With the country having at least half a dozen thriving classical dance forms of its own, European-style ballet never caught on in a big way in India. Yet Yana Lewis, a veteran ballerina and teacher from England who settled in India in 1998, founded and runs the Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet in Bangalore, where she’s training dancers and, crucially, dance instructors who can understand and respect Indian social mores in a way that most foreign ballet masters don’t. – The New Indian Express
If You’re Showing An Old ‘Nutcracker’ Online, What Do You Do About The Dances That Now Seem Racist?
Phil Chan, co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, has given advice to a number of companies on how to handle (in live performance) the ethnic-stereotype set pieces in the ballet’s second act. Here he offers three suggestions for providing access to the seasonal favorite for your community when the portrayals in your old production don’t look so good today. – Dance Magazine
Magazine Slammed For Performance Of Audio Narration
“The first line identifies the writer as a “southern Black woman who stands in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement.” The essay itself appeared in Fireside on Nov. 24 and an audio version was published alongside it. Despite the topic and its author, the person who narrated the audio recording was a young, White male voice actor who spoke in an accent that listeners interpreted as something that would appear in a minstrel show.” – Washington Post
America’s First Science-Fiction Novel Is Now 200 Years Old — But Who Wrote It?
Symzonia; Voyage of Discovery, published in 1820, follows a ship-captain/seal hunter to the South Pole (still undiscovered at the time), where there’s a portal to the interior of Earth (which is hollow), where lives a different race of beings. It’s a satire of colonialism and American self-regard, though a few newspaper writers at the time thought the book was non-fiction. But Symzonia was published anonymously — and here Paul Collins, with the help of JGAAP software, works out who the likely author was. – The New Yorker
Big Art Telling Big Stories
“The resurgence over the past two decades of artists working in the grand manner suggests that the energies inherent to this style didn’t disappear but were merely redirected: into cinema like that of Cecil B. DeMille; into cycles of narrative painting such as the African American history paintings of Jacob Lawrence; and even into political spectacle, lingering on in the rallies of President Trump. And now they are coalescing again into a coherent artistic form, with multiple offshoots and variations, including the works of Titus Kaphar and Kehinde Wiley.” – Washington Post
The Monolith Has Disappeared
And, just as quickly as we all learned about it, the monolith in the Utah desert is gone. “The Bureau of Land Management said it would not be investigating the disappearance because ‘crimes involving private property’ are managed by the local sheriff’s office. The San Juan and Grand County Sheriff’s Offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.” – The New York Times
How To Pandemic-Proof Our Griefstricken, Routine-Longing Brains And Hearts
It’s not easy, knowing familiar holidays are here and we just can’t expect to celebrate them the same way. “Our brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Not only is there the seeming capriciousness of the virus, but we no longer have the routines that served as the familiar scaffolding of our lives.” But now, knowing some things about our new lives, we have to create new routines. – The New York Times
And Yet, A Live Performance Truly Beats Livestreaming
Ireland is reopening in some ways, but arts venues are expecting a third wave of coronavirus infections and another shutdown after Christmas. How should they plan? “Covid-19 has profoundly changed parts of our world. Business travel has been killed by the Zoom call. The absurdity of the daily rush hour has been exposed by home working. Some of these changes may turn out to be permanent. But when it comes to art and culture, lockdown has revealed a contrary truth: live will always be better than livestream.” – Irish Times
A Century Of The Widening Gyre
One hundred years after the last massive, worldwide pandemic, Yeats’ poem feels close at hand. “I would scarcely call ‘The Second Coming’ a holiday poem. But it makes you feel that that a page of history is about to flip: one epoch is about to give birth to another.” – NPR
In 2020, The Performing Arts Livestream Winter Holidays
Members of Live Arts Maryland might be practicing outdoors, as far apart as possible, with earmuffs and scarves on, but on the day of their performance, “individual performers in A Celebration of Christmas will sing carols from their homes and will be joined, online, by an orchestra ensemble in a YouTube livestream.” – Baltimore Sun
The Pandemic Is Fueling Gaming, Sure, But Also A Game Category Called Just Chatting
Only connect, perhaps? Yes, Animal Crossing and Among Us are still popular, but “Just Chatting, which features people talking on camera about food, technology and other topics.” (And then there’s All Bad Cards, like an online version of Cards Against Humanity.) – Los Angeles Times
Cuban Government Agrees To Dialogue And Tolerance For Artists
It’s unprecedented in modern times, as Cuba has been quick to quash artistic dissent – but many of the protestors, who were demonstrating following a Thursday night raid of another protest, were actors, musicians, and others who long held governmental approval. – Seattle Times (AP)
Hollywood Is Lost And Wandering, And Wondering How To Survive
Sure, Hollywood has been predicting its own demise since TV made it big. Every subsequent innovation – larger TVs! color TVs! The internet! DVD rentals! Streaming! – has the industry thinking it will die soon. But this time, well. “In the 110-year history of the American film industry, never has so much upheaval arrived so fast and on so many fronts, leaving many writers, directors, studio executives, agents and other movie workers disoriented and demoralized — wandering in ‘complete darkness,’ as one longtime female producer told me. These are melodramatic people by nature, but talk to enough of them and you will get the strong sense that their fear is real this time.” – The New York Times
American Museums Are, Finally, Going Through An Identity Crisis
Perhaps, as one museum director claims, we’re “at a moment for complete reimagination of museums,” but it’s a painful one with the pandemic shutdowns mixing with a long overdue racial reckoning. “Museums are caught in a disheartening dilemma: They’re facing growing calls for diversity, equity, and inclusion, but without the funding they need they’re more likely to close than to be able to meet those demands.” – The Atlantic
Not Even A Pedophilia Scandal Can Crack France’s Legendarily Clubby Literary World
On the prize committees, those who should feel disgraced give a shrug. Why should they care? “François Busnel, the host of La Grande Librairie, France’s most important television literary program, compared prize juries to the southern Italian mafia. ‘It’s a camorra, particularly the Renaudot,’ he said in a recent interview.” – The New York Times
Slightly Correcting The Scales By Adding A Portrait Of One Woman To Britain’s Royal Society
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered a new type of star – the pulsar – when she was in grad school. A Nobel Prize for its discovery went to her male PhD supervisor. Now her portrait is going into the Royal Society at its headquarters in London. “‘I’m sure that will upset a few fellows,’ she said, chuckling, when told by the Guardian of her position at the top of the grand staircase. ‘It is really prominent I must say, I’m surprised at that.'” – The Guardian (UK)
Sarah Bryan Miller, Longtime Classical Music Critic In St. Louis, Has Died At 68
Miller was the first woman to be the Post-Dispatch‘s classical music critic, but as that role shrank (as at so many papers), she filled many other spots as well. Originally, “she got into journalism because she wanted to make a difference. In 2001, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra found itself in a financial crisis that threatened its existence. Ms. Miller covered the situation and explained to readers the options for keeping the SLSO alive, from maintaining it as an international-class ensemble to downgrading it to a regional orchestra.” Her articles inspired donors. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch