Roslyn Sulcas: "As with the funeral rites for Queen Elizabeth II in September, the choreography of ritual surrounding the coronation was extraordinarily powerful. Almost no gesture was spontaneous; … the intent and meaning of each moment was as deliberate as an intricate dance." - The New York Times
Dancers and choreographers often become unintentional collectors, accumulating valuable records of an art form with few tangible traces. And once artists are gone, families are left to be caretakers of dance history. - The New York Times
Absolutely, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is expanding the stories being told there to include Blacks, Native Americans, and even LGBTQ people. CEO Cliff Fleet rejects conservative criticism, saying that the Foundation is presenting "fact-based history. … Everything is going to be what actually happened." - The New York Times
“This is hands down the best time to be in Hawaii, and to be able to see that the Hawaiian people are thriving: in hula, in our culture, in our language, in our different traditional practices." - The New York Times
"Citing a cost of between $80,000 and $100,000, Premier Chris Minns, whose Labor Party defeated the conservative Coalition government in a state election in March, argued the financial burden on taxpayers would have been significant and said the sails were being lit too often." - The Guardian
Every piano has a noticeably different “character” of sound. It’s the kind of thing you might think you need training to hear, but then when you’re in the room hearing a pair of pianos, it’s glaringly clear to any ear. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Penguin Random House will release En agosto nos vemos (We'll See Each Other in August) throughout Latin America in 2024. The roughly 150-page book will consist of five separate sections about a protagonist named Ana Magdalena Bach (no relation to the composer). No English version has been announced. - The Guardian
"Stuart Murphy, who steps down later this year, said three potential bases would be selected by the end of May and a winner chosen by the end of this year, ... (and) that Bristol, Birmingham and Nottingham were also in the running." - The Guardian
The two oval-shaped murals, nearly eight feet tall, are part of a set of eight painted by artist Winold Reiss in the 1930s for a Longchamps restaurant on the ground floor of the skyscraper. They were lost when the eatery was remodeled in the 1960s. - The New York Times
A visitor described as an "elderly person" vandalized Miriam Cahn's painting fuck abstraction!, which the artist and museum say is a response to human rights abuses by Russian troops in Ukraine but which conservative politicians and activists say promotes pedophilia. Cahn has decided to let the purple paint remain. - ARTnews
On the last day of April, Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed a bill funding the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, calling public broadcasting an "outdated system" and complaining of indoctrination, the over-sexualization of our children." Among the pernicious influences he cited was Clifford the Big Red Dog. - Deadline
The opera is based on the memoir of Omar Ibn Said, a scholar who was abducted in Senegal in 1807 and sold into slavery in Charleston, where it premiered last year at Spoleto Festival USA. Finalists were Tyshawn Sorey's Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) and Jerrilynn Patton's Perspective. - The Post and Courier (Charleston)
"Sanaz Toossi’s English has won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Set in an English language class in Karaj, Iran, the drama quietly unpacks the aspirations and disappointments of Iranians living under the Islamic Republic in the months leading up to the 2009 Green Movement." - TheaterMania
"Washington University professor Carl Phillips has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his most recent book, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020. The collection chronicles an era of American culture roiled by crises of politics, identity and the pandemic." - St. Louis Public Radio
