The Dignity of Children

Public Affairs Conference to end with children’s concert, events

The 21^st annual Brown University/Providence Journal Public Affairs Conference, The Dignity of Children, will devote its final day – Saturday, March 10 – to children’s activities, including a performance of Peter and the Wolf.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The 21^st annual Brown University/Providence Journal Public Affairs Conference will come to a close on Saturday, March 10, 2001, with a day devoted to its subject – children.

Youngsters are invited that day to the Brown University campus for readings by local children’s authors, a performance of Prokofiev’s timeless classic, Peter and the Wolf, and a chance to work with dance masters in a special workshop. All events are free and open to the public.

The conference, titled The Dignity of Children, opens Sunday, March 4, and continues through the week, offering lectures and panel discussions with some of the nation’s leading experts on children, childhood development and parenting in the 21^st century. For a full schedule of conference events, visit www.brown.edu/news or call the News Service at (401) 863-2476.

Saturday, March 10

9 a.m.
The Salomon Center for Teaching, The College Green

Authors Natalie Babbitt and Emily Arnold McCully ’61 will read from their works. Babbitt has written and illustrated more than a dozen books for children and young adults, including Kneeknock Rise (a Newbery Honor Book), Tuck Everlasting and Nellie: A Cat on Her Own. McCully has illustrated more than 150 children’s books and written 25, including Picnic, which won a Christopher Award in 1985. In 1993 her highly acclaimed Mirette on the High Wire was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 best illustrated children’s books and awarded the coveted Randolph Caldecott Medal.

10 a.m.
Sayles Hall, The College Green

The Brown University Orchestra will perform Peter and the Wolf, directed by Paul Phillips and narrated by Oskar Eustis. Director of Trinity Repertory Theater for the past seven years, Eustis has worked as a director, dramaturg and artistic director for theaters around the world and has served the National Endowment for the Arts in many capacities. He has won directing awards for his Los Angeles production of Angels in America and, at Trinity, for Millennium Approaches. An award-winning composer, pianist, lecturer and writer, Phillips is in his 12^th year as director of orchestras and chamber music at Brown. He has held numerous conducting posts from Frankfurt to Savannah, and he is a five-time ASCAP winner.

11 a.m.
Ashamu Dance Theater, off Waterman Street

The American Dance Legacy Institute of Brown University will sponsor a Brown Legacy Dance Ensemble, a participatory workshop for children ages 8 and older. Children will work with contemporary dance master David Parsons to develop choreography for Parsons Etude, which they will perform with the Brown Dance Extension at the end of the session. Parsons was a lead dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1978 to 1987, when he founded the Parsons Dance Company. The Dance Extension is a touring repertory company of Brown students founded in 1979 by Julie Strandberg, founding director of dance and artist-in-residence at Brown and the executive director of the American Dance Legacy Institute.