“The elderly man was traveling from Kassel to Düsseldorf on February 15 when he switched trains at the city of Hamm and forgot to bring his precious cargo with him.” The ten-inch-tall jug, part of Picasso’s Hibou (Owl) series, is worth more than €10,000. – Deutsche Welle
This African Country Has A Stultifying Theatre Culture. Here’s How To Change That
“Attend three and you will start feeling the monotony in all of it; it is like each performance, each story, is the same,” writes Malawian theatre artist Isaac Mafuel. The problem, he says, is that theatre there has been used primarily as a tool for teaching schoolkids English as a second language, not as entertainment (let alone serious art), and Mafuel offers some ideas for changing that. – HowlRound
Theatre Made By Ex-Inmates To Show Outsiders That Prison Is Not Like ‘Orange Is The New Black’
Matt Trueman meets the women of the company Clean Break and playwright Luke Barnes, who talk about their scripts and the work they produce both inside and outside prisons. – The Guardian
Why Readers And Viewers Love Stories About Real-Life Scams
People seem to devour articles, books, and documentaries about the likes of the Fyre Festival and Theranos; Bernie Madoff and Enron are household names. “Reminding ourselves that sometimes liars do get caught and sometimes thieves are punished makes it easier to believe it could happen again. What we like about stories about scammers, I think, is born of the place where envy meets outrage: It’s incredibly unfair, and definitely evil, but also, why didn’t I think of that?” – The Cut
Why Doesn’t Dance Have Preview Runs The Way Theatre Does?
“Money is a factor. But even a few extra zeroes wouldn’t necessarily change the creative process for concert work, where priorities tend to revolve around giving an idea its fullest expression, not how it will be received by an audience.” – Dance Magazine
Perry Wolff, Producer Of Groundbreaking TV Documentaries, Dead At 97
Among his most famous and historic programs were the 1962 Tour of the White House with Jackie Kennedy; Hunger in America (1968), which shocked the public and led to changes in federal policy; The Selling of the Pentagon (1971), which infuriated the Nixon Administration and helped establish important First Amendment protections; the seven-part Of Black America (1968); and You and the Commercial, about television advertising. – The New York Times
College Gallery Shows Art Incorporating Confederate Imagery. Students Get Angry. Artists Are Stunned. Show Is Removed.
“One installation in the show [at Mary Baldwin University] included a bathroom sink with air fresheners — shaped like the silhouettes of statues of Confederate leaders — hanging from it. A medicine cabinet was mounted above the sink, and, inside, pill bottles containing watermelon seeds were labeled ‘make as directed.'” (A colleague had warned one of the artists, “The minute they know you’re white, and they see those watermelons, it’s all over.”) – The Washington Post
Sarasota Orchestra Asks To Put New Concert Hall In City Park
“The Sarasota Orchestra, which has kept its supporters guessing for years about the possible location of a new concert hall, made a pitch to Sarasota city commissioners Tuesday night to build a new performance, administrative and education facility in the city-owned Payne Park. The orchestra … began discussing a move from its longtime home near the Sarasota Bayfront more than 20 years ago.” – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
What The Buffalo Philharmonic Is Doing To Increase Diversity Among Musicians And Audiences
In addition to performing free concerts for every elementary school student in the city’s public school system every year, the orchestra has a Diversity Council (created in 2016) that provides scholarships to the BPO Summer Studio program, sponsors local competitors and winners in the Sphinx Competition, and offers chamber concerts in local minority-community churches. In addition, “last year, Jaman Dunn was named the BPO’s first-ever assistant conductor and outreach coordinator.” (text and audio) – WBFO (Buffalo)
Seattle Symphony Opens New High Tech Space To Explore Future Of Music
The Constellation system relies on 62 overhead loudspeakers; 10 compact subwoofers; four floor box speakers; two PA speakers; 28 miniature overhead microphones; four handheld microphones; and four headset microphones. “While taking and creating a space that is very much trying to leverage this technology to open new possibilities, the room needed to feel like it could hold its own architectural character, in a way that wasn’t about just coming in and seeing all the gadgets on the ceiling,” – GeekWire
The Market (And There Is One) For Hitler’s Paintings
It’s a niche market, to be sure, and one that major auction houses and dealers stay far away from. But there’s enough demand to make it worthwhile for a few to sell Hitler’s handiwork — or to forge it. And, according to one auctioneer, that demand doesn’t come from right-wing extremists. – The Art Newspaper
Energy Company Gives “Transformational” $10 Million Gift To Banff Centre For Indigenous Leadership
The money, doled out over five years, will go toward Indigenous leadership programs and social impact and social innovation courses. It will help pay for faculty, program design and scholarships for those from “remote and under-served communities.” – CBC
Comedian Brody Stevens Dead Of Suicide At 48
“His stand-up style was a seemingly contradictory mix of confrontation and self-deprecation. He would often mock the fact that he was not a household name and had managed to land only small parts in television shows and movies [such as the Hangover series]. … He was widely admired by other comedians for his willingness to venture into unsafe territory.” – The New York Times
Digital Sign-Language-To-English Translation – Can It Work?
There have been a few previous devices developed using gloves with motion sensors, and a team at MSU has invented a new one using an internal camera and deep-learning AI software. But many in the Deaf community, including Prof. Christian Vogler of Gallaudet, are skeptical, pointing out the complex difficulties of translating ASL to English. – Smithsonian Magazine
When A Linguist Discovers A Sign Language Developed In Isolation, Will She Kill It Just By Studying It?
“Given the high stakes, and the potential to exert unwanted influence on these fragile languages, researchers have been arguing for years about how to handle them.” Some follow a “prime directive,” trying not to have any effect whatsoever; others argue that keeping deaf villagers isolated from a national sign language smothers their prospects, keeoping them poor and isolated. It turns out, Michael Erard reports, that these languages aren’t really so fragile. – Digg
Orlando Ballet Will Stop Charging Dancers To Audition
Executive director Shane Jewell, responding to a previous Dance Magazine post: “Sara’s argument that it’s unfair that dancers are the only members of the company that have to pay for a job interview is a valid one. As she suggests, Orlando Ballet did not charge me $30 when I interviewed for the role of executive director last year. … But issues with charging dancers to audition go much deeper.” – Dance Magazine
A Million New Visitors Have Come To National Portrait Gallery To See Paintings Of Barack And Michelle Obama
“The Obama portraits have catapulted the Smithsonian museum to the top tier of the city’s attractions by dramatically increasing attendance. The Old Patent Office Building — the historic home to the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum — had a record-breaking 2.3 million visitors in 2018, about a million more than in 2017.” – The Washington Post
Makers Of ‘Fortnite’ Sued Over Yet Another Dance, This One By Basketball Players
“The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Maryland, accuses Epic Games Inc. of unfairly profiting from the ‘Running Man Challenge’ dance that Jared Nickens and Jaylen Brantley performed in social media videos and on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2016. … [Other artists] also have sued Epic Games over other dances depicted in the shooting game. Celebratory dances in Fortnite are called ’emotes.'” – Yahoo! (AP)
Russian Choir In Cathedral Sings About Nuking America To Dust; Viral Video Causes Consternation
In a performance at the city’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral on Feb. 23, “Defend the Fatherland Day,” the St. Petersburg Concert Choir sang a cheerful little ditty about a submarine headed toward D.C. with “a dozen hundred-megaton payloads.” (A few days earlier, state TV had shown a map of the U.S. marking possible nuclear targets.) Said ditty was written in 1980 by a Soviet dissident and was intended (then) as a parody of militaristic propaganda; its reappearance now has causes a minor uproar. – Global Voices
Choreographer Angie Pittman On Dance As A Community Experience
“I used to look up line dancing videos on YouTube and learn them in my living room by myself. And I was like, that’s one way to do it, but also, this form is meant to be done in community, so you should go do it in community.” – The New York Times
Canadian Comedians Fear Collapse As Canadian Comedy Channel Shifts Focus
The blowback has been brewing online among comedians, many of whom rely heavily on the royalties and exposure provided by the station to make ends meet, says the Canadian Association of Stand-Up Comedians. “For some people, this is their primary source of income,” said Sandra Battaglini, a Toronto comic and head of the two-year-old association. “It’s devastating for people, because these changes have already started happening, and people have stopped being played.” – CBC
Fool’s Gold at Metropolitan Museum: Tom Campbell’s Golden Coffin & Golden Parachute
The hits to the Metropolitan Museum’s finances attributable to its previous director, Tom Campbell, just keep on coming. – Lee Rosenbaum
Close-Up Worlds
Bill Young/Colleen Thomas & Co. February 22 & 23
The wall to our right is mirrored; a trio can become a sextet, a duet a foursome. The wood floor — golden brown, unmarred, and glowing — plays a starring role. It all but invites a dancer to rest on it. Or fall to it, roll across it, and spring back up and into the arms of a colleague in one seamless maneuver. – Deborah Jowitt
“Puttin’ On The Ritz” In Moscow
Here’s a Flash Mob video featuring a huge number of Muscovites having more fun than may be legal in Russia, dancing to the most joyous and metrically challenging song Irving Berlin ever composed. – Doug Ramsey