Siobhan Burke: “Those 90-minute lessons — advancing from a warm-up of the back and feet to more complex coordinations of the torso and legs to jumping sequences that flew across the room — were always a struggle. Yet I grew to love, even crave, the difficulty. I looked forward to coming back and trying again.” – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Herbie Hancock In Words (It’s A Bit Disappointing)
He’s led the sort of life that generates fascinating stories, which is perhaps what makes his much-anticipated memoir, “Possibilities,” such an occasionally frustrating read. – Los Angeles Times
Pittsburgh Opera: Our Audience Is Growing, But…
“Here there’s a problem where even when the community values this, they think it’ll be supported by wealthy industrialists. But those days are over, and we need to say we’ve got a lot of wealth in this community. How can we get people to support the diversity of arts and communities? We need you to ante up.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Busting Convention: Boomers Had Almost Nothing To Do With The 1960s
Louis Menand: “There are many canards about that generation, but the most persistent is that the boomers were central to the social and cultural events of the nineteen-sixties. Apart from being alive, baby boomers had almost nothing to do with the nineteen-sixties.” – The New Yorker
Lynn Nottage On Staying Political
Nottage is the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: for Sweat and Ruined. The former reached Broadway, while the latter – a story about women in war-torn Congo – played a sustained Off-Broadway run. As a result of where they were first staged, the plays have had somewhat different lives after their New York engagements. – The Stage
Ruth McGowan On How To Curate Shows For A Fringe Festival
“How, then, do you avoid the cringingly awful? The shows so bad you feel you’re never going to get those precious moments of your finite life back again? McGowan smiles and looks up – as she does when she’s thinking or, as is most likely in this case, remembering just such a show.” – Irish Times
London’s National Theatre Says 35 Percent Of Its Plays By Living Writers Were By Women Last Season
This figure is still 15% short of the NT’s stated 50/50 target for gender representation, which the theatre has said it will achieve by 2021. It is also below the 42% figure recorded in 2016/17. However, the theatre argued that it is still “on course” to meet its targets. – The Stage
Native Hawaiians Protest Plans To Build Telescope Atop The Islands’ Highest Mountain
Native Hawaiians agree that Mauna Kea connects humanity to the universe — as an umbilical cord between Earth and space. The peak at Mauna Kea is the “highest point where land touches the sky — where the two deities, Sky Father and Earth Mother, meet,” said Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, 68 , a retired cultural studies professor and elder in the fight against the telescope. To Native Hawaiians, putting a giant telescope on their sacred mountain is a desecration. – Los Angeles Times
At What Point Is A Dance Move Cultural Appropriation?
“People think that all you have to do is have certain postures, wear certain clothes, dance to certain music” to make it hip hop, Michele Byrd-McPhee says, pointing out that simply donning toe shoes and tutus and dancing to Tchaikovsky does not a ballerina make. “It’s that kind of disconnect from the origins of the culture and the people who created it that’s problematic.” – Dance Magazine
Why Isn’t Hollywood Actively Taking On Climate Change?
So why aren’t there more realistic, or semi-realistic, or, dare it be suggested, hopeful films about climate change? Because, several directors said, it is hard to find financing for movies that risk being real downers and challenge audiences to change their ways. Because mass extinction is soul-crushing and people seek out entertainment to escape. – The New York Times