In a city still somewhat in thrall to its heritage, from the Haçienda to Oasis, many in the Strange Quarter say the area has redefined Manchester’s cultural life. - The Guardian
"If I’m just talking about the work, I would say we have a very clear movement approach that has developed over time, a shared language that includes a lot of different modern dance techniques, a language that has become unique to us." - LA Dance Chronicle
“Since 1980, Val Caniparoli” — for decades SFB’s principal character dancer — “has dedicated most of his energies to a much-lauded choreography career, and rather than slowing down, he's building momentum as he enters an exciting new phase.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
Ross had become a master at catering to ego, facilitating deals and making a class of people feel important. Now he’d begun to wonder if the skills that made him exceptional at his job had also made him in some ways complicit. - The New York Times
The AI industry is splitting away from the lives of everyday people. Exclusive polling conducted for the Guardian last year found that twice as many Americans believe their financial security is getting worse than better, hardly half as optimistic as Jensen Huang’s prediction. - The Guardian
“At 11am, the ABC News channel switched to broadcasting the BBC News channel as staff walked out in protest. The ABC News channel filled the schedule with repeats of Planet America and the National Press Club, but broadcast Question Time as normal.” - The Guardian
“The AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,. It’s bogus because while they claim it’s fair to use the work of creators as training data, they do multimillion-dollar deals with rights holders and publishers like Disney, and Condé Nast, and Vox, and Warner Music.” - Fortune
It is difficult to appreciate the toll of being on the road for days, weeks, and sometimes months on end, playing program after program and often dealing with social and media commitments in addition. - Nightingale Sonata
The show’s producing team told the playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, that he was no longer welcome at rehearsals after tempers flared on Friday between Guirgis and Mark Kaufman, who runs Warner Bros. Theater Ventures, an entity that is among the play’s lead producers. - The New York Times
“He built a serious and wide-ranging classical career, collaborating with major artists like Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein and Yo-Yo Ma, without stinting the traditional ballads that John McCormack (1884-1945) had brought to the masses.” - The New York Times
“Tacoma Arts Live has filed for receivership, a court process similar to bankruptcy. ... TAL announced earlier this year that it would close for good this summer and sell the historic Tacoma Armory, its sole remaining building, citing debts incurred in part due to declining ticket sales following the pandemic.” - The Seattle Times
Shipping costs are rising; freighters are being re-routed, interfering with schedules; one shipment was on a vessel struck by a missile. Perhaps worst: insurance policies usually exclude acts of war. - Publishers Weekly
“The newly established award, launched to honour the legacy of the late Booker Prize-winning novelist, aims to support unpublished and un-agented writers across the UK and Ireland.” The inaugural winner is Florida-born, London-based writer and teacher Anna Dempsey for her yet-unpublished novel This Is About an Alligator and Nothing Else. - The Guardian
“OpenAI said it will discontinue Sora, the generative-AI video creation app it launched last year, without providing a reason for the decision. … The announcement comes just three months after Disney inked a groundbreaking deal with OpenAI” licensing the conglomerate’s characters for use with Sora. - Variety
