ArtsJournal Classic (Text)

“In George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, nobody dies, nobody falls to the ground, nobody falls in love. The only set is the sky-blue backdrop. The women’s costumes, minimal, are white tunics. Yet much does happen. A group of women becomes a vision of pulsating classicism and of gleaming American energy.”

Abi Stafford: “A new director might also spread out roles more evenly. In addition to having happier dancers, I think this would help everyone would perform better. Those who previously carried heavy workloads wouldn’t be dancing injured and exhausted. Dancers who were underutilized would feel more confident and in shape. I’d love to see casting […]

The way to document the finished works hasn’t been completed yet, but each will be accompanied by extensive musical notes, Labanotation — a method for recording dances — interviews with dancers and video from multiple angles. Designs for each dance will be created, though not built. And five to seven years after a work is […]

I’ve run a handful of races per year since my first 5K in 2008, and have done enough theme/costume runs to be used to seeing women (and occasionally men) in fluffy statement skirts—sometimes stiff ballet-inspired tutus, sometimes just sparkly costume skirts (utilitarian running skirts are a different sartorial category.) I stopped thinking of running tutus as […]

“The piece spurring the conversation [at Pacific Northwest Ballet] is RAkU, created in 2011 by Ukranian-born Yuri Possokhov, who danced with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow before becoming the San Francisco Ballet’s resident choreographer. The subject matter is the true story of the Buddhist Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan, which was burned down in 1950 […]

For more than two decades, geographers and sociologists have debated the character and role of cities in globalisation. Historians have been a step behind, producing less and more cautious work on cities and globalisation, and struggling to find readers. The relative silence is notable.

I’ve termed it ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching […]

“In the 1660s, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal speculated, ‘the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.’ Pascal surely knew it was harder than it sounds. But in modern times, the problem seems to have gotten exponentially worse.” What’s more, writes professor Matthew Jordan, […]

Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” movie suggests that the only thing holding back regular-looking women is their belief that looking regular holds them back at all. That attitude puts the onus on individual women to improve their self-esteem instead of criticizing societal beauty standards writ large. The reality is that expectations for female appearances have […]

Without ever intending it, experienced leaders often allow what they know to limit what they can imagine going forward; their knowledge can actually get in the way of innovation. Which is why, to summon the spirit of Proust, it’s so important for leaders to see their company and industry with fresh eyes — which means […]

The Arts Professional Ethics survey tells us that 73% of arts organisation employees consider their employer to be at reputational risk through association with a sponsor or major donor whose own reputation is subject to criticism. That’s a staggering indicator of how uncomfortable we are feeling about particular funding associations right now.

The survey findings raise the question of ‘whose ethics’ arts organisations should adopt. “It is important to look across the whole of society and not the organisation’s own immediate echo chamber to make this judgement,” writes one. Another points out that while public consensus agrees cigarettes shouldn’t be advertised, “it is not yet the case […]

The fall is mainly due to weather problems in Europe, which caused hardships for wine producers in the region. Poor weather conditions including droughts and storms hindered production in the main growing regions of France including Bordeaux and Champagne.

Can the arrival of Western culture in the Middle East be equated simply with European imperialism? Is this how the European bourgeoisie, as Marx would say, ‘creates the world after its own image’? First, let us consider the question of power. The Khedivial Opera House and other new Western-style cultural spaces represented authority to ordinary […]

I think that arts funding applications can become far too much like box-ticking. Companies are trying to present what they think the Arts Council wants – and some people are just better at it than others.

“Brace yourselves for a wave of Godard nostalgia. It’s 50 years since Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and co. closed down the 1968 Cannes film festival in solidarity with student protests in Paris. … Those were the days, eh? When cinema was radical and part of the revolutionary struggle. Nobody embodied that more than Godard. He […]

The investigation did not find “systemic discrimination” that was known to, and tolerated by, senior management. The investigation also largely absolved Laura R. Walker, the president and chief executive of New York Public Radio, who acknowledged last year that she had “prioritized growth, and content and programming, over investment in some of the processes and […]

Appearing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Hank Azaria said, “I think the most important thing is to listen to Indian people and their experience with it. Listening to voices means inclusion in the writers room. I really want to see Indian, south Asian writers in the writers room, genuinely informing whichever direction this […]

“Six news awards were bestowed, with BBC News winning for its reporting on Rohingya refugees in Myanmar and Bangladesh. Among the winners was a Vice News episode on HBO, ‘Charlottesville: Race and Terror.’ Al Jazeera won the sole public service award, for a documentary by Fatma Naib about female genital mutilation in Africa. S-Town, created […]

“Netflix leads with three honorees – A Series of Unfortunate Events starring Neil Patrick Harris, which won for children and youth programming; mockumentary American Vandal about a high school prank; and stand-up special Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King, which touches on the comedian’s struggles as an immigrant. HBO follows with two wins for Issa Rae’s Insecure […]

“On Tuesday, the orchestra announced a new residency at the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music, one similar to those it conducts at Indiana University and in Miami. The project marks the orchestra’s first formal collaboration with the school.”

The Sai Yong Hong Chinese Opera troupe and its fans “are preserving a cornerstone of culture and heritage dating to the seventh-century Tang Dynasty (618 to 907), making it one of the oldest dramatic art forms in the world. Like so much of Chinese opera throughout the world, the performances are a product of a […]

“One thread to keep in mind again is songwriters used to be able to rely on a steady stream of sheet music sales, and then it was album sales, and then it was download sales. As those have dried up, there is more interest by songwriters to make sure that the value of what’s contributed […]

“Especially on Caruso’s breakthrough records, the sound is scratchy, wiry and wobbly. The same holds true for early recordings of Nellie Melba, Luisa Tetrazzini and other luminaries of that era. While there are entrancing hints of astonishing voices, it’s hard to tell what they were really like. If only we could record a singer today […]

Julie Fuchs says that the management of the Hamburg State Opera has informed her that she cannot perform the role of Pamina in this spring’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte because “the artistic integrity of the production cannot be maintained if the soprano singing Pamina is four months pregnant.” Management has replied that German law […]

He began his career as a singer/composer/arranger in the 1950s and ’60s, working with (among others) Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. “Then, in 1971, with the jazz money running thin, Dorough was asked by his boss at the advertising company where he had a day job to set the multiplication tables to music; his boss […]

He began his career at the Boston Phoenix, went on to the San Francisco Examiner (1989-2002; he left as a result of the merger with the Chronicle), and spent seven tumultuous years (2003-2009) at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “during which he developed both a national reputation for arts criticism and more than a few foes […]

A vast quantity of Leonardo’s notes and manuscripts survives, filled with his thoughts on such themes as the motion of water and human anatomy. But there are no intimate letters; there is no emotional self-revelation.

There are slip-ups, and then there’s the CNN Incident. “Many of the obits were filled in with text from Britain’s Queen Mother, who had died the year before, including a description of Dick Cheney as ‘the U.K.’s favorite grandmother.’ Castro was listed as ‘lifeguard, athlete, movie star,’ a description lifted from Ronald Reagan’s bio.”

He led the museum through competing curatorial arguments, staff strikes, and more, while also getting a massive expansion and a boost to the endowment. But it all began with books, and a close relative: “Mr. Oldenburg — whose older brother is the Pop Art sculptor Claes Oldenburg — was a publishing executive when MoMA hired […]

A report prepared by the women’s rights organization the Fawcett Society states that “the discrimination, harassment and structural barriers that women face are too prevalent to be overcome without a direct intervention of this kind.”

“Often seen as one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’, the plot centres on Angelo, a puritan hardliner on a mission to clean up the city he is put in charge of, and the sister of a man he sentences to death, Isabella. After pleading for her brother, Angelo offers to save him in return for sex. […]

Elif Batuman meets some of the actors who play fake family members, the clients who hire them, and the agency entrepreneurs who bring client and erstwhile family together.

“In a news release, the [Little Rock] nonprofit cited ‘inability to reach its projected goals for charitable giving and ticket sales.’ … The Rep described its future as ‘under evaluation.'”

Where would British theatre be without him? Quite possibly in a more interesting place. Of course, we are blessed to have all those wonderful plays, but the success of Shakespeare has created a gold standard by which all British theatre is calibrated. He set us on a path of literary theatre that still dominates today. […]

“Art lending libraries function like traditional book libraries: individuals can borrow an artwork, enjoy it in their own home, and return it by a due date with little to no fee. They have a decades-long history on university campuses, but they seem to be gaining popularity among museums, public libraries, and nonprofits.”

It may not be a new development at this point, but it remains true. “No matter where they are from originally, they like to live and work in the German capital, producing art even if they don’t show it there. Having solid galleries and museums certainly helps, but it may be more a function of […]

If we can’t rely on what they say to get a clear sense of how Facebook et al see themselves and the way they are reshaping the world, then what clues do we have? The biggest and most concrete are found not in any online platform, but in their buildings.

Museums have long dealt with unauthorized augmentations of their exhibitions, such as unofficial tours, but technology has opened up new possibilities for activists and art enthusiasts eager to have a part in shaping the museum-going experience.

“A deeply layered, rigorously controlled formal structure undermined by a strange embarrassing whimsy occurs in almost every painting. While accepted in outlier artists like James Castle, or (more aptly for the 1930s) like Henri Rousseau, it is a quality that mainstream art has tended to eschew, until recently. … This contradictory dynamic of wacky sincerity […]

“On the occasion of the four-hundredth anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, New Yorker writers” – Elif Batuman, Richard Brody, Larissa MacFarquhar, Vinson Cunningham, Rebecca Mead, Philip Gourevitch, Louis Menand, and others – “share their experiences of reading, watching, studying, performing, memorizing, and falling in love with the work of the Bard.”

Mathematics and poetry are both “formats that can convey multiple meanings.” In mathematics, a single object or idea might take different forms. A quadratic equation, for example, can be understood in terms of its algebraic expression, perhaps y=x2+3x-7, or in terms of its graph, a parabola. Henri Poincaré, a French polymath who laid the foundations […]

Michael Cunningham: “The AIDS epidemic didn’t mean the end of dancing, or sex, or drugs. It didn’t have much effect at all on the general interest in youth, beauty and money. But it’s putting it mildly to say that this new guest, the silently grinning one standing by itself in a corner, dankened and befouled […]

“Tokyo-based designer Kosuke Takahashi has redesigned the tactile script to make it readable for both visually impaired and sighted individuals. His new typeface, Braille Neue, updates the nearly 200 century-old system by superimposing its raised dots onto carefully configured letterforms, allowing it to be understood by both sight and touch.”

“Newish LA Weekly editor Darrick Rainey and publisher Brian Calle run what is perhaps the most on-edge paper at this moment in American journalism. In December of last year, Calle – formerly the head of the libertarian op-ed pages for the Orange County Register – and a group of investors under the name Semanal Media […]