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Dance
- Why Jessica Lang Decided To Shut Down Her Dance Company February 19, 2019“We didn’t lose our funding. … It was something I did. I approached the board. I told them the last thing I felt I had time to do was create, to make ballets. They agreed. This kind of structure and organization — I know I am not the only one to say it — doesn’t […]San Francisco Classical Voice
- Australian Dance Awards For 2019 Cancelled February 19, 2019Ausdance National, the country’s advocate organization for the art form, has been presenting the honors annually since 1997. This year, in response to deep cuts in government funding throughout the arts, Ausdance has called off the awards and will focus its efforts on advocacy for dance as a whole. – Dance AustraliaDance Australia
- The Former Dancer Who Brought The Joy (And Big Success) Back To Gymnastics February 18, 2019“I know what it’s like to have to go through puberty in a leotard,” said Kondos Field, a former professional ballerina who had little experience in gymnastics instruction when she joined the UCLA program nearly four decades ago. “I know what it’s like to have disordered eating. I know what it’s like to have to […]The New York Times
- The Dancing Soldier From South Wales February 17, 2019One night, a young man in dance school worried about his future walked by an Army recruitment center in Manchester – and joined up. Alex Smith “says that, despite appearances, dancers and soldiers have quite a lot in common. Self-discipline is important in both cases, and a determination to succeed.” – BBCBBC
- How Hip-Hop Choreographer Rennie Harris Makes A Major Piece On The Alvin Ailey Dancers February 15, 2019“I’m a street dance choreographer. I do street dance on street dancers. I’ve never set an hour-long piece on any other company outside my own, and definitely not on a modern dance company.” Nevertheless, Ailey artistic director Robert Battle decided that Harris was the right person to be the company’s first-ever choreographer in residence. – […]Dance Magazine
- Why Jessica Lang Decided To Shut Down Her Dance Company February 19, 2019
Ideas
- What If We’re Trying To Find The Theory Of Everything In The Wrong Places? February 19, 2019“The ascension to the tenth level of intellectual heaven would be if we find the question to which the universe is the answer, and the nature of that question in and of itself explains why it was possible to describe it in so many different ways.” It’s as though physics has been turned inside out. […]The New Yorker
- Here’s A Good Primer On The Challenges (And Accomplishments So Far) Of Artificial Intelligence February 19, 2019In his masterpiece, “The Lady of Shalott”, Alfred Tennyson describes a character from the Arthurian legend who is cursed to remain in a tower, looking at the world only through a mirror, and weaving the “mirror’s magic sights” into her web. AI today is, it seems, in its Lady of Shalott stage, trying to weave […]3 Quarks Daily
- Fakes Everywhere – It’s Just About Impossible Now To Figure Out What’s Real February 18, 2019Fakery is gushing in from everywhere and we’re drowning in it. “Deepfake” videos mash up one person’s body with someone else’s face. Easy-to-use software can generate audio or video of a person saying things they never actually uttered. Even easier? Fake clicks, fake social media followers, fake statistics, fake reviews. A gaggle of bots can create the impression […]Wired
- Stop For A Moment To Appreciate How Much We Depend On Standards February 18, 2019The basic irony of standards is the simple fact that there is no standard way to create a standard, nor is there even a standard definition of “standard.” There are, however, longstanding ways that industries and nations coordinate standardization efforts. In the United States, the system of voluntary consensus standards is coordinated by ANSI, the […]The New York Times
- When Science Became Stories (Surprise – It Got Popular) February 15, 2019“That professionalization process had the effect of setting up boundaries between ‘scientists’ and anyone else who might be interested in science, so it led to the exclusion of a whole bunch of people from formal scientific activity. Arguably, popular science created its own demise by making science too popular and too successful.” – SmithsonianSmithsonian
- What If We’re Trying To Find The Theory Of Everything In The Wrong Places? February 19, 2019
Issues
- MacDowell Colony Gets A New Director February 19, 2019Philip Himberg is joining the 112-year-old MacDowell Colony from the Sundance Institute, where he served as the artistic director of Sundance’s theater program for the past 23 years. He will be based at the organization’s New York office and will work closely with David Macy, MacDowell’s resident director at the organization’s facility in Peterborough, N.H. […]The New York Times
- Blackface Minstrelsy, America’s First Cultural Export February 19, 2019While other nations have had traditions of blackening the face to portray a particular character (e.g., Holland’s Zwarte Piet), “a man named Thomas Dartmouth Rice first brought American minstrel shows to Europe in 1836 in which white performers portrayed African American slaves in tattered clothes, dancing and singing songs such as ‘Jump Jim Crow.’ … […]Public Radio International
- Charlotte, NC Considers Sales Tax Hike To Fund Arts February 19, 2019“Valecia McDowell, incoming chair of [local funding body] the Arts & Science Council, said the local arts sector is at a ‘crisis point.’ To make up for steep losses in private giving, Mecklenburg County could ask voters this year to approve a new quarter-cent sales tax, which would provide a dedicated funding stream for the […]Charlotte Observer
- The “Most Bananas Artistic Undertaking Of This Century”? February 18, 2019Rachel Donadio: “To DAU’s producers and editors, and some of its celebrity-artist guests, the project has become a vibrant creative and intellectual community, even a way of life. To anyone outside it, the project can seem unwelcoming. I’ve spent many long hours visiting DAU since it opened here on January 24, and I’ve found the films at turns […]The Atlantic
- Large Study Shows Students Do Better All Around If They Get Education In The Arts February 18, 2019It’s just the latest study to find that giving students more access to the arts offers measurable benefits. And adding time for dance, theater, or visual arts isn’t at odds with traditional measures of academic success, according to the research — which amounts to one of the largest gold-standard studies on arts education ever conducted. […]Chalkbeat
- MacDowell Colony Gets A New Director February 19, 2019
Media
- After Series Of Flops, Amazon Re-Orients Its Filmmaking Product Line February 19, 2019Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke: “What we struggled with, I think, was putting too much focus on a narrow prestige lane. I don’t think we had diverse-enough points of view in the storytelling.” So, in addition to the “prestige lane,” the company will add “lanes” in erotic thrillers, horror titles, and (later) young-adult movies. – […]New York Times
- French Court Throws Out Suit To Block Release Of Film About Sexual Abuse By Priest February 19, 2019François Ozon’s By the Grace of God, which just won the jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival, is based on the case of Father Bernard Preynat, who went to court to delay the release of the film until after his trial. A judge has rejected that bid. – The Hollywood ReporterHollywood Reporter
- If Netflix’s Roma Wins Oscars’ Best Picture, It Will Change The Movie Business Forever February 18, 2019If a film primarily distributed online wins, the debate in Hollywood about what constitutes cinema is over. It would strike a blow to the big multiplex chains, which have refused to show “Roma” because Netflix offered them an exclusive play period of only three weeks; three months is the norm. As far as box office figures, Netflix […]The New York Times
- Why Is There Such A Misstep-Filled Scramble To Make The Oscars Shorter? February 18, 2019The producer: “There are so many things to balance. Some viewers want to see glamour. You have to pay attention to where there is humor and where there is music. When do we guess that people at home might get up to make popcorn in the kitchen, and what can we have on right after […]The New York Times
- Bollywood Gets Its First Major LGBTQ Film [VIDEO] February 17, 2019The film, with major Bollywood stars in it, centers on the love story between two women, but they’re under pressure to be in opposite-sex marriages. The film’s director, Shelly Chopra Dhar: “The intent for this film was to reach a wider audience, to have everybody understand that love is love, and does not need to […]BBC
- After Series Of Flops, Amazon Re-Orients Its Filmmaking Product Line February 19, 2019
Music
- Classical Music Is Broken Online. What iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music And The Others Should Do About It February 19, 2019It’s difficult to find music, hard to catalog, and just an overall pain in the neck to manage. The problem? “We’re treating around 300 years of music from various countries, forms, philosophies, and so on as one genre. As far as modern commercial music, we don’t group the past 50 years together” – Mac RumorsMac Rumors
- Heavy Metal Has A Nazi Problem. But What To Do About It? February 19, 2019“Should metal stay dangerous and controversial and offensive? Is it censorship to deny bands a platform for their genocidal views? Is it curtailing their free speech to make it harder for a band to get booked or get signed versus at what point does it become critical to keep these dangerous Fascist elements out of […]The New Yorker
- After 109 Years, Yale Whiffenpoofs Admit A Female February 19, 2019The most famous of collegiate a cappella groups, the Whiffenpoofs were an all-male outfit until a decision last year to choose singers based on voice range (still tenor, baritone, and bass) rather than gender. So the Whiffenpoofs line-up for 2018-29 includes tenor Sofia Campoamor. – The Washington PostWashington Post
- Bozeman (MT) Symphony Music Director Resigns Following Accusations Of Bullying February 19, 2019The orchestra’s board launched an investigation into conductor Matthew Savery after 14 people, including musicians, former staffers, and board members, sent a letter complaining of both a hostile work environment and a shrinking donor base caused by Savery’s alleged bullying and verbal harassment. – Bozeman Daily ChronicleBozeman Daily Chronicle
- The Way Musicians Understand Beethoven Is Different From The Ways Listeners Do. Here’s How February 18, 2019Anne Midgette: “There’s a big gap between the way classical music is introduced to lay listeners and the way musicians experience it. We tend to offer classical music to audiences like a history lesson, in explanations studded with names and dates that are useful enough as context but that don’t really get to the heart […]Washington Post
- Classical Music Is Broken Online. What iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music And The Others Should Do About It February 19, 2019
People
- Ai Weiwei And Frank Gehry, Sitting Around And Talking February 19, 2019Ai: “When I see your earlier work, the models that look like you crumpled up a piece of paper that you were going to throw out, I think that’s a breakthrough.” Gehry: “You know, I grew up in the art world — this was the way I wanted to work, more hands-on, sort of like […]T — The New York Times Style Magazine
- Monty Python Snubs V&A Museum For Proposed Show February 19, 2019“It became clear they were doing an exhibition on Surrealism…,” writes Eric Idle in his book. “Pretentious nonsense. We’re nothing to do with Dalí or Duchamp… Python has always been about comedy. That is the art.” – The Art NewspaperThe Art Newspaper
- ‘Queen Of The Soundies’, Tap Dancer Mable Lee, Dead At 97 February 19, 2019“Soundies” were three-minute musical films meant to be played on jukeboxes, and Lee starred in more than 100 of them. In a career that stretched from the age of nine to this past summer, she achieved dance stardom after graduating from the Apollo Theater’s chorus line, was part of the first all-black USO tour, starred […]New York Times
- California Fire’s Aftermath: A Prominent Artist Loses Decades Of Work, Documentation February 18, 2019All of it was gone. Five decades of artwork, tools and texts — crucial components of Liz Albuquerque’s archive and artistic legacy. Within a few hours, reduced to ash-covered rubble. – Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
- Japanese Jazz Journalist Kiyoshi Koyama Has Died At 82 February 18, 2019Koyama covered jazz in Japan throughout the 1960s and 1970s, was an avid interviewer of New York jazz musicians in their homes and wherever they played, and then he became a producer of jazz albums. “By the end of his life, Mr. Koyama’s personal archive included close to 30,000 vinyl albums and CDs. He also […]The New York Times
- Ai Weiwei And Frank Gehry, Sitting Around And Talking February 19, 2019
Theatre
- Salvaging Alan Jay Lerner’s Biggest Flop, A Musical ‘Lolita’ February 19, 2019Think that’s a ghastly idea for a Broadway show? So did audiences in 1971, when try-out audiences in Philadelphia and Boston hated Lolita, My Love so much that the Broadway run was called off. But the producers of an upcoming staged reading in New York, with a revised book and a new framing device, aim […]New York Times
- What Comedy Tells Us About Ourselves — And How We’re Changing February 19, 2019Scholar of comedy Matthew McMahan: “Just as Michel Foucault encourages historians to look to moments of rupture and discontinuity when trying to decipher how a culture thinks and acts, I suggest students of comedy look to the moments when a successful joke simply stops landing with its audience. The moment when a loud guffaw quickly […]HowlRound
- Getting Fully Naked (And Getting It On) Onstage February 18, 2019The actors are OK with all of this: “The nudity has struck some theatergoers as so extreme and the sex so prolonged that the actors can hear members of the audience gasp when it begins. Occasionally someone will say, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no! Cora Vander Broek says of the moment the stage lights […]Los Angeles Times
- Rethinking The Purpose Of British Arts Institutions February 17, 2019Take a look at Battersea Arts Centre, which “no longer focuses on creating the ‘future of theatre’—a laudable purpose, but not one of much interest to the many who doubt theatre is for them. Instead, it concentrates on inspiring and supporting people to take creative risks to shape their own and their communities’ future, whether […]HowlRound
- Why Do Audiences Love Comedy, But Not Comedies? February 17, 2019That’s a bit of an exaggeration – audiences still enjoy seeing comedies at the theatre. But stand-up specials are eating theatre’s lunch. “TV was long seen as the enemy of theatre. … But TV was always fundamentally different than theatre. Comedy, on the other hand, shares a lot. It is a live art form, and […]American Theatre
- Salvaging Alan Jay Lerner’s Biggest Flop, A Musical ‘Lolita’ February 19, 2019
Visual
- The Salvador Mundi Has Disappeared. Where Is It? February 19, 2019Where the Salvator Mundi is now, no one is quite sure. Locked away in a store room in the Abu Dhabi Louvre, perhaps? Or being pored over in a laboratory somewhere by scientists and art experts determined to prove it is authentic? Or even hanging on the wall in a grand salon in a Saudi Palace, […]The Daily Mail (UK)
- Met Museum Closes Show And Returns Golden Casket To Egypt February 19, 2019“Less than two years after an acquisition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it had handed over a first-century BC gilded coffin to the Manhattan district attorney for return to the Egyptian government after discovering that it had been looted in 2011.” – The Art NewspaperThe Art Newspaper
- Roughly 2,000 Objects Have Been Recovered From Ashes Of Brazil’s National Museum February 19, 2019Among the items found are meteorites, bones of an ancient human and dinosaurs, gemstones and minerals, and pre-Columbian artifacts. (Curators warn, however, that some of the 2,000 items may be fragments of the same object.) – Smithsonian MagazineSmithsonian Magazine
- Artist Foundations Are Now Worth More Than $7 Billion. What’s Driving Them? February 18, 2019According to new research, assets owned by artist-endowed foundations more than doubled in the five-year period between 2011 and 2015, rising 120 percent to $7.66 billion from $3.48 billion. In comparison, the assets of all foundations nationally grew 40 percent during the same period. – ArtnetArtnet
- SFMoMA To Sell Rothko Painting To Help Diversify Its Collection February 18, 2019The move, said director Neal Benezra, will “enhance (the museum’s) contemporary holdings, and address art historical gaps.” Significantly, he said, it will also address the need “to broadly diversify SFMOMA’s collection.” – San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chronicle
- The Salvador Mundi Has Disappeared. Where Is It? February 19, 2019
Words
- What are Our Writing Tools Doing To Writing? (And Reading?) February 19, 2019Writing is so influenced by the machines we write with. The process of creating something is shaped by the tools. Ergo, what we write is also shaped? And how about readers? With constant demands on their attention, with screens and email and notifications, the process of reading has changed. What’s a writer to do? – […]The New Yorker
- Why Do The Covers Of Novels Always Have The Phrase ‘A Novel’ On Them? February 19, 2019“Books have used the ‘XYZ: A Novel’ format since the 17th century, when realistic fiction started getting popular. The term ‘novel’ was a way to distinguish these more down-to-earth stories from the fanciful ‘romances’ that came before … Then, as now, it was a tag that identified the kind of literature you were getting yourself […]Vox
- W.H. Auden Hated His Anti-Fascist Poems February 19, 2019“‘Spain’ and ‘September 1, 1939’ would be variously revised and amended before Auden finally excised them altogether from his corpus, the first because he saw it as the endorsement of a wicked philosophy, the second because it saw it as sententious nonsense.” – The Daily BeastThe Daily Beast
- AI Researchers Made A Bot That Wrote Convincing News Stories. It Was So Good They Shut It Down February 18, 2019These excellent results have freaked the researchers out. One concern they have is that the technology would be used to turbo-charge fake news operations. The Guardian published a fake news article written by the software along with its coverage of the research. The article is readable and contains fake quotes that are on topic and realistic. The […]Gizmodo
- Booker Prizewinner Marlon James On Following Up His Literary Novel With An Epic African Fantasy Trilogy February 18, 2019James, who is originally Jamaican and who lives in Minnesota, says of his African fantasy epic, “I was reading a lot of the original myths and legends. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to write a fantasy novel. I wanted the ability to pick and choose and do what Tolkien did with Scandinavian and […]The Observer (UK)
- What are Our Writing Tools Doing To Writing? (And Reading?) February 19, 2019