Choreographer Ben Duke on making dance post-Brexit and in a world dramatically changed by terrorism and war: “I think art is the opposite of terrorism. And that means the more frequent and violent the terrorism is, the better the art has to become.”
The Traces Of Cezanne In ‘Goodnight Moon’
Yes, Cézanne. Yes, Goodnight Moon. “This little book, which of course can be enjoyed without this sort of deconstructionist analysis, by those with tiny fingers and soft-closing eyelids, is a truly great work of Modernist art, its text as powerful an incantation of Modernist poetry as I know, and its illustrations richly in line with the tradition launched by Cézanne.”
What It’s Like To Spend Two Years In ‘Hamilton’
“Thayne Jasperson, who plays the British loyalist Samuel Seabury, is the only cast member still in his original role. Emmy Raver-Lampman, by contrast, started as part of the ensemble on Broadway, left the show in April 2016 for SpongeBob SquarePants, returned as an ensemble member in the Chicago production of Hamilton, and is now playing Angelica Schuyler in the first national tour. She and Jasperson talked to TheaterMania about their experiences with the musical and how it’s changed since the summer of 2015.”
Mary Cochran, Dancer With Paul Taylor And Chair Of Dance At Barnard, Dead At 54
Known for what Dance magazine called “her verve, charm and daring,” Cochran performed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1984 to 1996 and led the well-regarded dance department at Barnard College from 2003 to 2013.
Study: Students Don’t Learn As Well Reading Screens As They Do Reading Print
As researchers in learning and text comprehension, our recent work has focused on the differences between reading print and digital media. While new forms of classroom technology like digital textbooks are more accessible and portable, it would be wrong to assume that students will automatically be better served by digital reading simply because they prefer it.
David Hare: Directors Now Have Too Much Power Over Playwrights
“When I entered the industry the playwright was regarded as the most important person in the process and slowly in the new century things have moved over to director’s theatre, and the directors not only run the theatres, choose the plays, but they also want to be auteurs in the rehearsal room, and that is a new development.” Hare said playwrights are being forced to write like film writers, which he believes is unhealthy for theatre.
Why Common Sense Isn’t Always A Reliable Moral Guide
Why bother with moral philosophy when common sense serves most of us perfectly well? The simple answer is that, as history shows, commonsensical beliefs are very often wrong. Slavery, marital rape, and bans on interracial marriage were all widely accepted in the relatively recent past. Much like fish who, as the proverb goes, are the last to discover water, humans are so immersed in immorality that we can be entirely unaware of it.
Why Novels Matter Now More Than Ever
“The novel matters because and so on. By which I mean that I’ve come to believe that all the arts are about time, but that the novel in particular is about the and-so-on of things, continuance and continuity, the continuum. It’s a form, too, very interested in the workings of society, so it tells us about how we’re living, who we’re living with, and where we are in the endless social structural cycle that eventually gets called history.”
Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra Loses 20% Of Subscribers As It Moves To Temporary Venue
While the Tonhalle itself undergoes a major renovation, “the exiled orchestra can be seen in action for the next three years at the Maag Hall, part of an industrial complex in Zurich West … CHF10 million has been invested in the acoustics, but there are 300 fewer seats than in the Tonhalle, and one in five orchestra subscriptions has been cancelled.”
Music In The Museum – Plenty Of Upside (And Some Down-)
“When it comes to presenting music, museums aren’t necessarily ahead of the curve. Yes, it’s great that they do it — and they do it a lot. Most of Washington’s major museums present concerts, from the diminutive Kreeger Museum, which fills its central exhibition space with chairs for a small chamber music festival every year in June, to the National Gallery, where the foliage and statuary of the West Garden Court, despite its distorting echoes and uncomfortable folding chairs, often conspire to make events feel delightful. And yet most museum concert halls lack such charm.”
New York City Ballet’s Summer Season In Saratoga Cut By Half
“The 2018 ballet season will be cut in half, from a two-week run in 2017 to just one week. … [Saratoga Performing Arts Center CEO Elizabeth] Sobol said the board decided to reduce City Ballet’s stay because it lost more than $1 million on the NYCB residency. She said continuing to lose money on the residency is ‘not prudent’.”
Cuts In University Budgets Are Imperiling The Midwest Economy
Trump’s cuts would affect all research universities, but not equally. The problem is more pronounced at public universities than private ones, and especially at public institutions in the Midwest, which have historically conducted some of the nation’s most important research. These schools are desperately needed to diversify economies that rely disproportionately on manufacturing and agriculture and lack the wealthy private institutions that fuel the knowledge industries found in Silicon Valley or along Boston’s 128/I-95 corridor. Yet many flagship Midwestern research universities are being weakened by deep state budget cuts.
Czech Harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova, Survivor Of Auschwitz And Bringer Of The Instrument To New Audiences, Has Died At 90
Bach was her religion and her guide. When she “left the Nazi labour camp at Terezín in a truck bound for Auschwitz, she wrote down a passage from one of JS Bach’s English Suites ‘as a sort of talisman, because I didn’t know what was awaiting us.’ She came to think of his music as being ‘above human suffering.'”
Richard Wilbur, Twice A Pulitzer Winner And Former Poet Laureate, Has Died At 96
The poet, who wrote “pretty” and orderly poems that didn’t always suit reviewers’ tastes, also wrote lyrics for musicals and for opera, including Bernstein’s Candide. “‘I feel that the universe is full of glorious energy,’ he said in an interview with The Paris Review, ‘that the energy tends to take pattern and shape, and that the ultimate character of things is comely and good.'”
How Will Iraq Look In 100 Years? These Authors Have Some Ideas
Why Iraq for a speculative fiction future? Well, it’s obvious: “Baghdad is where algebra, the decimal point, and the first method to calculate the radius of the Earth were invented in ancient times — and Iraq, Blasim feels, is a rightful heir to the sci-fi tradition.”
After Allegations Of Sexual Abuse Led To The Controversial Firing Of A Popular Artistic Director, Theatre Asks City For Cash
Rochester, Minnesota’s Civic Theatre is asking the city for $80,000 on top of its usual $200,000 appropriation. In June, after news stories detailed seven different allegations of abuse for the former executive director and former board members failing to stop the abuse, the theatre also fired its popular artistic director. Now the theatre’s in need of funds as well.
All The Winners Of The UK’s 2017 Theatre Awards
The musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie scooped the major awards, but who won everything else? Here’s the list.
Woody Allen (Who Has Also Been Accused Of Abuse) Seems To Defend Harvey Weinstein And Then Backtracks
This happened first: “You also don’t want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself.” Then today, he clarified, “When I said I felt sad for Harvey Weinstein I thought it was clear the meaning was because he is a sad, sick man.”
The Man Booker Shortlist Is Out (And It Doesn’t Include ‘Underground Railroad’)
And the UK’s The Observer isn’t thrilled with the list: “When Lola Young, as chair, summarised the shortlist as ‘unique and intrepid books that collectively push against the borders of convention,’ she articulated a mission statement for a final session that promises to be an excruciating visit to the third circle of a literary critical inferno.”
Top AJBlogs For The Weekend Of 10.15.17
On playwrights attempting to be in the driver’s seat: my experience at Dominique Morisseau’s “Pipeline” at LCT
I’ve recently starting working as an assistant professor and program director for a new MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship (MA AME) at The New School. If you don’t know it, The New School is … read more
AJBlog: JumperPublished 2017-10-15
‘Just Like Real Life’
William Cody Maher & Signe MählerWilliam Cody Maher & Signe Mähler Oct. 21 – 28 at Freehome / Berlin “two people who have been living together for a long time have learned how to live … read more
AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2017-10-14
Replay: George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant
Duo Concertant, Hugo Niebeling’s 1973 film version of George Balanchine’s 1972 ballet. Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins, who created their roles for New York City Ballet, are the dancers, and Igor Stravinsky’s score is played … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2017-10-13
Scotland Yard Is Now Investigating Rape Claims Against Harvey Weinstein
“A team of officers has been established to look into the alleged crimes, which are said to have taken place in London between 2010 and 2015, as well as an allegation of sexual assault previously passed on to the Metropolitan police by detectives from Merseyside police, which relates to the late 1980s.”