Child Will To Learn

Sevillanas are, without a doubt, the most popular flamenco “palo". Many people are drawn to flamenco through this style. Their simplicity and colourfulness make them an ideal starting point to start to learn flamenco dance. In Andalucia there exists an innate ability to dance them at parties and fairs and around the world there are dance academies to learn and practice Sevillanas. Below you will find all you need to learn the secrets of the most festive flamenco style.

Sevillanas were born to accompany a dance of courtship. The are danced, therefore, in a couple and in series of four (the first, second, third and fourth) with a brief pause between each. The main movements are “paseillos", “pasadas", “careos" and “remates". Learning this art form requires a good methodology.

previewing the Tribeca Film Festival

I haven't been to the Tribeca Film Festival since 2003, and man, has it grown! Launching this Wednesday and running through May 6, more than 160 screenings, programs, and other events are taking over not just the neighborhood of Tribeca -- in lower Manhattan near the former World Trade Center site -- but theaters and venues up and down the length of Manhattan. (There are even rumors of a festival-hosted gala premiere of Spider-Man 3 planned for Queens, across the East River from Manhattan, and you know I'll be on the lookout for some way to sneak into that.)

So I'm attending TFF again this year? What the hell. Trying to plan my coverage, though, is like trying to plan an invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Even if I do nothing but see movies -- and never mind the panels, the street fair, the “drive-in," and all the other fun stuff -- I'll still be able to take in only a tiny portion of everything that's on tap.

JET Connection / From JET to part-time guide

This is the fourth installment in a series that profiles some former participants in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme who have maintained their connections with Japan.

Dechant was working as an English-speaking tour guide one Sunday last month, tutoring a group of about 40 Japanese and foreigners from Beppu and neighboring areas on the finer points of the Kannawa district in Beppu, one of eight hot spring resorts in the city. It was his fifth English-language tour.

news in our communities

The Catawba Science Center's Summer Fun camp program will offer 11 weeks of science classes June 11 through Aug. 24.Children ages 4 to 12 can explore the physics of sports, marine life, ecosystems, robotics, geology, the science of flight and more.

Parents of rising first- through sixth-graders can also choose the Afternoon Adventures option, which offers supervised activities noon-5:30 p.m. Activities include games, scavenger hunts, special themed Fridays, swimming, bowling and movie outings each week.

Outdoors calendar of events

Saturday: The Olympia Yacht Club celebrates the Opening Day of Boating with a boat parade. All boats - paddle, sail and power - can join the event, which starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m. The parade starts at Percival Landing and ends at the shoreline of the Olympia Country and Golf Club.

May 5: The road to Paradise, which has been closed since huge floods battered Mount Rainier National Park in late November, is scheduled to reopen. The Longmire area and Jackson Visitor Center at Paradise are also scheduled to reopen. The Cougar Rock Campground is scheduled to reopen May 18.

Masahiro Murata

Masahiro Murata, 35, is a hair and makeup artist whose salon, MaQueen, just behind the Kabuki-za theater in Ginza, is a sanctuary for both his loyal clients and staff. Murata loves people, and especially beauty in them, which he believes manifests itself in the way one treats others. As one of Japan's top hairstylists, for five days a week he works almost 15 hours a day, and he spends the other two traveling around the country doing workshops for professional hairdressers in styling, perms and cuts. As famous for his technique and style, he is more about substance than anything else.

Soundcheck: Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond

Five minutes before the doors opened for the My Brightest Diamond/Decemeberists show at the Orpheum last Friday, Shara Worden's (My Brightest Diamond) guitar is acting up. The cord seems to be acting up, and the guitar is cutting in and out. Two minutes before the doors open, she's still fine-tuning with her band. But everything seems to work out, and as she comes off stage, she seems happy to meet me.

As we climb the backstage stairs, we talk about the oddness of the back areas of the Orpheum. "It's like something out of another time," she says. And indeed, behind the big blast door that leads backstage, the Orpheum is a cross between a fortress and a haunted house - long, narrow stairwells leading to sinister closed doors and narrow hallways. We also figure out how to pronounce DeVotchKa (it isn't like you'd pronounce it in Russian).

The B-17 Experience: Way Outside the Box

I've probably seen about every WW II air-battle movie ever made, and several of them many times. That's because I grew up in the days when those movies were king, and the heroes of the Greatest Generation were still fresh on everyone's mind. And though many of those movies blur in my brain now, scenes from some of them remain fresh.

For a large chunk of a lifetime those movie scenes were all the B-17 was to me. The thought of a close encounter with one was only a childhood fantasy, put away in that same dusty box where slugging a homer to win the World Series slumbered.