“Step into Tareq Salahi’s house and you’ll pass a framed Washington Post article crowning him a 2009 Person of the Year. … Look closer, though, and you’ll see what’s changed. There’s a Real Housewives of D.C. sticker covering [ex-wife] Michaele’s face, a bronze plaque listing ‘widely unknown facts’ about the White House gatecrashing incident, and, right next to it, Salahi merchandise that Tareq sells to his Airbnb guests.”
Ballet About Asylum Seekers In Denmark Could See Its Leads Deported
“In Uropa – An asylum-seekers’ ballet, six migrants tell their stories with the help of dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet, hoping to change perceptions of refugees in a country that has recently rolled out some of Europe’s strictest asylum rules.” But some of those six could yet see their own applications rejected – the original lineup numbered ten.
Dystopian Novel Author Hates Dystopian Fiction And Wonders Why There Isn’t More Sex In The Apocalypse
Claire Vaye Watkins: “We’re plod, plod, plodding along, one foot in front of the other, and the ash is grey – and it’s just the same emotional key struck again and again and again.”
How To Raise Creative Children? Cut Down On Rules
“Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to “place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules,” the Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports.”
Why Defend Critics? (They Don’t Need It)
“Criticism needs no defending. It’s a job because people (sometimes) pay you to do it, and many more people pay attention to it. Write whatever you want to me about the irrelevance and superfluity of critics when you’re complaining that my top-10 list left off your favorite novel; you’ve just proved you care enough about critics to gripe to and about one.”
Watching Justin Peck Rehearse His New Ballet
“His manner was the same whether he was working with one dancer or dozens. By slightly lowering or raising his voice, he could shift seamlessly from giving a dancer a subtle note to rearranging major traffic patterns. He seemed aware of everything, and when the dancers took five, he did not, his mind whirring almost visibly.”
A New Test For Film, Named (By A New York Times Critic) For The Director Of ‘Selma’
“The long-established Bechdel test, first proposed by the US cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a 1985 comic strip, requires two women to talk to each other about something other than a man to prove its egalitarian values. Dargis said her ‘DuVernay test’ would merely require ‘African Americans and other minorities [to] have fully realised lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories.'”
A Snapshot Of The New York Phil’s New Music Director In Rehearsal
“Mr. van Zweden, 55, is more a maestro of the old school. He is sometimes polite, and sometimes quite blunt, but always very direct in seeking what he wants — the demanding teacher who, instead of giving a B-plus to a passable but unexceptional paper, will send it back riddled with cross-outs, order a rewrite and make it sparkle.”
Does How We Pay For The Arts Compound Our Diversity Issues?
“By disproportionately supporting large institutions, which reach a tiny slice of the American population, mega-donors and corporate foundations use the arts to serve the one percent. Which is why a strong and robust NEA, and increased investment in public funding for the arts nationally, is needed today, more than ever.”
Brutalism Is Back, Or So Its Cheerleaders Say
“The brutalist style harks back to an idealistic postwar world where even Conservative governments built council houses; an epoch when carving out a collective future, rather than endlessly showing off on Facebook, was the esprit du temps. Brutalist buildings might look like they want to slap you in the face, but they’re solid and dependable – the opposite of so many of today’s splutters on the skyline, which look like they’ll fall over if you mumble ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum’ near to them.”
Fox’s ‘Grease’ Live Had To Censor Some Famous Lyrics Because Of A Sponsor
“Executive producer Marc Platt told AdWeek that corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola forced the show to tone down some of the language. … That’s how Grease Lightning’s ‘the chicks’ll cream’ became ‘the chicks’ll scream,’ and ‘she’s a really pussy wagon’ became ‘she’s a real dream wagon.'”
What’s Going Down At Condé Nast?
“‘Those who want things always to stay the same are not living in the real world,’ Ms. Wintour said in a recent interview at her office overlooking the Hudson River at Condé Nast’s new headquarters, One World Trade Center. ‘It’s like perfection. Doesn’t exist.'”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 01.31.16
In early December, Rifftides Moscow correspondent Svetlana Ilicheva reported with enthusiasm about an appearance by singer Victoria Tchekovaya (pictured) at a vocal festival of the Moscow Jazz Art Club. Ms. Tchekovaya’s concert was in observance… … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-01-31
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-01-31
Paul Kantner in 2008, photo by Mike Krepka for The Chronicle Jefferson Airplane founding member Paul Kantner’s death at age 74 on Jan. 28 has been met by a cultural shrug compared to the celebratory… … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond JazzPublished 2016-01-31
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond JazzPublished 2016-01-31
Blackstar, David Bowie (with the Donny McCaslin Quartet and guitarist Ben Monder) (Columbia) Peter Doggett on On Point, January 12, 2016 Jon Pareles Obituary, New York Times Greil Marcus on Lodger, 1979 (“…ideas are run up the flagpole,… … read more
Jhumpa Lahiri Says Writing In Italian Makes Her A ‘Tougher, Freer’ Writer
“A week after arriving, I open my diary to describe our misadventures and I do something strange, unexpected. I write my diary in Italian. I do it almost automatically, spontaneously. I do it because when I take the pen in my hand I no longer hear English in my brain. During this period when everything confuses me, everything unsettles me, I change the language I write in.”
Turkish Police Uncover Stolen Picasso In Art Sting
“The operation targeted alleged art thieves attempting to sell the painting Woman Dressing Her Hair which was stolen from a collector in New York, Anatolia said.”
How On Earth Is Robert Falls Putting Roberto Bolaño’s ‘2666’ On Stage?
“It would take 45 minutes just to explain what the novel is about,” said the director of Chicago’s Goodman Theater. “I became weirdly obsessed with this novel years ago, and I still don’t quite know why. The process of staging it is part of trying to figure out what it is I personally respond to. I still don’t quite know.”