Fact: Doing the running man can help tackle a common fifth-grade learning deficit — number patterns. Here’s how math got it’s groove back…

Villagers in Zhengyangguan, in China’s eastern Anhui province, raise two children dressed as a deities onto poles. The “floating ballet” is an annual ritual once celebrated in many other villages but is now on the decline with fewer children now participating.

(Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Soundsuits: interactive art by Nick Cave, made from repurposed thrift-store finds. For Cave, the art comes precisely from this interaction of personalities, the Soundsuit on the one hand and the human who inhabits it.

Jeffrey Brown: So who are when you put on a Soundsuit?

Student: A whole different creature. It’s like a swamp monster, Easter egg thing.

A dancer from the Scottish Ballet sews on her pointe shoe straps before performing in a dress rehearsal “Sleeping Beauty” at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow.

Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images.

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The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs at its opening night gala at New York City Center on Wednesday. The dance company’s five-week New York season will be the first led by new Artistic Director Robert Battle, who replaced the retired Judith Jamison, the longtime face of the company, dancer and choreographer.

Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images.

(Photo: Angela Sterling)

The Pacific Northwest Ballet is one of many Nutcracker productions around the country that put their own local spin on the classic holiday ballet. 

Check out a slideshow of them, plus an interview with Jennifer Fisher,the author of Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World, about the history behind this cultural phenomenon.