Olivia Hartzell, who spent nearly a decade at Pennsylvania Ballet and the Royal Ballet of Flanders and is now a PhD student at Harvard, has some ideas about applying the field of market design to some of the dysfunction in the recruiting of dancers as it currently happens. - Dance Magazine
The city of Chicago has designated 2022 the Year of Chicago Dance in recognition of an art form that is ubiquitous, burgeoning, diverse—and precarious. - Chicago Reader
The scripts, 110 already uploaded and the rest coming later this year, "join Drama Online's award-winning digital library, an online research tool for drama and literature students, professors, and teachers. … The collection includes work by David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, Dael Orlandersmith, and Anne Washburn, among others." - Playbill
But there’s a hitch: The valuable paintings, including a Caravaggio said to be worth millions, cannot physically be moved from their location due to national heritage laws. - Artnet
Niamh Campbell: "In all the best erotic writing I've read – not a lot really, but the most accurate and enviably sexy examples have stayed with me – a certain pleasant darkness is revealed. Not the darkness of ordinary misogyny, but of idiot pleasure or exquisite tenderness." - The Guardian
For much of history, the nature of consciousness was the purview almost exclusively of philosophers and poets. It was not taken seriously as a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry because it was difficult, if not impossible, to do experiments. - Nautilus
The six-inch statuette of an oddly-shaped nude woman dates from about 600 years after the battle at the site, near the Baltic coast of Germany. It might have been a religious object, a good-luck talisman, or a weight for a balance scale (if not all three). - The New York Times
The return rate to movie theaters in the first week of February was 58% of what it was before the pandemic. Restaurants were nearly three-quarters as full as they were before Covid-19, and air travel had recovered to about 80%. - The Wall Street Journal
"Grete Minde, a late-Romantic opera of 1920s jazz-inspired melodies and large orchestral sounds, was the work of Eugen Engel, a Berlin-based Jewish textile tradesman in his day job, who gave his handwritten sheet music to his daughter for safekeeping when she escaped to the United States in 1941." - The Guardian
The former music director of the Toronto Symphony and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (and, before that, longtime first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet) was this orchestra's principal guest conductor from 2003-2006. He and the CSO have some changes planned. - Colorado Public Radio
The researchers at SMU Data Arts have updated their numbers, incorporating information about ticket sales, prices, COVID case rates, vaccination rates, etc.; they have new projections based on two scenarios. The key factor: higher vaccination rates aren't making the same difference in attendance they had earlier. - SMU Data Arts
"Navigating the fast-changing digital media landscape has left Slate struggling to define its identity. … Slate once stood out as a home for contrarian takes and intellectual debate, but that distinction has faded in recent years. Questions about its mission have increased after several high-level departures." - The New York Times
Earlier this month, there were reports that Mastaba, a 500-foot-tall quasi-pyramid made of 410,000 brightly colored steel barrels and planned for a desert site 100 miles south of Abu Dhabi city, had been given the go-ahead by UAE authorities. Those reports, it turns out, were premature. - Dezeen
"Critics and collectors, once made aware that Ms. Herrera existed, were rapt by the intensity of her work, which she achieved by juxtaposing geometric shapes in contrasting colors." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes — "an all-female team with broad appeal and comedic chops" — are in final talks to serve as emcees for the 2022 ceremonies, several sources have indicated. - Variety
