Royal Ballet principal ballerina Tamara Rojo: “There weren’t many programmes about ballet in Spain at the time, and the ones there were showed ballet as very serious and professional. Suddenly, Fame came out and it was about dance for young people….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
From The Top Turns 10, And Early Alums Are All Grown Up
Public radio’s From the Top has expanded in the decade since it “was launched as a showcase for pre-college classical musicians.” But its host, Christopher O’Riley, “says he’s most happy about the fact that the show has become a known outlet for young people to express themselves through music.”
Research: Bach Used 20th-Century Composing Technique
“In the current issue of ‘Musical Times,’ Professors Eric Altschuler and Noam Elkies write about finding a tone row in Bach’s music that may predate [Schoenberg’s] famous compositional technique by two centuries.”
In Tweets And Texts, Poetry Is Thriving
“[P]oets are migrating to the Web and using it in entirely new ways, that almost changes the way that they think of poetry in the first place.” At the same time, they’re making it clear that tweets, texts and instant messages aren’t shallow by nature.
Critic John Heilpern Exits New York Observer
Theatre critic John Heilpern, having left his longtime perch at The New York Observer, has this to say about the paper’s publisher: “I don’t want to be too negative about the 12-year-old owner, Jared Kushner, but as my ma and pa from Manchester, England, used to say, ‘That boy couldn’t run a chip shop.'” (Scroll down.)
Where Are All The Broadway Moms?
“With so many metaphoric families forming and disbanding every day in the world of theater, the old-fashioned kind seems to have little space to flourish.” Parents of small children don’t find much support.
How Diaghilev’s Parisian Debut Changed Everything
This is the centenary of the “season in which the Russian arts connoisseur and promoter brought his country’s ballet out of the hallowed halls of its imperial theaters and onto the stages of Western Europe and beyond. One might reasonably characterize Diaghilev’s now-landmark venture as triggering the applause heard ’round the world for the art of ballet.”
Mantel, Coetzee, Byatt Shortlisted For Man Booker Prize
“JM Coetzee could become the first author ever to win a hat-trick of Man Booker prizes, after his latest novel Summertime was this morning shortlisted for the literary award.” The other finalists: bookies’ heavy favorite Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters, A.S. Byatt, Adam Foulds and Simon Mawer.
Booksellers Brace For An Anomaly: Strong Sales
“Booksellers are hoping for a much-needed surge of traffic in a week with the release of not only [Dan Brown’s] ‘The Lost Symbol’ but also two other much anticipated titles”: Ted Kennedy’s memoir and Jon Krakauer’s biography of the late NFL star turned soldier, Pat Tillman.
Interpol Puts Database Of Stolen Art Online
“Now, for the first time, anyone looking to establish the origins of an artwork or simply peruse the vast catalogue of the world’s stolen treasures can do so for free at the click of a mouse. Interpol, the global policing body, has unveiled an online database of about 34,000 items known to have gone missing….”