“It is a wonder that so many black actresses have waded through this stereotypical muck with their dignity intact. … Gabby Sidibe better enjoy her fame while she can because black actresses never have less than a hard row to hoe. Even if the inner life they bring to characters is as beautiful as they are physically, they have little chance.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
The Castrati: The Beautiful, Sad Men ‘The Little Knife’ Made
“If you were part of a poor family–mainly in Italy but here and there around Europe–and you had a son with a glimmer of musical talent, it was off to the chop shop. As a young chorister, Joseph Haydn narrowly escaped it. Barbers in Naples hung a sign: ‘Boys castrated cheap here.'”
Houston Ballet To Boast Largest All-Dance Facility In U.S.
“When it rains hard, dancers leap around buckets placed underneath the leaks. The Houston Ballet has struggled with challenging conditions at its headquarters in a former clothing factory since 1984” — but that’s due to change in 2011 with a new $53 million home, now under construction.
We’re All In Crisis, And That’s Not Necessarily A Bad Thing
“Crisis is sexy. Crisis shakes you up. And if it changes our habits when it comes to looking at art, reading about it, or even making it, then that’s probably good, too. Artists, if they’re any good, are engaged in a war against habit, complacency and indifference.”
Are Dreams Merely Exercise For The Brain?
A new paper “argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.”
Patience And Fortitude, Redesigned For The Digital Age
“For the first time in at least a quarter century, the New York Public Library has unveiled a new logo, this one designed to work both online and in print. Consisting of a profile of a lion inside a circle … it uses bold, simple lines that evoke the style of stained-glass windows, woodcuts, or old printers’ marks.”
Dreamgirls Get Their Start In Harlem, For Real This Time
“The decision to open the national tour of ‘Dreamgirls’ at the Apollo, where this 1981 Broadway musical begins and ends, would seem to be a natural. The producer John Breglio recalled that the initial reaction was quite different, however: ‘Everybody thought I was crazy.'”
New In Chicago: World’s Tallest Woman-Designed Building
“Its white, wafer-thin balconies bulge outward, each slightly different from the other. They race around corners and shoot upward in fantastic, voluptuous stacks. This is a new vision of verticality, and it makes Aqua one of Chicago’s boldest — and best — skyscrapers in years.”
Texas Ballet Theater, Minus The Musicians
In a letter to the editor, the chairman of Texas Ballet Theater explains why her organization is doing without live music, even at the new Winspear Opera House: “It was heartbreaking, but temporarily suspending live music was the financially responsible decision. Had we not done so, there would be no Texas Ballet Theater.”
Amazon Whisks Lit Agents To Seattle For Day Of Wooing
“According to one participant, the aim of the meetings, which culminated in a dinner Thursday evening, was for Amazon to ‘explain itself’ to the agent community,” and particularly to persuade the group of prominent New York agents that the company is “not trying to destroy publishing as we know it.”