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Dance
Balanchine’s ‘Divertimento No. 15’ – Alastair Macaulay Does The Arithmetic
“Three men to partner five women! … I’ve often wondered if the name Divertimento No. 15 gave him the idea: 15 = 5 x 3, a kind of numerical pun. Having eight principals (5 + 3), he matches them with a corps of eight women. As you watch the changing corps patterns, Balanchine shows how neatly divisible the number eight can be – two fours, four twos: symmetries abound. But then you see those eight principals. Eight, after all, can contain an imbalance.”
New York Times Published:09.22.16
How Did Argentine Dancers Get To Be So Great?
“Around the world, there are prominent Argentine doctors, scientists, international-law experts, conductors, musicians. This is especially striking in the world of dance. Ballet was more or less a twentieth-century import to Argentina, brought by travelling troupes like Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, but its roots have dug their way down deep.”
The New Yorker Published:09.18.16
Swing Dancing’s Sexual Assault Scandal, And How The Lindy Hop Sommunity Handled It
“With his silky moves and electric personality, [Steven Mitchell soon rose to prominence as a swing dancer, receiving a star’s welcome in every city. When interest in swing experienced a resurgence, particularly in the 1990s, Mitchell – depending on who you ask – either rode the wave or created it. But there’s a group of women who know a very different Steven Mitchell.”
Vice Published:09.14.16
Suzanne Farrell Ballet To Disband Next Year
“The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, which for the past 15 years has showcased the works of Farrell’s mentor, George Balanchine, and which is bankrolled by the Kennedy Center, will shut down after a final series of performances in December 2017, the center has announced.”
Washington Post Published:09.21.16
Ideas
Feel Lonely A Lot? It May Be Genetic
“A large new study published online last week in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology …finds that loneliness appears to be a ‘modestly heritable’ trait. A predisposition to feeling lonely may run in the family, in other words. But there’s a caveat here.”
Science of Us Published:09.21.16
Coding Is Not “Fun.” It’s An Expression Of Values And Ethics
“The machine does what you say, not what you mean. More and more ‘decisions’ are being entrusted to software, including life-or-death ones: think self-driving cars; think semi-autonomous weapons; think Facebook and Google making inferences about your marital, psychological or physical status, before selling it to the highest bidder. Yet it’s rarely in the interests of companies and governments to encourage us to probe what’s going on beneath these processes.”
Aeon Published:09.23.16
Arts And Technology – A Natural Complement (Until They Go To War)
“It was the assertion of the Romantic movement that art makes us appreciate the beauty, richness and sheer size of the world. And technology, used appropriately, brings us closer to that sublime… Even if that was true in 1939, it’s not true now: not now our drones do our flying for us; not now our technology has got away from us to the point where large portions of nature are being erased; not now we live mired in media and, indeed, have to make special efforts to escape it.”
New Scientist Published:09.21.16
Some Rules For Brainstorming From Some Experts (If You Want To Accomplish Anything)
“We invited 50 leaders in the design community—typically some of the most opinionated, creative, and analytical types in business—to share how or if they brainstorm. Here are some of their responses, including a characteristically honest one from the legendary and outspoken creative director George Lois.”
Fast Company Published:09.18.16
Issues
Why Did Brexit Succeed? A Failure Of Philosophy
“For this continental European, it seems as if the famed British practicality didn’t quite work out this time, and the challenge came precisely from thinking that issues are always practical, forgetting that what truly matters are the foundation, the philosophy. Well-worn stereotypes say that the Germans resort to Kant and the French to Voltaire, while the Brits weigh the pros and cons (and Italians, like myself, just sing a song). But beyond the pros and cons, there are motivations, impulses, values and ideals, and ultimately that is what drives history.”
The Guardian (UK) Published:09.22.16
Incoming Arts Council England Boss Surprised By Plan For Arts Quality Assessments
Tate boss Sir Nicholas Serota responded with disbelief to presenter Sue MacGregor when she told him of ACE’s plans to introduce Quality Metrics to measure artistic quality and said “the Arts Council is going to say if it doesn’t tick these boxes we’re not going to give money to it.” Serota responded: “I suspect you caricature the decision”, which MacGregor denied, saying: “No, I’m almost quoting it word for word from the press release.”
ArtsProfessional Published:09.22.16
The Phone Call, R.I.P.
“The phone call always was an invasive form of communication, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that as soon as a plausible substitute presented itself we grabbed it.”
Slate Published:09.18.16
The Trouble With Sombreros At Tequila Parties: Francine Prose On Lionel Shriver’s Cultural Appropriation Speech
“The topic is a complicated and sensitive one, and Shriver’s first mistake, I think, was to ignore that complexity and sensitivity by adopting a tone that ranged from jauntiness to mockery and contempt. … To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a hat is more than just a hat.”
New York Review of Books Published:09.19.16
Media
TV – Even Peak TV – Does Not Work In A Film Festival
“Frankly, it felt weird to be watching TV at a film festival. A movie is a closed loop: it begins and an hour and a half or two or three hours later, it ends.”
Flavorwire Published:09.19.16
Even After 20 Years, ‘South Park’ Gets Thrown Together On The Fly Each Week
Said co-creator Trey Parker one day earlier this month: “There are times where we go, ‘How do we tell Comedy Central we don’t have a show?’ This is one of those.” Dave Itzkoff watches how they pull it off.
New York Times Published:09.25.16
Hollywood Worries About A Netflix Monopoly (And It Should)
The streaming pioneer is spending $6 billion a year on making shows. “Out of the blue Netflix comes into the market and says, ‘We’re going to give you a number [to license a network show],’ ” says one television agent. “For the studios, it was, ‘Holy shit. Do we even need a cable sale?’ They all got addicted to crack. Nobody really thought they’d be a competitor on the originals market. They used stuff from the studios and became important. Now you see the backlash.”
The Hollywood Reporter Published:09.14.16
How An ’80s California UFO Cult Became Public Access TV Auteurs
“The participants in these psychodramas [as the makers called them], which continued to air on public access channels into the ’90s, were not professional actors, but members of a UFO cult re-enacting their memories of past lives on film. They were part of Unarius, a self-described ‘spiritual school’ that offers self-improvement ‘based on the interdimensional understanding of energy.'”
Atlas Obscura Published:09.15.16
Netflix Reveals Which TV Episodes Hook People On Watching The Series
You know that moment you’re watching something and your interest makes you “invest” in the show and its characters. Netflix thinks it’s the “thriller/horror/ crime” genre that seems to get viewers committed earliest. The hardest to addict you? Shows like “Gilmore Girls. There’s a cool chart of favorite shows in this article that shows you the fan tipping point.
BBC Published:09.20.16
Music
Buffalo Philharmonic Board Chair Arrested On Corruption Charges
“[Louis P.] Ciminelli has been chairman of the BPO’s board for two terms, assuming the office in 2012. He has been generous to the orchestra, and his tenure has been a time of prosperity. In 2015, when his 60th birthday coincided with the BPO’s fall season-opening gala, Ciminelli gave the orchestra a gift of $1 million. “
Buffalo News Published:09.22.16
A Rising New Opera Star In The Rarest Of Voice Ranges
Says conductor Thomas Crawford of 25-year-old contralto Avery Amereau, “I don’t mean to exaggerate, but this woman made my knees shake.”
New York Times Published:09.22.16
Professional Byzantine Chant (!) Choir In Oregon (!) Has Thrived For 20 Years
“[Cappella Romana], the Portland-based vocal ensemble, which performs annual concert series in its hometown and Seattle, has released more than 20 recordings. Its tours have brought the group’s sometimes ethereal, sometimes austere, always powerfully moving music to venues such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles’ Getty Center, the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford and Yale universities and festivals throughout Europe.”
The Oregonian Published:09.19.16
When The African-American Museum Presents ‘African-American Music’, What Exactly Will That Mean?, Asks Anne Midgette
“When it comes to musical performance, the Museum’s tacit mandate is to spotlight all of African American music – which is like trying to put a frame around a living person and call it a portrait. It’s tough to pick ‘African American’ music out of the fabric of American musical history, of which it is an essential, even dominant part. Concerts at the Oprah Winfrey Theater could conceivably range from opera to hip-hop, jazz to country, R&B to classical.”
Washington Post Published:09.21.16
‘The Big Data Jukebox’ – AllMusic, The Project That Makes The Likes Of Spotify And Pandora Possible
“Discovering new kinds of music is easier than ever … But having all this music at our fingertips was only part of the equation – we needed to be armed with information.” And where is all that information kept? “Today, we talk about AllMusic, one of the internet’s first – and best – archival projects.”
Tedium Published:09.20.16
People
Art Critic John Bentley Mays, 75
“His life’s work was as a critic and he was for four decades one of Canada’s great observers, interpreters and explainers of art and architecture.”
The Globe and Mail (Canada) Published:09.22.16
Monty Python’s Terry Jones Diagnosed With Dementia
“The 74-year-old is suffering from primary progressive aphasia, which affects his ability to communicate. As well as appearing in the BBC TV shows and films, Jones also directed the features The Life Of Brian and Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life, and co-directed Monty Python And The Holy Grail with Terry Gilliam.”
The Guardian Published:09.23.16
Marina Abramović’s Ex Wins Intellectual Property Suit Against Her
“Abramović and Ulay, born Frank Uwe Laysiepen, had been lovers and co-creators for more than a decade before their separation in 1988 … Ulay launched a lawsuit last year in which he claimed that Abramović has violated a contract they signed in 1999 covering works they had created together.” On Thursday, a Dutch court agreed.
The Guardian Published:09.21.16
How Greg Tate’s Criticism Showed Me Being A Critic Could Be Art
Jazz critic Tate’s essays for the Village Voice were poetry. “For a generation of critics, Tate’s career has served as a reminder that diversity isn’t just about a splash of color in the group photo; it’s about the different ways that people see, feel, and move within the world. These differences can be imperceptible, depending on where your eye lingers as you scan the newsroom.”
The New Yorker Published:09.21.16
Theatre
The Trial Of George W. Bush And An Audience’s Verdict
“Don’t worry if you didn’t know the 43rd president was on trial. This was an off-Broadway verdict, the conclusion to a new play called The Trial of an American President. The trial was fiction, but the vote, from nine members of the audience chosen to be the jury, was very real.”
The Daily Beast Published:09.23.16
Staging Death: A Brief History
From Sophocles through Roman spectacles and the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol to Sarah Kane, a look at the means – decorous, horrifying, inventive – playwrights, directors and stage managers have used to depict characters’ ends.
JSTOR Daily Published:09.21.16
‘Sick Joker Or Avant-Garde Savior?’ Romeo Castellucci Makes Theater That’s Powerful, Confounding, And Icky
“His often-abrasive theater pieces won’t let you look away – whether it’s an elderly man struggling to control his bodily functions beneath a benevolent painting of Christ (On the Concept of the Face) or a klatch of Amish women cutting off one another’s tongues (The Four Seasons Restaurant).”
Philadelphia Inquirer Published:09.22.16
God, Did I Write That? New York Times Gets Playwrights To Look Back At Their Teenage Work
“How mortifying would it be to page through the creative writing you did as a teenager? And then, years or even decades later, actually see it in print? That’s what we recently asked a set of notable playwrights” – among them Lynn Nottage, Neil LaBute, Tina Howe, Nicky Silver, and Marcus Gardley – “to do.”
New York Times Published:09.16.16
Visual
A Century After It Was Proposed, The National Museum Of African American History And Culture Opens
”There were some who said it couldn’t happen, who said ‘you can’t do it,’ but we did it,’ said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who led the charge to make the museum a reality. ‘This place is more than a building. It is a dream come true.'”
The Washington Post Published:09.24.16
France Announces $100 Million Fund For Middle East Cultural Preservation
“Besides appealing for sites to be protected, Francois Hollande also called for a strengthened commitment to cultural preservation that might include “intervention”, for which he gave no details. Restoration of damaged sites would also be part of his new mission, he said. So would “asylum” for some endangered works of art, a curious term, given the resistance towards accepting Syrian refugees in Europe and the Gulf States.”
The Art Newspaper Published:09.21.16
Does Free Admission To Museum Change Who Comes (Or What They Do?)
“Many of those museums that have altered their admissions models have noticed a shift in visitor patterns. Attendance doubled after fees were waived to England’s national collections in 2001, said the director of London’s Natural History Museum to The Guardian. When the Dallas Museum of Art nixed its $10 admission fee, its annual attendance swelled from 498,000 to 668,000, and the institution saw a 29 percent increase in minority visitors, Fortune reported.”
CityLab Published:09.23.16
Seriously? Did China Just Pave Over The Great Wall?
“Chinese preservationists, internet users and media commentators have been incensed this week after pictures showed that officials repaired part of the Great Wall in northeast China by slapping a white substance on top of the crumbling, weathered stones.”
The New York Times Published:09.22.16
Are These The World’s Best New Highrises?
To qualify for “the world’s most important prize for high-rises,” buildings have to present at least 100 m (328 ft) in height and must have been completed in the previous two years.
ArtInfo Published:09.22.16
Words
There’s No Need To Fret About Today’s Decline In ‘Proper’ Punctuation
“Punctuation started out as free and easy prosodic units, meant to help the reader read out loud to an audience with all the requisite intonation, tone, pitch and pauses intended by an absent author. … With the more speech-like IM, texts, tweets, punctuation is just getting back to its roots, as a way to convey prosodic and speech cues in the absence of sound and vision.”
JSTOR Daily Published:09.21.16
Battle Bots: Wikipedia Bots Keep Editing And Re-Editing Each Other In Dance Of Futility
“Wikipedia editors sometimes use bots to help them keep on top of changes that users have made to the online encyclopedia. But when two editors task different bots with making incompatible edits, each bot will keep finding that its work has been undone.”
New Scientist Published:09.21.16
Oldest Surviving Fragment Of Bible Text (2,000 Years) Deciphered, Thanks To New Scanning Technology
“Nearly half a century ago, archaeologists found a charred ancient scroll in the ark of a synagogue on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The lump of carbonized parchment could not be opened or read. Its curators did nothing but conserve it, hoping that new technology might one day emerge to make the scroll legible.” That day has arrived.
New York Times Published:09.22.16
The First Woman Science Fiction Author Was A 17th-Century Duchess
“No one could get into philosophical argument with Lady Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and walk away unchanged. Born in 1623, Cavendish was an outspoken aristocrat who traveled in circles of scientific thinkers, and broke ground on proto-feminism, natural philosophy (the 17th century term for science), and social politics. In her lifetime, she published 20 books. But amid her poetry and essays, she also published one of the earliest examples of science fiction. In 1666. She named it The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World.”
Atlas Obscura Published:09.16.16
Best-Selling Historian David McCullough Wins First-Ever Lenfest Spirit Of The American Revolution Award
The author of Truman, John Adams, and 1776 has received two Pulitzers, two National Book Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The new $25,000 prize “will be given to those who contribute to the public’s understanding of the Revolution.”
Philadelphia Inquirer Published:09.21.16