When she started teaching at LAMDA in 1955, “traditional movement training might have involved elocution, fencing and a bit of traditional dance … Trish’s genius lay in creating a methodology and approach” – which came to be known as Pure Movement – “that worked from impulse (initial mental, emotional and physical responses) and release (letting go of habits of movement), so that actors could adopt the physical signals that help an audience recognise a character on stage or screen.”
Revenge Of The Grammar Nerds: Copy Editors Are Becoming Internet Stars
“In an age of texting and tweeting, these folks are trying to keep the mother tongue healthy, and their presence constitutes a refreshing renaissance for a profession that is generally underappreciated and rarely noticed – until, of course, a mistake shows up in print.” Thomas Vinciguerra looks at Mary Norris, John E. McIntyre, and other usage mavens who’ve been getting noticed online.
The Difference Between Performing Music And Playing It
Anne Midgette compares two piano concerts and comes away pondering the difference between playing music very well and communicating well.
Fritz Koenig, 92, Sculptor Of ‘Sphere’ At World Trade Center
Sphere – more officially called, by the sculptor, Grosse Kugelkaryatide (Large Spherical Caryatid) – “was the best known of his sculptures, though Mr. Koenig produced powerful memorials, including one at the former Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria” and another for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
Americans Are Choosing Smaller Screens To Watch TV On. What Will The Creative Implications Be?
“According to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, between 2009 and 2015, the number of American households without a single television doubled, from 1.3 percent to 2.6 percent. And even houses that still have televisions appear to be paring down: In 2009, 44 percent of households had three or more televisions, falling to 39 percent in 2015. The number of homes with one or two television rose 4 points in the same period, from 54 percent to 58 percent.”
Is Neuroscience Getting In The Way Of Figuring Out How Our Brains Behave?
“We still don’t understand how the brain works because we’re still ignorant about the middle ground between single neurons and behavior, which is the function of groups of neurons—of neural circuits.” And that’s because of “the methodological shackles that have prevented investigators from examining the activity of entire nervous system. This is probably futile, like watching TV by examining a single pixel at a time.”
Making Theatre Out Of Britain’s Brexit Divide
“Tired of the shouty voices from Westminster, [National Theatre director Rufus Norris] decided to turn away from London and start an in-depth listening project to try to understand the roots of the divide that had fractured the country. … He contacted 10 writers and directors from all over the country and asked them to start recording long interviews with people about their feelings about the vote.” Amelia Gentleman has the story of My Country: A Work in Progress, the resulting play.
What Studies Teach Us About Why People Ignore Incontrovertible Facts
“People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.”
Leonard Cohen Estate Sells Rights To All Songs To Montreal Dance Company – Other Dance Companies Stuck
“Last Tuesday, Ballets Jazz de Montreal said its worldwide exclusive dance and circus art rights include Cohen’s name and image as well as his visual, musical, and literary works. The company plans to debut a Cohen-inspired show in December that “will be performed through a series of acts, evoking the cycles of life, the colours of the seasons and nature’s true elements,” according to a news release.”
Musee d’Orsay Chooses New Director
“Lawrence Des Cars’s appointment comes after a lengthy process, which saw three other candidates reaching the final selection stages: Dominique de Font-Réaulx, director of Paris’ Delacroix Museum; Michel Draguet, director of the Royal Museums of Belgium; and Sylvain Amic, director of the Musée de Rouen. Le Monde reports that des Cars’s appointment is also significant in that she’s only the second woman curator to head a major Paris museum, alongside Sophie Makariou at the Musée Guimet.”
Why It’s Important For Theatre To Distinguish Between Real Live And The Digital Version
“No one ever pretended that King Kong or Bruce the Shark in Jaws were real, but they were grounded in the physical world (often by the limitations of technology), whereas now Kong is a highly sophisticated piece of digital animation in the new Kong: Skull Island, and crappily rendered sharks fall from the sky every summer on SyFy. It’s especially important for theatre that this distinction be made, because if people come to accept and even believe that what they’re seeing on screen is reality, how can theatre compete without giving itself over to holograms?”
Why The Highly Respected Art Magazine Parkett Is Closing
“Founded in 1984 by the foursome of Curiger, Jacqueline Burckhardt, Walter Keller, and Peter Blum, the magazine was known for both multiple essays on each of the artists it focused on and, later, innovative multiples by the same artists who were the subjects of the quarterly issues. As a measure of the respect the magazine garnered, consider that the editioned works were the subject of a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2001.”
Sotheby’s Income Down Substantially As Art Market Softens
“Full-year adjusted net income at Sotheby’s for 2016 was $99.6 million, compared with $143.1 million in 2015, reflecting a softening in the market that Sotheby’s has been trying to counter by diversifying its business.”
A Tour Of August Wilson’s Hill District In Pittsburgh
A visit to the building where the playwright and his six siblings grew up (Seven Guitars is set in its backyard), the neighborhood’s Catholic church, the house where Fences is set (and the film was shot), and other spots and scenes from Wilson’s Century Cycle.
Smashing Pumpkins: Selfie-Taker Breaks One Of Yayoi Kusama’s Sculptures
It took less than a week from the show’s opening at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum for this to happen – and the value of the unfortunate spotted yellow pumpkin is roughly $800,000.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.27.17
Are Orchestras Better than Ever? Why Riccardo Muti is Wrong
Are orchestras better than ever? Riccardo Muti thinks so. Recently, … he said: “The level of the orchestras in the world – especially in the seventies and eighties — has gone up everywhere.” … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-02-26
Burying the Bad News: Sotheby’s Earnings Call Ignores 30% Drop in 2016 Adjusted Net Income
“I feel good,” Tad Smith repeatedly declared during Sotheby’s earnings call with securities analysts this morning. Buoyed by New Year’s hopes for better performance in 2017 after a lackluster 2016, Sotheby’s president and CEO enumerated … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-02-27
The Serene Eye of a Storm
Danspace Project presents Julie McMillan in Benjamin Kimitch’s KO-BU. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-02-27
DC’s Arena Stage Doubles Down On Political Plays And Lands A Major Gift
“The $2.5 million is the initial splash in what will plainly need to be a very deep bucket. The Power Plays, first announced in November, are new works focused on politics and power – one for each decade of America’s existence. The 10-year, 25-work series will be composed of five related cycles: Presidential Voices, African-American Voices, Insider Voices, Musical Theater Voices and Women’s Voices.”
Oscars Ratings Are In – Slight Decline From Last Year
“In the 56 overnight markets, the Oscars show averaged a 22.4 rating, just below last year’s figure of 22.5. Each rating point represents the percentage of households tuned in.”
Why Paste Magazine Decided To Return To Print
The magazine had abandoned print in 2010 but stayed online. But print now seems a viable strategy again. “This isn’t a return to Paste Magazine. We’re not reliant on getting 200,000 people to be part of our rate base so we can go sell ads to Ford, BMW and Jack Daniels. Though we do have some advertising in the quarterly, it’s a small portion of our model. We’re reliant on our subscribers to foot the bill for what we do.”
That Whole Bringing Tourists Into The Oscars Telecast Thing? Here’s What Went Wrong…
“Our relationship with the icons of culture has changed, refracted through our politics. At the Oscars, the people who made those movies look out of touch in their Harry Winston jewelry and blue velvet dinner jackets. When they declaim a wall on the Mexican border, or quote the Koran, it sounds naïve, even insulting, to a good-sized number of people. Somehow not even movies about the emotional pain of working class Massachusetts townies or tough modern Texan cowboys shooting it out against the backdrop of economic disaster could get over that hump.”
In Defense Of Cultural Criticism Even During The Trump Presidency
“It’s hard to defend doing anything except being in the streets” right now, but the space where the arts lie “is not an apolitical place, it is just not owned by government. In this aesthetic space, the arts explore a less confined politics than the one that controls the state. The state is not the beginning, end, or the reason for this space.”
Inspiration For A Young Violinist
Francesca Dego, in a Q&A, asked about her musical guilty pleasures: “My guilty pleasures are usually not musical! Does not practising count? I’ve gone on holiday a couple of times without my violin and although I try to convince myself that bringing it would have been useless, because sunbathing and practising don’t coexist well, guilt usually strikes after a couple of days.”
In The UK, Waterstones Opens ‘Unbranded’ Small Bookstores To Some Backlash
Did the large chain do it to avoid the backlash against national chains on high streets? Of course not, says the managing director. It’s because the small shops are independent. (Except for being owned by Waterstones.)
Just In Case You Missed A Few Of The Award Winners In The Theatre, Here’s Your Catch-Up List
The New York Times debuts a new movie recommendation service (will this be an app someday soon?) with legal, aboveboard ways to catch up on the Oscar winners from the comfort of the couch.
There Was A Time When ‘Casablanca’ Was An Object Of Art-House Worship, But That Time Is (Finally?) Ending
The movie, which used to be a cultural touchstone so potent that it made audiences understand that characters like Harry and Sally were perfect for each other, has fallen off in recent years. Is it because Americans don’t feel the shadow of WWII anymore?