David Miller

Musicians rehearse on Baroque instruments for a Cornell production of the opera "Eumelio," March 19-20 in Klarman Hall.

Dancing through decades

Everything old is new again at Cornell Cinema’s 2016 Elegant Winter Party fundraiser, an early technology-driven extravaganza Saturday, March 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room. The public is invited and creative party attire is encouraged.

Advance tickets are $25 general, $15 for students; available online at CornellCinemaTickets.com, and in person through Friday, March 18 from the Cornell Cinema office, 104 Willard Straight Hall, open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission at the door is $35 general, $25 for students.

The “Dance through the Decades” dance party features classic swing and more recent and eclectic dance floor hits; “Dreams Rewired,” a new anthology of rare archival footage from the 1880s through the 1930s, screening in the background; and an interactive display of obsolete media technologies and early cinema devices. There is a cash bar; admission includes complimentary hors d’oeuvres and desserts.

With clips culled from more than 200 films, “Dreams Rewired” has scenes from early dramas and slapstick comedies, political newsreels, advertisements and filmed scientific experiments – showing early electric media were as revolutionary in their time as social media are in ours.

The Willard Straight Terrace will be open, weather permitting. All proceeds support Cornell Cinema. For more information, call 607-255-3522.

Underworld music

A modern revival of Agostino Agazzari’s opera “Eumelio,” based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and rarely seen since its premiere 410 years ago, will be performed March 19 at 8 p.m. and March 20 at 3 p.m. in the Klarman Hall auditorium. Performances are free and open to the public.

Staged by the Cornell Early Music Lab, the Cornell Chamber Singers and guest vocal and instrumental soloists, the Italian composer’s 1606 work is a pastoral musical drama in three acts, sung in Italian with a Baroque orchestra. Never recorded or staged in the modern era, its revival at Cornell began as a research project by students in a spring 2015 graduate seminar in Baroque music taught by musicologist Neal Zaslaw, the Herbert Gussman Professor of Music.

The production involves 30 Cornell and Ithaca College undergraduates, 15 graduate students, faculty members and three professional vocal soloists: soprano and visiting lecturer Lucy Fitz Gibbon (as Eumelio, a young Orpheus figure), soprano Rebecca Leistikow (as Poesia and the nymph Ecco) and bass Marc Webster of Ithaca College (as Apollo).

Musicologist Barbara Russano Hanning gives a pre-performance lecture March 19 at 7 p.m., “To Hell with Early Opera: Before ‘Orfeo’ – A Shepherd Boy’s Adventures in the Underworld.” A reception in the Klarman Hall atrium follows the Saturday performance.

Coal in China

Assistant professor of history Victor Seow presents “Sites of Extraction: Perspectives from a Japanese Coal Mine in Northeast China,” March 21 at 3:30 p.m. in 374 Rockefeller Hall. Presented by the Department of Science and Technology Studies’ Seminar Series, the talk is free and open to the public.

Seow is a scholar of 19th- and 20th-century Chinese history whose research interests include the history of energy. His study of the Fushun Colliery site – at one time the largest coal mine in Asia – examines the dynamics of fossil fuel extraction, including the energy expended in the effort to extract energy.

Connie Cook, pioneer

Constance Eberhardt Cook, J.D. ’43, was a woman ahead of her time. A leader in the fight for women’s rights, she was one of few female corporate lawyers in New York City in the 1940s and one of only three women in the New York State Assembly in the 1960s and early 1970s.

See her story at a free screening of “Connie Cook: A Documentary,” March 21 at 7 p.m. at Cornell Cinema, followed by a talkback discussion.

Cook spent more than 10 years in the assembly as a Republican representing Tompkins County. She implemented legislation on broad-based public control of education, and her efforts to decriminalize abortion in New York in 1970 became a model for the rest of the country, laying the groundwork for the Roe v. Wade decision. In 1974, she became Cornell’s first woman vice president. Also that year, she sued the Episcopal Church so women could be priests and won.

The 2015 documentary features archival footage and interviews with family, friends, politicians and colleagues. It is co-sponsored by the Cornell Public Service Center and Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Young bird researchers

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology will spotlight three young ornithologists and their research, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. at 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca.

Doctoral student Sahas Barve will explain the coping mechanisms birds use to survive high in the Himalayas, and Taylor Heaton Crisologo ’16 will talk about herring gulls’ strategies to defend their nests and protect their chicks. Connor Taff, a postdoctoral associate at the lab, will discuss the elaborate songs and plumage of male common yellowthroats and how these traits evolved over time.

Admission is free. For information, call 800-843-2473 or email cornellbirds@cornell.edu.

Islam and America

Sherman Jackson of the University of Southern California (USC) will lecture on “Islam and the American Common Good,” March 22 at 5 p.m. in Kaufmann Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. The event is a University Lecture sponsored by the University Faculty, and is free and open to the public.

An influential expert on Islam in America, Jackson contributes to the Huffington Post, the Washington Post-Newsweek blog “On Faith” and other publications. His books include “Islamic Law and the State” (1996), “On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam” (2002) and “Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection” (2005).

He is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture at USC, where he is a professor of religion and American studies. He also is a co-founder and trustee of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, where scholars, professionals, activists, artists, writers and community leaders develop strategies for the future of Islam in the modern world.