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Dance
The LA Dance Company That Uses Toys And Architecture To Careen Off
Diavolo’s taste for heights, soaring numbers and gigantic playthings hasn’t changed much since its early days, but the method behind the madness has evolved from freewheeling experimentation to fine-tuned research and development, especially after the company was commissioned to develop a trilogy of dance works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2005.
Jacques d’Amboise – Still Dancing At 82
“I danced for a long time before I asked myself the question,” he says. The question being, “What is dance?” He now thinks it’s “an invention by human beings to express space and time…to express wonder and emotion by losing control in how we move in time.” Needless to say, that’s something everyone should have […]
The Person Dancers Depend On To Make Those Tutus Flare
“If fashion is chimerical fantasy, Mr. Happel brings a dose of earthbound reality to the work: Will all that detailed embroidery read from far away? Will dancers actually be able to raise their arms in that bodice?”
The Ballerina Triplet Who Escaped The Nazis But Is Still Dancing [AUDIO]
“When things got painful, we’d hug each other and speak either French or German with each other and dance together.”
Can An Old Dance Theatre Do New Tricks?
“The theater looks a certain way, the curtain goes up on a company, and whatever happens on a stage can be vastly different from week to week. However, the experience itself of attending the Joyce has grown to be somewhat regular, and this is a way to challenge that.”
Ideas
What Machine Learning Is Teaching Us About How We Learn
“By bringing the tools of computation and machine intuition to the table, AI researchers are giving us a more complete picture of how we learn. They are also broadening the study of education to include quantitative, numerical models of the learning process itself. “The thing that AI brings to the table is that it forces us to get into the details of how everything works,” says John Laird, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan. If there was any doubt that good teachers are important, machine learning is helping put it to rest.”
The Currency Of Feelings – What’s It Worth To You?
“The primacy of feelings in our economy has given rise to a new field of scholarly inquiry. ‘Affect studies’ refers to humanistic and social-scientific investigations of the ways that feelings are generated, experienced, and interpreted. An affect is a particular kind of feeling, one distinct from an emotion. For academics in the field, affects are feelings that reside not in individual people but in social groups, institutions, or physical spaces.”
The Next Big Intellectual Revolution Is Coming
All of the past “justice revolutions” have stemmed from improved communications. Oppression thrives on distance, on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed. The next revolution will not abolish the consequences of place of birth, but the privileges of nationhood will be tempered. While the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment around the world today seems to point in the opposite direction, the sense of injustice will be amplified as communications continue to grow. Ultimately, recognition of wrong will wreak big changes.
A Sneaky Idea To Ship Bikes Safely By Disguising Them As Televisions
Apparently, delivery companies value flat-screen TVs more than bikes.
Issues
Why Writing About Science Seems Like Little More Than PR
“Think about it. For every article singing the praises of new science, how often do you see one that is critical? Not often. Unless you’re talking about eugenics or fission bombs, a new scientific result or technology is almost always treated as an unequivocally good thing.”
Dear Class Of 2020: You’ve Been Cheated. Time To Build A Bridge To The 16th Century
“The most momentous event in your intellectual formation was the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which ushered in our disastrous fixation on testing. Your generation is the first to have gone through primary and secondary school knowing no alternative to a national regimen of assessment. And your professors are only now beginning to realize how this unrelenting assessment has stunted your imaginations.”
Fine, Let’s Talk About Sombreros And Lionel Shriver
Francine Prose: “Like much of Shriver’s talk, this paragraph contains a kernel of truth encased by a husk of cultural and historical blindness. It seems clear that one part of the fiction writer’s job is ‘to step into other people’s shoes.’ But to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a hat is more than just a hat. Sometimes it is a symbol—and a racist one, at that.”
Jordanian Writer About To Stand Trial For A Cartoon Is Shot Dead Outside Of Court
“Hattar, a Christian, was arrested on August 13 after posting a caricature on his Facebook account that depicted a bearded man in heaven smoking in bed with women, asking God to bring him wine and cashews.”
Media
They’re Training Watson To Recognize Emotion, Personality
And then what? As the artificial intelligence computer gets better at understanding humans it starts to interact with them in more complex ways. For now though, Watson is coming up with movie trailers…
In The Shadows Of Hollywood, Does Abuse Of Young Actors Thrive?
“If the event resembles a harmless and burlesque version of the better-known award shows, there also has been a darker side to it at times. A handful of people who were actively involved with the show or attended it have been found by authorities to have troubling backgrounds with minors, including two men who were convicted of committing sex crimes against children.”
Rolling Stone Sells Almost Half Of Itself To An Investor From Singapore
“BandLab’s investment provides Rolling Stone with the opportunity to expand into the live event, hospitality and merchandising businesses in Asia—areas where BandLab has experience. Its flagship product is a digital platform for creating and sharing music.”
Baby Boomers Are Returning To The Movies, Reshaping Cinema Again
“More than the actual films though, it is the surrounding experience at the cinema that is pulling this generation through the doors. ‘Event cinema’, such as live-streamed ballet and opera, ‘is particularly valued’ by older people.”
Is This Quiet Rule Change A Death Knell For Canadian TV And Movies – And Actors?
“I began thinking about the ship of Theseus. The vessel in question was an ancient Greek ship kept afloat for generations by the replacement of any rotting plank and it is famous as a philosophical paradox: If every plank has been replaced, is it still the same ship?”
Music
The Superhuman Demands Of Singing Tristan
“Young singers usually build their careers by taking on gradually longer and more demanding roles. But the metallic colors and lower vocal center of gravity of prospective Tristans often make them an awkward fit for traditional young tenor repertory.”
Should The Minnesota Orchestra Start Looking For A Successor To Osmo Vanska?
“Much remains uncertain about the future, with orchestras everywhere battling to stop declining attendance figures. In these rapidly evolving circumstances, the relatively short three-year extension to music director Osmo Vänskä’s contract, announced in May 2015, was probably the sensible option for management and conductor. It does, though, snap sharply into focus the real possibility that Vänskä could be gone by August 2019.”
Is The Era Of The Nightclub Over?
“Even though an estimated half of venues have closed within the past decade, dance music industry figures insisted the scene is in rude health, with people instead choosing all-day events in parks, raves in pop-up spaces and festivals for their weekly freakout.”
Fort Worth Symphony Cancels All Concerts Through Early November
“The musicians, who are represented by the American Federation of Musicians Local 72-147, lambasted management’s decision to cancel concerts scheduled for more than a month away.”
Tristan Und Isolde Is The Ultimate Opera
“As well as enlarging – or perhaps subverting – the subject matter of opera, Tristan und Isolde also marked a turning point in the history of music. The opening chord in the prelude, the so-called Tristan chord, is seen by some as the beginning of modern music, introducing chromaticism, dissonance and, according to the composer Arnold Schoenberg, even atonality.”
People
Monty Python’s Terry Jones Diagnosed With Dementia
“Jones, who is from Colwyn Bay in north Wales, was a member of the legendary comedy troupe with Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and the late Graham Chapman. He directed Monty Python’s Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life and co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Gilliam.”
The 32-Year-Old ‘Fixer’ Of Pop Songs
“His is a story of why endurance and persistence are essential in the music business – even if your career seems only to consist of blind alleys at the start.”
The International Ambassador For Louisiana Roots Music
“Dural took up the accordion in 1978 and founded Buckwheat Zydeco a year later. In 30 years of touring and recording he took zydeco to unexpected physical and musical places. From his take on Bob Dylan’s ‘A Night Like This’ for Australian TV in the ’80s, to ‘Hey Joe’ on David Letterman’s Late Show in the ’90s, to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in May, Dural was a welcoming presence who made his audiences happy.”
Award-Winning Inuit Artist Found Dead At 46
“Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna offered his condolences to Pootoogook’s family Friday afternoon on Twitter. And Nunavut MP Hunter Tootoo tweeted that Canada has ‘lost great artist & great woman.'”
Theatre
The Payoff For Theatre That Stays Small And Local
“It seems the smaller the community, the more space there is to expand and embellish local narratives. Mixing one part fiction, one part myth, and one part truth, these narratives flourish in the festivals, parades, and plaques that have become the cultural landmarks of a city five miles north of Boston.”
When A Theatre Venue Shuts Down Suddenly In Virginia, Arts Groups Have To Scramble
“Other venues are stepping in to fill the artistic void, but many people are still expressing disappointment and doubt about the future of the downtown theater.”
The Intimate Details Of Theatre Poster Design
“I wanted something that you would look at, and without having it hit you heavily, you would understand it came from the ’20s and ’30s. We wanted to show a certain modernity that had style.”
Is This The Golden Age Of Playwriting?
“Or … is something else true? Is it actually a bear market? Is our theatre in a moment of peril?”
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.”
Visual
This Is About To Become The Largest Private Museum In America
“With the new addition, dubbed the Pavilions, Glenstone’s exhibition space will increase fivefold. Eight of the nine discrete but linked buildings will be dedicated to the work of a single artist, including Brice Marden, Charles Ray, Michael Heizer and Cy Twombly. (The ninth pavilion will house special exhibitions.)”
Where Are The Women Artists? Not Here (And Maybe They Shouldn’t Be?)
The first major survey of abstract expressionism since 1959, which has just opened at the Royal Academy, has been accused of displaying too much testosterone. Commentary developed on social media from early visitors asking: “Where were the women?” But what exactly were they expecting? The telling word from the critic is “few”. There were not many women in the movement to be included in the first place.
The Country’s Only Scientific Glassblowing Degree Program
“As they blow into glass tubes, they hover over bright orange flames that reach as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough for those stiff tubes to bend like rubbery taffy and twist into candy-cane shapes or snake coils that look machine-made.”
Images Of Los Angeles That Go Far Beyond The Postcards
“In the photographs of Anthony Hernandez, there are no swaying palm trees or cinematic sunsets. Instead, for half a century, this born-and-bred Angeleno has trained his unblinking lens on another L.A. — a city of the aged, of the working class, of the destitute.”
San Francisco Might Want To Push This Woman Out Of Museum Management – But She’s Not Ready To Go
“Her coal eyes flashed when she was asked to identify the anonymous wag who had told a reporter her run had come to an end. ‘I have no idea, and I’d like to kill them,’ Ms. Wilsey said. No one was going to run her out, she added. She would remain, overseeing politics and fund-raising. And to her detractors she would like to say: ‘You will look like a bunch of idiots. And I am going to laugh myself silly.'”
Words
People Who Can Switch Between Street Languages Use Same Cognitive Muscles As Bilinguals
“In the United States, a bidialectal person might be someone who speaks both Standard American English and African-American Vernacular English (called AAVE but also known as ‘Ebonics’), which differ a lot in pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary – so much so that AAVE has controversially been called a distinct language. So do bidialectals enjoy the same cognitive benefits as bilinguals?”
E-books May Be Slipping, But Publishers Hear Audio Is The Next Big Thing
“E-book sales have fallen precipitously for months, in part because many publishers have raised their prices after negotiating with Amazon and gaining the ability to set their own prices.”
Yes, Let’s Keep On Talking About Who ‘Gets’ To Write What, And Why
“A writer has the right to inhabit any character she pleases — she’s always had it and will continue to have it. The complaint seems to be less that some people ask writers to think about cultural appropriation, and more that a writer wishes her work not to be critiqued for doing so, that instead she get a gold star for trying.”
The Writing Life, And All Of The Self-Sabotage It Includes
“I am locked in a battle between self-doubt and self-discipline, and the former usually wins. I have the concentration of… oh, I like your shoes. It is so much easier to plummet down the sinkhole of Twitter.”
What Happens When A Novel You’ve Been Working On For Seven Years Finally Gets Published?
Yaa Gyasi: “This novel was an attempt for me to say: We cannot look away when something like this is happening. We can’t look away. We don’t get to.”