Wesley Morris: "Alas, she would not be playing the most daring, out-there characters. And let’s face it: the great parts were always headed to someone whiter anyway. The more audacious move was to declare herself a moral progenitor, to walk with her head high so that Denzel Washington might become a man on fire and Viola Davis could learn...
That's merely one thing that's missing right now, of course, but it is missing, and Dublin isn't going to let people forget the joys of moving their bodies alongside so many others at dance clubs. "Who’s in charge of making sure we have the facilities to be a city? Who’s in charge of making sure there’s somewhere for us...
The SETI Institute is ready to take music to Mars, or wherever. While it's a listening project, it's also now a beaming project. A founding astrophysicist and a musician "have devised the 'Earthling Project': a call to people everywhere to upload snippets of song that plans to meld into a collective human chorus. An initial composition will be...
Bernadine Evaristo, author of 2019's Booker prizewinning Girl, Woman, Other, is launching, or relaunching, a series of Black British novels that didn't quite make it into the British canon. "Our appreciation of literature is deepened when we understand the foundations from which each new generation creates literature anew, but because so much of the body of black British literature...
The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing: "One, the much-delayed awards will be scheduled 'in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.' And two, the voting will take place from March 1 to March 15." OK. Why not be flexible at this point? - The New York Times
Lee, the son of immigrants from China, "was determined both to restore the contributions of Asian-Americans to the historical record and to document their present-day lives and struggles, especially those living in New York." - The New York Times
There’s a village meeting each year to decide the theme. Village officials make a simple computer mockup and then ask art teachers to make more detailed drawings. Next, color-coded markers are staked into the watery field, and finally citizens are enlisted to fill in the spaces with the proper strain of rice plant. - Return to Now
The study surveyed 104 organizations, including 91 in the United States and 13 in Canada, from Dec. 12, 2020 through Jan. 12, 2021. The study found that, among U.S. organizations, companies in the Southeast, Southwest, and South are the most optimistic, with a majority planning a return before July. Companies in the Midwest, West, and Northeast mostly plan returns...
At its best, music theory creates simplified models that help us understand how compositions are conceived and constructed while leaving space for the mystery of artistic intervention. At its worst, it reduces composition to a numbers game, and dismisses enigmatic moments—often the most powerful ones—as irrelevant. - Van
"The danger of Trump using a presidential library to burnish his image is far more serious, with the ex-president and his surrogates still promoting the idea that his electoral loss was somehow fraudulent. That creates an ongoing uncertainty in American public life, which Trump and even more unscrupulous actors will use to further division, inflame tension, exacerbate racism and...
With the country splintered, its institutions shaken, a book documenting a classic American play affirming shared life experiences and bedrock values seems especially timely. Published Jan. 28, “Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ in the 21st Century” is an oral history of a dozen or so recent productions of this famously stoical and spare play. It’s a drama so...
Garry Stewart took the helm at Adelaide-based ADT — which is the country's oldest contemporary dance company — in 1999 and choreographed 20 original works there. - InDaily (Adelaide)