The stock of China Online Education Group (COE) formed H&SI with $7.16 price target or 3.00 % above the current $6.95 share price. The 9 months Head & Shoulders Inverse reveals low risk for the $141.74M company. This trade was featured by Faxor.com on Dec, 4. If the $7.16 target price is reached, the companys valuation will be $4.25 million more. Inverse Head-and-shoulders are some of the best chart patterns to trade. These formations work as in bear as in bull markets and many researchers states that they have very low failure rates. Despite the high pullback rate, these trading patterns are usually good places to trade based on their risk-reward profile. Industry expertss backtests show that 55% of these patterns reach their targets.

The stock decreased 0.71% or $0.05 during the last trading session, reaching $6.95. About 1,000 shares traded. China Online Education Group (NYSE:COE) has declined 44.19% since December 4, 2018 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 44.19% the S&P500.

More notable recent China Online Education Group (NYSE:COE) news were published by: Benzinga.com which released: Earnings Scheduled For September 11, 2019 Benzinga on September 11, 2019, also Seekingalpha.com with their article: Johnson Controls International plc (JCI) CEO George Oliver on Q4 2019 Results Earnings Call Transcript Seeking Alpha published on November 07, 2019, Seekingalpha.com published: China Online Education: Sitting On The Sidelines Seeking Alpha on November 07, 2019. More interesting news about China Online Education Group (NYSE:COE) were released by: Prnewswire.com and their article: China Online Education Group Announces First Quarter 2019 Results PRNewswire published on June 14, 2019 as well as Businesswire.coms news article titled: Mary Ellen Coe Elected to Merck Board of Directors Business Wire with publication date: January 29, 2019.

China Online Education Group, through its subsidiaries, provides online English language education services to students in the People's Republic of China and the Philippines. The company has market cap of $141.74 million. It operates online and mobile education platforms that enable students to take one-on-one live interactive English lessons with international foreign teachers. It currently has negative earnings. The company's flagship courses include Classic English and Classic English Junior for the development of English communication skills.

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Time to Buy China Online Education Group (COE) After The Completion of This Inverse H&S Pattern? - FinanceRecorder

EASEL Lab, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is on the map. There is solid evidence that SEL matters a great deal for important life outcomes including success in school, college entry and completion, and later earnings. We also know that SEL can be taught and nurtured in schools, resulting in significant impacts such as improvements in classroom functioning and organization, students ability to learn and get along with others, and increases in academic achievement.

Although the term social and emotional learning is not new, and has, in fact, been around for years, a growing evidence base has recently driven a tremendous surge in interest in this area particularly among parents, educators and policymakers. Yet, amid a wide array of effective programs and approaches to draw upon, challenges still remain. One major area of ongoing concern is that SEL goes by many names, and the terminology can be confusing and misleading, ultimately impeding efforts to achieve meaningful results.

Common ways of describing the field include character education, personality, 21st century skills, soft skills, and noncognitive skills. Each label draws from a slightly different theoretical perspective and employs different pieces of research, and each has its own related fields and disciplines. Moreover, major players in the field have put forward competing organizational schemes or frameworks that often use different or even conflicting terminology to describe similar sets of skills. The result is what has been described as the jingle and jangle problem, which refers to the use of a single term to mean many different things (jingle) or multiple terms to mean the same thing (jangle).

This wide array of terms, concepts and ideas is not a bad thing in itself. Indeed, it makes for a broad, rich and vibrant field overall. The challenge is that inconsistent terminology makes it difficult to communicate clearly about whats important and to make decisions about the right strategies and approaches to use in practice. In short, without a way to make sense of the words, its easy to misinterpret, overgeneralize or overlook the hard science that links evidence to strategies, and strategies to measurement and evaluation. The result could be cherry-picking teaching practices, interventions and assessments that may or may not be related to each other or to the desired outcomes.

To address this challenge, the EASEL Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education created Explore SEL. Thiswebsiteand set of tools is designed to show relationships among different skills, terminology and frameworks(organizing systems that communicate which skills and competencies are important, and that serve as a roadmap or guide for policy and practice),organizing, describing and connecting them across disciplines in a way that is agnostic to brand and sensitive to development and context.

Explore SEL includes the following interactive tools, with more to be added in the future:

Compare Domains: See which domains, or broad skill areas common to the field of SEL, are emphasized in different frameworks; see all frameworks at the same time and identify broad trends in the field;

Compare Frameworks: See where skills, competencies, behaviors in one framework relate to those in other frameworks; select any two frameworks from the database and compare them side by side;

Compare Terms: See where specific skills like conflict resolution, attention, empathy, self-efficacy and critical thinking are included across all the frameworks in the database; select any skill(s) and identify its prevalence; and

Thesaurus: See related terms, regardless of terminology and research tradition or discipline (whether the term is common to the study of early childhood vs. adolescent and youth development, or SEL vs. character education, etc.); select any skill or term in the database and see a list of related terms in order of similarity.

Ultimately, Explore SEL will provide education decisionmakers with a way to sort through frameworks and terminology to make sense of existing information, allowing them to better align strategies and goals to achieve real impact. As efforts to build social, emotional and related skills are integrated into schools, practitioners, policymakers and funders need to know which skills are important, what they are called and how they relate to one another, in order to focus on the skills and approaches to SEL that best meet their students needs. The tools are designed to help stakeholders in the field select, adapt or develop organizing frameworks that will guide their SEL efforts in ways that make clear the skills they intend to address, ultimately enabling greater alignment among those target skills, the strategies used to build them and the measures used to assess them.

To this end, Explore SEL encourages and supports users to (a) reflect on the goals, priorities and needs of their target population and setting; (b) identify, compare and align relevant skills and frameworks; and (c) think about which types of strategies and measures will best fit the skills they have identified as important. For example, school and district leaders can use the site to better understand the subtle nuances and differences between various frameworks in the field in order to select one that guides their approach to SEL in ways best aligned with their specific goals and needs.

Similarly, policymakers can use the site to explore which skills appear across multiple frameworks and how they are related to ensure that SEL standards dont focus too narrowly on a particular skill area while missing others that matter for childrens success. At the same time, the site can help researchers, funders and program evaluators be more clear and precise in how they understand and define the skills being targeted by a particular program or intervention, thus increasing the likelihood that their evaluation, measurement and assessment strategies are closely aligned with the target skills and outcomes on which they should reasonably expect to see impact.

This is an important moment for SEL interest is high, and promising approaches abound. But poor communication and coordination threaten to undermine efforts. Now is the time to take advantage of the current energy to drive forward more precise, careful and transparent work that will maximize impact. Explore SEL is designed to make it easier for educators, policymakers and researchers to be intentional about the skills and outcomes that are best aligned with their mission and goals, and to identify frameworks, programs and strategies that effectively meet their needs and enable them to achieve results.

Stephanie M. Jones is the Gerald S. Lesser professor of early childhood development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, director of HGSEs EASEL Lab and co-director of the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative.

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Analysis: Social-emotional learning is important. But what do all those SEL terms, concepts & ideas actually mean for the classroom? New online...

ENGLISH IS THE most widely spoken language in the world. And of the roughly 1.5bn speakers globally, the vast majority speak it as a second language. So where are the worlds best non-native English speakers? According to a new report by EF Education First, an international education company, Northern Europeans are the most fluent (the Netherlands tops the rankings, followed by Sweden, Norway and Denmark). Middle Easterners are the least proficient (Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia all rank near the bottom).

These results are not comprehensive, however. Nor are they representative. EFs index is based on the results of a free online test taken by 2.3m volunteers in 100 countries. Only people with an internet connection and time and willingness to take a test are included in the sample, which means the results are biased towards richer countries interested in English. As a result, many African countries do not have enough test-takersat least 400to be included in the index.

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Such biases aside, the EFs index produces results that are interesting, if not entirely scientific. Nearly six in ten of this years test-takers were female. Women have always fared better than men, but this year men closed the gap somewhat. Some countries saw their proficiency scores decline. This is probably not because their English got worse; more likely, a big increase in the number of test-takers brought in more people with weak English.

In Europe, the powerhouse economies fare surprisingly badly: only Germany makes the top tier of very high proficiency countries. France is next, while Spain and Italy are persistent laggards. A study by a Spanish research institute confirmed the bad news: 60% of adults say they speak no English at all. The fact that Spanish is a global language in its own right (the language boasts 400m native speakers) is probably the culprit. If you speak Danish, you need another language to take part in global culture; speaking French or Spanish (or Arabic) means hundreds of millions of people to talk to without English.

Asia is the region of greatest diversity. Only Singapore makes the top tier, but the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and India are not far behind. China is further back but still in the second tier, a few slots ahead of Japan. Languishing in the bottom slots are a clutch of South-East and Central Asian countries like Cambodia and Kyrgyzstan. This correlates with another factor: EF repeatedly finds that English skills are highly correlated with connections and openness to the rest of the world.

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Where are the world's best English-speakers? - The Economist

Just six days removed from a family tragedy, Journey Brown ran the ball with a greater purpose against Rutgers.

Browns 17-year old cousin died last Sunday, and he wasnt far from the running backs thoughts when he took the field on Saturday.

That first touchdown, I knew I was playing for him today. Brown said.

The sophomore running back racked up 103 yards and three touchdowns in the game, one of his best performances of his entire career.

After the game I said you made your cousin so proud, Im so proud of you the way you played today, sophomore linebacker Micah Parsons said. You know he kinda put the offense on his shoulders and made a lot of big runs, scored some crucial touchdowns.

What led to this great performance was a tough week for Brown, but the running back found solace in his teammates and the sport he loves the most.

Brown turned to football as a way to escape, a method of coping and most importantly, a support system.

Sunday after practice we knew Journey was going to go home and be with his family through that loss, Parsons said. He came right back Tuesday and said I dont want to miss a day with you guys, you guys are my second family, you guys help me get through everything.

The Meadville, Pennsylvania, native had unconditional support from his team throughout the week, so much so that Brown considers his teammates and coaches his second family in addition to the one he has at home.

Brown wanted to put on his best performance for both on Saturday.

I have two families, I did it for my little cousin Paige and his immediate family, and I did it for the seniors and the Penn State family. Brown said.

In his postgame press conference, James Franklin spoke about his running backs great performance and his perseverance through the adversity he faced in his life, which is a great amount.

In my 24 years I dont think Ive been around a kid who has overcome more adversity in his life than him he had some more this past week, Franklin said. Hes a special, special kid, huge smile on his face, very appreciative of Penn State. Hes been phenomenal and I could not be more proud of him.

Penn State Nittany Lions running back Journey Brown (4) celebrates after scoring a touchdown during the game against Rutgers on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa. The Nittany Lions defeated the Scarlet Knights 27-6.

Channeling his emotions into football isnt all that new for Brown, sadly.

The running back has previously spoken about the death of his grandmother and how he plays for her.

My grandma was hard but this one definitely hit different, Brown said. You grow from stuff like this, Im just becoming the man I want to become.

Overcoming adversity is something that Brown has dealt with on more than one occasion, and football has been the one constant as a way to move forward.

I learned at a young age how to channel my emotions and put it to the right things, Brown said. I just took all the energy and put it in my game, thats why every time I go out I wear my nana on my neck and have her tattooed on me it just always channels into football because thats my escape, thats my getaway, its what I love to do.

The past year has been a rollercoaster for Brown.

Hes dealt with two losses in his family while also going from backup to featured back on one of the nations premier programs.

Running back, Journey Brown (4), runs into the endzone and scores a touchdown during the game against Rutgers at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019. The Nittany Lions defeated the Scarlet Knights 27-6, with three touchdowns scored by Brown.

Brown has now rushed for over 100 yards in four games this year and taken the spot as the Nittany Lions leading rusher for 2019 as the season comes to a close.

This regular season finale against the Scarlet Knights was just the exclamation point on what has been a breakthrough year for the sophomore.

But after the three touchdown performance Brown is thinking of others and the bigger picture of why he plays the game he loves in light of his cousins passing.

It just gives me another why Why do I love this game? Why do I want to do what I want to do? Why do I want to get up every morning and roll out of bed? Because those people would have done it for me, Brown said. When I roll out of bed I think about the people that are still here and I think about what Ive got to do for my family up here at Penn State and then my family back at home

I know they would do the same because theyve sacrificed for me to get here to this point and the people that are here at Penn State are still sacrificing for me, for my position and what Im doing now, so Im always going to put on for the people, so thats my why.

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Journey Brown fights through personal tragedy to put together a career-performance for Penn State football - The Daily Collegian Online

Co-founder and choreographer for FluxFlow Dance Project, Russell Lepley, poses for a promotional photo for Ursula. Credit: Courtesy of Kate Sweeney

An up-and-coming dance company has planted its roots in Columbus, Ohio, and is taking the stage at the Wexner Center for the Arts this week.

Columbus-based dance company, FluxFlow Dance Project, combines mediums of dance, theater and music in the grand opening of its creative work Ursula, inspired by Joanna Newsoms song Monkey and Bear premiering Thursday, according to the Wexner Center website.

The performance is comprised of company co-founders Russell Lepley and Filippo Pelacchi and alumna Kelly Hurlburt.

Lepley said he was inspired to use Newsoms fable as the creative structure for the contemporary performance.

Lepley said the story is about a monkey and bear who escape from a circus hoping to pursue their own ambitions. He said the story takes a turn when the monkey becomes manipulative, essentially recreating the bears entrapment and ultimately leading to the bear leaving, forcing the monkey to remain alone to face his inner demons.

This kind of will to be your own maker rather than someones tool is like a similar parallel from our personal narrative, and we feel like its something that can connect to an audience because I think most people have had a boss that they probably dont like very much and have wanted to have their own freedom, probably, so we try to hit all of those points, Lepley said.

Lepley said he and Pelacchi, his partner, started FluxFlow two years ago to enable their own artistic visions in a career that can be restricting.

Dance is something that is a very creative career, but its also very limited in what your choices are, so another reason why we moved to Columbus besides to start our own company was because we wanted to have more creative autonomy, Lepley said.

This means integrating his dance and theater background with Pelacchis background in dance and music to form one multidisciplinary piece, Lepley said.

Lane Czaplinski, director of performing arts at the Wexner Center, said he chose to feature FluxFlow for the 2019-20 performing arts season as a means of showcasing Columbus local talent.

We have a lot of talented artists in lots of different disciplines who live in the region, and I want to encourage more of that, Czaplinski said. I think that if people can see artists from here who have professional careers, and if they see them working and making provocative work, then maybe itll inspire other people to do the same.

In addition to performing and choreographing, Czaplinski said FluxFlow Dance Project has their own dance studio in the Clintonville neighborhood of Columbus, helping solidify a community of supporters through the people who take classes there.

Theyre unique in that way because they actually have a lot of people in town who are off campus people in Columbus who are tremendous supporters of theirs, so thats why you know each night will be sold out, Czaplinski said.

FluxFlow Dance Project will perform Ursula at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wexner Center for the Arts Performance Space. Tickets cost $24 for the general public, $21 for members and $13 for students and can be purchased at the Wexner Centers website.

More here:
Dance project brings music and theater together for narrative performance - OSU - The Lantern

Andrew Scheer has highlighted the gains his Conservatives made in the last election, but polls suggest his own personal brand took a big hit during the campaign.

It might be hard for Andrew Scheer not to takethe calls for his resignation personally.

After all, under his leadership the Conservatives won more seats and more of the popular vote in October's election than they did in 2015.

The Liberals under Justin Trudeau were reduced to a minority and lost the popular vote. Jagmeet Singh led his New Democrats to their worst performance in years. Nobody inthose two parties iscalling seriously for either leaderto step aside.

What gives?

Polls conducted during the last federal election campaign suggest that Scheerhimself might be theproblem. An analysis of data from recent campaigns shows no party leader has seen his or her personal approval ratingduring an election campaign worsen more than Scheer's did.

Between the beginning and the end of the recent campaign, Scheer's net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) decreased by an average of 10 points, according to polls conducted by Forum Research and Campaign Research. That's the biggest decrease in a major party leader's net rating in any of the last four federal election campaigns.

In other words, Scheeractually lost groundpersonallyduring the 2019 campaign despite his party's stronger showing at the ballot box.

With an average approval rating of 27 per cent and a disapproval rating of 55 per cent, Scheer's net -28 rating at the close of the 2019 campaign was worse than any other leader's post-campaign score except Liberal leaders Stphane Dion (-32.5) and Michael Ignatieff (-37.5) and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper after his losing 2015 campaign (-32.5).

All three of those leaders resigned on election night, or shortly thereafter.

For Dion and Ignatieff, those ratings were actually an improvement over where they were when those campaigns started. Dion's net rating increased by 10.5 points, and Ignatieff's by 3.5 points, over the course of their disastrous2008 and 2011 campaigns. Despite their deep unpopularity, their ratings still improved (relatively speaking)once Canadians sawmore of them.

That was not the case for Scheer, who was a net -18 in Forum and Campaign's pre-campaign polling.

Trudeau also improved his net rating during the campaign by about three points although at -21 it was significantly worse than the +11.5 rating Trudeau enjoyed at the end of his first campaign in 2015.

So what looks like a double standard in how the three leaders are being viewed now isn't really a double standard at all.Calls for Scheer's resignation have been ramping up since it became clear that his campaign performanceworsened Canadians' views of him.

Singh, meanwhile,seems safely ensconced as NDP leader despite losing nearly half of hiscaucus. ButSingh impressed many people during the campaign, turningaround the negative impressions some voters had of him.

Singh's net approval rating improved from -13 at the outset to +26 by the end, an increase of 39 points. That puts him far and away ahead of all other party leaders over the last four election campaigns. His nearest competition is Jack Layton, whose approval ratingincreased by 18.5 and 20 points following the 2008 and 2011 campaigns, respectively.

The major difference is that Layton started those campaigns with significantly better ratings than Singh brought into the 2019 campaign.

Still, Singh ended this campaign with an average approval rating of 50.5 per cent. That's the best approval rating of any leader coming out of the last four election campaigns; it'sjust slightly ahead of Layton's result at the end of 2011 and Trudeau and Mulcair's scores at the end of the 2015 campaign.

This explains the numbers in a recent poll by Lger for the Canadian Press. It found that 87 per cent of NDP voters think Singh should remain as leader, compared to just six per cent who want to see him step down.

Among Conservative voters, however, just 48 per cent said Scheer should stay on, while 40 per cent want him to go. And these are the people who still say they will back the Conservatives a number that decreased in the Lger poll compared to October's election result.

Among all Canadians, just 24 per cent think Scheer should hold on to his job, while 52 per cent say the same for Singh.

Dion, Ignatieff and Harper (in 2015) are the only other leaders to end one of the last four campaigns with an approval rating of less than 31 per cent. Dion and Ignatieff ended each of their campaigns as Liberal leader with an approval rating in the low-20s worse than Scheer's 27 per cent but they had started their campaigns in the low teens.

Scheer is the only major leader over that time to see his approval rating actually drop over the course of the campaign. It went down by a single point, but every other leader has either seen that approval rating hold steady (which happened to Mulcair and Harper in 2015) or improve by at least 2.5 points (and often much more than that).

The nine point increase in Scheer's disapproval rating is also the biggest over the last four elections, outpacing Harper's 8.5-point disapproval increase in2011 and Mulcair's eight-point jump in 2015.

Analysis

Scheer's disapproval rating increased across the countryit spiked the most in Quebec, jumping by 18.5 points. With the exception of Atlantic Canada, Scheer's net rating got worse in every region.

So how did Scheer's Conservatives make gains if he is so unpopular?

Those gains were not uniform. The bulk of them came in Western Canada, where dissatisfaction with the Trudeau government was more likely than enthusiasm for Scheer to have been the main factor driving voters' choices. The rest of the Conservatives' wins came in Atlantic Canada, where the Liberal brand took a beating in recent provincial elections and where, after sweeping the region in 2015, the federal Liberals had nowhere to go but down. In Ontario and Quebec,the Conservatives took less of the vote than they did in the last election.

Summing up: Scheer'sintroduction to Canadians did not go very well. With some justification, Conservatives calling for his resignation have come to the conclusion that it likely wouldn't go any better the second time around.

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Andrew Scheer's personal numbers suggest he was part of the problem in October - CBC.ca

Posted on Dec 4, 2019

Author : Mark Bilney, MD of Learning & Development at Gobeyond Partners

We regularly hear people asking about L&Ds function within a business and where it should sit in relation to HR and the business units. For instance, is it a function of HR or a partner of the business in and of itself? And do the two need one another or can they work independently?

In our view, often when L&D is a mature and established department, it tends to remain as a function of HR. However, when this is the case, there appears to be a sense of detachment from the primary business drivers (provision of services or products). In contrast, when we have witnessed L&D aligned with key business areas and objectives, this close working is usually driven and led by the business areas themselves rather than by L&D. We see very different imperatives driving training procurement for a more traditional, HR-based approach, versus the procurement of L&D services directly by the business areas themselves. All too often, it feels as though L&D are passive participants in the business, rather than proactive in bringing their services and capabilities to the party.

However, with an increasing business focus on efficiencies and cost savings, competitive advantage being derived through customer experience, and the ongoing pressures of digital transformation, L&D has a real opportunity to take a seat at the transformation table. They can do this by focusing training around specific business needs and by building cohorts of people with similar problems to solve rather than having courses open to all. Whilst we have the desire to create a Peter Senge style continuous learning organisation, we also must appreciate that L&D cannot be a passenger on the business journey; it has to be seen as a key component within the organisation that measurably supports change and growth.

Generally the spend on training is low only 12% of companies have a budget of > 600 per annum per employee. However, if that training improves performance by 20%, reduces errors or complaints by 15%, reduces the cost to serve by 10%; then suddenly the spend per head is largely irrelevant. In a situation where you can measure a positivereturn on investment in-line withthe corporate agenda, L&D is no longer a cost to the business, but rather a value-add service contributing to the success of the organisation.At a time when some businesses are converting face-to-face learning to e-learning specifically to save money, L&D really does have an opportunity to show the measurable value add and play an essential part in business growth. There is also a correlation between colleague engagement and customer experience. By getting it right for colleagues within your business, you are often helping to get it right for customers interacting with your business improving the human experience (something that we call HX), as well.

For L&D to be a partner within the business, they must first and foremost understand the company purpose and strategy. Secondly, they will need to work in partnership with HR. If HR and L&D work collaboratively to ensure a healthy people function that is aligned to the company purpose, ultimately everything else should cascade from there. This includes measuring peoples performance and contribution. If you understand what your customer needs and how you are going to provide that, you will be able to provide training that directly supports that business purpose. Furthermore, when personal performance measures and learning outcomes align with the business purpose, the result is a positive one for all.

Certainly, some of the most successful L&D teams are made up of a mix of L&D professionals and people from the business areas; those who understand what we do and how we do it and can translate that into training requirements. When a transformation strategy is being shaped, L&D need to be involved early on and those people with both the business insight and the L&D experience will play an extremely important part in ensuring the business has the skill set it needs to be successful.

So where should L&D sit? Its probably the wrong question to ask. Rather what is critical is that whatever your organisational design or operating model L&D sits where it can link closely to the business agenda and where it can best deliver measurable, positive benefits.

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Where is L&Ds place within a business and how does this fit with HR? - HR News

Kim Petras has made no shortage of waves since hitting the music scene. Considered to be one of the youngest people to receive a gender reassignment surgery to blowing up and redefining the boundaries of pop music, Petras is changing the game on a cultural level. Her music is confident and flamboyant, unabashed in its Madonna, Paris Hilton and Max Martin influences, wherein, Petras is on a mission to just make pop music fun again. We caught up with the singer, prior to hitting the Ogden Theatre on Wednesday, December 4 to talk her ascent, her new album, Clarity, and what defines pop perfection.

303 Magazine: How has life changed since the release ofClarity?

Kim Petras: Completely! I dont think Ive processed it all yet, but everything has become bigger and better and everything is speeding up its definitely go-time for me.

303: People often describe you, as well as people like Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepson amongst others as saving pop music. How do you live up to such a prophecy? What do you think lacks from a lot of pop music as its perceived now?

KP: I dont think its for me to say! Im just doing my own thing and Im grateful that people love it and think of me that highly. Really, my sound is my own personal mashup of all my favorite things. Genres are disappearing and pop can be whatever you want it to be, so Im just focused on creating music that everyone can have a good time listening to. Even with my sadder songs like Icy, I want people to be able to dance to them. I dont ever want to lose the element of fun. I think thats what makes pop so great.

303: What makes the perfect pop song in your opinion?

KP: For me, pop songs are all about the emotion you put into them. I always try and put emotion at the core of my songs so that people feel something when listening to them. There are lots of elements that make a pop song successful, but I dont really think there is a perfect pop song except for Madonnas Like A Prayer, of course.

303: How did you prepare for this next era of your career the full-length tour, the debut album, larger gigs, etc.?

KP: I didnt really prepare for this era because I didnt have the time to! I was in rehearsals in the weeks leading up to when The Clarity Tour started, but I was also pulling all-nighters in the studio to finish TURN OFF THE LIGHT. Ive just been hustling as hard as I can. I also toured in the summer before all of Clarity was out, so I think of that as part of my preparation. Ive definitely been learning as I go because I like to keep moving.

303: Pop music often exists on the basis of stan culture. Who do you stan? Who do you look at in todays music landscape as inspirational?

KP: I stan so many people! My songwriter friends inspire me, like Lil Aaron, Theron Thomas, or Vaughn Oliver, whos an incredible producer. I think songwriters and those that work behind-the-scenes are very inspiring. I used to religiously watch anything I could find about Max Martin and was obsessed with amazing songwriters like Carole King. The list goes on forever, but most of all Im really drawn to lyricists. I love Lana Del Rey and Nicki Minaj they can both really write. I love Post Malone, Daft Punk, and Charli XCX, too. I dont think anyone is doing what Charli is doing at the moment. Shes amazing.

303: What are you listening to right now?

KP: I listen to the greats of every genre, like Post Malone, Madonna, Daft Punk, Lana Del Rey, Travis Scott, Kylie Minogue, Kanyes 808s & Heartbreak. They really inspire me and my own music.

303: How has the tour been thus far?

KP: It has been great! This tour is the biggest Ive ever done. Its such a shame its coming to an end as I love waking up in a new city each day and Ill miss partying with my fans. I think my shows keep getting better. I have lots of insane staging this time around, so there are lots of moving parts with all the costume changes!

303: Your Halloween releases have been incredibly popular. How did all that begin?

KP: Me and my friends were in the studio and were all wondering why there are so Christmas records but no Halloween records so we decided to make one. I love Halloween, scary movies, and movie soundtracks. When I was making TURN OFF THE LIGHT, everyone was like who is going to listen to that?! but it played at every Halloween party I went to. Im so glad I found the time to finish the project this year.

303: What attracts you to pop music?

KP: Pop music has always been an escape for me, so I think thats why I love it so much. I used to listen to Britney, Gwen Stefani, and other pop stars to forget my problems for a few minutes. Now, I hope that I can do that for other people with my own music.

303: Whats the craziest thing youve experienced on tour?

KP: Definitely the Westboro Baptist Church coming out to protest my Kansas City show. That was insane. Im just glad my fans still came out to the show and were all safe. My shows are always just a giant party where everyone can be themselves and that show wasnt any different!

303: What was your biggest moment of this past year?

KP: There have been so many! Its tough to think of just one, but if I had to pick, Id go with when I released my debut full-length project Clarity. I had been working on it for a long time and I ended up dropping a single a week for ten weeks, so it was definitely a big moment for me.

303: At this point in your career, what is a goal youd like to accomplish in 2020? Alternatively, what are you looking forward to most in 2020?

KP: There are lots of things Im looking forward to next year, but I cant share any of them just yet. You wont have to wait too long to find out what is coming, but Im always working on something. Next year will be even bigger and better.

All photography courtesy of Kim Petras Facebook.

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Kim Petras Talks Pop Perfection and Her Upcoming Performance at the Ogden - 303 Magazine

James Badge Dale chats with Awards Dailys Megan McLachlan about playing a drug-addicted veteran being taken care of by his teenage daughter in Mickey and the Bear.

Writer-director Annabelle Attanasio makes a devastating feature-length debut with Mickey and the Bear.The film follows Montana teen Mickey (Camila Morrone), whos charged with playing caretaker to her father Hank (James Badge Dale), a war veteran suffering from PTSD and opioid addiction.

The film has a lived-in, authentic quality about it, especially with its atypical Hollywood setting and genuine performances from Morrone and Dale, as well as an outstanding supporting cast.

I had a chance to chat with James Badge Dale about stepping into the role of Hank, how he was able to escape this dark story after the shoot, and what the film says about addiction.

Awards Daily: You play a drug-addicted veteran, and its so heartbreaking. What kind of research did you do for this role?

James Badge Dale: Thats the big question everyone asks. When I read this, it scared me so much because I related so much to the material. Ive worked a lot with veterans over the last 10 years. If you look at the circumstances were playing with, with veteran issues and brain injuries and opioid abuse, this felt like a continuation of some of the stories of the people Ive met along the way. I had a responsibility to these men and women that Ive met. There are a lot of people that I know in my life that are in that character. On the same side of that, theres a lot of my family in that character. My father grew up in a very violent, alcoholic household. I think its an interesting thing. You have to personalize everything. You have to relate to everything. You have to find those pathways to understand parts of it, for better or for worse. It was a very personal performance and experience for me.

AD: Camila Morrone plays your daughter, Mickey. What was it like working opposite her? I got to chat a little bit about it when I saw her at SCAD Savannah Film Festival.

JBD: I love Cami. I remember the day I met her, the moment I met her, and she was so game and ready to throw down. Shes a marathon runner. And she doesnt literally run marathons, but Im just saying as an actor, she comes so prepared for so much with vibrancy and attention to detail. I was so impressed by her. Its not easy to be a lead of a film. I dont think people understand what that actual responsibility is. And what that responsibility is is 60 hours a week, when youre in every shot of a film. Your responsibility to not only yourself and to the director and material, but also to your cast members and to the crew. I was so impressed by her. Shes a leader, and she has a great attitude, and shes tireless.

AD: Thats great. Shes relatively young as an actress, too, and it seems like a daunting performance. Speaking of which, how did you leave Hank at the end of the day? This seems like a part that would stick with an actor, especially since you talked about it being so personal to you.

JBD: Thank you for asking that. I wish I was one of those actors who just gets off work and shuts it off. Ive just never been that guy. I knew beforehand that this one was going to take a piece of me. I like to take a few weeks off after working. I was out in Montana and drove out to Portland, Ore., and I had some good friends out there. They drew me a map of the Oregon and Northern California coast, with all these little surf spots. I brought a surfboard all the way from New York. So me and my dog, my one-eyed pit bull, we just drove all the way down the coast of Oregon and just explored and got in the water and tried not to get eaten by large 20-foot great white sharks.

AD: That sounds like a good way to pull back from the film. Theres a scene at the end where Hank thinks Mickey is his wife Vanessa, and he kind of gets aggressive. Do you think he was aggressive like that with Vanessa when she was alive? Or do you think it was his drug-addled state doing the aggression?

JBD: Oh wow. No one has asked that question. Excellent question.

AD: Thanks!

JBD: At the end of the movie, Hank crosses a line that you cant come back from. He breaks that bond, he breaks that trust. That was difficult to shoot. Do I think Hank has a history of aggression? Yes, I do. I dont imagine his relationship with his wife was perfect by any means. But at the same time, were talking about a character thats not in the film. Shes passed away. And I always imagined her memory, Vanessa, as someone as Hanks equal, that probably could put Hank in his place verbally or physically. I always imagined Vanessa as this incredible, strong, powerful woman. Which I think makes it even harder for Hank to lose someone like that and lose someone that vibrant in his life.

JBD: Do you think his addiction is something that existed before his wifes death? Do you think it was exacerbated after her death?

JBD: When you deal with addiction, a lot of that is genetic. Youre trying to fill a hole that was already there. A lot of these experiences just speed it up. The death of a loved one, trauma, head injury, time in combat. I dont think Hank is sober one minute of the day, because he cant handle life. He doesnt have a drug problem; he has a living problem. Its a happy talk were having. (Laughs)

AD: (Laughs) Right? What a happy chat!

JBD: We had so much fun on set because the material goes in such a dark direction. So in order to survive that, we had to have fun every day on set. Talking about it isnt easy. We do these stories for the love of the game. This is because you believe in the art form. The best part is watching Annabelle and Camis careers blossom.

AD: This is a good showcase for you, too. Dont belittle yourself! Its also interesting to me that the film mentions Anaconda, MT being riddled with cancer deaths, hinting that thats what killed Vanessa, and yet thats not whats killing Hank. What do you think the film is trying to say about that?

JBD: Its the environment. Hanks cancer is his toxic relationship to his daughter. Hanks cancer is himself. You put him in this family, in this setting, with these circumstances. They are dealing with the air and water around them. They are dealing with the opioid crisis. Theyre dealing with all of these things. Hanks his own worst enemy. He would be lucky if he went fast from a disease I think. You learn about brain injuries, and they are irreversible. Emotions are just going to get more volatile. I was an amateur hockey player and got hit in the head as a kid. I was an amateur boxer in my 20s. You asked me about my research for this role. I know what its like to have so many concussions where I couldnt open the drapes because the sunlight would literally burrow into my eyes and brain. My thing with Hank and the thing I could relate to, I needed him to be in a circumstance where he was in close-quartered combat. It rattles your brain. I just think its important to actually go out and vocalize the mental health aspect of all of this. I had a head injury 10 years ago, but I recovered, but it took a while.

AD: The movie takes its title from an ill-fated bear expedition in the film. What is it about this moment that serves as a turning point for Mickey and her father?

JBD: That was actually a hard scene to do. I have a really good relationship with Cami and Calvin Demba (who plays Wyatt). I think the world of Calvin. Its basically a betrayal of trust. I wouldnt say its the beginning, but its a piece of that. Once again hes betraying trust. As an actor, you sometimes have to compartmentalize. My job is not to figure out what it means to the audience. Thats Annabelles job. My job is to live in that moment and provide her with the material to go back and edit it together and decide what story shes gonna tell. I will say, that day of filming, we had a lot of fun.

AD: It looked like it. Theres that great scene where Wyatt is talking to Mickey, and behind them, you just see this orange flash thats you that goes by into the water.

JBD: We actually had a bear show up that day, too!

AD: One last question: Mickey asks the VA psychiatrist played by Rebecca Henderson whether Hank will ever get better, and the psychiatrist tells her no. Its a stunning moment. Do you think Hank knows he wont get better?

JBD: Theres this thing where I cut off. (Laughs) On Page 120 when the script ends, its none of my business anymore to know what happens. I dont know what happens to Hank when he wakes up the next morning [following the last scene]. You have to approach this stuff with love and empathy for the characters. In a lot of ways, I have to have hope for him. And I really hope hes OK. Hes just really damaged. I hope people can relate to thatbut not relate too much to that. You try to bring a little humanity to things so that an audience member can not only believe the story, but find the common threads in their own life.

Mickey and the Bear is now playing in select theaters.

Originally posted here:
James Badge Dale On How He Tapped into His Drug-Addicted Character in 'Mickey and the Bear' - Awards Daily

In the stellar And Still You Must Swing at the Joyce Theater, she is joined by Jason Samuels Smith, Derick K. Grant and Camille A. Brown.

Dance relies on technique, but if thats all there is, a performance loses its dimension; its energy fizzles out. There are many points to be made about an excellent show like And Still You Must Swing, led by Dormeshia, a tap dancer of exceptional elegance, dazzling speed and, yes, an abundance of technique. But above all, at its foundation, there is heart and conviction. And, mission accomplished: It swings.

Dormeshia, who no longer uses a last name shes tap dance royalty, she doesnt need one has a delightfully lively projection, yet never more than the moment requires. Her reason to dance extends way beyond footwork. Shes nurturing, both to the tap form, whose jazz roots she celebrates here, and to her fellow dancers. In Swing, she shares the stage with two exceptional tap dancers, Jason Samuels Smith and Derick K. Grant, and another radiant performer, Camille A. Brown. Headliners, all.

At the Joyce Theater through Sunday, the program mixes robust unison trios for the tap dancers with nuanced, personal solos titled Swings. In Jason Swings, Mr. Smith is a virtuosic wonder, shifting seamlessly from power to quiet sensitivity. His fearless dancing even involved a shoe mishap he slipped out of his heel, but deftly fixed the problem mid-step and continued on . And no one dances quite like Mr. Grant, who glides across the stage with a voluptuous, bearlike grace as his feet hit into impossibly intricate rhythms.

Dormeshia is simply transfixing. For a dancer so grounded and connected to the floor in ways that you not only see but hear she moves as if buoyed by the air: When she swings, she floats. She has always had a magic quality about her, but with And Still You Must Swing, which runs a swift 75 minutes and features a jazz quartet performing original music by Allison Miller and Dormeshia, she attains an even greater level of expressiveness. And as the shows leader, its fitting: This is a celebration of her articulate body and all the information that it contains.

It makes sense that the tap dancers perform with Ms. Brown, a contemporary choreographer who explores African-American identity in her work; here, she wears sneakers and lights up the stage with her own footwork as always, shes electric and swinging rhythms. She is a container, too, in solos that hint at how tap emerged out of slavery and struggle.

But throughout the production, which had its premiere at Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival in 2016, the connective theme comes from the title, which itself comes from a quotation by the tap dancer Jimmy Slyde: Theres balance involved. Theres movement involved. And still you must swing.

Its an invisible line: Does Dormeshia find the groove or does the groove find her? Her eloquent dancing is utterly natural, full of strength, femininity and a worldly maturity that evokes a bygone glamour as movement melts from her shoulders. Throughout the show, she and the other tap dancers wear gold shoes halfway, she changes flats for heels and her glimmering feet are reflected on the base of two round platforms behind her. Its as if her dancing is giving off actual sparks.

Theres a swing dance section, too, in which the tap dancers wear sneakers, and Dormeshia shows, yet again, that her understanding of rhythm has a way of enveloping the music like serious play: Just as she makes us pay attention to the moments between the notes, she lets us feel how a step can be as soft as taking a breath.

The opening and closing numbers, trios for the tap dancers, end in the same way: Dormeshia high-fives each of the guys, who then cross their arms and stand sideways while she, arms out, poses in the center. Its a jaunty hello and goodbye even if it comes too soon. Dormeshia knows what shes doing: She leaves you wanting more of her brand of deeply felt tap, in which dancers good friends alive in the skill of their bodies, let us watch their conversations unfold in real time.

And Still You Must Swing

Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, Manhattan; joyce.org

The rest is here:
Review: The Tap Dancer Dormeshia Finds Her Groove, and Then Some - The New York Times