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Dance
Ballet Dancers Take To The Air – The Rock-Climbing Air, That Is, For An Aerial Ballet
“This is not choreography for the faint of heart. Tethered by harnesses and ropes, belayed by riggers from above, the dancers engage in constant risk management, watching for jagged surfaces, crumbling sandstone beneath their feet and the ever-present threat of rope snarls.”
Museums Move Even Deeper Into Contemporary Dance
“While art museums have dabbled in live performance since the 1960s, ‘the real estate has changed,’ said the choreographer Ralph Lemon … ‘Museums are now offering performance spaces beyond just the gardens and basements and unannounced hallways.’ The trend is proving a sure way to drive up traffic.”
‘This Is Not Just A Show About Fat Happy Dancing People’
“Kate Champion, artistic director of Force Majeure, and Kelli Jean Drinkwater, associate artist and fat activist, talk about the company’s new show featuring big-bodied performers. Nothing to Lose is ‘driven by dance’, says Champion, but also draws on the dancers’ real-life experiences to challenge preconceptions and reclaim a performance space for large bodies.” (video)
Dancing Waters: A Ballet Of Boats On The Mississippi River
Choreographer Patrick Scully, who has already done a similar project in Germany, hopes to get a cast of 100 kayaks, racing sculls, motorboats, paddleboards, and maybe even a barge to perform a work on the river in the Twin Cities this summer. (No sailboats, though.)
New Zealand’s Maori War Dance Looks Even Cooler On Ice
Sports fans and viral video mavens have seen the haka, the traditional pre-battle dance that New Zealand’s national sports teams (most notably, rugby’s formidable All-Blacks) do on the field before a match. Now the clever Kiwis have figured out how to do the haka on skates. (video)
Ideas
Turns Out Bilingualism Might Not Be *That* Much Of An Advantage – Until You Get Old
“Adults who speak multiple languages seem to resist the effects of dementia far better than monolinguals do.”
Technology Could Be Making Us Safer, Except Where It’s Making Us So Very Much More Vulnerable
“If technology moves along a linear axis, it is complemented by a cyclical resurgence of human forgetting, folly and failure. We might not be in danger of lapsing into the Dark Ages, but we do find ourselves relearning the same life-or-death lessons each generation.”
50 Years Ago: Did This Sci Fi Writer Predict Today’s Approach To Studying Humanities?
“The general trend to introduce mathematical thinking into various sciences (including disciplines that did not previously use any math tools, such as biology, psychology, and medicine), is slowly extending to the humanities. For now, we have had some rare efforts in language studies (theoretical linguistics) and literary theory (the application of information theory to the study of literary texts, especially poetry).”
Notes On Grumbling
Joshua Rothman: “Given its omnipresence, it’s tempting to say that grumbling may be the quintessential modern speech act. … Susan Sontag dedicated Notes on Camp to camp’s patron saint, Oscar Wilde. These far humbler notes are dedicated to that great grumbler Oscar the Grouch.”
Issues
This Russian Movie Was Nominated For A Foreign Film Oscar, But Might Be Censored In Russia
“The film, which paints a dark picture of corrupt provincial life in the country, has been denounced as anti-Russian by public figures ranging from politicians to clerics. The culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, has said he doesn’t like the film’s depressing story and foul language.”
Music Journalists Don’t Take Women Seriously As Writers, Producers Of Their Own Music
“Everyone is prejudged and sorted into preexisting categories. Man with guitar: songwriter. Man at a mixing console: Producer and mastermind. Woman with a shiny outfit: pop star.”
Women Fight On Many Fronts To Gain Equality In Hollywood
“Increasing numbers of people — if mostly women — are pushing back hard at the industry’s biases. And they’re pushing back publicly, a gutsy stance in an industry that runs on secrets, lies and fear.”
Let’s Understand Why People Engage (Or Don’t) With The Arts
Those who self-identify as lower or working class are more likely to attend events in order to “support the community” or “explore their cultural heritage;” upper classes often attend the arts “as a marker of their good taste, cultural capital and social identity.”
Media
Here’s Why You Don’t Have To Listen To Those Friends Who Think You’ll LOVE ‘The Fall’
“The show tells us that men are bothered by women who casually fuck men, it tells us there’s a virgin/vamp dichotomy in society. It tells us that male monstrosity isn’t monstrosity at all, but exists on a spectrum that includes hapless lovestruck officers of the law. It informs us that women can be unfeeling, that murderers can be empathetic, that men often mistake misogyny for art. True, all perfectly true, but the presentation is very After School Special.”
In The Run-up To The Academy Awards, ‘Birdman’ Just Added An Interesting Best-Picture Prize
“The victory is seen as a predictor of the Academy Awards. For the last seven years, the winner of the producers’ honor has gone on to win the best picture Oscar. And like the Academy, the organization uses a preferential ballot and allows more than five nominees.”
Actors Who Impress Web Shorts Or Series Directors Are Finding Larger Roles
Which is good, because web shorts pay in what’s known in the biz as “deferred compensation” – aka nothing.
Dreamworks Animation Studio Has Fallen On Hard Times. Can It Be Saved?
“The underperformance of films like Turbo, Mr Peabody & Sherman, Penguins of Madagascar and Rise of the Guardians has wiped almost 40% from the studio’s share value, leading to 500 layoffs, a change of management and a heavily reduced release slate.”
Hunger Games: Wave Of New Video Games Focuses On Scarcity And Subsistence Rather Than Shooting
“These games subvert the usual arc of heroic triumph … at last breaking away from the technicolour militarist bloodbaths that dog the reputation of computer games. … Finding a mouldy crust of bread to eat is often a higher priority than blazing away at the robots.”
Music
In Michigan, Protestors Host A Die-In Against A Conductor Who Supports Putin
“Gergiev is known to have close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Gergiev not only voiced his support for Putin after the leader passed anti-gay legislation, he also recently offered a quote to The New York Times Magazine regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea.”
Why Did Popular Music Break Up With Jazz?
“Soldiers who had come back from World War II didn’t seem to be as interested in the more complex, challenging kind of popular song, the more jazz-based song. Sentimental ballads and, yes, novelty numbers, suddenly was much more appealing.”
The Ulster Orchestra Wins A Temporary Reprieve – But Can It Be Saved?
“The current situation, of a fragile status quo, and an orchestra having to run ever harder and harder to stand still, is too precarious to sustain in the medium and longer term.”
The Vocal (Cord) Life Coach Behind Some Of The Biggest Belters
“Vetro has lived through the rise of Auto-Tune, and he says it’s never had an impact on his business. He asserts that proper technique and vocal maintenance are still crucial for working artists, and that many singers and producers who record in fancy studios still push to get the most genuine vocal performances possible.”
That One Time No One On Jeopardy Knew About Esa-Pekka Salonen
Be sure to follow the link to the full Twitter conversation about the entire category. To quote one participant, “Sibelius was $1,600. No one got him either.”
People
How The Feds Hunted And, Essentially, Destroyed Billie Holiday
“The Treasury Department told Anslinger he was wasting his time taking on a community that couldn’t be fractured, so he scaled down his focus until it settled like a laser on a single target—perhaps the greatest female jazz vocalist there ever was.”
First Lady Of Arabic Cinema, Faten Hamama, Dead At 83
“For a half-century, she stayed current by taking topical roles in films dealing with social justice and women’s rights. As an idolized national figure, she not only galvanized support for those causes but also helped redefine the Arab woman.” (She was also, by the way, the frequent co-star and erstwhile wife of Omar Sharif.)
New Investigation Into Death Of Pablo Neruda (Was He Poisoned?)
“Tests on Neruda’s exhumed body in 2013 found no trace of poison but more will now be done. His death certificate says he died of prostate cancer. Neruda died 12 days after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.”
John Bayley, 89, Literary Scholar, Critic, And Memoirist Of Wife Iris Murdoch
“As a critic and author, Mr. Bayley was acclaimed for his dissections of Goethe and Pushkin as well as of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Henry James.” He drew an international readership, wide praise and some condemnation for Elegy for Iris, his account of his wife’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease.
Theatre
Playwrights Need To Belong In Order To Thrive
“It empowers both the writer and theater to take risks to create the stories not being written. In addition, writing for a particular community––if you truly honor that audience’s needs––produces plays that are more specific, which in fact makes them more universal and ready for other productions elsewhere in the country.”
$150K Play Production Award To Rajiv Joseph’s “The Guards At The Taj”
Joseph, who was a Pulitzer finalist in 2010 for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, won the 2015 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award, “which provides $50,000 to the winning playwright and an additional $100,000 to defray production costs for the play’s premiere.”
Harvey Weinstein’s Broadway Publicist Dumps Him (Or Was Fired)
The famously volatile film producer “and the veteran Broadway press agent Rick Miramontez have parted ways on Mr. Weinstein’s forthcoming musical Finding Neverland after sharp words were said at their weekly planning meeting on Tuesday.”
New National Theatre Head: Here’s Why Support Of Theatre Is Important
“One of the many arguments for public and private support of this organisation, and organisations like this one, is we are the compost, the manure, the fertiliser that feeds culture worldwide.”
Julie Taymor To Stage New Play About Drone Warfare
It seems such a good match of director and subject that you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. George Brant’s Grounded features only one (human) character, to be played by Anne Hathaway.
Visual
Can Pamplona’s New Museum Make It A Destination For More Than The Running Of The Bulls?
“If the architecture of the new gallery is not as eye-catching as Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, the collection is more impressive, in particular the photographic archive that goes back to the dawn of photography as an art form. It also features works by Rothko, Tàpies, Picasso and Kandinsky.”
Creating Special Days So Kids With Autism Can Enjoy The Museum
“For two hours, the lights are dimmed, the loud noises are turned down and there is room to move around because it’s less crowded.”
Someone Broke Off King Tut’s Beard – And Glued It Back On With A Ruinous Epoxy
“The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material.”
Our Hidden Museum Masterpieces (And Why You Can’t See Them)
“Having 5% of your national collection on show is something people find difficult to understand,” says British curator Jasper Sharp, who was the commissioner of the Austrian pavilion at the 2013 Venice Bienniale. Many art institutions are thus coming up with ways to show their stuff, so to speak.
Did The Family Of This Barcelona Art Collector Pull Off A Major Art Heist?
“The missing 352 paintings and drawings, together with tapestries and other works, constitute an art heist on a grand scale, according to the city. It is alleging theft and fraud in a criminal case against the four daughters of Julio Muñoz Ramonet, a Catalan industrialist who bequeathed the property to his native city of Barcelona when he died in 1991.”
Words
Possibly The Best Copyright Quirk Ever Makes James Bond Public Domain In Canada
“Some Canadian writers, mindful of the 2015 copyright changes, are musing about the prospect of taking 007 for a spin” – especially if they could sell their books outside of their genre-loathing country.
Why Historians Are Losing Their Audience?
“For the past few centuries, historians have maintained an uneasy truce over the assumption that the search for “facts” should always take precedence over the more fractious difficulty of interpreting them.”
Why Mark Zuckerberg’s Book Club Is Really Cool
“Most of the coverage of Zuckerberg’s book club has taken the perspective of the publishing industry and invokes the hallowed name of Oprah. Will the Facebook founder become the book business’ new Prince Charming, bestowing instant fame and bestseller status on some obscure but deserving author twice a month? But far more intriguing is the emerging portrait of Mark Zuckerberg as a reader.”
Where Science And Science Fiction Meet
“Many scientists and engineers acknowledge that science fiction helped to spark their imagination of what was possible in science (immersion in the genre from a young age might help explain why I now research unconventional computers). And science fiction authors are inspired by future science possibilities. But how do novel scientific ideas get into SF authors’ heads in the first place?”
Literary Feud News: Naipaul And Theroux Bury 19-Year-Old Hatchet
The two men, who once had a close mentor-protégé relationship, began a nasty public feud in 1996; this week it came to an end as the ailing 82-year-old Naipaul was honored at the Jaipur literary festival.