A visit to the buzzing Dhaka Art Center and the Bengal Foundation gives a glimpse into a vibrant enterprise “rising above clichéd portraiture of a country steeped in flood and famine.”
Checking In On the Art Scene in Bangladesh
Ceci N’est Pas ‘Swan Lake’
“It’s not a rereading of Swan Lake, it’s another thing, which is why I’ve called it Lac,” says choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot of his rereading of Swan Lake more primal take on the Tchaikovsky score, which he created for his company, the reborn Ballets de Monte Carlo.
Every Choreographer Should Have Camille A. Brown’s Problems
She’ll have to miss seeing her choreography in Friday night’s opening of the new musical The Fortress of Solitude – because she’ll be dancing with her own company in their Boston debut. (She doesn’t mind so much.)
The Dynamic Duo That’s Supercharged the Canadian Opera Co.
In barely more than five years, general director Alexander Neef and music director Johannes Debus have taken the casting, productions and marketing up two or three levels, making the Toronto company one of the most important in the Western Hemisphere.
I Made the Muslim Hipster Video
The original #mipster, Layla Shaikley, describes the exciting responses – and the dismaying backlashes – to the two-and-a-half-minute video clip that went viral last year.
There’s More to Making Non-Sexist and Non-Racist Art Than (Thinking You’re) Not Being Sexist or Racist
“The folks at South African game development studio QCF Design have a post which addresses this issue in some thought-provoking ways” – which they tried putting into practice in their game Desktop Dungeons.
Nôtre-Dame de Paris Gets a Lighting Makeover
“Many things look better with crisp-edged LEDs – traffic signals, airplane cabins, perhaps even Christmas lights. But what about the moody, atmospheric interior of a 12th-century French-Gothic cathedral?” Oh, yes – have a look and see.
Could Phobias and Addictions Be Treated With a Pill?
“Drugs that work to boost learning may help someone with a phobia to ‘detrain their brain’, losing the fearful associations that fuel their panic. This approach is also showing promise for a host of other problems – from chemical and gambling addictions to obsessive nail-biting.”
Behind the Arthur Chu Backlash: Why Are Americans So Protective of ‘Jeopardy!’?
“To understand why [the nine-time winner's] controversial but effective strategy upset so many viewers, it’s worth looking back at why the show first became a TV staple in the Cold War era.”
‘In the Black Box, You Can Do Really Anything. We Have Always Abused That.”
That statement pretty much sums up the famously confrontational Belgian theatre troupe Ontroerend Goed. You’ll love how they got their start: “Suddenly we were told that what we made was theatre, and given money to make more.”
How Do You Dramatize Depression? With Werewolves, Of Course
Matt Osman, author of The Boy Who Cried: “My mind hit on werewolves, the original lunatics. I would create a world where it was depression that was the myth and werewolves were treated by the state as a common occurrence to be quietly put away.”
But How Do Psychiatrists Treat Werewolves?
Yes, this is a thing. “In the psychiatric literature, the werewolf hallucinations and delusions the patient was experiencing are broadly classified as clinical lycanthropy, or lycomania.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.13.14
Picasso Museum: Reopening With What?
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-03-14
How Did We Ever Get By Without Justice?
AJBlog: PostClassic | Published 2014-03-14
Will Gentrification Kill Music Scenes?
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-03-13
Respecting the craft
AJBlog: The Artful Manager | Published 2014-03-13
Man Saved By Pianos In NYC Building Collapse
“The pianos flew in the air — pianos were all around me,” he said. “They were literally on their side. I was stuck in some miraculous cocoon” of pianos, he said of the massive wood and steel instruments that fell benignly around his body — shielding him from the weight of five stories worth of debris.
Association Of Art Museum Directors Condemns College Art Museum Sale
“The prohibition against the sale of works of art from museum collections for such purposes is a violation of one of the most fundamental professional principles of the art museum field,” the museum directors’ association said in a statement.
Is Your DNA As An Actor Set In The Womb?
“While raw talent and rigorous training are clearly vital, recent research suggests the importance of an even more fundamental factor: The level of testosterone the budding thespian was exposed to in his or her mother’s womb.”
John Banville Talks About The Agony Of Being A Writer
“Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don’t do well, in the hope of learning.”
Conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi On The Responsibilities And Rewards Of Being An Artist
“I don’t like the idea that artists should keep out of politics. The more you know and understand art, the more you have to defend values. You should speak up—and early enough to matter.”
Budapest Launches An Architectural Competition To Build Five New Museums At Once
“Officials say that the total estimated costs for the five museum buildings in the cultural quarter is 75 billion Hungarian forints (€239m), with much of the money coming from funds allocated to the country by the EU.”
A Utopian Society – One Group’s Quest To Build A Floating Country That Creates Its Own Culture
“About six years ago, a group based in California’s Bay Area, led by the grandson of U.S. economist Milton Friedman, began designing and raising money for a floating ocean city-state, whose citizens could harness the sea to solve hunger, cure sickness and fix climate change.”
Sotheby’s Under Attack (And How What The Auction House Does Might Utterly Change)
There’s a “battle between the Sotheby’s Old Guard and a financier who views artworks as financial assets that trade in a market made by the auction houses. The confrontation figures to get bitter and bruising between now and May, but at its center there sits a rather more exalted question: How do you properly value art?”
Is This True: Audiences Are More Open To New Choral Music Than To New Instrumental Music?
“Choirs routinely look for and program new music and that draws audiences, but instrumental ensembles suffer at the box office when presenting new works. In my opinion, there are a few reasons for this, with the main reason having to do with the difference between the human voice and instruments.”
10,000 Hours Of Practice Can Let You Master Anything? Science Weighs In On The Idea
Different levels of deliberate practice can only explain one third of the variation in performance levels in chess players and musicians, the authors found, “leaving the majority of the reliable variance unexplained and potentially explainable by other factors.”
36 Ways The World Wide Web Has Changed Us
“With more than 4 billion indexed Web pages, thousands imploding and starting up by the day, any thorough accounting of the Web’s impact would be impossible.”
What They Almost Called The Internet 25 Years Ago
Tim Berners-Lee: Mine of Information, The Information Mine, The Mesh. None had quite the right ring.
Getty Endowment Recovers
“An audited financial statement posted on the Getty’s website reflects investment gains totaling $766.74 million from mid-2012 to mid-2013, enough to cover expenses while socking away about $534 million for the endowment. Officials said the endowment gained an additional $300 million during the second half of 2013, reaching $6.2 billion by year’s end.”
Canada Gets Its Version of the U.S. Justice Dept.’s E-Book Price-Fixing Suit
“Kobo is beginning to feel the pinch of prospective lower profit margins in Canada. The Canadian Government is forcing them to renegotiate contracts with all of their major publishing partners.”
When Was the First E-Book, Anyway?
Well, that depends on what you think qualifies as an e-book …
Missing Norman Rockwell Turns Up in Ohio
“The 1939 painting, called Sport, was used as one of the many Saturday Evening Post covers for which the artist is well-known. It sold last spring for more than $1 million at an auction in New York and disappeared later last year” – in Queens, yet again.
Who’s Designing the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion This Summer?
A Chilean architect named Smiljan Radic – and it will look like a cross between a flying saucer and Stonehenge.