Arts in Brief

The Glenn Miller Orchestra will help ring in the new year at Hancher Auditorium's Millennium Eve celebration, Dec. 31.

Millennium Eve celebration

Can’t make that cruise to the International Dateline, greet the sunrise at Machu Picchu, or circle the globe on the Concorde? Hancher has planned a Millennium Eve celebration with a distinctive Iowa flavor—a dance featuring the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Miller, who was born in Clarinda, Iowa, became a 20th-century American musical legend. The orchestra remains the most sought-after swing band in the world. The Hancher stage will become the dance floor, with the orchestra getting everyone In the Mood, and the celebration will culminate with champagne toasts and a fireworks display just after midnight. For ticket information, call (33)5-1160.

'She Loves Me’ is musical hit

The School of Music will present She Loves Me—called "a musical play with which everyone can fall in love" at its 1963 Broadway opening—with performances at 8 p.m., Dec. 10 and 11, and at 2 p.m., Dec. 12, in Space/Place Theater of North Hall. A product of the team of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick that struck gold in 1964 with Fiddler on the Roof, She Loves Me ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. The story—about a young couple who quarrel constantly at work while they fall in love through anonymous letters—is a familiar one. It has been used for three movies: The Shop Around the Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, in 1940; In the Good Old Summertime, starring Judy Garland and Van Johnson in 1949; and You’ve Got Mail, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in 1998. For ticket information call, (33)5-1160.

Early music group to revisit ends of centuries, 999 to 1599

The Collegium Musicum will honor the imminent turn of the century with "Fins des siecles" ("Ends of centuries"), a program of music taken from the ’99-numbered years of seven centuries, starting with 1599 and working back to 999, at 8 p.m., Dec. 4 in Clapp Recital Hall. The concert, under the direction of Elizabeth Aubrey, will be free and open to the public. Aubrey says the programming of music from previous "ends of centuries" is more than a gimmick. "It is striking that the ends of centuries have often seen experimentation by composers and performers that stretched the bounds of tradition," she explains. "Significant changes in musical style often coincided with the turn of a century, and theorists described these changes as the replacement of the ‘old’ with the ‘new.’ "

Writers’ Workshop reading

Heather McHugh will read from her poetry and Chris Offutt from his fiction at a reading sponsored by the Writers’ Workshop at 8 p.m. Dec. 3 in the Main Library’s Shambaugh Auditorium. Both McHugh and Offutt are visiting faculty members in the Writers’ Workshop. McHugh’s collection, Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993, was a National Book Award finalist. Offutt’s first book, Kentucky Straight, a collection of stories, won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Whiting Foundation.