“Authorities sought to reassure theatergoers Friday that London’s elegant but aging venues are safe after chunks of ornamental plaster fell from a ceiling of the Apollo Theatre, showering patrons with dust and debris and injuring 79 people.”
Archives for December 20, 2013
Dancing Through The Pain (What, Pain?)
“Dancers are stoic, and they tend to push through pain. That means not only that diagnosing a chronic illness be difficult, but dancers can block their own recovery.”
Pittsburgh Man Wins Raffle For Million-Dollar Picasso
“The 25-year-old Jeffrey Gonano, who works for his family’s fire sprinkler business, learned Wednesday that his ticket had won the Paris raffle. Organizers say nearly 50,000 tickets were sold worldwide, for €100 apiece, to benefit a Lebanese charity.”
How The Kindle’s Notes Function Is Changing The Way We Read
“The appeal of the shared notes and highlights stems from what’s enjoyable about physical books: picking up a secondhand book or finding a novel in a library, flicking through and finding evidence of who has read it before you.”
What Online Dating Sites Tell Us About Race In America
“Social psychologists know that what people say and what they do have little empirical connection. Dating sites capture what we do, and play it back for us. They expose who we are, who we want, and, of course, who we don’t want.”
How Oscar Buzz Helps Indy Films
“If people don’t say, ‘This could win an Oscar,’ they don’t spend the money. In one sense, I don’t blame them — but I don’t have [ads on] bus stops and billboards, so it’s great to have the movie mentioned in a positive way.”
Museum Boom – China Now Has 4000 Of Them (We Think)
That is a lot of museums. Then again, how do you define one? In China the word seems to refer to all types of spaces, from state-sponsored institutions to private collector-fueled projects … to the “many new museums … built as part of new property projects to help get them planning permission. Some may never have been intended for their stated purpose.”
The Problem With Setting Values On DIA’s Art
Beverly Schreiber Jacoby, president of BSJ Fine Art in New York, said that while Christie’s did what the city asked it to do, she regarded the evaluation process as “conceptually flawed.” She said it ignored the reality of bringing the art to market in the context of bankruptcy and what would be, in effect, a forced sale.
The Artists As Artists Of The Kitchen
“To take only the desserts, there is David Hockney’s Strawberry Cake, Robert Motherwell’s Whiskey Cake, Tom Wesselmann’s Lemon Sponge Pudding, Claude Monet’s Madeleines au citron, and Picasso’s Charlotte au chocolat.”
Harry Potter To Be Made Into Stage Play On London’s West End
JK Rowling “will not write the stage piece — however, she will co-produce and collaborate with a playwright.”
Roof Collapses During Show At London West End Theatre
“A large section of ornate plasterwork at the Apollo fell on to the audience during a production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time … injuring 76 people, seven of them seriously.”
Apollo Theatre Collapse: “I Thought the Clattering Noise Was Part of the Play”
Audience member Rachel Williams gives an eyewitness account.
The Business Model of the Royal Ballet’s Cinemacasts
“The Royal Ballet Director Kevin O’Hare discusses growing the business of ballet by taking the live show and simulcasting it to a global audience inside cinemas around the world.”
Royal Ballet Plans Second Reality-TV Backstage Webcast
“Allowing cameras backstage to film classes and rehearsals, this day in the life of the company was streamed live on YouTube and the Guardian [in 2012] website to an international audience that surprised even the company.”
Can Greensboro, NC Fund a New Arts Center? The Deadline Approaches
“The year is rapidly coming to a close, and with it comes the final fundraising push by the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro to raise $35 million in private donations by its Dec. 31 deadline for the $65 million Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts.”
Why People Who Move to a Big City Are Ever More Reluctant to Leave
“A new pair of studies helps to explain why city-dwellers seem to fall deeper in love with the urban environment the longer they spend there.”
The Psychology of Santa Claus
“It’s weird, isn’t it? Parents lie to their kids about a mysterious, bearded gift-giver, only to set them up for inevitable heartbreak. Except, it’s not so simple.”
The Peculiar Grammar of Christmas Songs
Linguist Arika Okrent explains what “round yon Virgin” is about and why we “troll the ancient Yuletide carol”.
Meet Germany’s Top Contemporary Composer: He’ll Communicate Only By Fax
When David Patrick Stearns set up his interview with Wolfgang Rihm, these were the conditions he was given: “No phone calls. No e-mail. Only questions submitted (in English) by fax and returned by fax, on handwritten pages – in German.” Says Donald Nally, who’s conducting a major work of Rihm’s this weekend in Philadelphia and New York, “I envy someone living in a different century like that.”
How Badly Does This Theater Company Need Money For Costumes?
Why, they just don’t have any – as L.A.’s Antaeus Company shows us in their annual fundraising video. (Sorry, folks, it’s pixellated.)
Valery Gergiev Says That Of Course He’s Against Anti-Gay Discrimination
He even says that allegations to the contrary “hurt me very much”. And well they might, since those allegations have had his next employers a bit concerned.
Inside The Mind Of A Half-Iranian, Half-British Comedian
Omid Djalili: “My English side really loves the royal family, and my Iranian side hates me for this. … You can tell I’m a very, very British person, but I’ve kept my roots quite strong. I still speak Farsi. I find Arabs hilarious.”