“Here we are in 2021 and many still think they can affect change by pulling their business from the very people who helped get the statewide and national results they claim to want. Apparently the way to get people to vote the way you like is to yank them around, threatening their ability to pay their mortgage and feed their children. While a middle-class actor like me could, in reality, move to another state where there is work, there are many good folks in my industry who would not have that privilege. For many, a boycott could mean a continuing elbow from the powerful that drives them deeper into the margins with fewer escape routes.” – ArtsATL
Authenticity Is Overrated
“Everyone else might be taken, but the effort to be ourselves is the surest path to being just like everyone else, especially in the context of a highly commodified and surveilled culture where we always seem to be on stage. If some person or organisation claims to be concerned with authenticity, you can be almost certain that they’re conformist posers.” – Aeon
LA Opens A Tiny Home Village For Homeless People
“The city keeps investing in these temporary shelters, but everyone acknowledges that there’s nowhere to move to from these shelters. And if it’s not permanent housing, it doesn’t actually solve homelessness,” says Shayla Myers of the Legal Aid Foundation of L.A. “Everyone says we need all of these options, and there’s no question that’s true. But at some point, the level of investment that’s going into temporary shelters starts to supplant permanent solutions.” – Curbed
If You Don’t Start Until Your Teens, Can You Still Make It In Ballet?
“The ballet world is filled with stories of dancers who first pointed their toes as toddlers and became professionals as teenagers. But what about those who started ballet as teenagers — and then realized that they wanted to make it their career? Their experience can be as thrilling as it is overwhelming, and also inspire a bit of panic.” – Pointe Magazine
Even Square Dancing Has Gone Onto Zoom
“Contra and square dancing involve lots of other people, not just a single partner. Dancing involves live music, played with precision. It involves callers who stand with the musicians and direct the dancers’ moves. It involves a dance floor. These were all issues that had to be figured out. By the summer of 2020, they were.” – The Washington Post
That Long-Awaited Final Sondheim Musical? It’s Not Coming
The show, titled Buñuel and based on that filmmaker’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, had been in development with playwright David Ives (Venus In Fur) and the Public Theater for about a decade, with a workshop held in 2016. Now the Public says that the 91-year-old composer told the theater last year that he had abandoned the piece. – The New York Times
AI Routinely Misreads Emotion In Human Faces. Should We Worry?
Today affect-recognition tools can be found in national-security systems and at airports, in education and hiring start-ups, in software that purports to detect psychiatric illness and policing programs that claim to predict violence. The claim that a person’s interior state can be accurately assessed by analyzing that person’s face is premised on shaky evidence. – The Atlantic
Back From The Brink Of Collapse, Australia’s Leading Professional Vocal Ensemble Is Hard At Work
Just two years ago, out of cash, The Song Company entered liquidation bankruptcy; it was rescued by a donor a month later. Then came 2020 and the pandemic, with Australia undergoing unusually strict lockdowns. Those measures worked, and with the country reopening, the ensemble has reorganized itself, started a professional apprenticeship for young singers, and is doing both mainstage programs and “Salon” concerts in small spaces. – Limelight (Australia)
The Biographer Has Been Accused Of Abuse. Should We Ignore The Book?
“If an artist is a bad person, should that change the way audiences interact with his art? In this particular case, if the author is a rapist, should that change the way we read Philip Roth: The Biography? Arguably, no. A book has an existence apart from its author, a truism that is extra true in the case of biography. When the biographer turns out to be a contemptible human being, his subject comes under suspicion too: What drew the biographer to this guy and not someone else? We owe it to this guy to be fair-minded.” – The Atlantic
Honkaku: The Japanese Detective Novels Catching On In English
“Honkaku translates as ‘orthodox’, and refers to the crafting of fiendishly clever and complex puzzle scenarios – such as a murder in a locked bedroom – that can only be solved through logical deduction. … Honkaku stories have more in common with a game of chess than some modern thrillers, which can be filled with surprise twists and sudden reveals. In honkaku, everything is transparent, … giving the reader a fair chance of solving the mystery before the detective does.” – The Guardian
Big Bump In UK Book Sales In 2020
UK consumer book sales climbed 7% to £2.1bn last year as people “rediscovered their love of reading” in lockdown, the industry body says. – BBC
Why Viewers With Thousands Of Options Are Choosing To Stream Old TV Series
The Office and The Sopranos were two of the biggest hits of 2020, according to streaming services, which have recently paid hundreds of millions of dollars for exclusive rights to long-off-the-air favorite comedies such as Seinfeld, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and South Park. Why? The same reason people turn to comfort food: reassurance and the dopamine hit. – BBC
YouTube On Pace To Be Bigger Media Company Than Netflix
In its first-quarter earnings report Tuesday, Google parent company Alphabet said YouTube brought in revenue of $6.01 billion in advertising revenue during the quarter — up from $4 billion from a year ago, for a growth rate of 49%. That’s an acceleration over its 46% growth in Q4. It’s also nearly twice the growth rate of Netflix, which reported 24% revenue growth in Q1, and expects growth to slow to 19% next quarter. – CNBC
Indian-American Calls For Paris Opera Ballet To Cancel ‘La Bayadère’
Rajan Zed, an advocate and the founder of the Reno-based Universal Society of Hinduism, has previously called on other companies, including Houston Ballet, the Royal Ballet in London, and, just this month, the Korean National Ballet and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, to remove “this deeply problematic ballet … [and] blatant belittling of a rich civilization” from their repertoires. In his latest statement, he says that “we are well into the 21st century now, and outdated La Bayadère, which was first presented in St. Petersburg in 1877, is long overdue for permanent retirement from the world stage, including from Opéra National de Paris.” – Gramilano (Milan)
Theodore Lambrinos, Prolific Baritone, Dead Of COVID At 85
A longtime soloist at the Met and a mainstay of New York Grand Opera’s summertime productions in Central Park, “over his 60-year career he gave nearly 800 performances in three dozen countries in opera productions (some 60 roles) and in concerts of arias, Broadway fare and Hellenic songs (a lifelong passion).” – The New York Times
Using Origami To Create Emergency Shelter For Disasters
A team of applied mathematics specialists at Harvard spent three years of calculations and trial-and-error to design a lightweight plastic structure that’s about the size of a twin mattress when folded but quickly inflates to a stable 8’x8’x8′ octagonal structure — relatively easy to transport in large numbers and quick to erect. – Wired
Trial Indoor Performance With Audience Of 4,500 Shows Little Indication Of COVID Transmission
The event, a rock concert at an arena in Barcelona on March 27, required attendees to have an antigen test beforehand and to wear masks throughout, but no social distancing was required. Two weeks later, only six audience members (four of whom say they were exposed elsewhere) tested positive for COVID, which extrapolates to half the current infection rate in Barcelona as a whole. – Yahoo! (AP)
The Jane Austen Museum, Slavery, And The Culture Wars
“This month, the museum, Jane Austen’s House, touched a nerve when its director said that it would include details about Austen and her family’s ties to the slave trade, including the fact that her father was a trustee of a sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua. … The reaction from the British tabloids was swift.” – The New York Times