The New York-born, Houston-trained conductor is currently general music director of the Komische Oper Berlin and just completed a term leading Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Gaffigan succeeds Patrick Summers, who departs at the end of this season. - CultureMap Houston
Josephine Flos was rehearsing the opening of “Figure,” a new dance piece created by the fashion designer Lisa Konno in collaboration with the choreographer Peter Leung, that tries to answer a simple question: What if choreography starts with the costumes? - The New York Times
Back in 1930, Gaetano visited Athens with the Italian Navy. And at the Acropolis—the Greek capital’s hilltop covered in ancient architecture—he picked up a small piece of carved marble near the base of the Parthenon, a temple built for the goddess Athena in the fifth century B.C.E. - Smithsonian
“(Mayor Brandon) Johnson’s proposed budget allocates just north of $62 million for (the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events) for next year. That’s a 15% decrease from the nearly $73 million allocated in last year’s budget.” - WBEZ (Chicago)
… in effect, “no comment.” Of 21 organizations WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times approached, only seven completed the survey. One answered part of it, three sent statements, and ten declined to participate or simply didn’t respond. - WBEZ (Chicago)
“By the accounts of many industry insiders, Ellison has been leveraging his family’s extraordinary wealth and access to President Trump to prepare for a buying spree. With the help of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison (the world’s second-richest person), the Silicon Valley scion wants to take on Netflix, Amazon and Apple.” - Variety
“That’s the question on the minds of Hollywood and Wall Street after the company put itself up for sale, citing ‘unsolicited interest’ from ‘multiple parties.’” - TheWrap (Yahoo!)
“’Vibe coding,’ an emerging software development that turns natural language into computer code using artificial intelligence, … was coined ... to describe how artificial intelligence can enable someone to create a new app while being able to ‘forget that the code even exists’.” - The Guardian
“DIA staff are seeking to unionize with AFSCME Cultural Workers United (AFSCME Michigan), a division of the national AFSCME union that represents workers at cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Philadelphia Museum of Art (sic).” - ARTnews
“It was tough on me, but I’m not going to answer any questions about it because I dealt with it. It nearly broke me, and that’s all I’m going to say. You probably know my heart, so you probably know. … Anybody that knows me knows how I believe.” - The Hollywood Reporter
Composer Stephen Schwartz and book writer Joseph Stein spent months on a pre-Broadway tour in 1976 trying to fix the show. It didn’t work, although one song, “Meadowlark,” became a hit. Since a revival in 2002, productions have been trying to address the piece's problems, and now there's a high-profile staging Off-Broadway. - TheaterMania
Roughly speaking, globalization flattens space and pares away cultural particularity; neoliberalism flattens value, reducing everything to its going rate on the market; the internet, and especially social media, flatten transactions and relationships into their barest, most instrumentalized form. - Commonweal
“This is not quite everyday delinquency … but it is a type of delinquency that we do not generally associate with the upper echelons of organized crime,” Laure Beccuau told France Info Radio. - ARTnews
“The Ballet National de Marseille has also taken a bold new direction under the leadership of the experimental collective (LA)Horde, producing edgy performances drawing on internet-native styles like jumpstyle and TikTok choreography. Dancers and choreographers are relocating to the city, too.” - Dance Magazine
