Understanding Cultural, Ethnic and Gender Differences by Managers and Professions Essay Example for Free

Understanding Cultural, Ethnic and Gender Differences by Managers and Professions Essay It is nearly impossible to have a successful business without considering the important aspect of the cultural, ethnic and gender differences among the employees. Culture refers to a set of beliefs that a certain group of people have in common. In at least every working environment, it is more than obvious to have people having different cultures, ethnicities, and of course different genders (Carlozzi, 2004). In order to ensure that people work together and efficiently, it is highly advisable for the managers and professionals to understand these diverse cultures (Carlozzi, 2004). Most countries have different cultures, and it is possible that in any given working environment, there are many cultures that exist. It is therefore an apparent fact that there is a need in the understanding of cultural, ethnic and gender differences to ensure success in businesses. Understanding cultural and ethnic differences at workplace can be termed as cultural diversity and not biasness as may be conceived by other critics. Cultural diversity encompasses race, gender, ethnic group, age, education and background among others. Understanding cultural and ethnic differences does not only involve how people perceive themselves, but how they perceive others. What results is that those perceptions affect the way they interact with each other at the work place (Carlozzi, 2004). For many employees to perform effectively in an organization, managers and professionals in human resource need to deal effectively with issues related to communication and adaptability and change (Carlozzi, 2004). Communication is the most basic concept of success in any business environment. If it is not properly fostered by the managers to their employees, the success of the business may be at stake. This implies that the managers and human resource professionals, should take the initiative to understand the cultural values and ethnic differences so as to know how well to approach issues with the employees without collusion. From the look of things, the issue of understanding cultural differences is likely to increase significantly in the coming years. Managers and professionals in all those businesses that have succeeded have come to see the need in building an understanding of cultural differences in the work place. They are ready to spend even resources, if needs be, to manage cultural diversity. It is very beneficial in many ways, and most importantly, they help to create an understanding in the working environment. A business entity’s success and competitiveness depends upon its capability to understand different cultures and ethnicities and realize the benefits involved. If a business organization actively assesses its handling of workplace diversity issues, and develops and implements diversity plans, multiple benefits can be realized (Carlozzi, 2004). One benefit is the increased adaptability of one another. Getting used to each other in a business environment is very vital in the success of the business. There will be free flow of information because people will be free to each other, and with perfect communication, issues will be approached in a friendly manner. Business organizations that embrace cultural diversity have the capacity to supply a greater variety of solutions to problems in service, sourcing, and allocation of resources. Employees from different backgrounds bring individual talents and expertise in suggesting of ideas that are flexible in adapting to fluctuating markets and the demands of the customers. With understanding of cultural differences and ethnicities, the business organization will have a broader service range, in terns of business delivery. The presence of different cultures in a business implies that there is a collection of skills and experiences in that particular business. This allows the enterprise to provide a service to customers on global basis. The managers and professionals in human resource department will give positions to employees with regards to capacities (Carlozzi, 2004). After understanding each individual’s culture, they will know where and on what field someone is good at. This will make the business succeed because an employee will be given a position where he or she is likely to perform best. This will also reduce job burnouts which greatly lower the performance of employees. The understanding of the cultural, ethnic and gender differences will enable managers to understand different view points that their employees possess. Different cultures in the work place possess different ideas, skills and experiences. In decision making process, different ideas will be suggested which will obviously find a solution to the problem at hand. This will only be achieved if there is cultural, gender and ethnic understanding by the managers. It will be better and most comfortable to communicate varying points of view as it will provide a large pool of ideas and experiences (Carlozzi, 2004). The business organization can now draw from that pool to meet the needs of its customers more effectively. In conclusion, it is wise to say that promoting cultural, ethnic and gender sensitivity in a business setting does not really mean promoting biasness in the business scenario as most people may try to argue. Instead, this clear understanding will take into account variations in the interactions of each employee to facilitate cooperation and communication in the business. Understanding the employees and trying to exploit their different potentials is a practice that can really benefit the business to grow to prosperity.

History of Chemotherapy and Cancer Treatment Research

History of Chemotherapy and Cancer Treatment Research An Early Victory A few doors from Freireichs office at the NCI, Min Chiu Li and Roy Hertz had been studying choriocarcinoma, a cancer of the placenta, which often metastasizes rapidly into the lung and the brain. Choriocarcinoma cells secrete a hormone called choriogonadotropin. The level of that hormone, also called the hcg level, was used by Li to track the course of the cancer as it responded to the therapy. In 1956, a young woman called Ethel Longoria suffered from choriocarcinoma that had metastasized to her lungs. Her tumors had begun to bleed into the linings of her lungs. Li and Hertz stabilized her and then treated her with methotrexate. After the first dose, when the doctors left for the night, they didnt expect that theyd find her in rounds the next morning. But she was alive. After four rounds of therapies, her tumor disappeared; the chest X-ray improved; and the hcg level rapidly plummeted toward zero. The tumors had actually vanished with chemotherapy. The trouble was the hcg level had not gone all the way to zero. Although the tumor seemed to have vanished, Li continued to treat her with chemotherapy based on her elevated hCG levels. The NCI administration disapproved, feeling that Li was experimenting on his patients, and fired him in July 1957. However, Li was ultimately proven to be right. Those patients whose chemotherapy were stopped once the visible tumors disappeared inevitably relapsed, while those who continued the treatment until their hcg levels had gone to zero were cured. Li had stumbled on a fundamental principle of oncology: Cancer needed to be systemically treated long after every visible sign of it had vanished. Mice and Men Adding vincristine to the arsenal of chemotherapy drugs had put the researchers at the NCI in a bind. It would take forever for the consortium to finish its trials because of the large number of permutations and combinations of drugs needed to be tested. Howard Skipper, a scientist from Alabama, provided Frei and Freireich a way out of the impasse. Skipper, who called himself a mouse doctor, was an outsider to the NCI. He had tested chemotherapy drugs in mice with leukemia, lymphomas and solid tumors as models for human cancers and came up with two pivotal findings: Chemotherapy kills a fixed percentage of cancer cells per treatment. The patients would need to be treated multiple times to get the compounded iterative effect; and Chemotherapy drugs are more effective when given in combination to optimize cancer killing capacity while minimizing drug resistance and side effects. Freireich and Frei were now ready to tackle a four-drug regimen known as VAMP, with each letter standing for one drug. VAMP When Frei and Freireich presented their preliminary plan for VAMP to the Acute Leukemia Group B (ALGB) at a national meeting on blood cancers, the audience hesitated. The group refused to sponsor VAMP until the many other trials had been completed. But Frei Came up with a compromise: VAMP would be studied at the NCI, outside the purview of the ALGB. The VAMP trial was launched in 1961. At the end of three intensively painful weeks, the leukemia cells went into remission. The remissions persisted for weeks, exceeding everyones expectation at the NCI. A few weeks later, the NCI sent another small cohort of patients to try VAMP. Once again, after the initial catastrophic dip, the leukemia vanished. The remissions were reliable and durable. In the fall of 1963, some children in remission came back to the clinic with minor neurological complaints such as headaches, numbness, and seizures. To investigate the possibility of cancer cells invading the brain, Frei and Freireich examined the childrens spinal fluid, and confirmed that leukemia cells were colonizing the brain. The neurological complaints were early signs of a more serious devastation. Eventually all the children came back with neurological complaints went into coma. It was a consequence of the bodys own defense system. The blood-brain barrier had kept VAMP out of the central nervous system, allowing the leukemia cells to colonize the one place that is unreachable by chemotherapy. But not all children had relapsed and died. About 5 percent of the treated children never relapsed with leukemia in the central nervous system. They remained in remission not just for weeks or months, but for years. An Anatomists Tumor In 1832, an English anatomist named Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) found a strange systemic disease among a series of cadavers. The disease was characterized by a peculiar enlargement of lymph glands. He wrote up the case of seven such cadavers and presented it to the Medical and Chirurgical Society. It was received with little enthusiasm. Soon after publishing his paper, Hodgkin drift away from medicine, and his anatomical studies slowly came to a halt. Hodgkins disease is a cancer of the lymph glands. The tumor moves from one contiguous node to another. It is a local disease on the verge of transforming into a systemic one. In 1898, an Austrian pathologist named Carl Sternberg discovered the cancerous lymph cells when looking through a microscope at a patients glands. Henry Kaplan, a professor of radiology at Stanford wanted to use radiation to treat human cancers. He knew radiation could treat solid tumors could be treated with radiation, but the outer shell of the cancer needed to be penetrated deep enough to kill cancer cells. A linear accelerator (linac) with its sharp, dense beam would be ideal for that purpose. In 1953, he persuaded Standford to tailor-make a linac for the hospital. With the linac in operation, Kaplan contemplated on his cancer target. Since Linac could only focus on local sites, his natural target was Hodgkins disease, a predictable local tumor. Kaplan wanted to prove that he could improve relapse-free survival by using a technique called extended field radiation (EFR). Under EFR, the X-rays are delivered to an entire area of lymph notes rather than to a single swollen node. In 1962, Kaplan conducted a trial. The result showed that EFR had significantly reduced the relapse rate of Hodgkins disease. In 1964, he did another trial with a larger field of radiation on a limited cohort of patients with tumors in just a few contiguous lymph nodes. The result showed even greater relapse-free intervals, stretching out into years. Wasnt the logic of extended field radiation similar to radical surgery -carving out larger and larger areas for treatment? Why did Kaplan succeed where others had failed? Kaplan was successful because he restricted radiotherapy to patients with early stage local cancers. Those are the natural disease for radiotherapy. Advanced-stage cancers are inherently different and would require other forms of treatment. An Army on the March In 1963 at the NCI Clinical Center in Bethesda, a group of researchers, including Zubrod, George Canellos, Frei, Freireich, and Vincent DeVita were making a list of cytotoxic drugs on one side of a blackboard. On the other side was a list of new cancers they want to target breast, ovarian, lymphomas, lung cancers. Connecting between the two lists were lines matching combinations of drugs to cancers. One question that came to their mind was whether chemotherapy could ever cure patients with any advanced cancers. The only way to answer that generic question was to direct the growing army of drugs against other cancers. They knew leukemia responded to combination chemotherapy. If another kind of cancer also responded to that strategy, then combination chemotherapy might cure all cancers. To test the principle, they focused on Hodgkins disease-a cancer that was both solid and liquid, a stepping-stone between leukemia and, say, breast cancer or lung cancer. Kaplan had proved that radiation therapy can cure local forms of Hodgkins disease. If they could prove that combination chemotherapy can cure metastatic Hodgkins disease, then the equation would be fully solved. In 1964, DeVita led the test of combination chemotherapy for metastatic Hodgkins disease. He combined four drugs-nitrogen mustard, oncovin, prednisone, and procarbasine into a highly toxic cocktail called MOPP. The nausea that accompanied the therapy was devastating. The toxic cocktail had weakened the immune system allowing pneumocystis carinii (PCP), a rare form of pneumonia, to sprout up. The therapy had caused permanent sterility in men and some women. The result of the study was remarkable. At the end of six months, 35 of the 43 patients had a complete remission. The most disturbing side effect would emerge a decade later. Several patients, cured of Hodgkins disease, would relapse with a second cancer, typically a drug-resistant leukemia caused by the prior MOPP therapy. *** In May 1968, Frei and Freireichs VAMP combination chemo had cured most of the children with leukemia in their bone marrow, but not the leukemia that had spread to their brain. A 36-year-old oncologist name Donald Pinkel thought that VAMP had not been intensive enough. Pinkel, a protà ©gà © of Farbers, had been recruited from Boston to start the leukemia program at St. Judess Hospital in Memphis. He determined to push the logic of combination chemotherapy to its limit with four crucial innovations: To use combinations of combinations of drugs mixed and matched together for maximum effect; To instill chemotherapy directly into the nervous system via the spinal cord; To kill residual cells in the brain by high-dose radiation; and To continue chemotherapy for month after month, even after the cancer seemed to have disappeared. The treatment protocol started with the standard chemotherapy drugs given in rapid-fire succession. The spinal canal was injected with methotrexate at defined intervals. The brain was irradiated with high doses of X-rays. The treatment lasted up to 30 months. It was an all-out combat. In July 1968, the St. Judes team published its results: Twenty-seven out of the thirty-one treated had a complete remission. Ten had never relapsed. The median time to relapse had increased to five years. By 1979, 278 patients had completed their chemotherapy. About 20 percent had relapsed, 80 percent was still in complete remission, disease free, after chemotherapy. The Cart and the House By the fall of 1968, the successes of the trials in Bethesda and in Memphis shifted the landscape of cancer therapy. The success of chemotherapy for both leukemia and Hodgkins disease made it seem like a unifying solution for cancer. In Boston, Farber celebrated the news by throwing a public party. He recast the occasion as the symbolic twenty-first birthday of Jimmy. Conspicuously missing from the guest list was the original Jimmy himself-Einar Gustafson. The real Jimmy had returned to a private life in Maine, where he now lived with his wife and three kids. As clinical oncologists were offering their unifying solution for cancer, cancer scientists were offering its unifying cause: viruses. The grandfather of this theory was Peyton Rous, a chicken virologist at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. In 1911, Rous discovered that a malignant tumor growing on a chicken could be transferred to another chicken by exposing the healthy bird to a filtrate derived from the tumor cells. He concluded that the cancer was transmitted by a virus. This virus is now known as the Rous sarcoma virus, or RSV. This discovery had set off a frantic search for more cancer viruses. In 1958, an Irish surgeon named Denis Burkitt discovered an aggressive form of lymphoma among children in Africa. Analyzing the cancer cells from these children, two British virologists discovered a human virus inside them. The new virus was named Epstein-Barr virus or EBV. Because viral diseases were potentially preventable, the NCI inaugurated a Special Virus Cancer Program in the early 1960s to systematically hunt for human cancer viruses. The cancer virus theory needed a deeper explanation: how might viruses cause a cell to become malignant? The success of cytotoxic chemotherapy raised a fundamental question: how would the therapy, the cure, connect with the cause of the cancer? As Kenneth Endicott, the NCI director, acknowledged in 1963: The program directed by the National Cancer Institute has been derided as one that puts the cart before the horse by searching for a cure before knowing the cause. But for Mary Lasker, this cart would have to drag the horse.

Monroe Doctrine :: US History Historical Essays

Monroe Doctrine The Monroe Doctrine can be considered as the United States first major declaration to the world as a fairly new nation. The Monroe Doctrine was a statement of United States policy on the activity and rights of powers in the Western Hemisphere during the early to mid 1800s. The doctrine established the United States position in the major world affairs of the time. Around the time of the Napoleonic Wars in the 1820s, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia all gained their independence from Spanish control ("Monroe Doctrine" 617). The United States was the first nation to recognize their independence from Spain. The European powers had still considered the new nations as still belonging to Spain. The Americans had a sense of pride in the former Spanish colonies gaining independence. They felt as if the American Revolution was a model for these new Latin American nations (Faragher 265). After Napoleon went down, the monarchy in Spain regained power ("Monroe Doctrine" 6 17). The Spanish had felt embarrassed after losing their colonies to independence. In 1815 Tsar Alexander I of Russia and the monarchs of Austria and Prussia formed the Holy Alliance. This alliance was a group set out to maintain autocracy (Migill 594). Spain then demanded the return of its colonies of the New World (Migill 594). With the possibility of help from the Holy Alliance and France, Spain’s goal was looking realistic. The Americans also feared that if the Spanish colonies were recaptured the United States might be next ("Monroe Doctrine" 617). Great Britain refused to let the Spanish take back their now independent colonies. As free countries the new Spanish-American nations could trade more goods with Great Britain. However, if Spain regains control of their former colonies then trade with Great Britain would decrease drastically ("Monroe Doctrine" 617). The Russian Tsar attempted to extend his interest of expansion in North America. In 1821 Rus sia had claims on the North Western coast of the North American continent as low as the 51st parallel, deep into the Oregon Territory (Migill 595). On September 14th of the same year Tsar Alexander I issued an Imperial Ukase (decree), saying that no foreign vessels could come within 100 Italian miles of Russian territory. Although the decree was never enforced, John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State at the time, strongly opposed it. Adams felt that many regions of North America were still unexplored such as Alaska and North Western Canada.

King Lear †Denial, Rage, and Isolation

Throughout Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, the audience is subject to differing emotions and sentiments for the main character. The changes in King Lear’s demeanor, state of mind and even beliefs throughout the play are constantly changing and subject to so many different factors that the audience cannot help but be swept up in the transformations. The contradictions and inconsistencies in the play have frustrated some and intrigued others. (Lynch, 2007) Despite this, King Lear continues to stand as one of the greatest literary pieces to have been written up to this very day.The aim of this essay is to examine the transformation in King Lear’s demeanor and person throughout the course of the second act. It is here where the audience can find a seemingly assorted array of emotions as caused by the unexpected circumstances faced by the king. It is this essay’s purpose to define and discuss the transition of the king from denial to rage and then to complete is olation all of which occurred within the span of a single act. The events, characters and development that transpires in the said act will be used as instruments to analyze the king’s steady transition in character.In Lear’s first appearance during the second act, he finds one of his servants in the stocks. His disbelief at discovering that someone could treat one of his own so badly is compounded by his discovery   that it was in fact Regan, his daughter, who ordered it done. This is the onset of Lear’s phase of denial. It is unbelievable to him that his own daughter would show disrespect for him in such a manner as evidenced by the following lines:King Lear:What's he that hath so much thy place mistook to set thee here?Kent: It is both he and she; Your son and daughter.King Lear: No.Kent: Yes.King Lear: No, I say.Kent: I say, yea.: No, no, they would not.Kent: Yes, they have.King Lear: By Jupiter, I swear, no. (Shakespeare, 1986)The king’s continuous refusal to Kent’s assertions is a clear indicator of his denial of the truth.King Lear’s denial is stressed even more with the news that his daughter and son-in law refuse to talk to him even upon his request. This was unheard of to the king and despite the obvious, he denies himself the realization that his daughter has betrayed him. His words show this denial clearly when he exclaims, â€Å"Deny to speak with me? They are sick? They are weary? They have travell'd all the night? Mere fetches; The images of revolt and flying off. Fetch me a better answer.† (Shakespeare, 1986)The king’s phase of denial turns to anger, however, when Regan comes to talk to him. She stresses Lear’s impotence as a leader and father with her continuous repetition of his being old as seen in Regan’s comment, â€Å"O, sir, you are old. Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine: you should be ruled and led.† (Shakespeare, 1986) She also says he is weak and tries to convince him to return to Goneril and stay there.This reaction to the king’s arrival as well as the earlier incident of finding his servant in the stocks fuels King Lear’s rage. This is seen with his exclamation of curses on Goneril, who maltreated him during the first act of the play.King Lear: Never, Regan: She hath abated me of half my train; Look'd black upon me; struck me with her tongue, Most serpent-like, upon the very heart: All the stored vengeances of heaven fall On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones, You taking airs, with lameness!Cornwall: Fie, sir, fie!King Lear: You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty, You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, To fall and blast her pride! (Shakespeare, 1986)Despite the many words of protest from Regan, the king continues to pour out his anger for his other daughter not knowing that Regan is in fact of like mind as Goneril and is already awa iting the latter’s arrival.Anger turns to isolation, however, when King Lear is confronted by both Regan and Goneril, who has just arrived. It is now clear to Lear that the two have betrayed him. They abuse their newfound power by requiring him to give up half of his knights, which was then lessened until it was required that he give up all of his knights. (Dominic, 1997) Unless he agreed, he would not be allowed to stay with them. This indicated Lear’s complete loss of authority as king and also as father to both his daughters.When the two daughters become of one mind in their demands from their father, King Lear is isolated emotionally and in power. He can no longer fight the demands of his daughters as he has bequeathed all he had to them and as such is empty-handed by himself. Also, the demand of withdrawal of all his knights indicates a future isolation even if the king does agree to the conditions of his daughters. He is isolated from them because of their betray al and agreeing to their demands will yield only a life of another kind of isolation, isolation from those loyal to him.The phase of isolation is final when the king runs out into the storm. Instead of looking for him, the two daughters order the door to be shut, leaving their father to fend for himself in the dark rainy night. Thus the transition from denial to rage and finally to isolation is made complete in the setting of the second act.ReferencesDominic, C. C. (1997). Shakespeare's characters for students. Detroit: Gale PublishersLynch, J. (2007). Classics revisited; the brutal power of ‘King Lear'; difficult and sadistic, the play still fascinates, especially in dark days.  Los Angeles Times, p.  E.1.   Retrieved 14 January 2008 from Los Angeles Times  databaseShakespeare, W. (1986). King Lear. William Shakespeare: the Tragedies, the Poems. Ed. John D. Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP

Mats Ek Carmen

This essay will analyze and discuss one of Europe's most creative and influential dance-makers, the Swedish dancer and choreographer Mats Ek; acclaimed for the theatricality and immediacy of his work while his contribution and development through the dance field with the main focus on his revision of the classical ballet stories. It will also discuss one of his major works Carmen and relate it with the original one. Mats Ek is a prominent and controversial figure of the contemporary dance.He has his own choreographic style and his work in contemporary dance choreography is contested. He was born in 1945. Eks mother, and his big influence, was the famous dancer and choreographer Birgit Cullberg, the founder of the world wide recognized, Cullberg Ballet Company. As said before, his mother was a huge influence for Ek. Therefore one can see that both, Mats Ek and Birgit Cullberg, choreographic style has a lot of same characteristics such as the attention of psychological characterization , the sensitive portrayal of humans feelings and the humorous episodes. In performance we see a fantasy world so unwaveringly strange and characters so imperiously dysfunctional we're genuinely compelled†¦ Ek may ask his dancers to go to some very odd places but the Cullberg Ballet follows him with ardent alacrity† (Judith Mackrell, the Guardian. ) In 1974–5, Ek was a member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Dusseldorf, and then made his choreographic debut in 1976 with The Officer’s Servant, for the Cullberg Ballet, the first of many of his works formed on them. In 1980 he became the artistic director of the Ballet Cullberg and a member of the Nederland’s Dance Theatre.He also worked and created pieces with many great dance companies. Mats Ek in well known for his revisionist versions of the classic ballets. He has also created his own work and most of the time his pieces have to do a lot with humor. However in reworking ballet classics, Ek likes to kee p the characters alive so as to always provide an inner emotion to the characters emotions and contrasts. The characters in his pieces,in contrast to the classic ones, have an emotional world of much more intense than usually and the relationship between them has a greater depth.Although he is revising the original pieces, he never forgets to stay true to the original context of the work and as far as the music is concerned he always uses the original one with very slight changes only to suit the new dramatic structure. Mats Eks key word, is clarity, despite the fact that he aims for clarity, this does not imply that he also uses simplicity in his pieces. â€Å"I was never interested in keeping to the classical traditions as such, What I want to explore are the underlying fairy tales that convey fundamental human issues love, deceit, pain, goodness.The classics have become cliches, and we have forgotten how they came to be and what they imply. We know them so well; they cease to ha ve meaning for our time. † (Mats Ek) Mats Ek is very often labeled that he relates his choreographies with the politics of the time that the choreographies are being made. This is not however right because none of Mr. Eks choreographies can be regarded as a political manifesto. In his pieces, the strong images and the dramatic situations will occasionally lead into humorous episodes. Humor, is one of Eks main characteristics throughout his pieces and as mentioned previously in the report so is his mother’s.By using humor in his dances, this does not mean that the pieces lose their tension. Since Mats Ek also studied theatre, most of the time his creations are a lot more dramatic than usual and this can be detected in every one of his pieces (Fifty Contemporary Choreographers, Pages 144-146). â€Å"Ek has a vivid theatricality and gift for genuine surprises†¦ his theatricality is matched by a full-out dance language that merges the sophisticated with the primitive. I became aware of just how much meaning Ek can compress into his pieces† (Nadine Meisner, the Independent).Ek’s style has become distinctive for its imaginative interpretations of storylines, in combination with a lyrical approach which transfers through movement the underlying emotions and feelings rather than just the narrative detail. His choreographic style and vocabulary is mainly from his ballet training, his relationship and dance experience with his mother and his collaboration with the Nederland Dance Theatre. Although Ek has rejected the conventional codes of classic ballet, it is clear in his pieces the he uses a lot of ballet technique.This can be found within the jumps, turns and footwork that he uses within his movement vocabulary. At the same time though, Ek uses a lot of contemporary movements such as drop of the pelvis, a lot of floor work and body weight. He manages to relate both styles with a unique and wonderful way in order for everything to look good and lovely. (Fifty Contemporary Choreographers, Pages 147-148) â€Å" Ek has done a great deal to enlarge how women are portrayed on stage, especially in the ballet classics. His â€Å"Giselle† and â€Å"Carmen† offer intense reimagining’s of  their heroines†. (Keeping dance alive: a Mats Eks portrait.Claudia La Rocco, TV classics) Let’s now move on to one of his most famous and great works, Carmen. Originally, Carmen was first performed in Paris on 3 March, 1875. Written by Georges Bizet. The story is about a temptress, Carmen, and her lover Don Jose who sacrifices his devoted lady, Micaela, to pursue his manly passions for Carmen. Jose, angry by her sexual behavior and blinded by his own rage, kills Carmen, thus bringing upon himself his own devastation resulting in death. The opera is set in Spain and the story line is more complex than the original novel by Prosper Merimee.The character of Carmen was too offensive for family theatre. Alt hough Carmen appeals to popular culture, the opera still attracts academic discourse as the spirit of Spain is personified in the character of Carmen. It is clear that in order for Carmen to be represented as a whore, she had to be black. That suited the beliefs of that time being, that the color of her skin will make her bad and evil. Moreover the color of her skin makes her also more exotic than any European and this will make her more desirable to the male audience and maybe more hated by women.In 1999 Mats Ek revised the Spanish classic Carmen to audiences all over the world. This version of Carmen is currently in the repertoire of the Royal Ballet, Cullberg Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, National Theatre, Ballet of Prague and the Polish National Opera Ballet. Ek in his pieces in general manages to show each character’s psychological aspect in depth. In Carmen, one can see that he presents Carmen as this woman who is complicated and has a complex behavior. That is what he usu ally does in his pieces, he presents all the women as very complicated and sexual creatures.In his choreography Ek is trying to keep the original features of the opera; but in order to attract more modern audiences he makes some changes so that the audience, in that time being, will be able to relate with the characters (Fifty Contemporary Choreographers, Pages 144-145). For example, the sexual behavior of Carmen in the piece is very important for the story line. However in the original piece it was not that clear. In Mats Ek version though, the sexuality is clearer and more understanding for the audience. Generally Eks version explores the actual human behavior as it is in real life.He pushes the male-female role reversal between the sexually free gypsy girl and the soldier Don Jose beyond safe boundaries, substituting a cigar for the familiar rose between Carmen's teeth, turning her into one of the boys( Cigar Crossed Lovers, David Bogoslaw, 1999). That cigar shows that she has a masculine soul in a woman’s body. (Carmen, 2010)   Carmen is a symbol of freedom and anarchy and can have as much freedom as she wants. In contrast, Jose is a traditional feminine role, a weak character that wants peace and a marriage, but cannot control his passions for Carmen in spite that he is going to marry Micaela.Eks Carmen begins and ends with a scene of a man, Jose, facing a firing squad and recalling in the last moments before death his tempestuous liaison with the gypsy girl who refused to be tamed. The dance then retells the story of the progressing love affair between Carmen and Jose. Eks choreographing style in this performance is a combination of both, ballet and modern dance. As they first dance together, Carmen and Jose, is like she is slowly explaining to him, throughout the dance, how she is and how she likes to live her life.He also tries to show her that he is a military man with a lot of discipline. At the beginning of the piece their movements are mor e aggressive, but as soon as they fell in love their movements become more soft and gentle. This change of the movement shows how they started to feel comfortable with each other as time passed (Janet Adshead, 1988, Dance Analysis: Theory and practice, Pages: 72-75). Carmen’s movement style initially is aggressive and masculine while it is becoming more beautiful as the story evolves.However, the fact that Jose is carrying the rose and Carmen the cigar, this shows that she is still the â€Å"man† in their relationship (As Willful As Ever And Puffing On a Cigar Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times. 1999). Another example of how the movement shows the emotional world and the relationship between the characters is when there is a trio between Carmen, Jose and Escamillo, who is the reason why Carmen does not love Jose anymore. He is the new love of her heart and that makes Jose angry. In the trio the two men’s jealousy is extremely obvious throughout the dancing move ment.There is imitation and repetition between each ones movement and the fact that they keep a certain distance between one another, shows the jealousy between them. At the end of the trio, when Carmen is going to strike Jose’s face, it becomes clear that she does not love him anymore. More over there is Michaela’s character which is also made clear through her movements. At the beginning she is dancing in a shy way but after she gets really angry with Jose and Carmen, thus her way of movement changes. She begins to be more aggressive and dynamic in terms of movement vocabulary and that is a reflection of her emotional world.The music in Eks choreography, as mentioned above, is faithful to the original one by French composer  Georges Bizet. The only difference is that is being used for different purposes in the story. In the original opera the music is a guide for the progress of the plot. In Mats Ek piece however, the music is not really needed to explain the plot or the relationship between the characters. It is there to create a mood in the piece. One thing that is really different from the original opera, in terms of sounds, is that in Mats Ek piece the dancers are sometimes talking and shouting. This adds a dynamic touch to the whole piece.Shouting is also more realistic than just singing opera. Carmen is wearing the same color of costume in both versions and almost in every version that has been created in the world. Red is the color of passion and sexuality. Thus, when the audience first sees Carmen, immediately understands her character and that she is a temptress. Micaela, in contrast to Carmen, wears blue, a color that symbolizes her innocence and that she is fragile. The street ladies costumes in Eks piece show their character and their Spanish ethnicity in contradiction to the original opera costumes that are showing the class and there social status.Ek uses very colorful, shiny and ruffled dresses that are a throwback to the 80s, in order to show that all women have sexuality. The costumes of the men are very simple and dark, just to show their discipline, as they are military men. The designs and sets in Eks Carmen are cartoonish and with playful colors. In terms of light, he tries to keep it dark. There is a metallic backdrop and panels which are suggestive of Spanish fans, as well as a large exercise ball downstage.In Mats Ek version of Carmen, there is a deeper reflection of all the characters emotional world. Carmen is clearly a symbol of Freedom and anarchy with an even more complex nature than the one of the classic story. That is what Mats Ek does anyway. Except from changing the classics into more modern and humorous editions, the thing that makes him special is how he deals with the inner world of each character. He manages to present each character, throughout the dance, in a very intense way so that the audience can understand for sure the characters personality.However he keeps the original stor y as it is, and he aims to show the same meaning as the original piece while at the same time he tries to explore a bit more the relationship between the characters. All of the above lead to Ek’s success when revising the classic stories. He remains faithful to the original story but however he does it not only with a more modern vocabulary but also with a more modern approach to suit the present. â€Å"Much like Bizet's opera of the same name, Mr. Ek's version proves that a grim tale of love and death can be downright entertaining† (As Willful As Ever And Puffing On a Cigar Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times. 999). It seems that Carmen will continue to appeal the audiences for years to come. Mats Ek Carmen will also continue to be popular to the audience because of the emotional and dramatic state of Mr. Eks pieces. He is a choreographer that distant himself from anybody else in the dance field. He is very original and successful with his choreographies and it is no wonder that he is so famous and he has achieved so much. He is an extremely talented choreographer with a lot of theatrical ideas and that is what makes him so special throughout all these years! Bibliography:Adshead, J. 1988. Dance analysis theory and practice. London: Dance books Bremser M. and Sanders L. Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Second Edition. 2011. Roudledge Au S. Ballet and Modern dance. 1998. Thames and Hudson world of Art. Articles: As Willful As Ever And Puffing On a Cigar Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times. 1999 Websites: Linda. 2010. Carmen. http://www. theballetbag. com Peter Grahame Woolf. 1996. Mat’s Ek Carmen. http://www. musicweb-international. com Claudia La Rocco. Keeping dance alive: A Mat’s Ek Portrait. http://www. classicaltv. com

Review on ang lihim ng pamilya rizal Essay

That documentary was quite intriguing especially the thing about Saturnina and her uncle Jose Maria.It got me thinking for an hour or two because if it was true it would be a disgrace to the family. The events links together; Saturnina got pregnant, her mother, Theodora took her on a long vacation and then they’ve returned with Soledad the baby that Theodora claimed to hers and Soledad was meztisa just like Jose Maria. Some questions run through my mind like how did that happen? Was it planned?does Theodora did not raised saturnina like the way she have raised rizal?.Another interesting issue is that the Alonzo family was a bastard because Theodora’s mother, Brigada Quintos was not a legal wife of her father,Lorenzo and the only legal child was Jose Maria. It was cleared to me why Rizal did not live in the alonzo mansion. Also, that’s why the Alberto mansion wasn’t recognized as a landmark because family Rizal wasn’t really connected to the mansion. Today the Alberto ancestral Mansion in Bià ±an laguna is being torn piece by piece for it will be moved to another location. Many people are against it because that is the house that Theodora grew with and it should be treated as a national landmark. I’m against it too because Theodora was an important person in history and she’s the one who mold Rizal into what he’d become. Despite the fact that Theodora wasn’t a legal child, she is still one of the people that have a right to it. The mansion is full of Filipino history and to be destroyed just for a foreign coffee shop? That’s not right. At the end of the documentary, the most important thing I’ve learned is everyone can be a hero. You don’t need to have a good family background; you just need to prove yourself worthy, care for your country and countrymen just like our national hero.

Transformation Of The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Austin Chang Arteaga/Morales AP English Language and Composition/ Period 6 2 October 2015 Transformation of Dimmesdale In the novel, â€Å"The Scarlet Letter†, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected reverend in the puritan society of seventeenth century Boston, commits adultery impregnates Hester Prynne. This sin that Dimmesdale commits causes his internal conflicts, which results in his self- punishments as he begins to see only darkness and no more light. This theme of sin and its ability to transform an individual is displayed through the multiple scaffold scenes within the novel as it slowly eats away Dimmesdale. In the beginning of the novel, when Hester Prynne is on display on the scaffold for the sins that she has committed, the community refers to Dimmesdale as a godlike figure. â€Å"That the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, take it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation,†( Hawthorne 49) expresses that the community views Dimmesdale as a holy person that has not indulged in sin and even at the last scaffold scene, he is still seen as a pure figure. At this point, Dimmesdale has yet to feel any guilt of his sinful act and still sees light. Ironically, Dimmesdale approaches Hester and tells her, â€Å"What can thy silence do for him, except it tempts him-yea, compel him, as it were-to add hypocrisy to sin? 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Text Features in Non-Fiction Informational Texts

Important tools to help students to understand and access information in informational texts are text features. The text features are both ways in which the authors and editors make the information easier to understand and access, as well as explicit means of supporting the content of the text through illustrations, photographs, charts, and graphs. Using text features is an important element of developmental reading, which teaches students to use these parts to understand and comprehend the content of the text. Text features are also part of most states high-stakes  tests. Students in fourth grade and above are usually expected to be able to identify the text features common to most non-fiction and informational texts. At the same time, they help struggling readers find and identify the information they are expected to know in content area classes, such as social studies, history, civics, and science. Text Features as Part of the Text Titles, subtitles, headings, and sub-headings are all part of the actual text, used to make the organization of the information in a text explicit. Most textbook publishers, as well as informational text publishers, use these features to make the content easier to understand. Titles The chapter titles in informational texts usually prepare the student to understand the text. Subtitles Subtitles usually immediately follow the title and organize the information into sections. Titles and subtitles often provide the structure for an outline. Headings Headings usually begin a subsection after a subtitle. There are multiple headings for each section. They usually lay out the major points made by the author in each section. Subheading Subheadings also help us understand the organization of the thoughts contained in the section and the relationships of the parts. Title, subtitle, headings, and subheadings could be used to create guided notes, as they are pivotal parts of the authors organization of the text. Table of Contents Works of fiction seldom have tables of content, whereas works of nonfiction almost always do. At the beginning of the book, they include the titles of chapters as well as subtitles and page numbers. Glossary Found at the back of the book, the glossary provides definitions of special words within the text. Publishers often place words to be found in the back in boldface. Sometimes the definitions are found adjacent to the text, but always in the glossary. Index Also in the back of the book, the index identifies where topics can be found, in alphabetical order. Features That Support the Content The internet has given us a rich and easily accessible source of images, but they are still incredibly important in understanding the content of information non-fiction texts. While not actually text it would be foolish to assume that our students understand the relationship between the content and the picture on the same page. Illustrations Illustrations are the product of an illustrator or artist and create an image that helps us better understand the content of the text. Photographs A hundred years ago, photographs were difficult to produce in print. Now, digital media makes it easy to create and recreate photographs in print. Now they are common in informational texts. Captions Captions are printed below the illustrations and photographs and explain what we are seeing. Charts and Diagrams Unlike illustrations, charts and diagrams are created to represent amount, distance, or other information shared in the text. Often they are in the form of graphs, including bar, line, and plot and whisker graphs, as well as pie charts and maps.