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DANCE
When A Curtain Breaks, The Ballet Cannot Go On
Australian Ballet audiences at the Sydney Opera House waited for half an hour to find out what was happening. Then the news came: ""We've tried everything to get it going, they've restarted the whole ... system. They have rung Europe to see if there's something they can do. Unfortunately nothing is working." … [Read More...]
The English National Ballet’s Artistic Director Says Ballet Is Changing With The MeToo Times
Tamara Rojo: "In the past, the ballet master was an almost godlike figure. You did what he said and there was no room for conversation. Certainly at the ENB, that’s not the case. We encourage dancers to have opinions, ask questions and contribute to the process. The work is good because it’s the work of everyone in the company." … [Read More...]
Opera Often Needs Choreographers, Not Just For Opera Ballets But For The Principals And Chorus
That's not without its challenges: "Directing singers is a very particular art: Try to make them move too precisely to the music, and some of them look like unmotivated marionettes, the more so if they have to share the stage with dancers." … [Read More...]
82-Year-Old Dance Professor Stars In Her First Head-Bangin’ Hard Rock Video
Dance anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna, who (on top of her scholarly work) has served as an expert witness in legal proceedings against exotic dancers, "has spent her career getting us to think about dance's relationship to society. ... She hadn't performed since college when she got a call from a music video producer, who caught a video of her dancing with her 13-year-old grandson. The rockers of Egg Drop Soup loved her energy and flew her out to Los Angeles for a day-long video shoot. We spoke to Hanna about the experience." … [Read More...]
Gotta Dance (Why?)
This Aeon Original video explores that unifying feeling of group ‘electricity’ that lifts us up when we’re enthralled by our favourite sports teams, participating in religious rituals, entranced by music – and, yes, dancing the night away. … [Read More...]
IDEAS
We’re Less Free, Less Creative When Someone Is Watching Us
We know that surveillance has a chilling effect on freedom. People change their behavior when they live their lives under surveillance. They are less likely to speak freely and act individually. They self-censor. They become conformist. This is obviously true for government surveillance, but is true for corporate surveillance as well. We simply aren’t as willing to be our individual selves when others are watching. … [Read More...]
Learning Our Relationships With Robots
The word “robot,” like the words “shalom” and “free-range chicken,” does not have a universally agreed-upon definition, but the usual criteria include autonomy, an ability to change its surroundings, intelligence, and the possession of a body. Then it gets trickier: How intelligent? Must a robot be mobile? Is a dishwasher a robot? According to the podcast “Robot or Not?” a self-driving car is not (you designate its destination), but a Roomba is (because it’s more in control of its path than you are). … [Read More...]
Pining For An Age Of Reason (And When Was That, Exactly?)
If we are to heal the divides of the contemporary historical moment, we should give away the fiction that reason alone has ever held the day. The present warrants criticism, but it will do no good if it’s based on a myth about some glorious, dispassionate past that never was. … [Read More...]
Turns Out Duolingo Is Good For Getting You To Do Duolingo, Not To Learn A Language
The challenge of Duo, with its addiction-causing rewards and points and treasure chests, is that it's trying to figure out both how to get people to learn - and how to get them to stay. The CEO: "We prefer to be more on the addictive side than the fast-learning side. ... If someone drops out, their rate of learning is zero." … [Read More...]
The Difference Between Bullshitters And Liars
Although most of us would agree that both bullshit and the outright lie are modes of misrepresentation, there exists a key difference between the two. Neither the bullshitter nor the liar can be relied upon to tell the truth. But in order to lie, the liar must first believe that she knows the truth; only then can she persuade her audience of what she knows to be untrue. The bullshitter, on the other hand, maintains no relationship at all with the truth: it is irrelevant to the bullshitter whether what she says is true or false, and what she is guilty of misrepresenting is precisely her concern for the distinction between the two. … [Read More...]
ISSUES
What The Brexit Deal Would Mean For The Arts
May’s deal, which was revealed on November 14, essentially maintains the status quo until 2020, with the deal “not saying anything concrete” about what will happen after this. This would be effectively “postponing a leap into the dark” for the creative industries until 2020, with “all the important issues left up in the air”. … [Read More...]
Nationalism Is Rearing Up Again And It Needs Hate To Survive. How To Transcend It?
If the cosmopolitan world we unsteadily inhabit is to survive, Hegelian logic would seem to demand that it find itself a new “other”—something which the nations of the world can only face, as they once faced the threat of perpetual conflict, as a cosmopolitan community, in which the self-consuming monster of national sovereignty would, once again, be laid to rest. Climate change, perhaps? … [Read More...]
Ford Foundation Uses Its Building To Help Reinvent The 21st Century Foundation
After half a century, the building remained a gem but needed an upgrade. City officials gave the foundation until 2019 to remove asbestos, fix the sprinklers and make the site wheelchair accessible. The foundation’s president, Darren Walker, saw the opportunity to nudge the headquarters, in other ways as well, into the 21st century. And so Ford has now downsized its footprint, making room for other foundations. There’s a new public art gallery, a touch-and-feel garden in the atrium for the blind; and Mr. Walker converted his own office into a pair of conference rooms that can be used by outside nonprofits. The building is rechristened the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice. … [Read More...]
After Significant Decline In Arts Lottery Funding, Finally An Uptick
Total sales were up 5.4% to £3.5bn, according to the latest figures released by National Lottery operator Camelot, translating into £793.2m for good causes. A fifth of this is allocated to the UK’s four Arts Councils, meaning they will collectively receive just under £159m – a 23% increase on the £129m lottery funding they received this time last year. … [Read More...]
Report: UK Arts Funding Shows Significant Class Bias
The plethora of reports and investigations drawn together in the review reveal that people with higher incomes attend arts events in disproportionately high numbers, but they are less likely to actively participate in cultural activities. Participatory arts activities are more popular among those with flexible working schedules and more disposable time than among “those who are both objectively and subjectively ‘busy’”, who opt for less time-consuming forms of leisure. … [Read More...]
MEDIA
How Did The Golden Globes Become The Place To Advocate For Journalists And Their Protection?…
Meryl Streep, basically - and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, sponsors of the Golden Globes and, for years, in real need of burnishing their image. … [Read More...]
In A New, Oscar-Tipped Netflix Movie, The Writer And Director Got To Express The Absurdities Of Her Own Experience…
And that director, Tamara Jenkins, "is getting increasingly frustrated by its billing. 'It’s not just a women’s infertility comedy. It’s about survival. It’s about humanity. It’s about growing. It’s about mortality. It’s about gentrification.'" … [Read More...]
Nigerian Makeup Artists Get To Create Tons Of Gore For Some Of Nollywood’s Thousands Of Films A Year [VIDEO]…
Artist Hakeem Onilogbo - who says they call him "Hakeem Effects" on the set - says, "If you are the kind of person who can't stand blood touching your body, you can't do our job." … [Read More...]
Is HBO’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’ The First Piece Of Socialist Prestige TV?…
All you need is a high-quality cable subscription or high-speed internet and a subscription to HBO's standalone service, and you too can see that "we may balk at seeing the economy of post-war Italy, which operated under quite different conditions, as an object lesson in the failings of capitalism for Americans today. But the way capital works in the neighborhood’s marketplaces should look familiar in many ways." … [Read More...]
Disney Is Joining The Streaming Wars – And It May Seriously Threaten Netflix…
Even Walmart joined with a movie studio to deal with its streaming service - but "two things make Disney stand out: decades of material and deep pockets." … [Read More...]
MUSIC
Study: Trained Musicians Score Higher On Tests Of Thinking
Combining the results of all the tests, "musicians with extensive experience scored significantly higher than non-musicians and less-trained musicians," the researchers write in the journal Psychology of Music. Specifically, they did better on four of the five cognitive skills that the tests measured. … [Read More...]
100 Years Later: Debussy’s Legacy
The better we get to know Debussy, the stronger the contrast between the richness of his musical world and the sordidness of his personal life—and yet, in both music and life, he liked things to be beautiful, rich, and sensually pleasing, and he wanted these things without having to work too hard or too regularly. (Debussy admits that he suffered from a “sickness of delay…and this curious need to never finish” his pieces.) … [Read More...]
The Optics Of A Music Problem
New music has done very little to change the expected optics of classical music, which is why new music’s identity problem is what it is today. Moreover, despite the recent increase in conversation about female, non-binary, transgender, and BAME/ALAANA/diverse composers, the programming of these composers has not significantly increased. … [Read More...]
When Puccini Visited New York
He visited twice, and though he shaped New York opera, he was also shaped by the city. "Puccini’s New York visits were filled with incident and intrigue, success and frustration. They are reminders that golden ages may not always sparkle as brightly to those who live through them." … [Read More...]
You Thought The John Williams And Star Wars Marriage Was Over? Think Again
Disney is never going to let him go. (He wrote the score for the new theme park. Did you know theme parks had scores? Well, they do.) … [Read More...]