Balanchine is an unusual subject for what critics like to call, and I’ll go there, a magisterial biography. He was a shy, somewhat receding figure. He had a facial tic, a nervous fluttering under one eye, that got him called “the rat” as a child. - The New York Times
I read and write about books for fun. And yet, time and again, my mind goes blank during book discussions, and all I can muster up is “Er, I thought the book was good, because …” - LA Review of Books
Art is now viewed as a pretext for collective discourse, raising “issues” that provide the raw material for op-eds, Twitter threads, college seminars, and conference panels, not to mention (dreaded word) post-performance “talkbacks.” But not just any kind of collective discourse. - Salmagundi
With the museum, designed by Thom Mayne, obviously the headliner, OCMA might have shown off its collection as the main exhibition, with perhaps a tangy traveling topical show as an enlivener. Instead, it went with staging a new edition of one of the institution’s heretofore well-regarded series. - The Wall Street Journal
Last week, mere days after long-time director Gaëtane Verna left for a bigger job in the United States, board members resigned en masse, saying interference from Harbourfront made it impossible to fulfill its duties. - The Globe & Mail (Canada)
Duchovny has moved fluidly between social circles, careers, and media. He was well into graduate school, preparing the fancifully titled (but never written) PhD dissertation, “Magic and Technology in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry,” when he took an interest in playwriting. - LA Review of Books
Real hula is primal, archetypal, esoteric and ever- evolving. And it’s now shared digitally all over the world. This is a good thing, because it helps authentic hula spread, not just via more hula schools but also through conferences, theatrical performances and festivals in the 50th state. - Dance Magazine
Every year, the Academy tweaks the rules, trying to improve the controversial and oft-criticized process by which the international nominees are selected: But they won’t get it right until the Academy rethinks the flawed logic behind the category. - Variety
"Unlike the members of the Boston Ballet, who are on season-long salary, local contemporary troupes pay their dancers by the hour for rehearsals and performances." BDT's founder "hopes to put the six-member troupe on salary by next year and hire a development director and a booking agency." - WBUR
The Oscar winner for Slumdog Millionaire said, "As a nation, our two art-forms are theatre, in a middle-class sense, and pop music, because we are extraordinary at it." - The Guardian (UK)
Martial law declaration "grants the country the power to 'evacuate' items of economic, social, and cultural significance. Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk are the four regions specified in Putin’s decree." - Artnet
Mary Gaitskill called Godfrey's Under the Bridge "'a remarkable piece of investigative journalism,' adding that Ms. Godfrey 'allows us to almost see what is essentially unseeable.'" - The New York Times
Hours after the victim went to the station "to report that Moonves had sexually assaulted her in the 1980s ... LAPD Capt. Cory Palka called a CBS executive to alert him to the existence of the report." - Los Angeles Times
