How Julie Kent Plans To Reshape Washington Ballet
Her predecessor, Septime Webre, “stamped the Washington Ballet as a showcase of youthful punch and audience-friendly showmanship. … [Kent] She aims to groom the Washington Ballet in the more refined, elegant language of the classics and first-rate contemporary works.”
How Do You Make Emergency Drills Less Annoying? Turn Them Into Choreography
“Emergency evacuation drills, though necessary, are a pain: they seem to always happen when we least expect it and interrupt us when we’re at our most productive. At SIGNAL gallery, the procedure becomes a delight, with artist Madeline Hollander transforming what we’ve all rehearsed with irritation into a mesmerizing performance.”
How ‘Weird’ Became The Term Of Civic Pride In Hipster Cities
“About 15 years ago, an independent bookseller in Texas went to battle against the specter of mega-bookstore invasion. His weapon of choice was something a purveyor of books knew best: a word. And the word was weird.”
Terrific Action Films On $200 Budgets: Uganda’s One-Man Hollywood
“It starts out like any other training montage. Alan is a white doctor in Uganda, and the children of the slum resolve to teach him the ways of the commando. A child soldier, armed with a makeshift assault rifle strung together by yam sticks and slung over his shoulder, chases the hapless doctor into a small stream. Alan falls face first. ‘That, my friend, was poo poo, for real,’ the film’s omniscient narrator exclaims through giggles. ‘This is Uganda. Poo poo everywhere.’ Madcap moments like this are emblematic of Wakaliwood-style films. And Wakaliwood is one Ugandan man in a slum.”
Now Out Of Prison, Garth Drabinsky Will Try For A Broadway Comeback
“A return to Broadway would be a remarkable moment for Mr. Drabinsky, who was convicted of fraud and forgery in Canada in 2009. As a theater producer he won three Tony Awards, for Kiss of the Spider Woman, Show Boat and Fosse, but he has not had a production on Broadway in 15 years, and is unable to travel to the United States because he is considered a fugitive there.” His vehicle will be a new musical adaptation of Madame Sousatzka.
Donald Trump Stiffed Me On $100,000 Worth Of Pianos, Says New Jersey Music Store Owner
J. Michael Diehl: “My relationship with Trump began in 1989, when he asked me to supply several grand and upright pianos to his then-new Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. I’d been running a music store for more than 30 years at that point, selling instruments to local schools and residents. My business was very much a family affair (my grandsons still run the store). And I had a great relationship with my customers – no one had ever failed to pay.”
The Hip-Hop Heroines Of Kabul
“The Taliban may no longer control the airwaves, but young women in Afghanistan still face torture and death for performing music. Meet the women who are pushing back – by rapping, singing, even playing the cello.”
$300K Gish Prize Goes To Wooster Group’s Elizabeth LeCompte
“LeCompte takes the award for 40 years of Wooster Group work encompassing a string of experimental, boundary-pushing, multimedia shows that include Route 1 & 9, L.S.D. (Just The High Points), Brace Up! and The Emperor Jones. She co-founded the troupe with Spaulding Gray, with Willem Dafoe among its original members; Frances McDormand has performed with the company in recent years.”
Without Warning, Off-Broadway’s Soho Rep Closes Its Theater
“The company said Wednesday that it had recently concluded that the scale of its current productions was not permitted by restrictions on the property, and that it would immediately vacate the premises. Three productions by other theater companies renting the Soho Rep space, including one that was scheduled to begin performances Thursday, will have to be relocated or canceled.”
Should Middle-Aged Opera Singers Really Be Playing A Babe Magnet Like Don Giovanni? Of Course, Say Middle-Aged Opera Singers
Christopher Purves: “I think it’s much more interesting for the audience to watch a couple of old duffers trying to negotiate their way round this opera. … [Giovanni] exudes danger, mature sex appeal, total self-confidence, even though he’s no longer young.”
The Matthew Bourne Dancer Killed In A Collision Last Year? The Driver Was Talking On His Cell Phone
“Dancer Jonathan Ollivier was killed when his motorbike was hit by a minicab while the driver was making a hands-free call on his mobile, a court has heard. Ollivier died last August after his motorbike collided with a car as he was making his way to the final performance of Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man.”
Bots Are Figuring Out How To Make Art (And Starting To Get Good At It)
“We’re always writing from our experiences of things that we’ve read and what we’ve heard and things that we’ve absorbed verbally. So to what extent can anyone author anything? And to what extent does this machine augment this capacity?”
An Evolving Landscape Of Creative Re-Use Rights
So, what do you do if you want to use someone else’s work as a creative jumping off point? “Appropriation art” is in the news these days; just ask artist Richard Prince, who’s been sued multiple times for copyright infringement and won, based on the “fair use” principle.
New California Law Requires IMDB To Remove Actors’ Ages If Requested
“Their ages are already very public and easy to find. The law is designed for the working performer… who wanted the opportunity to be able just to be seen for the first time or to be able to go into a room when they’re not known and be able to show their work and not have the subconscious bias of their age being the deciding factor of whether they should be able to come in that room or not for an audition.”
Continuing Woes: Metropolitan Museum Lays Off 34 Employees
As AJBlogger Judith Dobrzynski reported yesterday, the Met is cutting staff. “The Met has been contending with a ballooning deficit even as it aims to raise money for a $600 million new wing dedicated to Modern and contemporary art and to sustain its eight-year lease at the Met Breuer at a cost of $17 million a year.”
Why Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’ Makes The Perfect Introduction To Ballet
Alastair Macaulay: “Nobody can miss how vividly different its stage worlds are: the green romantic medieval French forest of ‘Emeralds’ (music by Fauré); the red Modernist high-energy American urban world of ‘Rubies’ (Stravinsky); the wintry white (both snowscape and palace) grand imperial Russian classicism of ‘Diamonds’ (Tchaikovsky). What other artist could conjure these three dissimilar realms with such easy mastery?”
Gamers Get Re-energized By The Possibilities Of Virtual Reality
“What makes virtual reality so potent is not only how it envelops players in a 360-degree visual experience, but also how it uses 3-D lenses, immersive audio and head-tracking technology to create a profound sense of physical presence that developers are just beginning to explore.”
The Brilliant Astronomer Who Opposed Copernicus And Galilieo On The Grounds Of Science, Not Religion
Johann Georg Locher “argued that Copernicus was wrong about Earth circling the Sun, and that Earth was fixed in place, at the centre of the Universe, like Ptolemy said. … Indeed, Locher even proposed a mechanism to explain how Earth could orbit the Sun (a sort of perpetual falling – this decades before Isaac Newton would explain orbits by means of perpetual falling), but he said it would not help the Copernicans, on account of the other problems with their theory.”
Is The Future Of Americana Music In England?
“While the Americana Music Festival and Conference, which wrapped on Sunday in Nashville, primarily focused on artists from the States, a good number were from Britain, where the genre is becoming better known and where artists are feeling more enabled to play music that appeals to their sensibilities for string-based music that harkens back to traditional country icons, from Hank Williams to Dolly Parton.”
‘Kill Climate Deniers’: The Play That Infiltrated Australia’s Parliament And Became A Breitbart Target
“Over ambient sound came the disembodied voice of the Canberra musician Reuben Ingall. ‘There are plain-clothed police officers patrolling every floor. You’ll be watched on camera for the whole trip and Australian federal police officers are armed with SR16 semi-automatic assault rifles,’ he said. ‘When you head through security, act as normal as possible. How does a normal person act? Be like that.'”
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The Financialization Of American Education (Let The Debate Begin)
“Reconsidering and reforming our system of higher education should move beyond debates about whether STEM skills—those promoted by the study of science, technology, engineering, and math—trump liberal arts. We need both, not only because it’s impossible to predict exactly what the jobs of the future will be, but also because critical thinking in any field is the most important measure of economic and civic success.”
The Eureka, The 19th-Century Proto-Computer That Generated Latin Poetry
“In July 1845, British curiosity-seekers headed to London’s Egyptian Hall to try out the novelty of the summer. For the price of one shilling, they could stand in front of a wooden bureau, pull a lever, and look behind a panel where six drums, bristling with metal spokes, revolved. At the end of its ‘grinding,’ what it produced was not a numeric computation or a row of fruit symbols, but something quite different: a polished line of Latin poetry.”
Women Dominate This Year’s Giller Prize Shortlist
Of the six finalists, five are women with Gary Barwin, author of Yiddish for Pirates, the sole male finalist for the prestigious prize.
Where Will Chris Thile Take ‘A Prairie Home Companion’?
“Thile’s plan, as suggested by his musical-guest choices, is to invert the formula of Prairie Home. Music will take the lead; guest comics like John Hodgman will provide side banter … His challenge is to curate a musical show that’s as attractive for the Prairie Home faithful as it is for a yet-unrealized younger crowd.” Says Thile about the show’s audience, “My goal is to lose one million and add two.”
What To Do With A Former Saddam Palace? A Museum Of Course
“The Basrah Museum has been planned for eight years and will join the National Museum in Baghdad as one of the most important institutions in Iraq. For the first time in a generation, the people of southern Iraq will have their own museum—a great achievement under extremely difficult circumstances.”
The Best Foreign-Language Oscar Race: Here’s Some Early Handicapping
“Frequent competitors – such as France, Spain, Iran, South Korea and Chile – have opted to bank on festival favorites from directors with significant art-house clout. As tried-and-tested as this method of attack sounds, it’s in fact not a given occurrence.”
Suzan-Lori Parks, Pultizer-Winning Playwright, On Backlash In The Age Of Obama (And Brexit)
“All I can say is that after Emancipation, when the slaves were freed, there was Reconstruction, which was essentially a lot of blowback. So, after Obama’s eight years, there’s serious blowback. People in America are often encouraged not to think. The basis of politics is to heighten their fears and make them buy something. But, you know, y’all just had Brexit. We were like ‘Whaay! We’re not the only stupid ones!'”
Mac Wellman Isn’t Just An Unorthodox Playwright, He’s An Unorthodox, And Great, Playwriting Teacher
Says one former student, Paul Ketchum, “He knows exactly where to put pressure to release the inner playwriting beast of his students. Mac would hate this, but he’s like a fucking dramaturgical acupressure neuromancer.” Wellman talks teaching, structure (he hates it) and gossip with another former student, Eliza Bent.
The ‘Godfather Of Gore’, Filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis, Dead At 87
“With his 1963 film Blood Feast, Lewis is widely credited with pioneering the splatter genre, despite it being considered ‘an insult even to the most puerile and salacious of audiences’ in a Variety review. A later critique described it as ‘one of the important releases in film history, ushering in a new acceptance of explicit violence that was obviously just waiting to be exploited’.”
San Francisco Museums’ Controversial Board Chair Keeps Position, Gives Up President’s Title
“Embattled philanthropist Dede Wilsey, who waged an all-out campaign to stay on as head of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco amid probes into whether she improperly spent the institutions’ money, won approval Tuesday to extend her reign as the city’s queen of culture – although with a new title and possibly less power.”