“The Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron has won a competition to build a new museum of 20th-century art in central Berlin with a long, low red-brick design that invited comparisons to a rail station, a barn, a temple and an indoor market.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Here’s How To Get Boys Interested In Ballet (From A Star Dancer Who Grew Up In A Maryland Slum)
“I found the best way to engage with these kids was to see if they could jump higher than me, run faster than me – physicality is what stimulated them. … Kids are required to take PE, so they could be encouraged to consider dance, too. The way in would be through dance generally, and now would be a good time for this, as hip-hop and ballroom clearly have a following.” An essay by Royal Ballet soloist Eric Underwood.
Susan Graham To The Rescue At Lyric Opera Of Chicago
Talk about a casting coup … Sophie Koch was going to sing Didon in Lyric’s new production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, which opens in a bit more than two weeks, but she just pulled out for personal reasons. And who should happen to be available but the world’s reigning singer of the role?
Chicago Symphony Had Record Ticket Sales Last Season, But Still Ran A Deficit
Single-ticket sales, and overall box office were at all-time highs, contributions were up, subscription renewals were at 90% – and still the budget gap just hasn’t closed yet.
Making Dance For Dancers Over 60
The company manager of England’s DANCE SIX-0 writes about how the project started, the needs it’s fulfilling, and its activities from full-fledged public performance to dance for dementia patients.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.27.16
Viewpoint diversity
In a guest blog at Scientific American, social psychologist Clay Routledge asks whether American (and presumably this applies to other countries) universities allot an excessive amount of attention to racial, gender, and cultural diversity, but insufficient attention to viewpoint diversity. … read more
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth Published 2016-10-27
Moving Architecture
American Ballet Theatre presents ballets by Tharp, Lang, and Millepied. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-10-27
Paul Conley On Joey Alexander
I have a longstanding rule regarding child prodigies who emerge on waves of publicity: Approach with caution. When the eleven-year-old Indonesian pianist Joey Alexander materialized last year in a flurry of accolades from Wynton Marsalis, … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-10-27
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Why Do Witches Ride Broomsticks?
“Before the Wicked Witch of the West or Harry Potter took flight on the spindly cleaning tool, the image first appeared in the 15th century.” You may not be surprised to read that the depiction was an attack on both sexuality and heresy.
The Memory Lane In Your Brain Has A Three-Way Fork
“There are things you remember, and there are things you remember well. Even if you can recall a past event, your memories will vary considerably in how much detail they contain, and how correct those details are. In an elegant experiment, a team of neuroscientists … [at] Cambridge have shown that these aspects of our memories – our success at recalling them, their precision, and their vividness – depend on three different parts of the brain.”
Remember Bookmobiles? Here’s A Book Boat
“The Perahu Pustaka (Book Boat) is sorely needed. … More than 10% of the [province of] West Sulawesi’s adult population cannot read, while in many villages, the only book available is a solitary copy of the Quran. So in 2015, local news journalist Muhammad Ridwan Alimuddin decided to combine his twin passions for books and boats by setting up a mobile library on a baqgo, a small traditional sailboat.”
The Three Marina Abramovićs
“As she likes to say herself, there are three Marina Abramovićs: Warrior Marina (who can endure any pain and scream louder than anybody else), Spiritual Marina (who can endure any amount of stillness and remain silent longer than anybody else) and Bullshit Marina (who adores celebrity and likes to talk about fickle men and why she sometimes feels fat and ugly).”