The State of Things

Every summer, over 300 professional dancers, choreographers and dance students flock to Durham. They come for the American Dance Festival. It’s a summer school and a series of world-class performances open to the public. This summer's theme is "Something New, Something Treasured" and features the work of established choreographers like Bill T. Jones and Paul Taylor, as well as emerging talents like Rosie Herrera. The festival starts June 9 and runs through July 23.

When most college students were probably enjoying summer vacation, Rye Barcott was hanging out in a Kenyan slum. In the summer of 2000, while still a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rye went to Kibera. The slum is small, about the size of Central Park in New York City. But within it more than a million people live in squalid, desperate conditions.

Nonviolent political action had a long and successful history in the 20th Century. When people look back on the great activist leaders, names like Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi may come to mind, but the women who were essential to the civil rights, peace and other movements are often overlooked.

Nick Prueher was bored working at McDonald's the day he discovered one of his life-long passions. He found a hilarious training video for McDonald's janitors, watched it and was hooked. He would spend years collecting all the weird videos he could find, until in 2004, he and his friend Joe Pickett decided to have a festival. The Found Footage Festival has been going strong ever since. It's coming to the Rialto Theatre in Raleigh June 8 at 8 p.m.

Restorative justice is a theory of justice that emphasizes healing rather than punishing. The idea is to repair the harm for everyone involved: the victims, the offenders, and the community. The Campbell University School of Law in Raleigh plays host to the third annual National Conference on Restorative Justice June 8-10 at the Sheraton Hotel in Raleigh. Host Frank Stasio talks about restorative justice with Therese Bartholomew, producer and director of “The Final Gift,” a film about her brother’s murder and her attempt to reconcile with his killer; Howard Zehr, professor of restorative justice at Eastern Mennonite University, and Amy Elliott, co-founder of the Restorative Justice Project in Durham.