1 . Having spent more than a decade on the dance floor, ROME — Niccolo Filippi, a 23-year-old Italian dance performer, recently decided to explore Chinese culture and its traditional dance forms and believes that this experience will not only boost his career, but also broaden his horizons beyond the world of dance.

His interest in diversifying his skills grew after he stumbled upon a short video of traditional Chinese-styled dance on YouTube. “I saw it as an art that combines tradition and modernity, which was mostly the reason why I liked it,” says Filippi.

Ever since, he has been closely following Chinese dance performers and watching numerous videos to learn more about the traditional style that he admires. “I prefer the traditional style because of its light movements. It also reflects my personality with elegance,” he adds.

Filippi’s chance came when he was invited to perform for a Chinese New Year celebration in the central Italian city of Florence. He has since fully committed himself to the art form, learning several pieces and putting his newfound passion into practice.

“The biggest difference that I found (compared to other disciplines) is the change of mood and emotional expressions among dances,” says Filippi, adding that he needed to shift from the dynamic moves of hip-hop to the graceful and fluid movements of Chinese dance. Despite various obstacles, Filippi’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. Two of his friends shared videos of his performances on social media, and the response was overwhelming. One video garnered 500,000 views, while the other received 200,000 views.

Filippi believes that learning about different cultures is priceless, and he sees it as a means of personal growth. “I like to think of a person as a book,” he says. “Embracing different traditions and cultures, such as Chinese culture and many others, is like adding new chapters to my book, making it more diverse and wonderful.”

2 . “Music is where everything started,” Samira Horton says.     1     She has been rapping and performing since she was 6 years old. Through music, DJ Annie Red says, “I can express myself and let out my emotion.”

The rising hip-hop star uses music to share a message about bullying. “I was bullied a lot,” she says, “even today, especially because of my voice.” DJ Annie Red has a deep voice.     2     But DJ Annie Red has found a way to rise above their rude remarks. Instead of thinking of her voice as a weakness, she uses it to spread her anti-bullying message far and wide.

    3     She posts her music online, too. She likes to give students a rhythmic and interactive show while teaching them how to overcome bullying. “It makes them feel like they're not alone.”

Annie Red believes that standing up to bullying is more important than ever.     4     “You don't have to show your face at all,” she says. “Someone could easily be affected by that.”

    5     She believes that kids of her generation can make things better by finding their passions, and using those passions to inspire changes, as she has. “Kids' being more confident in themselves and wanting to do something that they really enjoy doing is something that motivates me to keep doing what I do.”

3 . Mary Dickins had been a member of the audience at poetry nights before and knew “the poetry clap”. She made a polite tapping of fingers. But when she made her debut (首次演出) as a performer at the age of 62 at the legendary Bang Said the Gun night in south London, she said, “It was so wild — like nothing I had ever seen before.” The audience stamped their feet and shook shakers. “It felt transformative. I thought, ‘I’ve got to have more of this,’ ” Dickins said. Becoming a performance poet has given her a place on a stage of her own making.

All her life she has written, mostly without being seen or heard. Her mother died when she was nine, and, after she went into a care home at 13, Dickins’ writing stayed in notebooks. Really, she says, a lot of her adult life has been about getting over childhood shyness. At university — she studied education — she met her husband of 40 years, but in three years of seminars she did not say a word. Some of this results from her years at the children’s home. She says, “It gave me a sense of what it’s like to be excluded. I never fitted in anywhere.”

After she graduated, she discovered that she loved working with people with learning disabilities. She became an expert in inclusive education. “That was my niche (称心的职业),” she says. She published books and returned to the University of North London as a senior lecturer in early childhood studies.

Dickins now sees that in adulthood she has been giving herself permission to be silly. “The sillier I allow myself to be, the better the writing is,” she says. Her observations are humorous.

“Putting things into words and giving shape to your emotions is an important part of coming to terms with the things that happen in life,” she says.

Does she still feel like an outsider?

“I think I’ve made it into a virtue. I celebrate the fact that I don’t fit into a box. Finally! You have to wait till you’re 62 to feel confident!” she says. “But I have a sense of who I am and I'm proud of it. I wouldn’t be anyone else now — and it took me a long time to say that.”

4 . Music is present in any part of the world, and it is appreciated and felt everywhere. Without its presence, life could be boring. Studies show that music is good for your body and mind.     1    

Music can increase pain management. Listening to music can help increase your pain tolerance (耐痛性).     2     Listening to music can help you gain a sense of control over your ability to deal with pains. If you have a certain pain, for example, listening to music that you enjoy can help reduce the pain that you experience.

●    3     Listening to certain types of music, such as relaxing music, can naturally reduce both your heartbeat rate and breathing rate. Additionally, music has shown promising results as a treatment for heart disease. Whether it involves listening to music or composing music, the calming effect that music produces further improves your heart’s health by supporting it throughout the healing process.

●Music can reduce anxiety and depression     4     When it comes to anxiety and depression, music treatment can help to reduce the amount of stress hormones. For example, listening to music that you enjoy can naturally decrease the amount of cortisol (皮质醇) that your body releases.

●Music can improve self-expression and communication. Self-expression and communication are an important part of the human experience, especially when it comes to basic emotional and mental health needs.     5     By listening and singing along to music, kids who struggle to interact and communicate with others can practice using the very skills needed to do so.

5 . For over a decade, Zubin Kanga, a pianist, composer and technologist, has changed the limits of the forms of musical performances. He has both organized and performed shows that have pushed barriers, with motion sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), live-generated 3D visuals and virtual reality among the technological advancements used to unlock new possibilities of music and performances.

Kanga’s approach to employing cutting-edge technology was first informed by the relative limitations of his chosen instrument. “The piano is a very accurate technology,” he says. “From the early 20th century till now it hasn’t really changed at all. It’s an amazing instrument, but it does have certain limitations in terms of the types of sound you can create.”

One of the early works is Steel on Bone, composed by Kanga himself. He performs the piece using MiMU multi-sensor gloves. “I can put up one finger, and that’ll produce a particular sound,” Kanga explains. “And then I can control that sound just by moving my wrist through the air — I can do that with lots of different gestures.”

“For Steel on Bone, I’m actually playing inside the piano with these steel knitting (编织) needles, and getting all these interesting effects on the strings. Then I’m using samples of them. Sometimes I’m using live delays and operating them. The sound can change depending on how my hands are moving. It allows me to make a very theatrical piece, and people can see this immediate connection between how I’m moving — these very big, almost conductor-like gestures through the air — and the way the sound is changing,” said Kanga.

This is just the start, and Kanga goes on to be enthused with the use of motion sensors to make music, the possibilities that AI offers composers as a tool, and how virtual reality could transform performances and more.

On 12th January 2007, an experiment     1     (conduct). About a thousand morning commuters (通勤者) passing through a subway station in Washington, D.C. were treated to a free mini-concert     2     (perform) by violinist Joshua Bell, who played for about 45 minutes on his Stradivarius violin. Bell reportedly paid 3.5 million dollars for the violin. However, only 7 people stopped and stayed to listen for a while. About 27 gave him money but continued to walk at their normal pace. He collected $52.17. When he finished     3     (play) and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any     4     (recognize). No one noticed that one of the best musicians in the world had played one of the most difficult pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

When some children would stop     5     (listen), their parents would grab them and quickly take them away. The experiment was     6     (clear) disappointing but raised some     7     (interest) questions such as “In an ordinary setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty be recognized by most people?” Three days earlier, in fact, Bell had played to a full house at Boston’s Symphony Hall,     8     tickets went for over $100.

This experiment gives way to a comparison of     9     public’s awareness of art in different settings.     10     pressure, it also reminds us of the challenge of adapting to surroundings. Furthermore, it makes us aware of how our intentions and expectations can influence our perception of worth.