“In January 2015 the 75-year-old ensemble organised a Kickstarter crowdfunding initiative, following the sudden cancellation of its state subsidy at the end of 2014. The £300,000 target needed to fund the 2015 season was successfully met with the help of private donations from individuals and local businesses.”
Zero Gravity – Choreography’s Final Frontier?
“This time, it’s not a modern dance company that’s pushing the limits of choreography. It’s the quirky pop band OK Go … For their newest video, ‘Upside Down & Inside Out,’ the band performs an intricately-choreographed dance, using the fact that they are literally weightless to try unthinkable physical feats.” (includes video)
They Read It For The Articles: Playboy’s First Nudity-Free Issue, Reviewed
“Playboy doing away with naked women … might sound like Vogue doing away with fashion, or Cat Fancy doing away with cats, or, frankly, Vanity Fair doing away with movie stars and badly behaving rich people. … Now that the ‘the articles’ are, indeed, the only reason to read Playboy, the question is raised: Are they, in fact, any good?”
Get Inside Bosch’s ‘Garden Of Earthly Delights’ Via Virtual Reality App
“The triptych from the turn of the 16th century is too precious and fragile to leave its home, the Museo del Prado in Madrid, but now, thanks to a virtual reality experience, anyone with an iPhone, iPad, or Android can ride a giant fish through the three panels of the Dutch artist’s strange world.”
The Art Of Genius – An Uneven, Messy Quality
“Thanks to the diversity of human experience and human talents, we know that genius isn’t a monolithic quality that appears in identical form everywhere we find it. Einstein’s genius was different from Curie’s, and scientific genius is different from musical genius. Celebrity, on the other hand, tends to follow more predictable patterns.”
Is This Why Americans Don’t Trust Experts? (An Experiment)
“It turns out that hearing from experts on both sides of an issue distorts our perception of consensus — even when we have all the information we need to correct that misperception.”
Glenda Jackson Is Returning To The Stage – In Shakespeare’s Greatest Role For Older Actors
Twenty-five years ago, when Jackson gave up acting for politics, she was considered perhaps the most formidable actress in the English language; after 23 years as a Labour MP, she retired from Parliament last year. She’ll be back on the boards later this year at the Old Vic, with Deborah Warner as director, playing …
How My Ballet Career Survived Five Knee Operations In One Year
Marijn Rademaker, longtime principal of the Stuttgart Ballet, now at Dutch National Ballet, tells the long and frustrating story of his meniscus injury – including what that nurse should not have said to him on the operating table.
So It Begins: First Of UK’s National Daily Newspapers To Go All-Digital Stops Print Next Month
“At its peak sales hit around 428,000 copies a day. Twenty-five years later, the number of copies being sold on a weekday in newsagents is rather closer to 28,000.”
Will Small, Used-Book Bookstores Be The Last Ones Standing?
“The not very glamorous economic answer is that it’s a lot easier to make money selling used books. … On the whole, the problem with new books is that there’s a list price set by the publisher and a discount price that’s also set by the publisher. So, as a new bookseller, you have no control over what the book sells for or what you pay for it. With used books, if you’re smart, you find ways to get them cheap, and you decide what you price them at.”
The Precise Timing That Makes ‘Kinky Boots’ A Success On Broadway
“There’s a whole world underneath the stage. It’s called a ‘trap room,’ and at the Royal Alex, it’s a tight space for sound gear, change areas and a wig station. The musicians are in the orchestra pit, working to a “click track” rhythm and with in-ear monitors to keep in time with the actions on stage. The sound man and a mixing board are upstairs, at the back of the house, where the volume levels of the actors’ wireless microphones are manipulated constantly, on the fly.”
The Movies Used To Be An Escape From Work, And Now They’re All About Work
“The somber message of these movies — most of them contenders for best film or acting honors in this year’s Oscar race — is that we have become our jobs. ‘I think, therefore I am’ has been updated to ‘I work, therefore I exist.’ Not only has private life been squeezed out, but personal happiness, when it is captured, is also celebrated as a boon for productivity.”
What (The Hell) Went Wrong With St. Mark’s Bookshop, RIP?
“In a neighborhood that is wearily familiar with the closing of local fixtures (two recent blows were Sounds record store and De Robertis pastry shop), the demise of St. Mark’s Bookshop stands out as painfully, publicly prolonged — one former employee I spoke to compared it to ‘watching a puddle evaporate.'”
Cuba Is Getting The Full Hollywood Treatment
“‘It’s great that people from Hollywood want to come to Cuba, but it’s caught us at a bad moment,’ said Carlos Lechuga, a Cuban director. ‘We have stories to tell, and right now we don’t feel that we can do that.'”
Is The Art Market Self-Correcting Right Now?
“The shakiness comes amid tumult in stock markets around the world. Sagging oil prices, weakness in global banking sectors, and slowing economies in China and emerging markets all contributed to the markets’ volatile start to 2016.”
Making An Hour-Long Musical Every Week On A TV Schedule
“‘The development process for stage musicals is years and years to get 12 or 15 songs onstage,’ he says. With ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,’ the team ‘sometimes have just a few days to write 2-3 new ones.’ That’s fine with him, as his philosophy is that ‘all creative work takes exactly as long as the amount of time you’re given. It’s amazing how much you can get done if you have to.'”
No Surprise: The New ‘Harry Potter’ Book Isn’t Out ‘Til July, But Is Already A Bestseller
It’s actually going to be the rehearsal script for a Harry Potter-universe play opening in London on July 31, but that hasn’t stopped the book from hitting bestseller status based on pre-orders in the days after the announcement happened.
The Philadelphia Museum Of Art Is Over Facebook’s Art Censorship Policies
“In a statement to the museum, Facebook explained the painting was taken down for ‘containing excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content.’ On Friday, the museum uploaded the colorful image – which features a woman suggestively licking an ice cream cone — to its Facebook page with the following message … “
Behind The Scenes At #ThatsWhatSheSaid Before, During, And After The Cease And Desist Orders
“It definitely crossed my mind, if someone wanted to be a huge asshole or was so protective of their work that they didn’t want anyone whispering its name, that they could potentially have a problem with this idea.”
#Thatswhatshesaid Lawyer Responds To Samuel French Copyright Claim With A Lecture On Fair Use
“It makes sense that they thought that was happening and freaked. But that’s not what’s happening. Our play contains no major plot points from any of the other texts and we are in no way trying to restage any one of those productions.”
Revealed: The Most Romantic Sentence In All Of Literature
An analysis based on the most-quoted romantic lines…
20th Century Ideas Of How The World Works Are Based On Growth. That Might Not Work In The 21st Century (And That’s Good)
“The information economy in which we are now living allows us to break the link between improving living standards and unsustainable growth. In the process, we have the chance to realise some of the most appealing aspects of the ‘degrowth’ idea proposed by the Club of Rome.”