As a result of a massive fMRI data collection project currently underway, researchers may one day “be able to read your DNA and determine your innate level of anxiety, your propensity for drinking, and a range of other psychological traits.”
Month: April 2012
William Forsythe On Artifact, His Great Meta-Ballet
“I had to find my way around Balanchine, Petipa, Cranko, MacMillan, the whole crowd. … It is about the process of people imitating one another. Of replication. That is what one does. One starts by standing behind someone else and imitating what they do.”
The Getty Trust Hires A Fundraiser (Wait, The Getty Trust??)
“The J. Paul Getty Trust, the visual art world’s ultimate one-percenter with about $8 billion in net assets, has decided that it can’t get by on investment income alone and will begin raising money in earnest to pay for special projects.” The Trust’s president assures us (of course) that its fundraising won’t poach support from other cultural institutions.
Jordan’s Only Orchestra Faces Closure
“A loss of donor funding means that the [Amman Symphony Orchestra] and the Amman Arab Music Ensemble (AAME) will close down at the end of the 2012 concert season if they do not raise enough financial support from both public and private institutions.”
‘The Man Who Made Rock ‘n’ Roll Safe For America’ – Dick Clark, ‘America’s Oldest Teenager’
“Before the invention of teenagers [in the 1960s] there had been bobbysoxers in the 1940s but no generational tag for adolescence. … He instinctively understood that the best way to capitalize on the emerging market was to pose as a kind of older brother, a safe-as-milk intermediary who kept the peace between worried parents and their restless children.”
Cynthia Ozick 2-1 Favorite To Win Orange Prize
Well, that’s what the London bookies are saying. The 84-year-old author “joins a [finalist] list including her fellow Americans Ann Patchett and Madeline Miller, Esi Edugyan from Canada, the Irish writer Anne Enright and the sole British contender, Georgina Harding.”
Playwrights Win 8% Fee Increase At England’s Three ‘National’ Theatres
“Playwrights working for the National Theatre, the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company are to benefit from an increase of just under 8% on their total minimum fee. The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain has secured a rate of £11,500 for writers of original plays used by the three venues.”
Eighteen Antique Chinese Artworks Stolen From Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum
“Among the stolen items were six pieces from the Ming dynasty, including a jade 16th century carved buffalo, a carved horse from the 17th century and a green and brown jade carved elephant.”
Are Human Facial Expressions Universal? Maybe Not
“A new study suggests that East Asians perceive emotion in faces differently from Westerners, casting doubt on the thesis – proposed by Darwin and widely accepted in psychology today – that human facial expressions are largely universal.”
Getting To Know Tamara Rojo Better
Her appointment as director of English National Ballet “sets up a fabulous prospect for the art form, for the Spaniard is astonishing in myriad ways: driven, ambitious, furiously intelligent, mischievous, occasionally cutting, always funny, inquisitive, probably far too open and, I can’t help mentioning, exquisitely beautiful.”