In many ways, the performing arts are undergoing a quiet transformation. Six ballet directors discuss that evolution, and how they see the future of dance.

Respecting shared public space is becoming as quaintly archaic as tipping your hat to a lady, now that the concept of public space is as nearly extinct as hats, and ladies.

What’s literature’s most frequently mentioned song? Hey Jude, apparently – you can find it in 55 books, from Stephen King’s Wolves of the Calla (“The people are real. You … Susannah … Jake … that guy Gasher who snatched Jake … Overholser and the Slightmans. But the way stuff from my world keeps showing up over here, that’s not real. It’s not sensible or logical, either, but that’s not what I mean. It’s just not real. Why do people over here sing Hey Jude? I don’t know”) to Toni Morrison’s Paradise (“The Cadillac was unmolested but so hot the boy licked his fingers before and after he unscrewed the gas cap. And he was nice enough to start the engine for her and tell her to leave the doors open for a while before she got in. Mavis did not have to struggle to get him to accept money – Soane had been horrified – and he drove off accompanying Hey Jude on his radio”).

Elvis, meanwhile, is apparently the most mentioned musician or band, appearing in 1,300 books, while the most mentioned film in literature is Star Wars: among 396 other titles, it’s in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude: “They did watch from the backseat. Dylan steered Heather’s attention to crucial details, though Star Wars didn’t carry the same impact here, flashing like a View-Master slide in the pinpricked bowl of night, as it did at the Loews Astor Plaza on Forty-Fifth Street.”

In an excerpt from his new book, David Byrne explains why sometimes, he prefers hearing nothing.

The UCLA study proposed that our appreciation and feeling for music are deeply dependent on mirror neurons. When you watch, or even just hear, someone play an instrument, the neurons associated with the muscles required to play that instrument fire. Listening to a piano, we “feel” those hand and arm movements, and as any air guitarist will tell you, when you hear or see a scorching solo, you are “playing” it, too. Do you have to know how to play the piano to be able to mirror a piano player? Edward W. Large at Florida Atlantic University scanned the brains of people with and without music experience as they listened to Chopin. As you might guess, the mirror neuron system lit up in the musicians who were tested, but somewhat surprisingly, it flashed in non-musicians as well. So, playing air guitar isn’t as weird as it sometimes seems. The UCLA group contends that all of our means of communication—auditory, musical, linguistic, visual—have motor and muscular activities at their root. By reading and intuiting the intentions behind those motor activities, we connect with the underlying emotions. Our physical state and our emotional state are inseparable—by perceiving one, an observer can deduce the other.

People dance to music as well, and neurological mirroring might explain why hearing rhythmic music inspires us to move, and to move in very specific ways. Music, more than many of the arts, triggers a whole host of neurons. Multiple regions of the brain fire upon hearing music: muscular, auditory, visual, linguistic.

Why are the Japanese so slender? There are three reasons, and none of them has to do with genetics. One is the traditional Japanese diet, which is heavy on fish, vegetables, and rice. The second is Japan’s mass-transit-centered urban design, which encourages Japanese people to walk a lot more than Americans. But the third factor is paternalism. Japan’s government takes an active role in combating any hint of an upward trend in fatness.

In 2008, Japan’s diet passed a law designed to combat “metabolic syndrome,” which is known to Americans as “pre-diabetes.” The so-called “Metabo Law” requires overweight individuals, or individuals who show signs of weight-related illnesses, to go to dieting classes. If they fail to attend the classes, the companies that employ them and/or the local governments of the areas in which they live must pay fines to the federal government. In addition, companies with more than a certain percentage of overweight employees are fined directly.

If loading up my Kindle counts…

Delayed Onset Reader #1. You are without a doubt a book lover, and when you walk into a bookstore or any place books are available, you can’t help yourself, you buy one or many. When you get home you put them aside, often reverently, as if they were art, displaying them on a bookshelf or propping them up on your bedside table, pages ready to meet your eyes as soon as you have the moment. But you’re very, very busy, and days, weeks, or months may go by before you actually crack open one of these books. It’s not for lack of trying! When you finally do, you will be overjoyed by all the learning and emotional depth and humor and writing quality that exists in this book that’s been sitting within reach all along, and you will be amazed that you waited so long to ever open it. Suggested delayed onset #1 suggestions: The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman; The Princess Bride, by William Goldman; Lolita by Nabokov; Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery. 

I read books incredibly fast and I do usually have 3 or 4 going at the same time so I’m possibly this…

The Multi-Tasker. This is the nice way of saying you are a promiscuous reader, but it’s not that you don’t finish reads. Instead, you just have a sort of hippie reading way about you, free love or some such. You might start the day out with a few pages from one novelist, then read something entirely different on the subway, and when you come home from work, another work as well. Your bedtime read, too, might be different, and all in all, when you count up the books, you’ve got quite a lot of irons in the fire all at the same time. Do you confuse characters or plots? Do you give more attention to some books than to others? Perhaps. The point is, you’re not ready for a book commitment just yet, and you’re doing a brilliant job dating them all in the meantime. Suggested multi-tasking reads: Short story and essay collections, novellas. 

Café Griendsteidl in Vienna, 1897

The Kaffeehäuser are the public living rooms of Vienna. The home of Mozart and Freud is as famed for its coffee culture as it is for opera. From the grand vaulted ceilings of Café Central to the intimate corners Café Hawelka, there is a coffeehouse in Vienna for everyone, an ambiance for every temperament. Historically, they have always been places where a few hours respite can be bought for the price of a cup of coffee; a haven for artists and flâneurs; a place to sit, drink, and read the newspaper –the writers of which could likely be found at the next table over scribbling out their next story– while churlish, tuxedo-clad waiters glide between marble tables and Thonet chairs carrying silver platters of artfully prepared melange and home made cakes. As proudly described by Austria’s National Agency for the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the Viennese coffeehouse is truly a place “where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee is found on the bill.”

Legend has it that the tradition of the Vienna coffee house sprang from the abandoned beans left in the aftermath of the failed Ottoman siege in 1683. In reality, coffeehouses existed before the invasion and their popularity didn’t really take hold until the 19th century. Today, despite the rise of globalization and the prevalence –even in Vienna– of modern coffee chains, the tradition of the coffeehouse continues, although many of the city’s cafés have updated their services with non-smoking sections, WiFi connections, and other modern amenities.