All those beautiful people. All those tantalizing dates. They’re in this year’s U.S. 1 Newspaper’s calendar and datebook, and if you go to the Princeton Regional Chamber’s lunch on Thursday, January 6, you’ll be able to get your own free copy.

For the past several years, the Princeton Regional Chamber has started off the New Year with a luncheon speaker who prognosticated about the economy. For instance, last year’s January speaker for the chamber was David Sandahl, who predicted gloomy results for job creation. But for this year, enough about the economy, we need something more cheerful.

Jeff Vanderbeek, the speaker for Thursday, January 6, 11:30 a.m. at the Princeton Marriott, has finance forecasting chops, because he used to be at Lehman Brothers. But now he is chairman of the New Jersey Devils hockey team, and he will talk about how he aims for a payout from the largest private investment in New Jersey. Walk-ins pay more, so pre-register.

And sure enough, this January lots of people are still looking for jobs. At the Princeton Public Library on Wednesday, January 5, at 7 p.m., outplacement consultant Jean Baur offers some consolation and advice, in part from her book, “Eliminated? Now What?” Co-sponsored by NJ Unemployed, the group begun by Katie Devito aimed at making the unemployed a collective voice, the event is free.

More meetings of value in the next week:

At the library, on Monday, January 10, at 6:45 p.m., Brinda Wiita will speak about how small businesses can use social media. A neuroendocrinologist and pharmacologist, she manages a website for submission of patented and patent-pending opportunities that may be commercialized by Johnson & Johnson Consumer companies.

New Jersey Technology Council offers its latest CEO Forum, “Managing a Board of Directors,” on Wednesday, January 12, at 8:30 a.m. at the offices of the Edison Venture Fund, 1009 Lenox Drive. Cost: $25. Visit www.njtc.org.

Also on January 12, a nationwide group teams with New Jersey’s Solid Waste Resource Group will present “Creating Ways to Keep Organics Out of the Landfill, a day-long interactive workshop, aimed at creating a vision for organics recycling. Cost $20 including lunch, call 609-651-1544 or vastola@aesop.rutgers.edu.

Donna Liu teaches a free course on how to use the Internet to spread your message. It’s on Thursday, January 13, 9 a.m., at Princeton Community Television, 369 Witherspoon Street, and. like the library workshops, it’s free.

For more social media advice, check out these excerpts from U.S. 1’s Survival Guide.) And check the calendar of U.S. 1 Newspaper for other business meetings that can give you a “shot on goal.”

Ever since 1980, when I saw Bhutanese monks incorporate slapstick with their religious dances, I’ve been interested in how comedy can impart spiritual values. They knew that in the Middle Ages, when stained glass windows served as Biblical texts for illiterate peasants, and when actor/dancers told Bible stories by staging “mystery plays” in front of the cathedrals.

Today’s churches follow suit when they stage Nativity plays (shown here, my church’s annual pageant). Like the medieval mystery plays, they depict Bible stories as tableaux, accompanied by songs.

A Princeton University senior, Phoenix Gonzalez, had that same fascination. For her senior thesis she presents Wakefield Mystery Plays at the University chapel on Friday, January 7, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, January 8, at 3 p.m. The play begins outside the chapel, so dress warmly. It’s free, no tickets needed.

Says Gonzalez: “The goal of this project is to capture some of the medieval aspects of the plays, while also exploring elements of modern life, and in so doing, to probe important questions such as: What is the role of the community as audience and creator in this type of theater? How can religious theater be understood today?”

This could be a wonderful family activity on Saturday afternoon. Actors will be speaking in stanzas but one of the two plays, The Second Shepherd’s Play, opens with buffoonery, involving a thief who steals a sheep and tries to pretend it is his son. When he is discovered, the shepherds punish him by tossing him on a blanket – and then set forth to visit the Christ Child.

Time travel to the early 15th century — and get back in time for dinner.

Two titans of dance are represented here next week in master classes. One, amazingly enough, is for those with Parkinson’s Disease. It makes sense, doesn’t it, that dancers — who know how to use the body — are the best teachers of those who have difficulty moving.

On Saturday, January 15, at 2:30 p.m., two dancers from the Mark Morris Dance Group will give a free movement class for those with Parkinson’s Disease and their partners, caregivers, and friends. Space is limited at the PDT studio in Forrestal Village at 116 Rockingham Row, so register now, says Marie Snyder, who organized this class, the first such master class in New Jersey. Here;s a link to a documentary about this therapy.

Bill T. Jones will lecture and show a video of his 1978 work Continuous Replay, which Princeton University students are scheduled to perform. Then Jones will conduct an open rehearsal. The Tuesday, January 18 lecture and screening will be from 3 to 4:15 p.m. in the James M. Stewart theater at 185 Nassau Street, and the rehearsal will start at 4:45 p.m. in the Hagan Dance Studio in the same building. Both events are free, and no tickets are needed. Master classes “open to the university community” are also offered, in January, on the styles of Balanchine, Fosse, and Robbins.

Looking ahead, the students will likely perform the Bill T. Jones work at the Spring Dance Festival, February 18-20 in McCarter’s Berlind Theatre. The Mark Morris Dance Group (pictured) will no doubt be a sellout at McCarter on March 30.

A Longest Night Service, to be held at PUMC on Tuesday, December 21, at 7:30 p.m., offers prayer, meditation, and reflection for those for whom the holidays may bring painful memories. “The theme of light in the darkness runs through this service which is being held symbolically on the winter solstice – the longest night of the year,” says Pastor Catherine Williams.

Senior Pastor Jana Purkis-Brash will lead the candlelight services on Christmas Eve at 6 p.m. (especially for families) and at 8 p.m.

Christmas, for me, begins with the children’s pageant at Christmas United Methodist Church (shown here on December 12.) It’s wonderful when children from age 4 through high school tell the story, “A Gift from the Holy Child.”

This was my second in-person TEDx experience at the Princeton Public Library. It’s not easy to explain TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Imagine fabulous speakers (mostly men, actually) telling important, even life-changing ideas, and the speeches are so dynamic that they get thousands of hits on YouTube.

Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, says these powerful ideas, from some of the greatest thinkers, need to be shared.

TED talks have acquired a powerful brand, and now mini-TED conferences are licensed around the country. The Princeton Public Library hosted an all-day session last spring, engineered by Janie Hermann (show here) and earlier this month it streamed live video of a TED conference in DC that focused on women.

Of the DC-streamed talks, I was most deeply affected by Elizabeth Lindsey, a former Miss Hawai’i who is the first Polynesian explorer and the first female fellow of the National Geographic Society. She spoke movingly of how, as the elders die, we are losing the richness of our world’s cultures.

The library also had its own live speakers on the theme of Women and Technology (Twitter feed: TEDxNJLibes).

DC-based Jill Foster, of Live Your Talk, offered a powerful keynote.

Holly Landau of Landau Leadership inspired with her tales of My Pink Pizza, workshops for Girl Scouts.

Katie DeVito shared how the group she founded, NJUnemployed, attributes some of it success to social media.

Hilary Morris told of being a mommy blogger.

Melissa Klepacki of Princeton Scoop gave a poignant account of what it’s like to do everything in a virtual world — business and social life — and wake up to realize that some needs can’t be supplied by that world.

Winsome Sarah Donner of Cat Lady Records entertained with acoustic guitar. And by the way, the E in TED is supposed to be Entertainment, not Education, as you might think.

But the best part of it all was, of course, the people. The TED schedule allows for time to really get to know a few of the folks who have been hearing the same things you heard, and it allows for meaningful sharing. On one break, Janie Hermann held a trivia contest, each group had to name itself after a woman we admired. In our group, we all decided that we admired our mothers more than any other woman in the world, and so we called ourselves the Daring Daughters. Click here for photos of the groups. Led by Holly Landau, we had a hi-larious time and actually won the contest.

It was a real upper to meet one member of our group, Bethnolastname, for instance, to whom I gave the soubriquet: She Who is an Activist Beyond Her Means.

May we all use our means for the activation of good.

I had the delight of seeing American Repertory Ballet’s production of “Nutcracker” on Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, with my 9 year old granddaughter. I bought tickets for the first row of the balcony at McCarter. We loved it.

Then a friend asked me – which Nutcracker to choose for a newcomer to Princeton who used to teach dance? If you are still deciding whether to see Nutcracker this seasons, here is my assessment of the “small town” and “big city” alternatives.

Why you would see American Repertory Ballet: ARB has one more set of performances, at the New Brunswick State Theater, on Saturday and Sunday, December 18 and 19. It is a heart warming and beautiful production with professional dancers in the leading roles, some of them my favorites. This all-new production has choreography by the new director, Douglas Martin, with Audree’ Estey’s 1963 choreography for the party scene plus some welcome updates. Martin (a Really Nice Guy), plays Drosselmeier, and the adult cast, now unified behind him, has a good time on stage and it shows. LOTS of children, and they are appropriately used. (Above, the fabled soldier line, always exciting.)

Before, when ARB positioned itself as one of the nation’s leading companies, the teenage girls augmented the corps of mature professional dancers and often struggled to keep up with them. Under the new structure, the company has a core group of good young professionals and augments with apprentices. It works. The Nutcracker corps consists only of the advanced students, and they are not asked to do anything they can’t do, with a very pleasing and calming result for Flowers and Snow.

For the New Brunswick State Theater tickets are $52 and $32. Parking is essentially free. Unlike at McCarter these performances do have a live orchestra, and the historic theater offers an appropriate dignity to the production.

Why you would choose Pa Ballet: It’s with full orchestra at the Academy of Music, in itself an experience, a grand and historic opera house, with a professional company doing Balanchine’s version. At the time I wrote this, it had $49 seats in the highest balcony on the side for Friday, December 17, $62 in the center. Add $12-$25 parking plus gas. It runs to December 31, mostly on weekends but it is DAILY after Christmas.

Similarly priced tickets may actually still be available in the “orchestra,” they call it parquet, on the outside side aisles. Watch out for the Academy seats that are partial view.

Why you would choose New York City Ballet: To get a New York experience and of course a fabulous company and orchestra. It runs almost daily through January 2. You can still get seats for as little as $40 in the back of the fourth balcony, but take your binoculars – you’ll be pretty far away. Evening shows are at 6 p.m. so you get home at a decent hour. Be careful about taking young children to any out-of-town production. You run the risk of tiring them out even before they get there. To the ticket price, add $60 round trip for 2 adult tickets on NJ Transit, or pay tunnel tolls and try to find on-street parking.

For a flamenco version, The Alborada Spanish Dance Theatre presents the Spanish version of Nutcracker, El Sueño, at Mercer County Community College’s Kelsey Theatre, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, Dec. 21, 7:30 p.m.

For an intriguing view of Nutcrackers nationally, read Alastair McCauley in the New York Times. He is crisscrossing the country to review lots of them. When I was the dance critic for the Trenton Times, I did that on a local scale and — like McCauley — I found a delightful, not boring, array.

One of the best free shows in the town of Princeton is the chance to see smart people competing, not on the gridiron but at the podium, presenting their business schemes. The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club sponsors, for instance, a fall event, which calls for one-minute pitches in a program called Princeton Pitch. I attended that November 22 event with speech coach Eileen Sinett, of Speaking That Connects. She was so enthusiastic about the students’ presentation skills that I asked her to write a guest post:

Too often, listening to a series of speakers can be a tiring experience. Not the case tonight, though. I just returned from the Princeton Pitch, hosted by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, where I heard thirty (30), one-minute presentations in less than an hour (30 seconds between speakers and a 10 minute intermission) and I wasn’t bored one bit! Students vying for a $1,000 prize to seed their business concept delivered their ideas before a panel of judges and an audience of students and curious community folks like myself. The room was full and the ideas were not only intelligent and forward-focused, but also creative and dynamic.

I was particularly pleased by two presentation best practices I rarely see in business presentations. The first is to pique interest at the start. Too often professionals default to mediocre. Tonight instead of hum-drum, ”vanilla” openings there were a diversity of creative beginnings: Imagine, How would you like…..You want to play, but…… Here’s a way to… Thank you for keeping the audience interested.

The second best practice that made me smile was seeing speaker after speaker stay within the one-minute time limit.

I thought, “Now this is a challenge I will bring to my corporate clients.” Many business speakers have trouble limiting their ideas to 5-10 minutes. They are sent to speech coaches to learn to be more persuasive and succinct. They need to get to the point, hook their listeners and give them a reason to listen. These students did just that, without reading PowerPoint slides or hand-written manuscripts. Bravo Princeton Pitch!

by Eileen Sinett

Editor’s notes: The winners of Princeton Pitch were Guanchun Wang and Zhen Xiang, both PhD students in the electrical engineering department, with their proposal for China’s Netflix, aimed at “providing a competitive pricing scheme to challenge piracy in China.” The next event in the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club competition is Super Saturday for the Tiger Launch, set for February 26.