University tuition fees are a prime example. Public transport run for profit by private-sector franchisees is another. Sooner or later, central government’s what-next-to-privatise spotlight was bound to turn to the Arts Council. Unthinkable? Ask any client of the Student Loan Company. Ask anyone who commutes to work by train, paying the highest fares in Europe. Ask English Heritage (once the Ministry of Works) or the Canal and Rivers Trust (formerly British Waterways).
Month: February 2018
Tyranny Of The Five-Paragraph Essay (Or How Not To Think)
“The foundation is the five-paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended high school in the US. In college, the model expands into the five-section research paper. Then in graduate school comes the five-chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is set. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of journal articles that follow from it. Then it’s time to pass the model on to the next generation. The cycle continues.”
Confabulation: Why People Make Up Stories To Explain Things
“When we confabulate, we tell a story that is fictional, while believing that it is a true story. As we are not aware that our story is fictional, this is very different from a lie: we have no intention to deceive. So in confabulation there is a mismatch between what we aim to do (tell a true story) and what we end up doing (tell a fictional story). We tend to confabulate when we are asked to explain our choices because we don’t always know the factors responsible for our choices. Yet, when asked why we made a choice, we offer an explanation.”
Nézet-Séguin To Lead Met Opera Two Years Early
The company announced on Thursday that Yannick Nézet-Séguin would become its new music director next season, two years ahead of schedule. The accelerated ascension will give much-needed musical stability to the Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, which suspended Mr. Levine, its longtime conductor, in December and opened an investigation into his behavior.
Deborah Borda: The Thinking Behind The NY Philharmonic’s Next Season
“We felt the New York Philharmonic should be of our city, about our city, and in our time.” Like every other arts organization, the orchestra is chasing the young (or youngish), and Deborah Borda insists the key is not to peddle outdated prestige or blandish with watered-down entertainment but to present art that is socially engaged. “Millennials are hungry for experience, but they need a different context, one that’s political and social,” she says.
Theatre’s Mini-Boom In Adaptations Of Movies
The genre has moved far beyond Disney’s screen-to-stage extravaganzas, Hairspray, and The Producers: in London alone, there are currently live-theatre versions of Network, Jubilee, Fanny and Alexander, and The Exorcist. Says director Chris Goode, “I think what has happened over the last 10 years or so is that we’ve stopped having the idea that theater is essentially a literary form.”
Our Reading Utopia Has Turned On Us
“Now more than ever, art and commerce seem indistinguishable. On today’s Internet, everything is, to borrow Hebdige’s term, even flatter. There’s less time, somehow, for the depth of history—yesterday’s trends float farther and farther from their points of origin, commingling as styles without pasts, images without contexts. I do most of my reading online, and a few hundred words can take hours to digest—a paragraph of text is a launch pad to other places; I find myself falling down YouTube and eBay wormholes, my attention drifting. That state of being would have sounded like heaven to my teen-age self. It doesn’t usually feel like it now, though.”
A #BlackLivesMatter Song Cycle For One Of The World’s Leading Tenors
“The poet who wrote the words can be confrontational. The composer is known for cutting-edge jazz. The singer specializes in ornately written operas from another century. Suffice it to say that Cycles of My Being, a new song cycle by poet Terrance Hayes and composer Tyshawn Sorey – prompted by police brutality against African Americans – won’t be anything typical. Or demure.” Says Lawrence Brownlee, who conceived the project for Opera Philadelphia, “Hold on to your seats. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But something is going to happen.”
Judge Rules: Taylor Swift Lyrics Are Too “Banal” To Copyright
In his ruling, Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald held that combining the phrases, “Playas gonna play” and “haters gonna hate,” does not entail sufficient originality to warrant copyright protection. “By 2001, American popular culture was heavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters,” Fitzgerald wrote. “The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal.”
Meet The Man Who Teaches Movie Stars Playing Ballerinas How To Dance
“How does someone go from a New York City Ballet corps member to training Hollywood A-listers like Natalie Portman, Rooney Mara and Jennifer Lawrence? By getting injured, says Kurt Froman.”