A & E briefs: Velocity Dance gets new director

Velocity Dance Center, one of Seattle's leading contemporary dance organizations, has appointed a new executive director. Kara O'Toole, a founding member of the d9 Dance Collective who once danced with the Pat Graney Company, took the helm last week.

She replaces Velocity Dance Center's founders Michele Miller and KT Niehoff, who will still teach at Velocity, but have chosen to step down for artistic and personal reasons. Miller and Niehoff started Velocity in 1996.

In addition to teaching weekly "ballet for modern dancers" classes at Velocity (which she will continue doing), O'Toole has taught for 10 years in the University of Washington Dance Program, where she earned her master's in dance. She comes to Velocity from Cornish College of the Arts, where she was part of the Dance Department faculty.

O'Toole will report to the Velocity Dance Center board of directors.

Judy Chia Hui Hsu,

The Seattle Times

Shiloh's photos stir legal action

NEW YORK — The first pictures of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt have been published — and she appears to have her mother's lips.

Photographs of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their infant daughter appear on the cover and inside the pages of People magazine, on newsstands today.

Pitt and Jolie sold the rights to the photos to Getty Images, saying all proceeds would be donated to a charity, not yet named. People paid a reported $4 million for the North America rights and London-based Hello! magazine obtained the British rights.

On Wednesday, both People and Hello! launched legal action against two Web sites that had published one of the pictures before the magazines appeared on newsstands.

China pulls plug on "Da Vinci"

HONG KONG — The Chinese government, in an unprecedented move and for reasons that are unclear, has ordered theaters to stop showing "The Da Vinci Code," movie-industry officials said Thursday.

Chinese authorities said the withdrawal of the movie from theaters was to make way for locally produced films, one industry executive said, declining to be named because she wasn't authorized to speak on the matter.

Includes information from

The Associated Press