Since the very first Butoh performance, in 1959, “queer themes and imagery have been reoccurring, if not instrumental, in Butoh. The concepts of otherness and ambiguity, particularly with respect to gender identity and sexuality, permeate its narratives. Drag, androgyny and fluidity are staple elements.” – The New York Times
The Business Of Virtual Cannes
Cannes is online, and so are movie sales, in two digital marketplaces. “Both digital markets were initially conceived as being mainly initiatives to reconnect industry players. Three months later, many companies have decided as push comes to shove to launch at least some of their bigger projects now rather than wait for the fall.” – Variety
Thousands Of UK Creatives Call For Action Against ‘Systemic Racism’ In British TV And Movies
The open letter says, in part, “A direct line can be drawn from the stories and voices that are silenced and ignored, to the discrimination and biases that are pervasive in the entertainment industry and larger society. This moment in history presents an opportunity for you to be a positive partner for change.” – The Hollywood Reporter
September 11 Memorial Furloughs Or Lays Off Almost 60 Percent Of Its Staff
The museum is facing a deficit of $45 million over the next year with the massive loss of ticket revenue – and that’s a big problem: “Earned revenue, mainly museum admissions, covers more than 95 percent of the memorial and museum’s annual expenses, the officials said.” – The New York Times
American Museum Of Natural History To Remove Teddy Roosevelt Statue
One suspects it might otherwise have been targeted for a less gentle removal. The museum says it’s the statue, not the man, that it objects to, but critics see TR “as an imperialist whose role leading troops fighting in the Caribbean ultimately resulted in American expansion into colonies there and in the Pacific including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba and the Philippines.” – The New York Times
Kristin Scott Thomas Says That These Days, She’s Longing For Massive Film Productions
Working on a socially distant set hasn’t made her exactly content. “How are you going to get hair and makeup done when you can’t get near each other?” – The Observer (UK)
How Spike Lee Movies Saved At Least One Life
No matter what a mother says, Spike Lee’s movies might just have more impact. “As I watched the police take the life from Radio Raheem, everything my mother had been trying to tell me was suddenly crystallized. For me, Do the Right Thing took the police from an intellectual threat to an existential one. The police, I realized, could kill me … and no one would say a word.” – The New York Times
Learning From A Vanished Mural Of Racial Violence
John Wilson’s student mural The Incident made such an impression on David Siquieros that the famous muralist and head of Mexico’s Department for the Protection and Restoration of Murals requested it be preserved. It was, for a few years. Now, “with each passing day, it gains newfound relevance and newfound pain — its act of reckoning is far from done.” – Hyperallergic
Sally Banes, Distinguished Dance Critic And Historian, 69
Banes’ writing “paired a vivid and inquisitive approach with a lack of agenda and a belief that dance was a crucial part of cultural history.” – The New York Times
The Future Of Art: Human Scale
It doesn’t seem clear what will happen until there’s a vaccine, but perhaps – “Museums will reopen, and galleries can stop pretending their online viewing rooms are actual shows. Exhibitions may be fewer, run longer, borrow less from abroad. Collections will be swapped, tours will be wider, perhaps there will be more slow-looking shows like the Courtauld’s Manetin 2004, which concentrated so deeply on one pair of paintings.” – The Observer (UK)
Gathering And Honoring – And Playing – The Music Of The Death Camps
Francesco and Grazia Lotoro have spent their lives collecting and cataloguing “symphonies, operas, scores and songs that were composed and performed under conditions so horrible one imagines that music would have lost its ability to encourage and to soothe.” Their project now: To raise money for a “citadel” that is “known formally as the Istituto di Letteratura Musicale Concentrazionaria [and] is to include a museum, a library and a theater, at a cost of roughly $45 million.” – The New York Times
The First Black British Author To Reach Number One On The Bestseller Lists Says It’s All Too Bittersweet
Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race was a sensation when she first published it, but it took a lot of police brutality for her book to top the lists. She notes, “To know there was a surge of people searching out anti-racism books after seeing what was essentially a film of somebody being murdered, I can’t uncouple those two things.” – The Observer (UK)
A Nigerian Scholar Calls For A Halt To The Sale Of Sacred Igbo Art
Chika Okeke-Agulu, professor of art history at Princeton, says that the sale of the two alusi would “perpetuate the violence” of the 1960s civil war, when the sculptures were “removed” from the Igbo areas of Nigeria that tried to create the state of Biafra. – The Guardian (UK)