1.
Kansas City, Missouri
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Kansas City is the largest city in Missouri and the sixth largest city in the Midwest. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the city had an population of 475,378 in 2015. It is the city of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River coming in from the west, on June 1,1850 the town of Kansas was incorporated, shortly after came the establishment of the Kansas Territory. Confusion between the two ensued and the name Kansas City was assigned to them soon thereafter. Most of the city lies within Jackson County, but portions spill into Clay, Cass, along with Independence, it serves as one of the two county seats for Jackson County. Major suburbs include the Missouri cities of Independence and Lees Summit and the Kansas cities of Overland Park, Olathe, and Kansas City. The city is composed of neighborhoods, including the River Market District in the north, the 18th and Vine District in the east. Kansas City is also known for its cuisine, its craft breweries, Kansas City, Missouri was officially incorporated as a town on June 1,1850, and as a city on March 28,1853. The territory straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers was considered a place to build settlements. The Antioch Christian Church, Dr. James Compton House, the first documented European visitor to Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about 90 miles east near Brunswick, Missouri, where he illegally traded furs. In the documents, he describes the junction of the Grande Riv des Cansez and Missouri River, French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the areas first reasonably accurate map. The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French continued their fur trade under Spanish license. After the 1804 Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, in 1831, a group of Mormons from New York settled in what would become the city. They built the first school within Kansas Citys current boundaries, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833, in 1833 John McCoy established West Port along the Santa Fe Trail,3 miles away from the river. In 1834 McCoy established Westport Landing on a bend in the Missouri to serve as a point for West Port. Soon after, the Kansas Town Company, a group of investors, began to settle the area, in 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the Town of Kansas
2.
Modern dance
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Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern dance is considered to have emerged as a rejection of. Socioeconomic and cultural factors contributed to its development. In the late 19th century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, moving into the 1960s, new ideas about dance began to emerge, as a response to earlier dance forms and to social changes. Eventually, postmodern dance artists would reject the formalism of modern dance, and include such as performance art, contact improvisation, release technique. American modern dance can be divided into three periods or eras, Modern dance has evolved with each subsequent generation of participating artists. Artistic content has morphed and shifted from one choreographer to another, artists such as Graham and Horton developed techniques in the Central Modern Period that are still taught worldwide, and numerous other types of modern dance exist today. In America, increasing industrialization, the rise of a class, and the decline of Victorian social strictures led to, among other changes. It was in this atmosphere that a new dance was emerging as much from a rejection of social structures as from a dissatisfaction with ballet, womens colleges began offering aesthetic dance courses by the end of the 1880s. Emil Rath, who wrote at length about this emerging artform at the stated, Music and rhythmic bodily movement are twin sisters of art. 1877, Isadora Duncan was a predecessor of modern dance with her stress on the center or torso, bare feet, loose hair, free-flowing costumes, and incorporation of humor into emotional expression. She was inspired by classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature, natural forces, and new American athleticism such as skipping, running, jumping, leaping and she thought that ballet was ugly and meaningless gymnastics. Although she returned to the United States at various points in her life and she returned to Europe and died in Nice in 1927. 1891, Loie Fuller began experimenting with the effect that gas lighting had on her silk costumes, Fuller developed a form of natural movement and improvisation techniques that were used in conjunction with her revolutionary lighting equipment and translucent silk costumes. She patented her apparatus and methods of lighting that included the use of coloured gels and burning chemicals for luminescence. 1905, Ruth St. Denis, influenced by the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Japanese dancer Sada Yacco, developed her translations of Indian culture and her performances quickly became popular and she toured extensively while researching Oriental culture and arts. Other pioneers included Kurt Jooss and Harald Kreutzberg, an accomplished choreographer, she was a founding artist of the first American Dance Festival in Bennington. Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of dance and musical theater
3.
Jacob's Pillow Dance
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Jacobs Pillow is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. The organization is known for the oldest internationally acclaimed Summer dance festival in the United States, the facility also includes a professional school and extensive archives as well as year-round community programs. The facility itself was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 2003, the Jacob’s Pillow mission is to support dance creation, presentation, education, and preservation, and to engage and deepen public appreciation and support for dance. The site of Jacobs Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts was originally settled in 1790 by the Carter family. Because of the road leading to the hilltop property, it became known as Jacobs Ladder. The farm was purchased in 1931 by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn as a dance retreat, Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, led the highly regarded Denishawn Company, which had popularized dance forms rooted in theater and cultural traditions outside European ballet. They were influential in training a host of dance pioneers, including Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Doris Humphrey, Shawns objective was to establish a dance organization for American men. The early corps of his company built many of the structures on the Jacobs Pillow campus. This effort came to an end in 1940 with the advent of the Second World War, Shawns company disbanded, significant debt forced Shawn to consider sale of the property. In 1940 he leased the property to dance teacher Mary Washington Ball, british ballet stars Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin learned of Shawns financial difficulties, and decided to acquire the property. With financial backing and fundraising support from millionaire Reginald Wright, $50,000 was raised to purchase the property, the summer dance festival was revived, and Shawn was retained as its director until his death in 1972. In 2003, the Jacobs Pillow property was declared a National Historic Landmark District by the government as an exceptional cultural venue that holds value for all Americans. It is the only entity in the U. S. to receive this honor. In March 2011, Jacobs Pillow was named a recipient of the 2010 National Medal of Arts, World premieres have been commissioned from choreographers such as Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor, and artists such as Margot Fonteyn and Mikhail Baryshnikov have been showcased in works. Performances at Jacobs Pillow take place on three stages, the Ted Shawn Theatre has a capacity of 620 reserved seats. The Doris Duke Studio Theatre, built in 1990 as a flexible, talks by Pillow Scholars-in-Residence take place before every performance in these two theaters. Wednesdays preview the Doris Duke Studio Theatre artists, Thursdays and Fridays feature emerging artists, each performance at Inside/Out concludes with a Q&A session with the artists. Free historical walking tours are available to the public weekly during the summer, the School at Jacobs Pillow’s conservatory-style curriculum includes five programs, Ballet, Cultural Traditions, Contemporary Traditions, Jazz/Musical Theater, and Choreographers’ Lab
4.
Knight
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A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch or other political leader for service to the monarch or country, especially in a military capacity. Historically, in Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors, during the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, often, a knight was a vassal who served as a fighter for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback, since the early modern period, the title of knight is purely honorific, usually bestowed by a monarch, as in the British honours system, often for non-military service to the country. The modern female equivalent in the United Kingdom is Dame, furthermore, Geoffroi de Charnys Book of Chivalry expounded upon the importance of Christian faith in every area of a knights life. This novel explored the ideals of knighthood and their incongruity with the reality of Cervantes world, in the late medieval period, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many nations. Some orders of knighthood, such as the Knights Templar, have become the subject of legend, each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state or monarch to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement. This linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry, cavalier, the special prestige accorded to mounted warriors finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Muslim world, and the Greek hippeus and Roman eques of classical antiquity. The word knight, from Old English cniht, is a cognate of the German word Knecht and this meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages. Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which also meant knight, the Anglo-Saxon cniht had no connection to horsemanship, the word referred to any servant. A rādcniht, riding-servant, was a servant delivering messages or patrolling coastlines on horseback, a narrowing of the generic meaning servant to military follower of a king or other superior is visible by 1100. The specific military sense of a knight as a warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years War. The verb to knight appears around 1300, and, from the same time, an Equestrian was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. This class is often translated as knight, the medieval knight, both Greek ἳππος and Latin equus are derived from the Proto-Indo-European word root ekwo-, horse. In the later Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, equus, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the English cavalier, Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier, Portuguese cavaleiro, the Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider, German Ritter, and Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, to ride, in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh-, in ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris from which European knighthood may have been derived. Some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, in the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin
5.
Royal Danish Ballet
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The Royal Danish Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Danish Theatre in Kongens Nytorv, Copenhagen, Denmark. It is one of the oldest ballet companies in the world and originates from 1748 and it was finally organized in 1771 in response to the great popularity of French and Italian styles of dance. From the outset, the Royal Danish Ballet employed some of the leading French and Italian dancers and choreographers. Within a few years of its founding, in 1771, the Royal Theater Ballet School or Royal Danish Ballet school was established to provide native dancers, one of its early masters, Vincenzo Galeotti, is considered the veritable founder of the company. He was master of the company from 1775 to 1816, and introduced ballet daction, Galeotti is credited with choreographing Amors og Balletmesterens Luner, which is still part of the companys repertoire and is the worlds oldest ballet still performed with its original choreography. Another major master of the troupe was the Danish dancer August Bournonville, during the half-century that Bournonville led the company, he choreographed some fifty ballets, of which about a dozen are still part of the companys repertoire. The works are influenced by the French school of dance, since Bournonville studied in that country. The third great period of the Danish Royal Ballet came in 1932, trained in the United States and the Soviet Union, he both adapted traditional ballets and choreographed original works for the company. He encouraged local choreographers, who went on to create prominent works that won international acclaim, among them was Børge Ralov, who choreographed the first modern Danish Ballet, The Widow in the Mirror, in 1934. He also trained many prominent international dancers, including Erik Bruhn, a prominent company director was Henning Kronstam, who directed the 1979 Bournonville Festival. In 2007 the appointment of New York City Ballet principal dancer Nikolaj Hübbe as balletmaster was announced, special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Archival footage of the Royal Danish Ballet performing Konservatoriet at Jacobs Pillow, July 1955
6.
University of Denver
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The University of Denver is a coeducational, four-year university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States, DU enrolls approximately 5,600 undergraduate students and 6,100 graduate students. The 125-acre main campus is an arboretum and is located primarily in the University Neighborhood. The seminary was founded as a Methodist institution and struggled in the years of its existence. In 1880 it was renamed the University of Denver, although doing business as the University of Denver, DU is still legally named Colorado Seminary. The university grew and prospered alongside the growth, appealing primarily to a regional student body prior to World War II. The heart of the campus has a number of historic buildings, the longest-standing building is University Hall, built in the Romanesque Revival style which has served DU since 1890. The cornerstone to this building is one mile above sea level. Just a few blocks off campus sits the historic Chamberlin Observatory, still a fully operational observatory, it is open to the public twice a week as well as one Saturday a month. The central campus area also includes Evans Chapel, an 1870s-vintage small church which was located in downtown Denver. Buchtel Tower is all that remains of the former Buchtel Chapel, the administrative offices are located in the Mary Reed Building, a former library built in 1932 in the Collegiate Gothic style. Margery Reed Hall was also built in the gothic style in 1929. Margery Reed Hall has recently been designated to house the Undergraduate Program for the Daniels College of Business, the update for the building was to include more classroom space, a larger hall to host guest speakers, as well as mechanical and technical improvements. In 2005 the Graduate School of Social Work completed the renovation and significant expansion of its building, in autumn 2003, DU opened a new $63.5 million facility for its College of Law, what was later named the Sturm College of Law. The building includes a library with personal computers accessible to students. Donald and Susan Sturm, owners of Denver-based American National Bank, had given $20 million to the University of Denver College of Law, the gift is the largest single donation in the 112-year history of the law school and among the largest gifts ever to the university. The Daniels College of Business was completed in September 1999 at the cost of $25 million, F. W. Olin Hall was built in 1997 to house Biological and Natural Sciences. Olin Hall promotes an exceptional collaborative learning and study space for DU science students, additionally, the university opened the $70 million Robert and Judi Newman Center for Performing Arts, which houses the acclaimed Lamont School of Music
7.
Los Angeles
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Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L. A. is the cultural, financial, and commercial center of Southern California. With a census-estimated 2015 population of 3,971,883, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the United States. The citys inhabitants are referred to as Angelenos, historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was founded on September 4,1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, in 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4,1850, the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California, nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, and sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles also has an economy in culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology, education, medicine. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index, the city is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $831 billion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. The city has hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984 and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and thus become the second city after London to have hosted the Games three times. The Los Angeles area also hosted the 1994 FIFA mens World Cup final match as well as the 1999 FIFA womens World Cup final match, the mens event was watched on television by over 700 million people worldwide. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva, a Gabrielino settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning poison oak place. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2,1769, in 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. The Queen of the Angels is an honorific of the Virgin Mary, two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto with a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small town for decades, but by 1820. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, during Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta Californias regional capital
8.
Museum of Modern Art
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The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is identified as one of the largest and most influential museums of modern art in the world. The MoMA Library includes approximately 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, over 1,000 periodical titles, the archives holds primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and they became known variously as the Ladies, the daring ladies and the adamantine ladies. They rented modest quarters for the new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7,1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. At the time, it was Americas premier museum devoted exclusively to art. One of Abbys early recruits for the staff was the noted Japanese-American photographer Soichi Sunami. Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees, Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr, under Barrs guidance, the museums holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne. Abbys husband was opposed to the museum and refused to release funds for the venture. Nevertheless, he donated the land for the current site of the museum, plus other gifts over time. During that time it initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, the museum also gained international prominence with the hugely successful and now famous Picasso retrospective of 1939–40, held in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. In its range of presented works, it represented a significant reinterpretation of Picasso for future art scholars, Boy Leading a Horse was briefly contested over ownership with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1941, MoMA hosted the exhibition, Indian Art of the United States. His brother, David Rockefeller, also joined the board of trustees in 1948. David subsequently employed the noted architect Philip Johnson to redesign the garden and name it in honor of his mother
9.
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. It houses one of the worlds largest collections of relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four centers of the New York Public Librarys Research library system. Originally the collections that formed The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts were housed in two buildings, a separate center to house performing arts was first proposed by Carleton Sprague Smith in a 1932 report to the library administration, A Worthy Music Center for New York. There were attempts to create partnerships with Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art, during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Music Division produced a program of concerts. These concerts were held in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Juilliard School. After Lincoln Center was incorporated in 1956, a mention of a possible library. It was envisioned that a library-museum would serve to interpret and illuminate the entire range of the performing arts, by December of that year, the library had become an accepted component of Lincoln Center planning and fundraising. Recalling his earlier reports, Smith produced a new report arguing for a move to Lincoln Center, Library administration officially approved of the move in June 1959. The building housing the research collections and the Vivian Beaumont Theater was the third building to be opened at Lincoln Center. Original plans conceived the library as a building, but prohibitive costs necessitated a combination of the Library. As built, the Theater forms the core of the building, the 1st and 2nd floors occupying the southern and western sides. Noted modernist architect Gordon Bunshaft, of the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the interiors, the Claire Tow Theater was built on the roof of the Library and opened in June 2012. The third floor, housing the collections, opened to the public on July 19. The entire library was opened to the public on November 30,1965, at its opening, it was called Library and Museum of the Performing Arts. The Librarys museum component was named the Shelby Collum Davis Museum in honor of an investment banker who contributed $1 million to Lincoln Center for museum purposes. At its opening, the Librarys main lobby at the Lincoln Center Plaza entrance housed a bookstore, a viewing area. The second floor included a childrens performing arts collection as well as the Hecksher Oval, prior to the 2001 renovation, the childrens collection was relocated to the Riverside Branch
10.
Augmented reality
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Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a general concept called mediated reality. As a result, the functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one, augmentation is conventionally in real time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology the information about the real world of the user becomes interactive. Information about the environment and its objects is overlaid on the real world and this information can be virtual or real, e. g. seeing other real sensed or measured information such as electromagnetic radio waves overlaid in exact alignment with where they actually are in space. Augmented reality brings out the components of the world into a persons perceived real world. One example is an AR Helmet for construction workers which displays information about the construction sites, hardware components for augmented reality are, processor, display, sensors and input devices. Various technologies are used in Augmented Reality rendering including optical projection systems, monitors, hand held devices, a head-mounted display is a display device paired to the forehead such as a harness or helmet. HMDs place images of both the world and virtual objects over the users field of view. Modern HMDs often employ sensors for six degrees of freedom monitoring that allow the system to align virtual information to the physical world, HMDs can provide VR users mobile and collaborative experiences. Specific providers, such as uSens and Gestigon, are even including gesture controls for full virtual immersion, in January 2015, Meta launched a project led by Horizons Ventures, Tim Draper, Alexis Ohanian, BOE Optoelectronics and Garry Tan. On February 17,2016, Meta announced their product at TED. AR displays can be rendered on devices resembling eyeglasses, a head-up display, also known as a HUD, is a transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints. Near eye augmented reality devices can be used as portable head-up displays as they can show data, information, many definitions of augmented reality only define it as overlaying the information. CrowdOptic technology can be used by Google Glass users to learn where to look at a point in time. In January 2015, Microsoft introduced HoloLens, which is an independent smartglasses unit, First impressions and opinions have been generally that HoloLens is a superior device to the Google Glass, and manages to do several things right in which Glass failed. Contact lenses that display AR imaging are in development and these bionic contact lenses might contain the elements for display embedded into the lens including integrated circuitry, LEDs and an antenna for wireless communication
