“The auditorium in Dublin’s Abbey Theatre is to close for nine weeks this summer while asbestos is removed. … Other parts of the theatre are to remain open for business during the operation, with the auditorium due to reopen in time for the Dublin Theatre Festival [in late September].”
Month: May 2012
Ai Weiwei’s Tax Lawsuit Can Proceed After All
“A Chinese court has made an unusual decision to hear a lawsuit by dissident artist Ai Weiwei who accuses the government of violating the law by imposing a 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) tax evasion penalty on the company that markets his work.”
Oldest Known Mayan Calendar Found In Guatemala
“In the remote northeastern corner of Guatemala, archaeologists have found what appears to be the 9th century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar.”
Edmund White On Obama And Same-Sex Marriage
“I was interested that the president said he discussed the subject of same-sex marriage with his daughters. Their acceptance of the same-sex parents of some of their classmates was so automatic and total that their very ease convinced him that same-sex marriage was inevitable … Which shows something that anthropologists have known a long time: That innovative behavior comes from children, is passed to their mothers and recognized by their fathers last of all. This rule of innovation holds true throughout the primate world.”
Who Was García Lorca’s Lover? After 70 Years, We Finally Know
“The identity of the lover to whom Federico García Lorca wrote passionate verse in his final year has been a mystery ever since the poet’s assassination during the Spanish civil war. But now, more than 70 years later, his name has finally emerged.
Publishers Are Losing Patience With Multi-Year, Multi-Volume Biographies
“It’s an ever-shrinking group, the authors who are given the real estate between multiple sets of hardcovers to chronicle the life and times of their subjects. ‘I don’t know of anyone who has gotten a contract for a multivolume biography in the last five years,’ said [historian] David Nasaw … ‘God bless Bob Caro, but it’s over.'”
How Much Of Petipa Has Survived In Petipa’s Ballets?
“This year, like every other, the big ballet spring season brings to America… a series of 19th-century classics almost all attributed chiefly or partly to the choreographer Marius Petipa (1818-1910). The list is short. It varies little. Yet most of these ballets, as staged today, are laden with cliché; and much of what now bears the Petipa brand name has actually been rechoreographed by his successors.”
Embarrassing Moments In Ballet
“One woman recounted her awful experience of having her skirt fall off mid-performance. Another in the class – a former male principal with a thick French accent – told us about a time when a faulty lift left him holding his female partner between his legs ‘like a piece of dental floss.'”
The Guardian‘s New Rules Of Audience Behaviour
In response to the contretemps between Bianca Jagger (blithely taking flash photos during a performance) and critic Mark Shelton (who chewed Jagger out, in person and then in print), The Guardian‘s arts writers conferred and came up with some sorely needed up-to-date guidelines. (Will the people who need them pay attention?)
Regifting Is Officially OK (Research Says So!)
“Regifting is often presented as synonymous with tackiness, but the taboo on the practice is partly the result of a misunderstanding: Recipients of gifts think the givers are far more offended by regifting than they truly are. Givers assume that they’ve passed on ‘title’ to the gift and that recipients can do what they wish with it. Receivers, meanwhile, feel constrained by the giver’s original wishes.”