Her death-defying dancers rehearse Ascension. (video)
Wait, What Actually *Is* The Most Banned Book In The United States?
The American Library Association’s list is not statistically supported, says FiveThirtyEight. Sooooo what’s the deal?
Does Too Much Porn Really Numb Us To Sexual Pleasure?
“In many ways, pornography is no different to a scary movie or a bungee jump. We just view it differently because it happens to involve sex. … [One researcher] likened pornography addiction – the notion that, like a drug, the more you watch, the more, and higher doses, you crave – to the emperor who has no clothes: everyone says it’s there, but there is no actual evidence to support it.”
What It’s Like To Have An Opera Written About You
“Who has an opera made of their life? Roman gods, doomed lovers, Nixon, and now, to our great surprise, my wife Jessie and I. … In popular usage, the words ‘operatic’ and ‘tragic’ are roughly synonymous, the required minimum bet of misery much greater for opera than memoir. So how should you take it if professionals think your life was awful enough to qualify? The war was bad, I admit, but I didn’t know my war was Wagner bad.”
The Couple Who Are Finally Bringing Us The Real Dostoevsky (Eat Your Heart Out, Constance Garnett)
“When we first told [this old Russian émigré lady] we were translating The Brothers Karamazov, she said, Oh, Dostoevsky, I hope you correct his awful style. I said, No, that is precisely what we’re going to keep.” A conversation with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Do Our Theatre Reviews Have A Racial Bias Problem?
“Reading these reviews just after following reports from the Americans in the Arts and Theatre Communications Group conferences, which demonstrated a genuine desire on the part of arts institutions to address diversity and inclusion, I worry that if the arbiters of art continue to judge work based on retrograde social views, it will only slow progress in the field that, as it is, has already been too long in coming.”
MoMA Averts Strike As Employees Approve New Contract
The three-year labor agreement “was ratified by 95% of the roughly 280 MoMA employees who are members of Local 2110.”
Bill T. Jones Grapples With The Holocaust In Dance
“Taking testimony from a Holocaust survivor and turning it into a dance is an intriguing but risky proposition, especially if you’re not a Jew. How do you do justice to the words and the truths they contain while still creating something new from them? How do art and life, imagination and reality, coexist?”
A Liberal Arts Education? Not Worth A Dime (And That’s Okay)
“Even the shrinking pool of champions of liberal education try to argue for its workplace utility, pointing out that employers actually do want their employees to ‘write clearly,’ ‘argue persuasively,’ and ‘possess critical thinking skills,’ … It has not compelled anyone. … This tactic may win some battles, but it will ultimately lose the war.”
London’s Royal Opera House Has Record Year At The Box Office
“Double-digit increases in income from ticket sales – which grew 19% to £44.2 million – and fundraising (a 10% lift to £26.5 million) accounted for more than half (56%) of all earnings. Funding of £29 million from Arts Council England saw its contribution to overall income decreasing 1% to 23% of the total.”
Latest “Jurassic Park” Reaches $1 Billion Box Office In Only 13 Days
“The dinosaur film has collected $402.8 million domestically in 10 days and $584.4 million overseas since its international rollout began on June 10, according to studio estimates. Internationally, the latest installment will pass the $640-million lifetime box office total of “Jurassic Park” (which includes the first run, reissues and 3-D) and become the highest-grossing film in the “Jurassic” franchise.”
Everything About Canadian TV Is Changing
“All the change is symbolized, illuminated, in CBC actually firing a well-connected person of privileged background on a heap-of-cash issue. It’s still a racket, the Canadian TV business, but the old version is dead. And some people dance on its grave.”
A Star Retires: Julie Kent’s Last Night At ABT
“After the curtain went down on the last act, she received a 23-minute ovation and enough bouquets to stock a small flower shop. They were tributes to Julie Kent, who danced her farewell performance with American Ballet Theater on Saturday night after 29 years with the company — a final “Romeo and Juliet” — and stirred strong emotions among fans and fellow dancers.”
Amazon Will Pay Writers Based On How Many Pages Readers Read. Is This Fair?
The move has dismayed some authors, who believe it sets a dangerous precedent and could spread across the industry. It has also raised concerns about the amount of data Amazon is able to mine from its customers. “We’re making this switch in response to great feedback we received from authors who asked us to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read,” the company said.
Was It Really Taylor Swift Who Got Apple To Pay Musicians?
Many small and mid-sized labels had protested Apple’s free trial. “Collectively, the protesting labels – which included Beggars Group, home to Adele and Britain’s largest indie – represented about a quarter of the global market. Not to have Swift’s album 1989 on Apple Music, when it launches at the end of the month, is one thing; to be missing tens of millions of songs from independent acts is a whole other matter.”
The New Cardiff Singer Of The World Is –
– a 32-year-old soprano from Belarus. The Audience Prize went to a 29-year-old Mongolian. Obscure? Not for long.
If The Internet Was Once An Egalitarian Utopia, Have Corporations Paved Paradise?
“In the early days of the web, much more of what we encountered was home-made by people who shared those values and that vision. … But then Facebook happened. … Blogs were ours. Facebook is not ours.” Nevertheless, argues David Weinberger, if they’ve turned paradise into a parking lot, there’s still a lot of grass growing through the pavement.
The Marvelous Manhole Covers Of Minneapolis
“Most visitors to new cities don’t come home raving about the location’s manhole covers, but the city of Minneapolis has made its underfoot sewer covers a point of artistic pride, with designs that celebrate the area’s art, history, and wildlife.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.22.15
“Artless” In America: Why, Oh Why?
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-06-22
Commercial, Not Collegial: British Museum’s Major Loans to Abu Dhabi’s Zayed National Museum
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-06-22
Visit from a gaggle of fractious critics
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-06-22
Twitter, in four sentences
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-06-22
Chamber Ballet in a Church
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-06-22
Picnics, Plato and Pleats: Death in Venice at Wormsley
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2015-06-22
Gunther Schuller On Book 3
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-06-22
Monday Recommendation: Kenny Dorham
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-06-22
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The Berlin Phil Has Chosen Its New Conductor
Kiril Petrenko “is best-known for his work in the opera pit; he spent five years at the helm of the Berlin Komische Oper, and has been general music director of the Bavarian State Opera since 2013.”
Gunther Schuller, A Composer Who Synthesized Classical And Jazz
“In addition to being fiercely proud of his self-taught status, he had an iconoclastic streak, and had a busy sideline delivering jeremiads in which he railed against either his listeners’ approach to music making or the musical world in general.”