FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

L.A. HOLIDAY CELEBRATION 2009 is the “best of” of the six-hour live L.A. County Holiday Celebration broadcast from Los Angeles’ Music Center in December 2008. The one-hour highlights version of this Emmy-nominated music and dance spectacular mixes traditional, contemporary and offbeat holiday entertainment. That holiday staple “The Nutcracker” meets street dance as Antics Performance does a hip hop take on the first act Christmas Eve party and battle with the Mouse King. Backhausdance similarly transforms the “Nutcracker” Snow Scene: ballerinas in white tutus are replaced by modern dancers in ski wear gamboling in the snow. The natural beauty of the holiday season is also the backdrop of DreamDance II’s “Ladies in the Snow,” inspired by the elegance of Chinese dance of the Han dynasty.

Among the critically acclaimed artists spotlighted in the show are two who made their mark on reality television: Melissa Sandvig, the “Naughty Ballerina” from “So You Think You Can Dance” Season 5 and member of the company Motion Tribe, solos in a mesmerizing aerial performance, and Celtic Spring, from the first season of “America’s Got Talent,” offers trademark high intensity fiddling and Irish step dance.

L.A. Holiday Celebration was produced by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. For more Holiday Celebration information, visit www.holidaycelebration.org.

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Faith Hill, Joy to the World – A Soundstage Special Event

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24 @ 6:00PM & 9:00PM

Working with producers Dann Huff and Byron Gallimore, engineer Allen Sides and Grammy-winning arranger David Campbell, Faith Hill has crafted a one-of-a-kind Christmas record with Joy to the World, freshly conceived yet anchored in tradition. It is a loving tribute to both the spirit and the music of Christmas, one that pays homage to the classics.

Recorded over a two-year period, the album features reworked classics along with the only original song on the track and her single, “A Baby Changes Everything.” The arrangements are diverse. From the big band orchestration of songs like “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, “Winter Wonderland” and “Holly Jolly Christmas,” to the a cappella “The Little Drummer Boy” and the Appalachian feel of “Away In A Manger.” The CD opens with “Joy To The World,” and, says Hill, “From the very first note you hear, I wanted it to be joyous. I wanted to give you (the listener) the impression of what the song meant before a word was ever uttered.”

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La Bohème, The Movie

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23 @ 7:00PM & 10:00PM

The pairing of one of the most beloved operas of all time with a contemporary “dream team” of singers sets the stage for a silver screen romantic blockbuster. Released theatrically in October, the lush new film version of La Bohème makes its U.S. television debut on Great Performances during the holiday season – a perfect fit, given the first two acts of the plot unfold on Christmas Eve. “My principal motivation in filming the opera ‘La Bohème’ is to set a memorial to the singers Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón,” says Austrian director Robert Dornhelm, adding: “I think that this film, this music, this story will beguile not just opera lovers.” Great Performances viewers will remember Netrebko and Villazón from last season’s telecast of Three Stars in Vienna with superstar tenor Placido Domingo, as well as Netrebko’s starring appearances on Great Performances at the Met (I Puritani, Roméo et Juliette, and Lucia di Lammermoor).

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THE FIRST CHRISTIANS

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30 @ 8:00PM

This FRONTLINE series is an intellectual and visual guide to the new and controversial historical evidence which challenges familiar assumptions about the life of Jesus and the epic rise of Christianity.

For an overview of the series read the Synopsis. It includes links to some of the stories and material on this web site which expand the narrative.

This site is anchored by the testimony of New Testament theologians, archaeologists and historians who serve as both critics and storytellers. They address dozens of key issues, disagreements and critical problems relating to Jesus’ life and the evolution of Christianity. Throughout the site, maps, charts (for example, the fortress of Masada), ancient texts (including Perpetua’s diary), pictures of the archaeological discoveries, ancient imagery, and audio excerpts from the television program complement and illuminate the scholars’ commentary.

A new addition to this site is the edited transcript of a two-day symposium at Harvard University. This symposium was a follow-up to the FRONTLINE broadcast and featured scholars’ presentations, workshops and audience discussion.

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Dance in America: San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21 @ 7:00 PM & 10:00 PM

San Francisco Ballet makes the beloved Nutcracker its own, resetting it during the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibition and introducing Dance in America viewers to the dazzling Maria Kochetkova and Davit Karapetyan. Recorded in December 2007 by KQED Public Television to help commemorate the company’s 75th anniversary, the work is choreographed by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and features sets and costumes by, respectively, Michael Yeargan and Martin Pakledinaz, both repeat Tony Award-winning designers. “Striking, elegant and beautiful,” assessed The New York Times.
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Night of Glory, Dawn of Peace

Saturday, December 19 @ 3:00pm

Breathtaking music, glowing candlelight and the robed choristers of Luther College capture the wonder and joy of the holiday season in a new special. For the past 27 years, Luther College has been sharing the gift of music with audiences far and near through televised performances. This year’s special features performances by six choirs, the symphony orchestra, organ, hand bell choir, Christmas Brass and Percussion Ensemble; caroling; and the signature lighting of candles that encircle the audience in light. Luther’s music program is internationally renowned for its tradition of excellence.

Africa: House Calls and Health Care

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18 @ 6:30PM

Can a breakthrough health care innovation in Rwanda work in the U.S.?

In rural Rwanda, the simple and time-tested idea of medical house calls is not only improving the health of the community, but stimulating its economy as well.

This week, NOW travels to the village of Rwinkwavu to meet the Rwandan doctors, nurses and villagers who are teaming up with Boston-based Partners in Health and the Rwandan government to deliver medicine and medical counseling door-to-door. Would such an innovation work in America?

In the capital of Kigali, NOW’s David Brancaccio sits down with Rwandan President Paul Kagame to talk about international aid and Kagame’s ultimate vision for a healthy, financially-independent Rwanda.

This show is part of Enterprising Ideas, NOW’s continuing spotlight on social entrepreneurs working to improve the world through self-sustaining innovation.
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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

Episode 6: Freedom

This last episode tells how a foreign multinational (the East India Company) thousands of miles away gradually and almost by chance took power over great swathes of the Indian subcontinent; how after the horrendous shock of the 1857 “Mutiny” the British state took over and turned this supremacy into the Raj, the jewel in the crown of the greatest empire the world had ever seen; and how the Freedom Movement delivered Independence to India in 1947, albeit a divided India.

The series ends by acknowledging the extraordinary achievements of Indian democracy over sixty years and flags India’s predicted rise to be the largest country and the second largest (or even the largest) economy in the world in the next three decades.

Map showing extent of British Raj

Our last episode takes us from the 11 miles of archives of the East India Company in the British Library in London, out to the Hooghly River and 18th century Calcutta (Kolkata), through the battlefields of Lucknow and Etawah in the First War of Independence in 1857 (“The Indian Mutiny” as the British saw it!). At a destroyed fort still marked by cannon fire, we meet the descendent of a rebel Maharaja who tells us how his ancestors fought the British twice – once in 1857 and then during the nationalist movement of the early 20th Century.

We chart the development of the Indian National Congress of Nehru and Gandhi and its unlikely founder member – a British civil servant called AO Hume. The Rebel in the Raj, Hume was a recent question in the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The show looks at the rise of newspapers and education in Victorian India, goes to Kipling’s Allahabad and visits the amazing labyrinth of stacks in the National Archive in Delhi to look at the early British censuses.

Then Wood takes us on to the First War, the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, the move to Independence and the fateful Partition of 1947, one of the most crucial events in the history of modern India.
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