The LADP app takes this experience of live-streamed classes to a new level by packaging this professional-grade instruction with a sneak peek into the company’s rehearsals and performances. The app is free; access to the classes is $9.99 a month. The app is a savvy effort to prevent layoffs similar to the ones that have hit many dance companies, while raising the profile of Millepied’s eight-year-old organization. Classes are taught by members of the company in genres including ballet, modern, and hip-hop. Guest dancers also make appearances on the app every week. – Fast Company
World’s First Entirely Virtual, Entirely Interactive Art Museum Opens Aug. 14
The Virtual Online Museum of Art (VOMA) …, curated by London-based art dealer Lee Cavaliere, will feature masterpieces on loan from international institutions such as Musée d’Orsay, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. … Additionally, VOMA will present commissioned artworks by international contemporary artists as part of its newly-launched Digital Firsts Commission Programme.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Considering Poulenc – A New Biography
“Poulenc was a composer who melded the incompatible. Famously described as a combination of “monk and ragamuffin”, he wrote music that the mind can mistrust but the heart will adore. He clung resolutely to tonality and melody in a century that had other ideas. His humour and light, his sheer loveliness, have led to suspicion.” – The Guardian
Abstract Art Can Changes Your Mindset: Study
Looking at non-representational art tends to induce what’s called “psychological distance.” As one of the lead researchers put it, “This means that art has an effect on our general cognitive state, that goes beyond how much we enjoy it, to change the way we perceive events and make decisions.” – Inverse
Everyone’s A Copy Editor In This New Card Game For Word Nerds
“The game involves some role playing. If you use only the Grammar cards, the dealer is called the Copy Chief, as in ‘The Copy Chief shuffles the fifty Grammar cards.’ If you mix in the Style cards, the dealer is the Author, the players are Copy Editors … and the deck is huge.” New Yorker Comma Queen Mary Norris writes about Stet!, a spinoff from Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer’s 2019 book Dreyer’s English. – The New Yorker
Theatre’s Overlooked Casualties Of The Pandemic: Publicists
Says the co-director of one London theatrical PR firm, “At the end of the day, we are not the people putting on the shows, but we make a crucial contribution. What we do is bespoke, skilled and comes with specialised knowledge often honed over many years. We are the translators between the artists, the journalists and the people on the street.” – The Stage
Journalist Sues Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes)
Kjersti Flaa, a Norwegian journalist living in Los Angeles, filed a complaint Monday in California federal court alleging that the HFPA has adopted membership rules that exclude qualified applicants who compete with existing members. The suit alleges that applicants must pledge not to write for any rival publication claimed by an HFPA member and that foreign markets are allocated among the membership. – Los Angeles Times
New AI Browser Extension Factchecks What You’re Seeing
Beyond just matching up bogus claims with evidence to the contrary, the startup treats the fact-checking process like an assembly line, with an algorithm prioritizing and doling out tasks. As a basic example, one step might involve finding the source of a rumor, while another might involve researching the claim. Logically’s system can handle some of these tasks automatically, but it can also hand out assignments to human fact-checkers based on their area of expertise. – Fast Company
How To Think About Leadership Transitions
“I mentioned that I work in real estate. When a listing is advertised with the line, “First time on market after 40 years of family ownership,” it almost always includes the phrase, “Bring your contractor and architect!” The work of restructuring an outmoded organization is not as physical as renovating a building, but the perils of deferred maintenance are just as dangerous. You can’t allow your house to fall into disrepair. You must keep up with changing codes, modern tastes, new ways of addressing sustainability.” – American Theatre
The Muppeteers Need To Concentrate On Some Other, Any Other, Couple Than Kermit And Miss Piggy
Never mind the enormous catalogue of their incompatibilities and the exhausting ups-and-downs of their relationship. “The Muppeteers’ obsession with Piggy and Kermit has come at the expense of nearly every other character. Sure, Fozzie briefly dated a human. But we know so little about, say, the long-term love of Gonzo and Camilla the chicken, or Janice’s romances with various members of Electric Mayhem, or what is actually the deal with Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker. Share the spotlight a little, you attention hog (and attention frog)!” – Slate
Met Museum Ends Free Internships – Now They’ll All Be Paid
The museum says that as a result of Adrienne Arsht’s gift, it is now the single biggest art museum in the US to offer 100% paid internships to nearly 120 undergraduate and graduate interns each year, widening access for students who cannot afford to work without compensation. It says that the internships enable interns to learn about museum practice in over 40 department areas. – The Art Newspaper
God, What A Treat To See Live Dance Again, Writes New York Times Critic
Gia Kourlas: “It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. Sunshine, a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff. So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears.” – The New York Times
A COVID Face Mask That Can Translate Eight Languages And Take Dictation
“In conjunction with an app, the C-Face Smart mask can transcribe dictation, amplify the wearer’s voice, and translate speech … between Japanese and Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, English, Spanish and French.” Naturally, it was the Japanese who dreamed up and developed it; the company that makes it is called Donut Robotics. – CNN
Notre-Dame’s Organ Is Being Taken Apart Piece By Piece To Get The Lead Out
Miraculously, the enormous instrument suffered no structural damage from the April 15, 2019 fire at the medieval Paris cathedral. But the 8,000 pipes, five keyboards, and intricate mechanisms were covered and filled with toxic lead dust from the destroyed roof and spire. Disassembly will take until the end of this year and the cleaning will take more than three years; after the organ is all back together, it will take six months to tune and voice it. – Yahoo! (AP)
Another Selfie-Greedy Tourist Breaks Another Artwork
“This time, the victim was a historic plaster model by the Italian artist Antonio Canova (1757–1822). On July 31, a misguided Austrian tourist snapped the toes off the Neoclassical sculpture Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix, housed at [the town of] Possagno’s Museo Antonio Canova in northeast Italy, while attempting to sit on its lap for a photo.” – Artnet
Unemployment In UK Theatre Up By Two-Thirds In Just A Few Weeks
“Job losses at theatres across the UK have jumped from 3,000 to 5,000 in less than a month, according to figures from the Bectu trade union. The job losses include redundancies of permanent employees and layoffs of casual staff.” – The Guardian
Is Standup Comedy Theatre?
Standup comedy is not created purely by the performer, but as a collaborative production between the performer, the audience, the venue and the promoter. In the same way a theatre is arranged to support dramatic performance or a gallery is lit to display paintings, so too must a standup comedy gig be presented in such a way that it contextualises the performance to come – the iconic image of the single microphone on a stand in a spotlight is evocative of standup comedy without anything needing to be said. – The Conversation
YouTube – Designed To Addict (But To What?)
The burning question, at this point, is whether this recommender system can reliably lead users down epistemically problematic rabbit holes. In other words, is it possible to discern a pattern in YouTube’s AutoPlay system that takes users from ABBA to lizard people? This becomes especially significant when you consider that 70% of all watch-time spent on YouTube is due to videos suggested by the recommender system. – 3 Quarks Daily
Should Unions Be Compulsory?
Given the degree to which workers lack autonomy and are at the mercy of arbitrary and capricious decisions by their employer, republican liberty is at risk when it comes to the employer-employee relationship. Without a union, employees are subject to all kinds of arbitrary treatment. With a union, employees have some protection against this. – Aeon
There’s A New Genre In Town: Quar-Horror
A couple of the filmmakers: “This is where our brains went. Instead of making bread, we were like, ‘what can we do with how we’re creative?'” – NPR