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DANCE
Pilobolus: A Shadow Of Itself?
Brian Seibert: “It all feels, in the end, like what it is: a late-generation copy. After a five-year absence, the fungus is still alive but not showing many signs of growth. ” – The New York Times
Choreography As Conflict Resolution — A Retired Dancer Becomes A Professional Mediator
Dana Caspersen, William Forsythe’s wife and a former member of his company, Ballett Frankfurt, “develops choreographic methods that let groups address differences in nonverbal ways. Many of her projects center on participatory ‘action dialogues,’ which allow groups as large as 250 to tackle fraught issues like racism and polarization.” – Dance Magazine
Jazzercise, At 50, Is Big Business
“Countless workout fads have come along since the heyday of Jazzercise: Tae Bo, Pilates, Zumba, boxing, spinning, pole dancing. And yet Jazzercise persists: today, according to the company, there are more than seven thousand franchises, serving roughly two hundred and fifty thousand customers in twenty-five countries and grossing somewhere between ninety-five million and a hundred million dollars per year.” – The New Yorker
Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon — Femme Fatale, Enterprising Escapee From Poverty, Victim Of The Patriarchy? All Of The Above?
In the 18th-century source, a novel by the Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut was an archetypal siren, luring a helpless young nobleman to his doom; later operatic adaptations may have had more sympathy for her but weren’t so different. Yet MacMillan found in her one of his most powerful, and controversial, heroines, one that great ballerinas love to play. Alastair Macaulay looks at how their portrayals of the character have shifted over the years. – The New York Times
The Guardian’s Five Female Choreographers Who Are Pushing Their Art Form Forward
“Their moves are fresh, funny and stylish; their subjects include the climate crisis, gender politics and poetry.” – The Guardian
IDEAS
Being Out In Nature Is Good For Your Health. But How Much Time Do You Need To Spend?
A new study quantifies it. “The study examined data from nearly 20,000 people in England who took part in the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey from 2014 to 2016, which asked them to record their activities within the past week. It found that people who spent two hours a week or more outdoors reported being in better health and having a greater sense of well-being than people who didn’t get out at all.” – The New York Times
Worried About DeepFakes? How About CheapFakes?
Journalists, politicians, and others worry that the technological sophistication of artificial intelligence–generated deepfakes makes them dangerous to democracy because it renders evidence meaningless. But what panic over this deepfake phenomenon misses is that audiovisual content doesn’t have to be generated through artificial intelligence to be dangerous to society. “Cheapfakes” rely on free software that allows manipulation through easy conventional editing techniques like speeding, slowing, and cutting. – Slate
The New Arms Race: Information As Weapon
One side attempts to mislead the public over a key issue – the safety of a drug, whether climate change is real, or whether vaccines are dangerous, for example. At the same time, the other side works to combat this misinformation campaign. – Aeon
Ready For The Meritocracy Wars?
Much resentment focuses on the way in which the meritocracy is selected, through the education process, and on the winnowing effect of extensive standardized assessments that seek to measure and validate cognitive skills. – The New York Times
Study: Overuse Of Computers In Classrooms Lowers Student Performance
“When students report having access to classroom computers and using these devices on an infrequent basis, they show better performance. But when students report using these devices every day, and for several hours during the school day, performance lowers dramatically.” – Pacific Standard
ISSUES
Climate Activists Protest BP Funding At London Outdoor Screening Of Royal Ballet
Campaigners from Extinction Rebellion descended on the big-screen event, which live-streamed a Royal Ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet for free on June 11. BP has sponsored the free screenings for more than a decade and has a 30-year relationship with the Opera House, which has come under fire from climate change campaigners for accepting money from the oil and gas giant because of its “devastating impact on the natural world”. – The Stage
Funders Are Asking For More Data From Arts Organizations. This Is A Trap
“Constantly demanding data, while changing formats, metrics, methodology and requirements every few years, creates the illusion of order and control, while actually making meaningful insight more difficult. The situation is convenient for funders, as it reinforces their power while making it harder to hold their own performance to account. It also provides useful work for consultants and researchers. For arts organisations themselves, however, the advantages are less obvious.” – Arts Professional
A New Funding Model For Opera, Ballet In Europe That Aims For Younger Audiences
“Since 2014, Fedora has awarded €1 million to help launch 10 new opera and ballet projects, co-produced by 64 cultural institutions across Europe. To do this, they’ve tested new models of raising money and new ways of awarding it to operas and ballets.” – Forbes
Redefining London Culturally
“More of us than ever consider ourselves culturally engaged, and we are now expanding the definition of culture “possibly to the point of extinction”. ‘Big c’ and ‘small c’ culture now intermix with a day-to-day theatricality that we all welcome, and the stage for this activity is places, from small community-owned plots to large brownfield regeneration sites, where these elements can be brought together in ways that benefit a range of communities and tell great stories.” – Arts Professional
Why Medieval History(!) Has Become A Modern Battleground
Last week The New York Times reported in detail on YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which is “capable of drawing users deeper into the platform by figuring out ‘adjacent relationships’ between videos that a human would never identify.” The Crusades are a plum example of a topic that turns into a thread, leading the viewer through a labyrinth towards potential radicalization. You can search “Knights Templar” on YouTube and reach conspiracy theories (“Ten Secret Societies Ruling The World”) within three intuitive clicks. – The New Republic
MEDIA
First Time: More Millennials Are Paying For Video Games Than For TV
About 53% of people born between 1983 and 1996 now pay for gaming services, versus 51% who pay for television, according to a survey from the accounting and professional services firm Deloitte. That is compared with Deloitte’s survey last year, in which paid subscriptions among millennials were 44% for video games and 52% for television. – New York Post
Cuba’s Tiny Movie “Palaces”
During Cuba’s Special Period, a time of deprivation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many cinemas closed due to lack of funding, so the state opened small “video rooms” to screen movies on VHS. For mere pennies, Cubans across the island can enjoy a day at the movies. It’s so cheap that some locals pay the admission simply to enjoy the air conditioning, which seems to be more modern than some of the cinemas’ technical equipment. – The Daily Beast
YouTube’s Content Problem Can’t Be Fixed With An Algorithm Tweak
YouTube’s recommendation engine can lead you astray pretty quickly, jumping down rabbit holes of unsafe or misleading content. Figuring out an algorithmic fix is more difficult than it seems. – The New York Times
HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ Has Turned The Actual Town Into A Tourist Mecca
“In a strange turn more than three decades after the meltdown, the exclusion area around Chernobyl is gaining a following as a tourism destination, apparently propelled by the popularity of a TV mini-series about the blast that was broadcast in the United States and Britain last month.” – The New York Times
‘This Is Heroic Criticism, Warrior Criticism, Live-Ammo Criticism’ — Six Film Writers Give Their Takes On Pauline Kael
David Thomson: “The shrewdest thing to say about Pauline Kael – beyond recognising that she was essential – is that she was kind of crazy. Yet determined to seem rational or in control.”
Kate Muir: “Her language is spankingly crisp and her reactions that of a ticket-buying human, not someone sweating ink as they try to impress.” – The GuardianMUSIC
What If We Could Rewrite Classic Operas?
In fact, David Lang is, with a re-imagining of Beethoven’s Fidelio. Anne Midgette explores the idea of revisiting classics in new form. – Washington Post
Palm Beach Opera Director Daniel Biaggi Stepping Down
When Palm Beach Opera promoted him to general director in February 2009, the company was struggling. It was posting unsupportable deficits and the chief administrator job was a revolving door. Under Biaggi’s leadership, the company stabilized and grew. It slashed the budget, reducing the number of operas it produced at the Kravis Center from four to three and eliminating Monday matinees, and re-directed resources to programming designed to broaden its audience. – Palm Beach Post
Baltimore Symphony Musicians Lobby Governor To Release Money For The Orchestra
“We put $8 million into the BSO,” Governor Larry Hogan said. “They received the most money of any arts group in the state, 74 percent higher than any other arts group. . . . We continue to pour millions and millions of dollars into the BSO, but they’ve got real serious issues and problems with the management, with losing the support of their donor base.” – Washington Post
Anna Netrebko, ‘Aida’, And Why Opera Just Needs To Drop Blackface Already
The diva posted a photo of herself in her dressing room at the Mariinsky, all done up as Verdi’s enslaved Ethiopian princess, and one commenter wrote, “Beautiful singing! But is the blackface really necessary?” Netrebko replied, “Black Face and Black Body for Ethiopien [sic] princess, for Verdi[‘s] greatest opera! YES!” And, of course, all hell broke loose. (It didn’t help when Netrebko called her critics “low class jerks.”) Olivia Giovetti considers why, in the opera world, there still has to be an argument over blackface. – Van
A Choir For The Homeless Changes Lives In Rio De Janeiro
Streetwise Opera, the British company for people struggling with homelessness, founded the choir Uma Só Voz/With One Voice for the 2016 Olympics, and the city has kept it going. Two AFP reporters talk with members of the choir about what singing with the group has done for their lives. – Yahoo! (AFP)
PEOPLE
Relentless Researcher: Robert Caro’s Brand Of History
“All the ordinary limitations under which most writers and scholars labor — deadlines, money, family obligations — have never contained the force of Caro’s curiosity, which he describes as something akin to a compulsion.” – Jacobin
The Mysterious Case Of Agatha Christie’s 11-Day Disappearance
It was 1926. “On the evening of Dec. 4, Agatha Christie, carrying nothing but an attaché case, kissed her daughter good night and sped away from the home in England that she shared with her husband, Col. Archibald Christie.” She disappeared for a week-and-a-half, without explanation. – The New York Times
The 14-Year-Old Music Prodigy: Carnegie, Vienna State Opera, Etc…
“An accomplished pianist and violinist, she is also a composer, having written concertos for piano and violin and an opera. In December, she will make her debut at Carnegie Hall, where she will play the solo violin and piano in her two concertos, while the orchestra will play selections from her opera and her most recent work, a Viennese waltz. Next month, she will record a retrospective album with Sony of piano melodies she composed going back to when she was just 4 years old.” – The New York Times
Franco Zeffirelli, 96
“Critics sometimes reproached Mr. Zeffirelli’s opera stagings for a flamboyant glamour more typical of Hollywood’s golden era, while Hollywood sometimes disparaged his films as too highbrow. But his success with audiences was undeniable.” – The New York Times
Bill Wittliff, Screenwriter And ‘Primary Texas Cultural Lightning Rod’, Dead At 79
He’s known to the wider world primarily as the writer of the TV series Lonesome Dove and the films Raggedy Man and The Perfect Storm, and he was a book author and photographer himself, but in his home state he’s revered for the artistic ecosystem he made possible for writers, photographers, and filmmakers. – Austin American-Statesman
THEATRE
Evening Standard’s Sacking Of Its Theatre Critics Doesn’t Mean Criticism Is Going Away – It’s Just Moving On
“Mainstream theatre criticism is unlikely to disappear. But professional, full-time critics, whose only real job is to review plays, may be a dying breed. It is unfortunately possible for publications to be committed to criticism whilst being utterly cavalier about individual critics.” – The Stage
How Do You Put An Ayahuasca Trip Onstage?
You cast an actual Peruvian shaman, of course. And you get the entire rest of your cast do ayahuasca rituals furing the rehearsal period. Lyndsey Winship talks with Peruvian director-choreographer Oscar Naters, and with said shaman, about their performance piece, Ino Moxo. – The Guardian
The Mainstream U.S. Theater World Is Finally Starting To Diversify — Do We Still Need Culturally Specific Theater Companies?
In a word, yes. As one such producer puts it, “There’s layers of conversation of what diversity really means in a cultural arts landscape. … We have the opportunity to go deep within multiple layers and not just check off the box.” Reporter Makeda Easter talks to members of African-American, Asian-American, and Latinx companies about that difference. – Los Angeles Times
The Tony Awards’ Most Important Speech, And Most Important Fashion Statement, Were Barely Even Noticed On The Telecast
That fashion statement, writes Chris Jones, was the breathing tube and oxygen device that Terrence McNally wore onstage as he accepted his lifetime achievement Tony, and his speech — as both a major American playwright and a survivor of the worst days of the AIDS epidemic — “was the most beautiful recounting of one of this nation’s most distinguished artistic careers.” – Chicago Tribune
Ending A Turbulent Few Years, Berlin’s Volksbühne Appoints A New Director
The playwright and director René Pollesch will take the reins at one of Germany’s most important theaters in 2021. He succeeds Chris Dercon, formerly the director of London’s Tate Modern art gallery, who lasted only six months in the job in the face of regular protests over his presence there. “Those included personal attacks — feces were left in front of Mr. Dercon’s office at one point — and an occupation of the theater by left-wing activists.” – The New York Times
VISUAL
More Than Half The Art In This French Museum Turned Out To Be Fake. How Did It Happen?
Last year, a museum dedicated to the work of Étienne Terrus revealed most of its paintings were probably not by him. How did they get there? – The Guardian
The Dia Foundation’s Quiet Reinvention
“Blockbusters are not their thing. But don’t let the hush of the Beacon galleries mislead you; a profound transformation is afoot.” – The New York Times
Plans To “Fill In” Some Of London’s Barbican Spaces Would Ruin It
“The grand columns that you see all around the complex are about creating space. You fill in that space, then you have something that was designed to be open becoming cluttered and oppressive. What makes the Barbican special would be lost.” – CityLab
Does Owning A McMansion Make You Happier?
To be clear, having more space does generally lead to people saying they’re more pleased with their home. The problem is that the satisfaction often doesn’t last if even bigger homes pop up nearby. “If I bought a house to feel like I’m ‘the king of my neighborhood,’ but a new king arises, it makes me feel very bad about my house.” – The Atlantic
The Bauhaus Was Built On Ambitious Ideas (That Both Succeeded And Failed)
This new vision for an art school was explicitly intended to combine knowledge of modern techniques for making things with a medieval attitude toward how and why you are making them. Gropius and his allies were going to save the modern world by shoving it as hard as they could both backward and forward at the same time. – The Easel
WORDS
Why Short Stories Are More Creative
The short story is on a huge upwards trajectory, yet attitudes persist that collections can’t be as successful as novels. To be fair, most of those prehistoric views emanate from London rather than Ireland or the US. After all, it was we Irish who exported the short story to the US in the first place, and it’s our biggest cultural legacy – next to the Irish bar, of course. – Irish Times
Strand Bookstore Owner: Why Landmarking The Strand Will Kill It
Nancy Bass Wyden: “My dad’s proudest moment came in 1996, when he finally saved up enough money to buy the building that had housed the store since he was a young man. He’d watched rents climb and he’d seen enough competitors go under to know that making that purchase was key to ensuring the Strand’s survival. This week, that security vanished. By designating the store a landmark, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission put the Strand in peril.” – New York Daily News
How The Internet Has Changed (Is Changing) Book Culture
“The personal touch sometimes takes some of the critical edge out of books conversation online. Like many outlets, Bustle is fazing out professional book reviews, and Electric Literature did away with its reviews a couple of years ago now. Instead, these websites are prioritizing personal essays from a diverse group of writers, and both of the aforementioned sites have a women-focused editorial strategy.” – Publishers Weekly
‘A Great Realist Novel’: Salman Rushdie On Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’, 50 Years On
“It tells us that wars are hell, but we knew that already. It tells us that most human beings are not so bad, except for the ones who are, and that’s valuable information. It doesn’t tell us how to get to the planet Tralfamadore, but it does tell us how to communicate with its inhabitants. All we have to do is build something big, like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China.”- The New Yorker
Allen Ginsberg Annotates Gay Pride March Photos
On the backs of pictures that photographer Hank O’Neal took of the marches in the 1970s, Ginsberg commented in Ginsbergian style. “Black white brown boy girl what idealism! — Wearing their hearts on a banner for nothing but love” – Hyperallergic