“The accent we’re talking about here is among the weirdest ways of speaking in the history of the English language. … Its popularity, though, in pop culture [of its era] can be tied to one American woman, and a very strange set of books.”
Just-Discovered Ingmar Bergman Screenplay To Be Filmed By His Old Enemy
Sixty-Four Minutes With Rebecka was planned as part of a joint project with Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa that never panned out. Now it’s going to be filmed by Suzanne Osten, a director with whom Bergman feuded from the 1960s until his death.
What’s The Source Of The Problems At Philly’s Biggest Funder? An Auditor Names Names
Lisa Ranghelli of Philamplify, which conducted a formal assessment of the William Penn Foundation in 2014: “We didn’t call out specific individuals in our report, but perhaps our choice to be circumspect merely helps perpetuate the problem.”
For The Seventh Year, National Ballet Of Canada Posts Surplus
The company had 2,277 performances and outreach events in the 2015/16 season with a total attendance of 918,131. There were77 performances at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts with 141,146 in attendance and 2,190 community events reaching 760,413 young people and their families.
Elizabeth Bishop’s Last Love Affair
In 1971, three years after the suicide of her Brazilian partner, the still-grieving poet came to Harvard to fill in for the on-sabbatical Robert Lowell. There she fell for the 27-year-old house secretary – with her “blue blue blue” eyes – of the dorm where Bishop was staying.
The Power Of “Showing Off” (And What It Means)
“Consider then what is meant by ‘showing off’. We use this phrase to designate behaving in a way intended to attract admiration. Showing off is not just doing something well before an audience. Jacqueline du Pré doing Elgar is not showing off. She is performing, playing cello before an audience. What distinguishes showing off is the intention behind the deed. When I show off, I do something for the reason that I want to attract your admiration. When we deem others to be showing off we make those judgments within a context of intricate sets of meanings. These are at best provisional and changing, and so too are the possible meanings we live out in our daily lives.”
A Rare Cultural Glimpse Inside North Korea
The Munich Chamber Orchestra visits North Korea and makes a film about the experience. Life in the North is regimented and looks, in this video – a bit grim. But then, maybe that’s one reason the North Korean musicians seen here seem so passionate about the music they make.
So What Does It Mean To Be A Public Intellectual? It’s A Very Difficult Road To Walk
“A social category so pure and idealized will be both immensely irritating and fatally ineffective. All intellectuals will appear tainted as soon as one pauses to examine how they put bread on their table, with whom they play golf, and how they fund their projects. No critic can be truly independent of his or her society, and in pretending that one can, we set ourselves up for disillusionment.”
Anger And Confusion In Cairo As Film Fest Abruptly Disinvites A Film (And Filmmaker)
“Filmed amid and set before, during, and after the revolution and the ravages of post-Mubarak Egypt, the piece is of intense interest to its local audience, particularly the independent cultural scene of Downtown Cairo, of which El Said is a member.”
Jaap van Zweden’s Global Dance
The conductor leads two orchestras on different sides of the world, and the disconnects aren’t just geographic. “The New York and Hong Kong orchestras are not just distant geographically — they are also at very different phases of their development, requiring different types of effort from their shared music director.”
Mary Boone Gallery Accuses Alec Baldwin Of Tax Avoidance In Disputed Art Case
Mr. Baldwin’s dispute with Ms. Boone, a prominent gallerist who built her reputation in the 1980s, has lifted a curtain on a part of the New York art world outsiders don’t always see.
Why Did An American Couple Just Give $380 Million In Art To France?
It was a negotiation that involved the highest levels of the French government. “The donation, announced Saturday at a ceremony at Élysée Palace, was the culmination of formal talks between officials at the highest levels of the French government and the couple, who are 80 years old and have been married for 60 years.”
There’s A Neurological Explanation For Why I’m Always Late
As the surprisingly simple title of the study in question says, “Familiarity expands space and contracts time.” (See, boss? It’s science!)
How Hollywood Eagerly Enlisted In The War On Drugs
“The prospect of foreign drug traffickers invading American shores gave pop-culture cops a new and more dangerous enemy to fight, one that justified fast driving, explosive shootouts and all sorts of audience-thrilling rule-breaking. In return, Hollywood promoted the idea that drugs posed a grave threat that justified new, frightening police tactics and the erosion of basic rights.”
Edmonton Symphony’s New Chief Conductor Is A 24-Year-Old Former Child Prodigy
When he was 13, Alexander Prior wrote a ballet score commissioned by the Moscow State Ballet; when he was 17, he finished a conducting degree at the St. Petersburg Conservatory; he speaks six languages. Now, he’ll take over the baton in Alberta’s capital from William Eddins at the beginning of next season.
Is It A Farmers’ Market? A Train Station? No, It’s Berlin’s Next Museum
“The Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron has won a competition to build a new museum of 20th-century art in central Berlin with a long, low red-brick design that invited comparisons to a rail station, a barn, a temple and an indoor market.”
Making Dance For Dancers Over 60
The company manager of England’s DANCE SIX-0 writes about how the project started, the needs it’s fulfilling, and its activities from full-fledged public performance to dance for dementia patients.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.27.16
Viewpoint diversity
In a guest blog at Scientific American, social psychologist Clay Routledge asks whether American (and presumably this applies to other countries) universities allot an excessive amount of attention to racial, gender, and cultural diversity, but insufficient attention to viewpoint diversity. … read more
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth Published 2016-10-27
Moving Architecture
American Ballet Theatre presents ballets by Tharp, Lang, and Millepied. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-10-27
Paul Conley On Joey Alexander
I have a longstanding rule regarding child prodigies who emerge on waves of publicity: Approach with caution. When the eleven-year-old Indonesian pianist Joey Alexander materialized last year in a flurry of accolades from Wynton Marsalis, … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-10-27
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Cincinnati Symphony CEO Named New Head Of Interlochen
“A nonprofit, Interlochen includes one of the nation’s most renowned arts camps, which draws 2,500 students each summer for intensive work in seven arts disciplines in a nature setting. The center also has a 500-student fine arts boarding school, an acclaimed concert series and a public radio station. Its alumni include opera legend Jessye Norman, pop singer Josh Groban and conductor Lorin Maazel.”
Overnight Earthquakes Damage More Italian Heritage, Church Collapses
“The 5.4-magnitude and 5.9-magnitude tremors near Visso in the Marche region follow a 6.2-magnitude earthquake that destroyed the town of Amatrice, 70km to the south, on 24 August, killing at least 295 people. The impact was felt in Rome, Naples and the Veneto coast, according to Italian press reports.”
Preview Periods For Plays Will Disappear ‘In My Lifetime’, Says Leading Director
Michael Grandage: “One of the jobs of a director, and certainly I see it as one of my jobs, is to make sure the rehearsal period is such that when you get to that first preview, you are effectively getting to an opening night. … Opening previews will be opening nights before too much longer in some form. They already are, if you like, because of social media.”
‘The Red Detachment Of Women’ Is Coming To Australia, And People Are Fussing About Commie Propaganda
“Chinese-Australian members of the Australian Values Alliance … are drawing up a petition against four Australian performances of The Red Detachment of Women by the National Ballet of China in February at the Melbourne Arts Centre. … The alliance says The Red Detachment was orchestrated by Jiang [Qing, Mao’s wife] ‘to brainwash civilians during the horror of the Cultural Revolution’.”
Ah, Those Merry Days Of Dadaism
Alfred Brendel (yes, the pianist): “Has there ever been a major avant-garde movement that was so closely tied to laughter and the grotesque? Laughter was the Dadaists’ favorite instrument … Traditionalists see Dadaists as silly people. To a degree, they are right. Silliness was liberating from the constraints of reason. Silliness has the potential to be funny, to provoke laughter, and make people realize that laughter is liberating.”
The Gifts Of John Cage
“He opened doors—floodgates, really—and dissolved definitions; if most of his own compositions now seem less interesting than the ramifications of his ideas, there can be little doubt that his oceanic spirit changed the topography.”