“While the locals flock to the 300 or so venues, they are largely un-visited by tourists and expats because one of the main requirements for a visit is a good knowledge of French. At least that’s what Carl de Poncins says. He quit his job as the marketing director of a multinational company last year to focus on making theatre accessible for English speakers by introducing surtitles.”
How Ballet Dancers Make Pop Music Videos Incomparably Better
“Behold, a brief history of ballet invading pop music.”
Clinging To Timelessness In A Changing Cosmos
“Traditional science has little to offer our longing for permanence, leading many to disenchantment, says commentator Marcelo Gleiser. Can we be scientific and satisfy our desire for transcendence?”
SoCal Arts Groups Courting A New Donor Source: Chinese-Americans
“With a median income that exceeds the national average, and a cultural heritage that prizes the arts, it’s little wonder that Chinese Americans would be seen as a promising source of donations. But there are challenges. Many wealthy Chinese Americans are immigrants who don’t have strong connections to L.A.’s cultural institutions. … [And] for wealthy Chinese Americans living in L.A., arts philanthropy is a relatively new concept.”
The Refugees Who Created The Sound Of Hollywood
Violinist Daniel Hope looks at the composers who fled the Nazis and settled in Los Angeles – and supported themselves by creating a style of music that defined an industry.
Why Zadie Smith Will Not Keep A Diary Ever
“I realize I don’t want any record of my days. I have the kind of brain that erases everything that passes, almost immediately, like that dustpan-and-brush dog in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland sweeping up the path as he progresses along it. I never know what I was doing on what date, or how old I was when this or that happened – and I like it that way.”
When Virtual Reality Becomes Good Enough, Will Masses Of People Just Give Up On Real Life?
“The appeal of these environments is not so much that they help us totally escape reality. Rather, it is that they make us believe that we can recreate and change our own.’ In that way, rather than forcing a mass rejection of society, virtual worlds may open new ways of examining our own.”
Met Opera And ENO Commission Second Work From Nico Muhly
The two companies, which developed and premiered Muhly’s recent Two Boys, will work with the composer on an adaptation of Marnie, Winston Graham’s 1961 novel (made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock) about a woman blackmailed into marrying one of her bosses after she gets caught embezzling.
Those Who Stay: The Lives Of Writers’ Companions
“We often know very little about those who live closely and share the lives of the writers about whom we apparently know so much. Part of this is wilful mythologizing. We like to think of the writer as indestructible as the text, preferring not to imagine who might make them breakfast in the morning or help them put on their shoes when they are too old to manage it by themselves.” A look at “Miss Alice” Lee, Ted Hughes, John Bayley, Leonard Woolf, and Valerie Eliot.
Guthrie Theater Names New Artistic Director
“His name might not have been on the handicappers’ shortlist, but Joseph Haj’s appointment Tuesday as artistic director of the Guthrie Theater brought waves of acknowledgment and praise. ‘He’s a huge player on the national scene – one of the finest theater artists working in America today,’ said [former NEA head of theater] Ralph Remington.”
A Children’s Cartoon Landed This Man In An Iranian Prison
“In 2006, the Iranian artist Mana Neyestani sat down to draw a children’s cartoon for a weekly magazine called Iran Jome. The image showed a 10-year-old boy named Soheil trying to have a conversation with a cockroach in a nonsensical cockroach language. The insect didn’t understand the boy and responded, ‘Namana?’ – which means, ‘What?'”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.18.15
Arts Predispositions III: Noes
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-02-18
From Cariwyl Hebert: Reaching the 97 percent
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2015-02-18
Your Museum as an Essential Community Space
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-02-18
Cleaving to Cleveland: Where I’ll Be on My Winter Workation
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-02-18
[ssba_hide]
National Symphony To Let Eschenbach Go In 2017
“The National Symphony Orchestra announced this morning that Christoph Eschenbach will become Conductor Laureate of the orchestra in the 2017-18 season. In other words, his contract, after what will have been seven seasons as music director of the orchestra and of the Kennedy Center, is not being renewed.”
And Now Random House Will Introduce | An Unpublished Book By Dr. Seuss!
“The manuscript had been in a box that was discovered in the home of Dr. Seuss (otherwise known as Theodore Geisel) in the La Jolla section of San Diego, shortly after his death in 1991, and set aside. In 2013, Mr. Geisel’s widow, Audrey, and longtime secretary and friend, Claudia Prescott, went through the box and found the nearly complete manuscript, along with other unpublished work.”
Paris Museum Shuts Down Without Warning
“It is a sad 20th birthday for the Musée Maillol in Paris, which shut its doors indefinitely this weekend. The museum has posted a message on its website that says the closure is due to planned renovation work, but there is more to the story. On 5 February, the company that manages the museum, Tecniarte, filed for bankruptcy.”
Is This America’s Weirdest Playwriting Professor?
“He asks students to write bad plays, to write plays with their nondominant hands, to write a play that takes five hours to perform and covers a period of seven years. Ms. Satter recalled an exercise in which she had to write a play in a language she barely knew.” Yet his master’s program has been turning out some of New York’s most audacious – and lauded – young playwrights.
Pussy Riot Gets Buried Alive In First English-Language Video
“It’s called ‘I Can’t Breathe,’ and as the title indicates, the song is something of a tribute to Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died last summer after New York Police Department officer placed him in an apparent chokehold. ‘I can’t breathe’ were Garner’s last words, repeated and captured on video.”