While many people (including more than a few Scottish ones) see the tongue of Robert Burns and Trainspotting as just a thickly accented dialect of English, Scots actually developed independently. (There was no medieval influence from Norman French, for one thing, since William the Conqueror never crossed the border.) But with Scotland having been united with the much larger, richer, more culturally assertive England for several centuries now, Scots came close to being subsumed into English entirely. Yet it has survived, and now it’s even gaining speakers.
How Did Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker End Up Becoming A Broadway Choreographer?
“Though [she] won’t say much about her plans for [next year’s revival of] West Side Story just yet, she did admit that it’s not a project she would have ever thought she’d be doing. But her rewarding experience directing the large-scale Così fan tutte at the Paris Opéra last year — another project she never thought she’d do — plus the chance to work with Ivo van Hove and explore a key work in the history of musical theater convinced her to say yes when van Hove asked her to choreograph.”
England’s Arts Funding Body To Consider Micro-Grants
In Arts Council England’s first-ever “live online review of the year,” a questioner asked executives (via Twitter) if there could be a relatively red-tape-free way for artists to apply for amounts as small as £500. (ACE has two programs that make grants from £2,000 up to £15,000.) CEO Darren Henley replied, “We don’t know the answer yet, but it’s something we will go away and think about.”
The Color Pink Has A Dark Past
When it comes to interior design, the color pink has been particularly controversial. After some psychologists were able to show that certain shades of pink reduced aggression, it was famously used in prison cells to limit aggression in inmates. Yet pink toes a shaky line. Is it a benign means of subtle manipulation? A tool to humiliate? An outgrowth of gender stereotyping? Or some combination of the three?
The Healing Powers Of An Orchestra For Those With Mental Illness
Hospitals and psychiatric institutes have long employed music therapists in treating patients. While many doctors agree that it can be an effective form of therapy, it’s difficult to explain, qualify and quantify results. But that’s changing. With advances in neuroscience and noninvasive brain scanning, there’s increasing interest in the scientific community in exploring the ways music and the arts affect the human brain. This is leading to new enthusiasm in exploring music’s capacity to heal.
‘Consolationism’ — Proposing An African Approach To Philosophy
Nigerian philosopher Ada Agada writes about how, building on the ideas of African thinkers such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Kwame Nkrumah, he found his way to this synthesis of Western academic philosophy and traditional African thought.
Sorry, ‘Little Women’ Is Simply Not A Feminist Novel
The second half of the book in particular — originally published, and still sold in Britain, under the separate title Good Wives — “is, for the most part, incredibly dull; most of it is left out of film interpretations. And yet,” argues Hillary Kelly, “it needs to be reckoned with if we’re going to assess what it means for young girls to read Little Women today. … It is obsessed with wifely duty — deferential to patriarchy and dismissive of female ambition of any variety other than the maternal. … It’s downright strange that intelligent women would call a book that disposes of its protagonists’ dreams in order to settle them into lives darning socks ‘required reading’ for young girls today.”
Bronx Museum Of The Arts To Open Manhattan Satellite
“The new site will be a hub for participants in the institution’s flagship emerging artist program, Artist in the Marketplace (AIM), which provides professional development resources — such as art law education, help with financial planning, and writing workshops — to emerging artists in New York City.” The 4,800-square-foot space is on the second floor of a former manufacturing site in Tribeca.
Sometimes We Just Have To Let An Arts Institution Die: Arts Council England Report
The study, titled “What is Resilience Anyway?”, says, “For the sector as a whole to be resilient, all the organisations within it do not necessarily need to survive in their current form … a more resilient sector might allow more organisations to come to a natural end.”
Justin Peck Will Choreograph Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Remake
Peck, the New York City Ballet dancer and choreographer who won a Tony this year for his work on Carousel, will create the dances for the film, which will be directed by Steven Spielberg to a screenplay by Tony Kushner.
Tampa Bay’s Florida Orchestra Extends Music Director’s Term
“This week the orchestra … extended [Michael] Francis’ contract another three years, pushing his commitment through the 2023-2024 season. It’s a major step for the fourth music director in the orchestra’s history, coming on the heels of a record-breaking 50th season.”
12th-Century Statue At Santiago De Compostela Defaced By KISS Fan
In early August, an unidentified culprit painted the rock band’s name and a cat face (or, alternatively, the face of a band member) on a sculpture that had just undergone a five-year restoration at the medieval pilgrimage center.
Mexico City Now Has A Full-Size Replica Of The Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Miguel Francisco Macias, a retired graphic designer, spent 18 years reproducing Michelangelo’s frescos for his neighborhood church, whose ceiling is almost exactly the same size.
“Still Here:” Native Americans And The Symphony Orchestra
“One of the biggest messages that we found personally was that we’re trying to tell people that we’re still here because a lot of people still view us as not being real – that Native Americans are made-up or that we’re extinct by now. We really want people to know that we’re not the Indians that they portray us as on TV, and we’re not the Indians that they come to sight-see. We’re actual people. We’re our own sovereign nation, and we’re trying to be a part of modern society if people will let us.”
How Dictionary.com Became A Master Of The Tweet
The website’s Twitter account now goes far beyond vocabulary-building blasts, seizing instead on words embedded in the public discourse–and expounding on not only their meaning but the intent behind them.
Reality According To Google (Like It Or Not We’ve Got To Deal With It)
Whether or not Google ultimately exercises this power depends on its human leaders—and on the digital society Google is so central to building. The company is investing heavily in machine intelligence, committing itself to a highly automated future where the mechanics and, perhaps, the true insights of the quest for knowledge become difficult or impossible for humans to understand. Google is gradually becoming an extension of individual and collective thought. It will get harder to recognize where people end and Google begins. People will become both empowered by and dependent on the technology—which will be easy for anyone to access but hard for people to control.
City Ballet Has A Gala, And Addresses Its Recent Scandals
The fall fashion gala began with all of the dancers facing the audience, and principal dancer Teresa Reichlen reading a statement that included the words, “We will not put art before common decency or allow talent to sway our moral compass.” That is, of course, because three of City Ballet’s male dancers have recently left or been fired for sexual harassment and worse. Will this statement work?
How The 19th Century Japanese Artist Hokusai Influenced His Dutch Contemporary
Van Gogh admired Katsushika Hokusai and studied prints of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Did it influence Starry Night? From a visual standpoint, that seems probable: “The similarities between the thrust of the wave and the swirling of the sky; that they are both striking studies in blue; and the fact that Van Gogh admired The Great Wave so much all point to a loose inspiration.”
Joe Masteroff, Playwright Of ‘Cabaret,’ Has Died At 98
Masteroff, who adapted Cabaret from Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and the stage adaptation of that book, hit a timely nerve (not that performances have ever stopped at colleges, high schools, and community theatres – or even on Broadway, where it was revived in 2014). “Cabaret, produced and directed by the Broadway legend Harold Prince, pushed boundaries with provocative depictions of homosexuality, bisexuality, ménages à trois and abortion” – and the growing Nazi threat.
Leonard Cohen’s Notebooks In The Freezer (And His Final Poems)
Leonard Cohen’s son says that even talking about his father’s process of writing feels like an invasion. “My father was very interested in preserving the magic of his process. And moreover, not demystifying it. Speaking of any of this … is a transgression,” Adam Cohen says. But a final book of poems “is what he was staying alive for.”
That ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Riff Is Back In The Courts Again
Though a federal court jury ruled in 2016 that “Stairway to Heaven” wasn’t plagiarized from the Spirit’s instrumental song “Taurus,” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that that jury was “wrongly instructed.” So Spirit’s lawsuit is back on.
CBS Was Subject To Subpoenas In New York About Les Moonves’ Alleged Sexual Harassment
It’s not just Moonves: “CBS has been embroiled in the sexual harassment controversy for the last two months. On Aug. 1, the CBS board of directors hired two high-profile lawyers in New York — Mary Jo White from the Debevoise & Plimpton law firm and Nancy Kestenbaum of Covington & Burling — to investigate claims against Moonves. The two firms were also tasked with looking into allegations of sexual harassment at CBS News and the overall workplace culture at CBS. That review is ongoing” and has led to at least one high-profile firing.
Opera’s For The People, So Why Not Make A Mile-Long Opera With 1000 Singers?
Also, why not get the libretto for it from poets (and utter forces of nature and intellect) Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine, and then set it all on New York’s High Line? Why not indeed. More: “Ms. Rankine said that she assembled her contribution of the libretto — her words are spoken, while Ms. Carson’s are sung — by interviewing people about their tables.”
Inge Feltrinelli, Who Has Died At 87, Was An Italian Publishing Magnate Who Started Her Career As A German Celebrity Photographer
Feltrinelli staged the photo that launched one of her careers when she stayed with Ernest Hemingway and his wife in Cuba, but then she became a force in the publishing world in Italy. She “had an eye for promising writers and formed close relationships with Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, Günther Grass, Doris Lessing and Daniel Pennac, as well as homegrown talent like Stefano Benni, Antonio Tabucchi and Alessandro Baricco.”
What Happens When Writing Fiction Hurts The People The Writer Loves Best?
Not to mention this price: “I stand apart, casing the joint. Always on the lookout for a good line, the odd detail. It’s what writers and visual artists are trained to do: In the midst of a flood, consider the color of the water. We might or might not get a good story that way, but we’re at least more likely to survive the crisis. “