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Dance
At What Point Is A Dance Move Cultural Appropriation?
“People think that all you have to do is have certain postures, wear certain clothes, dance to certain music” to make it hip hop, Michele Byrd-McPhee says, pointing out that simply donning toe shoes and tutus and dancing to Tchaikovsky does not a ballerina make. “It’s that kind of disconnect from the origins of the culture and the people who created it that’s problematic.” – Dance Magazine
Dance Podcasts Are Proliferating, And Here Are Dance Magazine’s Top Three
Do you want a serious look at the world of dance; a more lighthearted, behind-the-scenes glance; or some potentially weird but eclectic and innovative podcasts involving hosts and guests? This list tells you which one to download for that commute to the studio (or, er, the office). – Dance Magazine
She Had Trouble Finding Dance Classes Online — So She Founded A $600 Million Startup
Payal Kadakia, New Jersey-born daughter of two Indian immigrant chemists, got a degree from MIT while setting up one Indian dance group and worked a professional job at Bain & Company while launching and running another. In a Q&A, she recounts how, as a way to address one of her biggest frustrations as a New York dancer, she built ClassPass. – The New York Times
What’s Going On In This Merce Cunningham Masterpiece? Nothing.
“Nothing but the world outside the human one.” Alastair Macaulay offers an analysis (if that’s the right word for a Cunningham piece) of the 1958 work Summerspace. – The New York Times
How The Royal Ballet Trains Pigeons To Play The Title Roles In A Frederick Ashton Ballet
The eponymous avians in Ashton’s The Two Pigeons are meant to be living symbols of the relationship between the two human leads, called the Young Man and the Young Girl. Reporter Jennifer Lu talks with Emma Hills, who trains the pigeons who have been doing the show for a decade, about how she teaches them and what mischief they occasionally get up to. – Pointe Magazine
Ideas
Meritocracy Is Making Us All — Even The Rich — Miserable
“Meritocracy has created a competition that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win. But what, exactly, have the rich won? Even meritocracy’s beneficiaries now suffer on account of its demands. It ensnares the rich just as surely as it excludes the rest, as those who manage to claw their way to the top must work with crushing intensity, ruthlessly exploiting their expensive education in order to extract a return.” – The Atlantic
Facial Recognition Tech Is Being Used Everywhere. What Does It Mean For Us?
“We are just as ignorant about what has been happening to our faces when they’re scanned by the property developers, shopping centres, museums, conference centres and casinos that have also been secretly using facial recognition technology on us, according to the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch.” – The Guardian
Facial Recognition Software Doesn’t Just Identify You, It Can Tell How You’re Feeling
Amazon’s new use case takes Rekognition to a new level. Now you can now use the software to take a pretty good guess at what a person in an image or a video is feeling. What could possibly go wrong? – Shelly Palmer
Phone Booths Are Mostly Dead, But Not All Dead, In Spain
Is the phone booth a thing of art? Of commerce? Or is it just a piece of trash from an older age – a piece of trash no one, including the phone companies, wants to deal with? While Spaniards use their mobiles to call someone around 100 million times a day, and use WhatsApp for messages 125 million times a day, the number of phone calls from or between pay phones is a low 6,180. And then there are the reasons to use them: The authorities say it’s “to send a threat, claim a debt in an unorthodox way or for a date between lovers or adulterers who must hide their relationship. The advantage of the phone booth over the mobile is that the calls leave no trace.” – El País
The Friends Who All Dress Up As The Same Movie Character
Yes, that finishes as “stay together,” of course. Though it’s a bit unusual in the cosplay community, these women have a different idea. “It was just so nice to share our resources. It made both of us so much better at what we were doing. … Actually, all three of us took ridiculous pictures of us eating peanut butter sandwiches [like Black Widow does in Endgame]. We weren’t like, ‘Oh, she stole my idea.’ No one stole anyone’s idea. We all watched the same movie.” – The Atlantic
Issues
Busting Convention: Boomers Had Almost Nothing To Do With The 1960s
Louis Menand: “There are many canards about that generation, but the most persistent is that the boomers were central to the social and cultural events of the nineteen-sixties. Apart from being alive, baby boomers had almost nothing to do with the nineteen-sixties.” – The New Yorker
Why Is There So Much Weird Stuff In English Cathedrals These Days?
Rochester Cathedral has mini-golf (okay, an “educational adventure golf course’). Norwich Cathedral has a “helter-skelter” (a tarted-up sliding board), ostensibly so that visitors can get a better look at the exquisite medieval ceiling before sliding down. Derby Cathedral got in hot water last year when its free movie series got a bit too racy. What’s going on? Well, last fall the Archbishop of Canterbury said that people should “have fun in cathedrals,” but, in fact, some serious structural and governance issues are in play. – The Economist
England’s Arts Funding Agency May Have To Cut Commitments Already Made To Largest Institutions
A group of about 800 so-called National Portfolio Organisations — from giants like the Royal Opera House and Southbank Centre and its residents such as the National Theatre (who receive tens of millions of pounds a year) to smaller regional institutions — are guaranteed funding from Arts Council England on a rolling multi-year basis. But ACE is warning that proposed in the Conservative government’s next budget would mean that those funding guarantees couldn’t be met. – Arts Professional
Native Hawaiians Protest Plans To Build Telescope Atop The Islands’ Highest Mountain
Native Hawaiians agree that Mauna Kea connects humanity to the universe — as an umbilical cord between Earth and space. The peak at Mauna Kea is the “highest point where land touches the sky — where the two deities, Sky Father and Earth Mother, meet,” said Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, 68 , a retired cultural studies professor and elder in the fight against the telescope. To Native Hawaiians, putting a giant telescope on their sacred mountain is a desecration. – Los Angeles Times
Read The Art Spiegelman Essay On Comics That He Says Marvel Refused To Print
“I turned the essay in at the end of June, substantially the same as what appears here. A regretful Folio Society editor told me that Marvel Comics (evidently the co-publisher of the book) is trying to now stay “apolitical”, and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance. I was asked to alter or remove the sentence that refers to the Red Skull or the intro could not be published.” – The Guardian
Media
Robert De Niro’s Company Sues Former Exec For $6 Million
Until April (when she left amid worries about “corporate sabotage”), Chase Robinson was “vice president of production and finance’ at De Niro’s Canal Productions, drawing a $300,000 salary. Canal’s suit accuses Robinson of embezzling cash, using corporate credit cards for lavish spending on hotels and meals, taking personal trips using De Niro’s frequent flyer miles — and, on top of it all, rarely coming to work and spending what time she was in the office binge-watching Netflix. – Variety
YouTube Powered Brazil’s Turn To The Hard Right
“Members of the nation’s newly empowered far right — from grass-roots organizers to federal lawmakers — say their movement would not have risen so far, so fast, without YouTube’s recommendation engine. New research has found they may be correct … [and] a New York Times investigation in Brazil found that, time and again, videos promoted by the site have upended central elements of daily life.” – The New York Times
Why Isn’t Hollywood Actively Taking On Climate Change?
So why aren’t there more realistic, or semi-realistic, or, dare it be suggested, hopeful films about climate change? Because, several directors said, it is hard to find financing for movies that risk being real downers and challenge audiences to change their ways. Because mass extinction is soul-crushing and people seek out entertainment to escape. – The New York Times
Annabella Sciorra May Yet Testify In Weinstein Trial
Sciorra has said that Weinstein attacked her in 1993, which is outside of the statute of limitations – but the prosecutors want her to be able to tell the jury her story anyway. “Prosecutors hope that Ms. Sciorra’s testimony will strengthen the case, particularly the predatory sexual assault counts, by establishing a pattern of behavior.” – The New York Times
Endeavor Content, An ‘Aggressive’ Arm Of William Morris, Owns Parts Of Hit TV Shows, Irking Writers
The company is part of Killing Eve, the movie Book Club, and around 100 other media properties, to date. Their spin: “In a world of media consolidation at an unprecedented scale, the size and scale and reach of media companies today is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and the idea of ownership and creative freedom is under threat. … So how do we help create an alternative and help create leverage for people?” (The Writers Guild of America isn’t signing onto that, of course.) – Los Angeles Times
Music
Pittsburgh Opera: Our Audience Is Growing, But…
“Here there’s a problem where even when the community values this, they think it’ll be supported by wealthy industrialists. But those days are over, and we need to say we’ve got a lot of wealth in this community. How can we get people to support the diversity of arts and communities? We need you to ante up.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Cultural Appropriation Wars Come To Bang On A Can
The controversy at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival (aka Banglewood) in Massachusetts broke out over the use of didgeridoos in the 1990 work Thousand Year Dreaming by 80-year-old New Zealand-American composer Annea Lockwood. Several of the festival’s young Fellows raised concerns about Lockwood’s deployment of the indigenous Australian instrument, including, in this performance, its being played by women (traditionally taboo). But those concerns were not shared by everyone there. – New Sounds (WNYC)
The Nashville Symphony Is ‘Taking A Break’ From Its Free Day Of Music
The claim: The event takes up an incredible amount of time and money, and the symphony says “our understanding of our role in the community has begun to change.” Therefore, “the staff is evaluating [Free Music Day] and a lot of other programs to determine if they are the best offerings for listeners and performers.” – The Tennessean
How Fandom Endangers Women Musicians
Singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus: “Music is magic, yes, and many people use it as an outlet for their animal emotions, but I just wish people would let loose their feelings while still keeping their behavior under control.” (Examples of said behavior include a man chasing a musician down the street, screaming, “I would never chase you!”) – Nylon
The Weirdly Compelling Time-Lapse Video Of Milwaukee Construction Crews Moving A Symphony Wall
No, really, go watch the crews move the wall – moved so more musicians could eventually fit on the stage-to-be – and enjoy: “It took about six hours for construction crews to move a seven-story 625-ton wall 35 feet that will eventually be part of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s new home.” – WTMJ-TV (Milwaukee)
People
Leonard Bernstein’s Long-Lost Late-Life Love Letters
Kunihiko Hashimoto, then a 26-year-old insurance worker, attended a New York Philharmonic concert in Tokyo in 1979, and he went backstage afterward to meet Bernstein, soon to turn 61. They fell in love, and though Lenny was never one for monogamy, letters in Library of Congress archives show that they remained involved for the rest of Bernstein’s life. And the relationship became professional as well as personal. – The Observer (UK)
How Kristi Edmunds Disrupts The Arts World
“In my late twenties (living in Portland, Oregon as an artist and emerging curator), I recognized that the art institutions at the time had settled on mission-priorities that would follow the conventions of art-historical successes which were long proven and regionally familiar. This left a rather large gulf between the ideas and work of living artists, and the towering significance of the established canon.” – Authority Magazine
500 Years Later, We’re Still Fascinated By Leonardo (With Good Reason)
“His inventions and scientific theories, as well as his painstaking painting technique, were all of a piece: science and art were not separate modes of thinking. His investigations into geology and botany were not digressions but crucial to understand universal principles that he incorporated in his paintings. Multidisciplinary and boundlessly inquisitive, Leonardo used all that he learned to create sublime art that still captivates.” – Clyde Fitch Report
Paule Marshall, Influential Author Of ‘Brown Girl, Brownstones,’ Has Died At 90
Marshall, the child of immigrants from Barbados, wrote novels and short stories that connected the US African American community and the communities of the Caribbean – and influenced many writers who came after her, including Angela Flouroy, author of The Turner House. – The New York Times
Katreese Barnes, Musical Force Behind The Scenes Of Careers And ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Has Died At 56
Barnes served as a studio musician and producer for some of the most popular acts of the 1990s, including Roberta Flack, Sting, and Chaka Khan – and she propelled SNL to early viral fame on YouTube with her music for the song (whose title The New York Times will not print) “Dick in a Box.” – The New York Times
Theatre
Lynn Nottage On Staying Political
Nottage is the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: for Sweat and Ruined. The former reached Broadway, while the latter – a story about women in war-torn Congo – played a sustained Off-Broadway run. As a result of where they were first staged, the plays have had somewhat different lives after their New York engagements. – The Stage
San Francisco’s Commercial Theatre Titans Settle Years-Long Legal Battle
“By terms of a settlement announced Monday, Aug. 19, [Carole] Shorenstein Hays will give up her half ownership of SHN, operator of the Orpheum and Golden Gate Theatre. [She] will retain her ownership of the Curran as a separate entity. [Hays and former business partner Robert Nederlander] are now free to compete for Broadway productions, a sticking point to their prior arrangement that had led to years of costly lawsuits over noncompete clauses between the theaters.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Ruth McGowan On How To Curate Shows For A Fringe Festival
“How, then, do you avoid the cringingly awful? The shows so bad you feel you’re never going to get those precious moments of your finite life back again? McGowan smiles and looks up – as she does when she’s thinking or, as is most likely in this case, remembering just such a show.” – Irish Times
London’s National Theatre Says 35 Percent Of Its Plays By Living Writers Were By Women Last Season
This figure is still 15% short of the NT’s stated 50/50 target for gender representation, which the theatre has said it will achieve by 2021. It is also below the 42% figure recorded in 2016/17. However, the theatre argued that it is still “on course” to meet its targets. – The Stage
The Director Happily Tackling Six Hours Of Shaw
Kimberley Rampersad was a dancer who started to sense that dance jobs would dry up – and it was time to move into directing. Now, she’s got Man and Superman, all six hours of it, on her plate, thanks to her previous work – and to Mark Rylance. – The New York Times
Visual
What, Exactly, Is A Museum? International Council Of Museums Is Having A Bitter Fight Over That Question
“On 12 August, 24 national branches [of ICOM] — including those of France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Canada and Russia, along with five museums’ international committees — requested the postponement of a vote on a revised definition of museums.” Said one veteran art journalist of the proposed revision, “At first, I thought this was a joke”; the chair of the International Committee of Museology maintains that not even the Louvre would qualify as a museum under the proposed revision. – The Art Newspaper
San Francisco Mural Controversy Is An Example Of Public Responsibility For Art
Charles Desmarais: “As important as the Arnautoff murals are, as art and as American history, the issues raised by the attempt to destroy or obscure them are larger than this single controversy. They have to do with what I think of as a kind of cultural duty of care — with the avoidance of negligence or harm to works of art maintained by an organization for the public good. – San Francisco Chronicle
The Forgotten New York Photographer Finally Getting (Some Of) The Attention He Deserves
Alvin Baltrop only had a few shows while he was alive, one of which was at a gay nightclub. Now that he’s getting more attention, we can see some of the “real” New York of the 1970s and 1980s – the impoverished city that couldn’t rebuild a collapsed West Side highway, the piers where the Whitney Museum now stands, the cruising that happened under those piers, the time between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. (Oh, and they tell a lot of architectural history, too.) – The Guardian (UK)
Work Is Now Scheduled To Begin On Reconstructing Notre Dame In 2020 – But Has The Lead Danger Truly Gone?
Work stopped entirely on July 25 to ensure that tests were done and the workers were safe, because many tons of lead burned or melted when the spire fell in the fire in April. But work will resume Monday, and “after reassuring measurements on air quality, the debate focused on the concentration of lead on soils around Notre-Dame and in some schools on the left bank.” – Le Monde (France)
How Have Our Nudes Changed In The Last 50 Years?
Bodies have changed – we’re bigger, with a lot more markings – and times have changed: It’s actually less legal to be nude on national beaches now than it was during the summer that saw both Woodstock and Altamont, though women can legally go topless now in a lot more states. – The New York Times
Words
How Women Authors Still Struggle To Be Taken Seriously
“There is anecdotal evidence that gender affects every step of the publishing process. In 2015, Catherine Nichols submitted proposals for a novel to agents and publishers under both her own name and a “homme de plume.” Her male alter ego, George, received far more interest: His manuscript was requested 17 times, compared with two for hers. The tone of the responses was also different.” – The Atlantic
France’s War To Keep Other Languages Out Of French
“There’s a tendency among some Anglophones to see the official struggle to resist English as somewhat hysterical. That attitude partly reflects the smugness of a people who increasingly expect to see their language everywhere they go—and who are accustomed to English’s ability to shamelessly gobble up terms from other tongues. If you see France’s efforts as a celebration of linguistic biodiversity, however, then the ingenuity employed in French’s defense make more sense.” – CityLab
The World Seems To Be In Love With Long – Really, Really Long – Audiobooks And Book Theatre
War and Peace? Bring it! Every single word of Silas Marner? Amateurs! What about 72 hours of Sherlock Holmes? Bliss! “‘There is an appetite for the epic that has simply surpassed our expectations,’ says Celia De Wolff, who has produced and directed a marathon adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, to be broadcast over three days” in Britain. “Event radio like this gives the audience a sense of achievement.” – The Observer (UK)
An Author Won A Prize For Her Debut Novel, And She Split The Prize With The Other Nominees
Olivia Laing won a £10,000 prize for her novel Crudo over the weekend. But Laing said, in her acceptance speech, “Crudo was written against a kind of selfishness that’s everywhere in the world right now, against an era of walls and borders, winners and losers. Art doesn’t thrive like that and I don’t think people do either. We thrive on community, solidarity and mutual support and as such, and assuming this is agreeable to my fellow authors, I’d like the prize money to be split between us, to nourish as much new work as possible.” – The Guardian (UK)
Orwell Is Being Rewritten Into Newspeak (On Amazon)
Sure, some of this is funny – “One edition of Animal Farm: A Fairy Story referred to itself on the back cover as Animals Farm: A Fair Story. The preface referred to another great Orwell work, Homage to Catalonia, as Homepage to Catalonia – but overall, not so great (or funny). “Until recently, improving Orwell was not a practical business proposition. Then Amazon blew the doors off the heavily curated literary world.” – The New York Times