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CHINA MILLENNIUM COUNCIL Events Calendar Year 2006
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WORLD LEADERS AND HUMANITARIANS RAISE $7.3 BILLION FOR GLOBAL AID EFFORT
A dazzling array of national Heads of States, global business leaders and humanitarians gathered at the second annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. An astonishing $7.3 billion in global aid was pledged by a stunning roster of modern visionaries and philanthropists. Distinguished members included First Lady Laura Bush, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, President Perev Musharraf of Pakistan, Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, President Vicente Fox Quesada of Mexico, former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and the President of Ireland Mary Robinson. Business entrepreneurs included Warren Buffet, Sir Richard Branson, Russell Simmons, Georgette Mosbacher of Borghese, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Starbucks CEO Jim Donald. Educational leaders included President of Brown University Dr. Ruth Simmons and President of Columbia University Lee Bollinger. The nonpartisan Global Initiatives annual meeting concentrated a diverse and select group of current and former heads of state, business leaders, noteworthy academicians, and key NGO representatives to identify immediate and pragmatic solutions to the world’s most pressing social and economic problems. Workshops focused on resolving poverty issues; integrating religion as a force for reconciliation and conflict resolution; and implementing innovative business strategies and technologies to combat climate change; and strengthen governance. The Clinton Global Initiative is a non-partisan catalyst for action, bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions, in order to implement and address the complex and growing demands borne of a modern civilization. The mission of CGI is to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To advance this mission, CGI has developed programs and partnerships focused upon: ▪▪Poverty Alleviation ▪▪Global Health ▪▪Energy and Climate Change ▪▪Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict “All of us have an unprecedented amount of power to solve problems, save lives and help see the future.” - William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the United States. To read more about the current work of the Clinton Global Initiative, www.clintonglobalinitiative.org.
KEVIN LOCKE, INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED LAKOTA HOOP DANCER PERFORMING ARTIST
Among American Indian artists of North America, none is more famous than
Kevin Locke, Lakota hoop dancer and indigenous flute player. Locke, also
known as Tokeya Inajin, will perform his stunning dance and Native American
flute artistry on March 24, 2006 at 7:00PM in the Cutco Theater
on Jamestown Community College’s Olean Campus as part of Cultural Diversity
Weekend.
INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED ANDY WONG VISITS RIT NATIONAL TECHNICAL INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF
China’s prestigious modern dance artist and choreographer Andy Wong visited Rochester, New York and with dance students at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Andy began his training in Jazz, Ballet and Chinese dance at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Choreographed events involved community organizations and universities in Hong Kong organized by The Council of Hong Kong Dance Forum. DanceArt’s performances address modern social concerns. "A lot of what we do is about individuality and our identities as Asian people who live in this country. They’re about what we feel about our environment," Wong says. "The social issues are underneath the choreographic line. It’s not very obvious." According to Wong, traditional Chinese dance forms are still predominant in Hong Kong, though modern dance with a Western bent has gained a foothold in the last decade. He now counts 30-plus modern companies in Hong Kong. DanceArt stands out due to its active outreach programs with children and people with disabilities. Wong believes his company "represents a new creative force in Hong Kong. Because we all worked with professional companies for a long time, and we’re mature in age… and we go to different corners of society … and we bring a lot of that back with us." Thomas Warfield, Artist in Residence and Choreographer at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf invited Andy Wong to participate in his dance education workshops. PeaceArt International, founded by Thomas Warfield, is a company of worldwide performers facilitating greater human understanding through the arts. YING QUARTET WINS GRAMMY AWARD FOR BEST CLASSICAL CROSSOVER ALBUM
The Ying Quartet, at the University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music’s string quartet-in-residence, garnered top honors with a Grammy Award for the Best Classical Crossover Album “4 + Four”, a collaboration with the Turtle Island String Quartet. Now in its second decade, the Ying Quartet continues to develop ways of making artistic and creative expression an essential part of everyday life. Selected projects include: residency at Symphony Space in New York City, linking music with poetry; collaboration with Da Camera of Houston to bring chamber music into the lives of working people; and touring with the Turtle Island String Quartet in jazz and improvisation. Natives of Chicago, the Ying siblings began their career as an ensemble in 1992 in the farm town of Jesup, Iowa as the first recipients of a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support chamber music in rural America. The Ying Quartet participated fully in the community, performing on countless occasions for audiences of six to six hundred people in a residency so successful that it was widely chronicled in the international media, including features in the New York Times and on CBS Sunday Morning. In 1999, the Ying Quartet introduced LifeMusic, a multi-year commissioning project supported by the Institute for American Music, designed to produce a distinctively American string quartet repertoire. As Quartet in Residence at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, the Ying Quartet plans and directs a rigorous, sequential chamber music curriculum that integrates intensive musical instruction with training in creative presentation and communication skills and includes practical performance opportunities throughout the greater Rochester community. Since 2001, they serve as the Blodgett Quartet in Residence at Harvard University. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER DR. SPENCER WELLS LAUNCHES GENOGRAPHIC PROJECT
Remarkable DNA genetic evidence reveals without doubt that we are all related and descended from a common African ancestor who lived only 60,000 years ago. The fossil record attributes human origins in Africa, but little is known about the great journey that took Homo sapiens to the far reaches of the Earth. When DNA is passed from one generation to the next, most of it is reconfigured by the processes that give each of us our individuality and uniqueness. Components of the DNA chain remain largely intact through the generations, altered only occasionally by mutations which become "genetic markers." These ancestral markers allow geneticists like Dr. Spencer Wells to trace our common evolutionary timeline back through the ages. "The greatest history book ever written," Wells says, "is the one hidden in our DNA." Different ethnic populations convey distinct genetic markers. Tracing their cultural and historical reconstruction through past generations reveal a genetic tree on which many diverse branches may be further examined back to their common African root. Our genes allow us to chart the ancient human migrations from Africa across the continents. Through one DNA strain, living evidence attests to an ancient African migrational path, penetrating India and China, and to ultimately populate remote Australia. In a shrinking world, mixing populations are scrambling genetic signals. The key to this puzzle is acquiring genetic samples from the world's remaining indigenous peoples whose ethnic and genetic identities are isolated. But such distinct peoples, languages, and cultures are quickly vanishing into a 21st century global melting pot. The Genographic Project has established ten strategic research laboratories around the globe. Scientists are exploring the Earth's remote regions in a comprehensive effort to compile and archive humanity's genetic diversity atlas.
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