Things to Do in Alexandria

Listen. You’re a creative person. You know it, we know it. So what if you spend your life hunched in a cubicle, writing reports summarizing and aggregating multiple reports in a daily report in preparation for the weekly and monthly reports. There’s something inside you, something bright and starlike that burns in your soul like a fire-breathing dragon (only smaller and maybe without wings or fire breath, but with some impressive firelike appendages coming out of its nose instead, like star-nosed moles).

Deemed one of the world’s 12 coolest museums by the Sunday Times, the Newseum uses new technology to tell the history of newspapers, journalism, and groundbreaking photography. Beyond the museum's 74-foot engraving of the First Amendment and its glass atrium, 14 permanent exhibits include the News Corporation News History Gallery, where 10 touch screens offer time lines, games, close-up views of publications, and a live cam of Tom Brokaw's nose. Several theaters screen documentaries that focus on journalistic issues, and the temporary Photo Finish exhibit displays legendary sports photographer Neil Leifer’s work, including a shot of a victorious Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston while announcing his career transition to badminton. The Berlin Wall Gallery shows how news shaped the story of the wall being torn down, with eight 12-foot sections of the wall on display.

Driven to share her passion for yoga with others, Quiet Mind Yoga’s director Rita Maximilian left her career in business development and education-policy reform to become a yoga instructor. She and her dedicated instructors guide students of all fitness levels through a variety of yoga classes—with a focus on the Iyengar and Ashtanga practices—at Columbia Heights’s first yoga studio. They help newcomers build a foundation for their practice during beginner sessions by walking pupils through standing and seated postures, and challenge more advanced students in intermediate-level Vinyasa classes that connect postures with athletic transitional movements, culminating in the secret yogi handshake. As a member of Live Green, Quiet Mind Yoga's studio provides environmentally friendly props, mats, and blankets to help students enhance their yoga practice while giving Mother Nature the day off.

Hypnotize postal workers with your flagrant disregard for gravity with today's Groupon to Dance Place. You'll get five drop-in dance classes for $35 (a $75 value). Dance Place offers classes in African dance, modern dance, salsa, belly dance, and hip hop. Classes are offered most weekday mornings and evenings and Saturday mornings and afternoons (Dance Place is closed Fridays), so it's easy to drop in on a whim to hone your hip shimmies and razor-sharp elbows. Check out Dance Place's schedule for individual class times.

Inside the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall & Arts Center, works of art grow like flowers in a greenhouse. Amid the Mary Collier Baker Theater’s rich wood paneling and burgundy upholstery, symphony concerts burst to life, fed by stunning acoustics. The Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Art Gallery, on the other hand, lets the work hanging on the walls do the talking, trumpeting the skills of local visionaries as they explore the bounds of aesthetic media.