ArtsJournal - Newsside

Joan Acocella: The Mercurial Trisha Brown

DANCE Posted:

“At the same time as she was becoming more difficult, she was also becoming more accessible. Part of Judson Dance Theatre’s deglamourization program was a refusal, by most of the choreographers, most of the time, to use conventional music, sets, or costumes. But Brown eventually put music back in, and while she often said that she did so because she got tired of hearing the audience cough, it cannot have escaped her notice that most spectators prefer dances set to music.”

If Fiction Is The Thing That Changes The World, That Fiction Will Be YA

WORDS Posted:

That might be because literary adult books need time and distance, not topicality – or at least that’s the idea. “Anecdotal evidence would suggest to me that YA novels take, on average, less time to get from idea to hardcover than literary novels, so that may be a factor in all of this. But there’s also the fact that in literary publishing, there’s a definite ick factor that comes along with being too timely.”

How Netflix Is Becoming A Global Media Company

MEDIA Posted:

“Netflix has morphed into an international service that streams in nearly every country around the world. This fast-paced growth has meant that the company’s dedication to improving models now extends to just about everything it does. Another reveal at Labs Day was that it has even created an online translation test, called Hermes, that helps it recruit the best foreign talent to dub its shows and movies.”

End Of History? The Much-Maligned Francis Fukuyama Was Right About Our Current Political Circumstances

IDEAS Posted:

Rarely read but often denigrated, it might be the most maligned, unfairly dismissed and misunderstood book of the post-war era. Which is unfortunate for at least one reason: Fukuyama might have done a better job of predicting the political turmoil that engulfed Western democracies in 2016 – from Brexit, to Trump, to the Italian Referendum – than anybody else.

Patti Smith Buys Arthur Rimbaud’s House

PEOPLE Posted:

The dwelling, which is located near the French border with Belgium in a small town called Roche, is a reassembled version of Rimbaud’s childhood home. It was here that the late 19th-century French poet wrote his most famous piece, A Season in Hell, when he was merely 19 years old.

How English Has Created A New Caste System In India

WORDS Posted:

“Fluency in English is endemic of the deep class-based divisions that continue to plague Indian society. A 2014 report from the Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy in India found that only 20 percent of the population speaks English, and only 4 percent of the population speaks the language fluently. The report emphasizes that men in India who spoke fluent English earned 34 percent higher wages than those who had some fluency.”

Carey Perloff To Retire From San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre After 25 Years

THEATRE Posted:

Perloff, who will leave after the end of next season, plans to write and direct on a freelance basis. One of the few women leaders in the still male-dominated American theater, the indefatigable Perloff first came to the 50-year-old ACT back in 1992 when the theater was in disarray both physically, in terms of the massive earthquake damage at the Geary, and in terms of its artistic reputation, which had stumbled in the wake of the volatile Bill Ball era.

A Musical Instrument You Can Play With Your Mind Alone

MUSIC Posted:

It’s called the encephalophone (brain instrument), and it was developed “with a double-edged purpose: to explore new frontiers in music technology and as a possible therapeutic tool for people who’d suffered from strokes or neurological problems like ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).”

Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.23.17

AJBlogs Posted:

I know you won’t judge me
This Arts Advocacy Day, the stakes are much higher. As we work to make the case for the arts, we wonder, is our data keeping pace? We’re using love (or breakup) letters as a creative and fun design research method to get powerful insight into the perceptions of our stakeholders. … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2017-03-23

Flyover country? Nonsense in jazz, politics, crime fiction
There’s no such thing as “flyover country” — except in the minds of careless or ignorant people who ought to know better. For instance: Jazz lives throughout the US and the world, not only in New York. … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2017-03-23

Ice cream and coffee
Quite a lively discussion in class this week, about how conservatories could change. One quick takeaway: That the Juilliard graduate students in my class would love to go to a school where the focus was … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2017-03-23

 

Argument: Kill The NEA To Help Art And Artists

ISSUES Posted:

“Our cultural bureaucracies, from the NEA down to the local organizations and institutions it supports, are the great enemy of American art, distorting tastes, careers, and patronage. They are a major factor in the malinvestment that has employment in cultural institutions growing significantly more quickly than that of the overall labor force. I am sure the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is terrific — but 400 employees Eliminating the NEA is not a program for punishing artists but for liberating them — from bureaucracy, from mediocrity, and, above all, from subservience to politics.”

Royal Ballet Choreographer Publicly Insults Dancers Over Bad Reviews

DANCE Posted:

The London critics were not fond of David Dawson’s The Human Seasons, onstage at Covent Garden as part of a triple bill. In the comment section for one particularly harsh review, Dawson’s assistant choreographer, Tim Couchman, left a rant blaming the poor quality of the performance on the dancers, insulting their professionalism, skill, work ethic, attitude and egos. The Royal Ballet is not happy.