Reading — 2026 Jan–Apr Recall Set 86

Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century. The nobility were treated to extravagant events, especially wedding celebrations, where dancing and music created a detailed and fascinating spectacle. Dancing masters taught the dance steps to the nobility, who participated in the performances. In the 16th century Catherine de Medici, an Italian noblewoman, wife of the king of France and a great patron of the arts, began to fund ballet in the French court. Her elaborate festivals encouraged the growth of ballet de cour, a programme that included dance, costume, song, music and poetry. A century later, King Louis XIV helped to popularise and standardise the ballet. A passionate dancer, he performed many roles himself, including that of the Sun King in Ballet de la Nuit. His love of ballet raised it from a hobby for amateurs to a skill requiring professional training. By 1661, a dance academy had opened in Paris, and in 1681 ballet moved to the stage. The French opera Le Triomphe de L’Amour incorporated ballet elements in its performance, creating a long-standing opera-ballet tradition in France. In the mid-18th century, however, French ballet master Jean Georges Noverre rebelled against the artifice of opera-ballet, believing that ballet could stand on its own as an art form. His idea—that ballet should contain expressive dramatic movement, and this should reveal relationships between characters—introduced the ballet d'action, a dramatic style of ballet that features a narrative. Noverre's work is considered the forerunner to the narrative ballets of the 19th century. Early classical ballets such as Giselle explored the world of spirits and magic, and often showed women as passive and fragile. These themes are reflected in the ballets of the time which are called romantic ballets. This is the period which dancing on tiptoe, known as pointe work, became the normal style for the ballerina. The romantic tutu, a calf-length, full skirt, was also introduced at this time. By the 19th century the popularity of ballet had soared in Russia and by the end of that century its composers and choreographers—who designed the movements and steps the dancers took—had taken the art form to new levels. The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty, as choreographed by Marius Petipa, represent classical ballet in its grandest form. The primary purpose of Russian ballet in this period was to display classical technique such as pointe work, high leg lifts and precision of movement. Complicated sequences that drew attention to demanding steps, leaps and turns were choreographed into the story. The classical tutu, much shorter and stiffer than the romantic tutu, was introduced in the second half of the century to reveal a ballerina's legs and emphasise the skill of her footwork. George Balanchine is considered by many to be the greatest innovator of the contemporary "plotless" ballet, with no definite story line. Its purpose is to use movement to express the music and to depict human emotions. Today, the ballet takes many forms. Classical approaches, traditional stories and contemporary choreographic innovations blend together to produce the character of modern ballet. Despite all the changes which ballet has undergone, pointe shoes, which were first worn in the 1830s, have remained the key ballet equipment. Specially made to allow ballerinas to dance on tiptoe, they create an illusion of lightness and even give a sense that the ballerina is floating on air. While they look very delicate, pointe shoes are, in fact, quite the opposite. The tip of the shoe is a rigid box made of densely packed layers of fabric, cardboard or paper which has been hardened by glue. The box needs to be extremely sturdy since the entire weight of the dancer's body is balanced on it. The rest of the shoe is made of leather, cotton and satin, and each shoe is hand-made to fit a dancer's specifications, which means that you'll never see two pairs that are identical. Sometimes, men will also wear pointe shoes, usually for comedic effect, but male dancers usually wear a leather or canvas slipper with a soft sole, which provides flexibility when jumping. Each time a ballerina gets a new pair of pointe shoes, she has to break them in. This is done by pounding the box of the shoe with a hammer to soften it. Dancers also sew on ribbons and elastic to hold their shoes in place. Despite this time-consuming preparation, the shoes may only last for one performance, or even part of a performance, depending on the difficulty of the ballet. In the course of a single season, a professional ballerina can go through 100-120 pairs of pointe shoes.

A Do you read while listening to music? Do you like to watch TV while finishing your homework? People who have these kinds of habits are called multitaskers. Multitaskers are able to complete two tasks at the same time by dividing their focus. However, Thomas Lehman, a researcher in psychology, believes people never really do multiple things simultaneously. Maybe a person is reading while listening to music, but in reality the brain can only focus on one task. Reading the words in a book will cause you to ignore some of the words of the music. When people think they are accomplishing two different tasks efficiently, what they are really doing is dividing their focus. While listening to music, people become less able to focus on their surroundings. For example, we all have experienced times when we talk with friends and they are not responding properly. Maybe they are listening to someone else talk, or maybe they are reading a text on their smartphone and don’t hear what you are saying. Lehman called this phenomenon “email voice.” B The world has been changed by computers and their spin-offs such as smartphones or cellphones. Now that most individuals have a personal device, like a smartphone or a laptop, they are frequently reading, watching or listening to virtual information. This increases the occurrence of multitasking in our day-to-day life. Nowadays, when you work, you may use your typewriter, your cellphone, and speak with colleagues who may drop by at any time. In professional meetings, when one would normally focus on and listen to one another, people are more likely to have a cellphone in their lap, reading or communicating silently with more people than ever. Even inventions such as the cordless phone have increased multitasking. In the old days, a traditional wall phone would ring, and the housewife would have to stop her activities to answer it. When it rang, the housewife would sit down with her legs up and chat, with no laundry, sweeping or answering the door. In the modern era, our technology is convenient enough not to interrupt our daily tasks. C Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied the prefrontal cortex, which guides the brain while a person is multitasking. According to his studies, the size of this cortex varies between species. He found that for humans, it constitutes one-third of the brain, whereas it is only 4 – 5 percent in dogs and about 15 percent in monkeys. Because this cortex is larger in humans, it allows a person to be more flexible and accurate in multitasking. However, Miller wanted to know whether the cortex was truly processing information about two different tasks simultaneously. He designed an experiment in which he presented visual stimuli to his subjects in a way that mimicked multitasking. Miller then attached sensors to the patients’ heads to pick up the electrical patterns of the brain. These sensors would show whether the neurons were truly processing two different tasks. What he found was that the brain neurons lit up in singular areas one at a time—never simultaneously. D David Meyer, a professor at the University of Michigan, studied young adults in a similar experiment. He instructed them to solve math problems while simultaneously classifying simple words into different categories. Meyer found that when you think you are doing several jobs at the same time, you are actually switching between jobs. Even though the participants tried to do the tasks at the same time and both tasks were eventually accomplished, overall the task took more time than if the person had focused on a single task. E People sacrifice efficiency when multitasking. Gloria Mark used office workers as her subjects. She found that they were constantly multitasking. She observed that nearly every 11 minutes people at work were disrupted. She found that doing different jobs at the same time may actually save time. However, despite the fact that they are faster, it does not mean they are more efficient. We are equally likely to self-interrupt as to be interrupted by outside sources. She found that in the office nearly every 12 minutes an employee would stop and, with no reason at all, check a website on their computer, call someone or write an email. If they concentrated for more than 20 minutes, they would feel distressed. She suggested that the average person may suffer from a short concentration span. This short attention span might be natural, but others suggest that new technology may be the problem. With cellphones and computers at our sides at all times, people will never run out of distractions. The format of media—such as advertisements, music, news articles and TV shows—is also shortening, so people are used to paying attention to information for a very short time. F Even though focusing on a single task is the most efficient way for our brains to work, it is not always practical in real life. According to human nature, people feel more comfortable and efficient in environments with a variety of tasks. Edward Hallowell said that people are losing a lot of efficiency in the workplace due to multitasking, outside distractions and self-distractions. In fact, the changes made to the workplace do not have to be dramatic. No one is suggesting we ban e-mail or make employees focus on only one task. However, certain common workplace situations—such as group meetings—would be more efficient if we banned cellphones, a common distraction. A person can also apply these tips to prevent self-distraction. Instead of arriving at the office and checking all of your e-mails for new tasks—a common ritual—you could dedicate an hour to a single task first thing in the morning. Self-timing is a great way to reduce distraction and finish tasks one by one, instead of slowing ourselves down with multitasking.

New research shows how the people we are in social contact with can influence us for better - and worse. Governments should take heed. From healthcare to climate change, governments today face a range of problems in which they must persuade people to change their behaviour. But maybe instead of relying on their powers of persuasion, governments should consider using the science of social networks as a tool to do this. True, many claims for the power of these are based on the hype surrounding major social networking websites. But the basic idea is simple: people can join together in groups with particular patterns of social links, and these patterns then have important effects on the way they behave. The shape of these networks has surprising effects. Take an unlikely example: stage musicals. Brian Uzzi is a sociologist at Northwestern University in Chicago. He is also a big fan of musicals. Musicals have been big business for decades, but investors have to guess which shows will be a hit. Bye Bye Birdie, a profitable 1960 production, ran for 607 nights. Bring Back Birdie, its 1981 sequel, closed after just four. Intrigued, Uzzi used network science to find out why. He investigated 321 American musicals that were launched between 1945 and 1989, paying particular attention to whether the team of director, producers, choreographers and writers had worked together before. After crunching the statistics, he discovered something remarkable. Teams who had never worked together, perhaps unsurprisingly, fared poorly: their 'weak' networks meant a lack of creative vision, and lots of failures. And at the other extreme, teams that had worked together successfully also tended to produce flops. Sometimes, lacking outside creative input, the team just rehashed the same ideas that worked the last time; sometimes, lacking newcomers, they 'developed' their vision in unwise ways. Either way, lightning rarely struck twice. But, in between, Uzzi found a point of balance. Groups with exactly the right mix of new and old participants reliably produced hits. This variation in the 'density' of the ties allowed easy communication and fostered greater creativity; new ideas from the outsiders meshed with the experience of the insiders. It made no difference whether a musical was about cats or roller-skating, or who starred in it - what mattered was the nature of the network binding its team together. These insights have some fascinating consequences for policymaking—particularly in the area of health. According to network science, teenagers are more likely to adopt unhealthy eating habits if their friends' friends consume junk food, even if they don't personally know those individuals. Conversely, they may be encouraged to eat more healthily if their immediate friends do. This opens up opportunities for governments to reduce spending. For example, suppose a health authority has £100 and wants to improve the diets of ten people. If it invests £10 in each individual separately, it might only influence one or two. However, by investing the entire sum in persuading one or two key individuals who are central to a social network, the authority could trigger a cascade effect, influencing the entire group for a fraction of the cost. The same principle could be applied to other areas, such as encouraging physical exercise or quitting smoking. However, the influence of networks is not always positive. The same mechanisms that can spread healthy behaviours can also amplify harmful ones. Financial panic, political extremism, and the rapid proliferation of unhealthy fads can all be accelerated by tightly-knit social networks. This presents a significant challenge for policymakers: how to harness the power of social connectivity for good while mitigating its potential for harm. Understanding the precise structure of these networks—identifying the key influencers and the strength of the connections between people—is therefore critical. Without this map of human relationships, any intervention risks being inefficient or could even produce unintended negative consequences.