The dancer-choreographer-MacArthur ‘Genius’ talks with Leonard Lopate about renovating the genre and the world premiere of her piece ETM: Double Down. (audio)
There’s More To Syrian Archaeology Than Palmyra
“Some five years into its violent civil war, Syria remains a hotbed of archaeological exploration. Such exploration involves perhaps a good deal more danger than those archaeologists envisioned when they were in graduate school.”
How On Earth Do You Choreograph Something Fresh To Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’? Edouard Lock Was Itching To Try
“These are pieces that have entered the collective unconscious. The act of combining something that you’ve already experienced with something you haven’t yet seen is something I like to use as one of the tensions available to a work. There’s a sort of distortion between the stage and the audience that is dependent on the memories of each individual.” (One thing Lock did not do is leave the music as is.)
The Rarefied World Of Larry Gagosian
“Gagosian himself is estimated to clear $1 billion in sales annually and is among a small group of gallery owners whose appetites are omnivorous: He works across the contemporary and modern eras, representing living artists like John Currin and Mark Grotjahn while also dealing on behalf of the estates of Alberto Giacometti, Richard Avedon and Helen Frankenthaler.”
Odd: Why Are Our Actors Of A Different Color A Different Color?
“You don’t see Leonardo DiCaprio, Sandra Bullock, and Tom Cruise painting their faces to win roles, but this color-changing gambit has practically become required of black dramatic actors who want to appear in big-budget movies.”
Gay Dance Clubs Decline As The Culture Moves On
“The new generation just doesn’t support large dance clubs. They spend money on special events I do, like my RuPaul’s Drag Race, Pride and Halloween events. But the days of the weekly dance party are over, at least for now.”
When A Robot Kills, Is It Murder Or Product Liability?
Responding to a new short story about a robot who/that kills her/its owner, a legal scholar considers issues of robotics law that will arise sooner or later.
30 Years Of Chernobyl In Literature
“Through three decades of literary response, Chernobyl has undermined the sort of authoritative depiction that might bring closure. But something closed can be forgotten. The finest works express profound doubts about the power of language to absorb a disaster of this magnitude, and so continually reopen it to new ways of being remembered.”
A Symphony For Tape Decks (Talk About Historical Instruments …)
No Sharps, No Flats is an installation made up of 30 partially deconstructed boom boxes with tape decks, each one containing a composition by metro D.C. musicians. All of the music is in C major. Harmonious? Not for long – because it’s all on cassette tape, which has problems you youngsters don’t know about and the rest of us may have forgotten …
Why The Royal Ontario Museum Decided To Digitize Its Entire Collection (And That’s Just The Start)
Q: So five years, 1.5 million images, mobile apps, access points in the galleries. That’s a huge endeavour. The big question is, why? A: Well, it’s obvious. This collection doesn’t belong to the museum. It belongs to the public. And technology is the way we’re going to give it back.
UK Report: Jobs In The Arts Increased By 4% In 2015
“The data from the Office of National Statistics shows that 976,000 people now work in the sector, with separate data from 2015 showing that 460,000 people were working in artistic, literary and media jobs, including 77,000 authors and writers and 19,000 choreographers.”
Why Comcast Wants To Buy Dreamworks For $3 Billion
“Comcast could make use of DreamWorks’ IP-rich vault in its theme parks as well as to feed its global film and TV pipelines. It’s understood that the deal on the table envisions bringing DWA into the Universal Pictures fold.”
Subversive Opera That Hooks You Without You Realizing It
“We created a show and pretended it was going to be a rock concert. Booked a rock venue and advertised it as an indie rock show. Made up the name Liederwolfe. Everyone in the Montreal scene was curious and it was packed. And then people came on stage and sang opera. People freaked out – it was a real happening – it was great. People were yelling, people walked out – but some people stayed. They brought their friends the next time. And they stayed with us and became our core audience for eight years.”
Making Dance Out Of Martial Arts And Meditation (And Rice), And Becoming A National Symbol In The Process
Founder Lin Hwai-min talks about the birth, the growth, and the aesthetic of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Canada Council’s New Strategic Plan: Be A Bridge Between Indigenous/Non-Indigenous Through Arts
“Reconciliation through the arts is one of four main priorities in the council’s new five-year plan, which was released on Tuesday. The other three are about helping Canadian artists thrive in a digital environment, raising their profile internationally and giving them more money.”
Zaha Hadid’s Firm Wins Its First Post-Zaha Commission
Zaha Hadid’s Firm Wins Its First Post-Zaha Commission
“Zaha Hadid Architects won an international design competition for the Sberbank Technopark building, which will be built at the Skolkovo Innovation Center near [Moscow]. The new science and technology park – designed to host emerging IT, biomedical, energy, nuclear and space innovation companies – is said to be Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley.
Why Do So Many Smart And Capable People Not Feel Happy? A ‘Scarcity Mindset’
“Most of us are the products of people who survived in what was for a very, very long time, in our evolution as a species, a scarcity-oriented universe. … So we do have a very hard-wired tendency to be scarcity-oriented. … It is now being shown in quite a lot of studies that you actually perform better if you don’t put yourself under the scarcity mindset, if you don’t worry about the outcomes and enjoy the process of doing something, rather than the goal.”
Is Mindfulness Overrated? Research On The Subject Might Be
Results of a meta-analysis of 124 studies on the purported benefits of mindfulness practice “show that many of these studies contained sample sizes that are too small to provide meaningful results – and they suggest that studies on mindfulness that have turned out negative results may have not been published.”
Esa-Pekka Salonen Nails A Big Problem With Classical Music Marketing
“We have been so apologetic in this, what we call classical music, that we say: ‘You don’t have to know anything, you don’t have to have any background, you don’t have to have any frame of reference, just come with an open mind, and you’ll love it. It doesn’t quite work like that. Because if I go to an American football game not knowing anything about the rules – as, I have to admit, I don’t – it’s totally meaningless.”
Freelance Arts Workers Occupy Ten Theatres In France, Including The Comédie-Française
Angry about impending changes to the country’s generous system of unemployment insurance for performers and backstage personnel between gigs, protesting intermittents du spectacle (as they’re called in France) have occupied the Comédie-Française and the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris (where this set of protests began, and where performances of Racine’s Phèdre starring Isabelle Huppert have had to be cancelled). Demonstrators say they’ve also occupied the major state theatres in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Rennes, Caen, Lille, Toulouse, Grenoble, and Montpellier. A disastrous string of protests over the same issue in the summer of 2003 devastated the nation’s summer festivals, causing cancellations even at Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. (in French; Google Translate version here)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.26.16
Relationships and Public Policy
by Karen Gahl-Mills
I had an interesting conversation with a smart colleague today, on the topic of the role of cultural organizations in civic affairs. We were talking about the current, polarized state of public discourse and what role, if any, arts organizations should play by bringing residents together to celebrate differences and share views. He asked something simple yet profound – “Yeah, but what if I just want to run my ballet company and dance? Can’t I just do that?” … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-04-26
Lookback: on being out of touch with pop culture
From 2006: I took a look yesterday at a list of the twelve top-grossing movies in North America. I’d heard of four of them: I read the novel on which Thank You for Smoking is … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-04-26
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The Kennedy Center Wants To Be Inclusive. But what Exactly Does That Mean?
The Kennedy Center is mightily trying to remove its blinkers and open itself up to wider cultural influences — with, for instance, its new hip-hop arm. But it still defaults to a concept of “art” and “culture” that may not denote inclusivity to a lot of people.
Germany’s Cult Of Trombone (They’re Everywhere)
“While membership in Germany’s Protestant (Lutheran) church is rapidly declining – last year a record 200,000 members left the church – its trombone choirs are thriving. Today, Germany has 110,000 amateur brass players belonging to 6,000 trombone choirs.”
Pennsylvania Ballet Replaces More Than A Third Of Its Dancers
“Of 43 dancers, 12 were let go and five are leaving on their own. Others, dancers say, are thinking of leaving. … Dancers say six others were paid to leave last year” – the first under artistic director Ángel Corella.