“A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety – a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops – or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Truth About The Dancers In Madonna’s ‘Truth Or Dare’
“‘I look petrified,’ Salim Gauwloos says in the film as he watches the old footage of himself play on a computer screen. ‘I can’t wait to get offstage.'” And he had reason to be.
Fabian Barnes, 56, Founder/Director Of Dance Institute Of Washington
“The Dance Institute of Washington is reeling from the unexpected death Friday of [Barnes], the hard-driving and big-hearted former Dance Theatre of Harlem soloist who devoted his life to training underprivileged children in classical ballet.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.14.16
LP Alert: Shipp-Bisio & Guaraldi
Matthew Shipp, Michael Bisio, Live In Seattle (Arena Music). Vinyl is becoming the preferred medium of listeners to a variety of genres, particularly of young people who counter the traditional youthful notion that anything from … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-04-14
So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-04-14
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James Levine To Retire From Met Opera At End Of This Season
“The announcement about Mr. Levine, 72, capped a difficult year in which he struggled to hold on to his position amid a variety of health problems, including Parkinson’s disease.”
Lincoln Center’s President Abruptly Resigns
“A little more than two years after taking the position, Jed Bernstein is stepping down as the president of Lincoln Center, a major job in the nonprofit world that he had come to after a career in the commercial theater. His departure … leaves Lincoln Center in the position of looking for a new leader just as it is trying to begin an ambitious project: the long-delayed renovation of David Geffen [formerly Avery Fisher] Hall.”
Salman Rushdie On Shakespeare And Cervantes
“Cervantes and Shakespeare almost certainly never met, but the closer you look at the pages they left behind the more echoes you hear. The first, and to my mind the most valuable shared idea is the belief that a work of literature doesn’t have to be simply comic, or tragic, or romantic, or political/historical: that, if properly conceived, it can be many things at the same time.”
Did McCarthyism Drive Aaron Copland To Write 12-Tone Music?
“What caused Copland’s shift from populist to abstruse? Was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy to blame? Or the Modernist influence of the composer Pierre Boulez? For decades, listeners and scholars have offered a range of answers.”
Is This The World’s Oddest YouTube Star?
“Two years after ‘Eye to Eye’ baffled the country by giving birth to a huge cult following, the Pakistani singer Taher Shah returned this weekend with a second music video, ‘Angel,’ that has gone viral. … For most of the new video, Shah walks around a golf course wearing a tiara and a purple gown (bathrobe?), showing off his chest hair.”
Reviving 18th-Century Paris’s Version Of A Broadway Musical Revue
Opéra-ballet, “a frothy, sometimes louche amalgam of dance and singing, was wildly popular in early 18th-century France but then largely disappeared, arousing interest again only in recent decades.” William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, with stage director Robert Carsen, are bringing to the US the most popular example of the genre, André Campra’s Les Fêtes Vénitiennes.