- The haircuts that help traumatised Ukrainian soldiers heal
- Sinner crushes Medvedev to set up potential Alcaraz Shanghai semi
- 7-Eleven owner restructures to fight takeover
- England's Harry Brook blasts triple century against Pakistan
- Chinese electric car companies cope with European tariffs
- Zelensky in London for whirlwind tour of Europe ahead of US vote
- Sri Lanka recovering faster than expected: World Bank
- Hong Kong, Shanghai rally as most markets track Wall St record
- Record-breaking Root, Brook both pass 200 as England pile up 658-3
- Football mourns Greek defender George Baldock's shock death at 31
- Uniqlo owner reports record annual earnings
- Hong Kong, Shanghai rally as markets track Wall St record
- Indonesia biomass drive threatens key forests: report
- Home is far away for Madagascar in AFCON qualifying
- Two months on, Donbas soldiers begin to question Kursk offensive
- Rugby Australia to counter-sue in dispute with Melbourne Rebels
- Mumbai mourns Indian industrialist Ratan Tata
- Philippines challenges China over South China Sea at ASEAN meet
- Mets advance on Lindor blast, Dodgers stay alive in MLB playoffs
- Injury-ravaged Krygios aiming to return at Australian Open
- Greek international Baldock, dead at 31: family
- EU talks deportation hubs to stem migration
- Deaths and repression sideline Suu Kyi's party ahead of Myanmar vote
- S. Africa offers a lesson on how not to shut down a coal plant
- China opens $71 bn 'swap facility' to boost markets
- Mets advance on Lindor grand slam, Yankees and Tigers win
- Taiwan President Lai vows to 'resist annexation' of island
- China's solar goes from supremacy to oversupply
- Asian markets track Wall St record as Hong Kong, Shanghai stabilise
- 'Denying my potential': women at Japan's top university call out gender imbalance
- China's central bank says opens up $70.6 bn in liquidity to boost market
- Zelensky on whirlwind tour of Europe ahead of US vote
- Youth facing unprecedented wave of violence, UN envoy warns
- 'A casino in every kitchen': Brazil's online gambling craze
- Nobel chemistry winner sees engineered proteins solving tough problems
- Lindor powers Mets past Phillies into NL Championship Series
- Wildlife populations plunge 73% since 1970: WWF
- 'Sleeper agent' bots on X fuel US election misinformation, study says
- Death toll rises to 109 after Haiti gang attack, official says
- Tigers beat Guardians and on brink of advancing in MLB playoffs
- Argentina MPs back Milei's veto of university funding
- Man City sink Barca in Women's Champions League as Bayern outgun Arsenal
- Greek international Baldock, 31, found dead in pool: state agency
- Florida seaside haven a ghost town as hurricane nears
- Pharrell Williams to co-chair Met Gala exploring Black dandyism
- Wall Street indices hit fresh records as Chinese shares tumble
- Taiwan's president to deliver key speech for National Day
- Sea row on the menu as ASEAN leaders meet China's Li
- Injured Kane won't start England's Nations League clash with Greece
- Discord seen as online home for renegades
New performing arts center opens at Manhattan 9/11 site
Days after New York marked the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it opened a new arts center Wednesday in the last area of Ground Zero that had not yet been redeveloped.
New York's state governor, the city's mayor and other local officials came together to open the Perelman Performing Arts Center, a project decades in the making intended to provide a space of healing and celebration of life at the site of the 2001 destruction.
It's the final piece of a project intended for the once-devastated area in Lower Manhattan where reflecting pools indicate an area of memorial, the museum a place of education, and now the arts center for renewal.
"I lost my husband, David. And each time I come to the site, my feelings keep changing. At first, a rawness filled with inescapable loss and longing," said Paula Grant Berry, a member of the jury that selected the design for the 9/11 memorial.
"But now, after more than two decades, and this may sound a little odd, I am also filled with something more hopeful."
In the aftermath of the attacks many advocates of building an arts center at the site repeated a line written by the legendary composer Leonard Bernstein, who in the days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated said: "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
That line was repeated at Wednesday's ceremony, which featured a performance of Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's definitive ballad "Somewhere" from "West Side Story," as well as a "ribbon-connecting" in lieu of a ribbon-cutting, meant to symbolize unity.
- 'Crossroads of the world' -
The $500-million, 129,000-square-foot (12,000-square-meter) project at the foot of the World Trade Center received significant funding from the city's former mayor Michael Bloomberg, who contributed $130,000 to the development funded mostly with private donations.
The cube-like building encased in almost 5,000 marble tiles houses three primary theaters, which can be used independently or combined, with 60 different configurations and capacities ranging from 90 to 950 seats.
"The arts, as we all know, is the heart of what makes New York a beacon of light for people around the world," said Bloomberg at the opening ceremony. "And Lower Manhattan has always been a crossroads of the world and a cauldron of creativity."
The project initially stalled as focus went to the memorial and museum, as well as to the new skyscraper and an unwieldy transit hub and shopping mall designed by Santiago Calatrava.
But in 2015 architect Joshua Ramus won an international design competition intended to revive momentum, as magnate Ron Perelman donated $75 million in a bid to reboot fundraising efforts.
The finally-opened center intends to showcase both emerging and established artists from the worlds of theater, dance, music, opera and multi-disciplinary performance.
"What connects all the work across the eclecticism of the programming is what it means to contribute to civic healing, what it means to bring people together and create connections at this location, at the World Trade Center," the Perelman's artistic director, Bill Rauch, told AFP.
L.Miller--AMWN