Author: Matthew Westphal

Watching Justin Peck Rehearse His New Ballet

“His manner was the same whether he was working with one dancer or dozens. By slightly lowering or raising his voice, he could shift seamlessly from giving a dancer a subtle note to rearranging major traffic patterns. He seemed aware of everything, and when the dancers took five, he did not, his mind whirring almost visibly.”

Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.01.16

Local, state, federal: public funding for the arts in the U.S.
At the Atlantic, Andy Horwitz asks ‘Who should pay for the arts in America?‘ He is specifically asking about nonprofit arts, whose funding comes from paying customers, donors and other sponsors, and the public sector. … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2016-02-01

Miles To Go: The Met Breuer’s Unspoken Task
The Metropolitan Museum put on a show for the press last week at a briefing on the Met Breuer. It took place, oddly (for the Met) in a black gallery in the main museum building and … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-02-01

Boulez
Pierre Boulez’s passing last month brought back memories of what a giant he was in his prime.  He certainly gave the generations that followed a complex heritage.  I really can’t imagine what it must have … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2016-02-01

Goodbye to All That (Almost)
The Trisha Brown Dance Company presents three of Brown’s proscenium works in New York for the last time.  … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-02-01

Journalism as ‘The Poetry of Fact’
At the Chicago Sun-Times I watched some great wordsmiths up close. Roger Ebert wrote with an ease that seemed miraculous. His profiles flowed like swift streams. David Elliott was another. His reviews had the density … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-02-01

In two and a half months …
Here’s something I’ve mentioned before. But now it’s time to get serious. My reemergence as s composer is just two and a half months away, with an evening of my work on April 14, … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-02-01

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How Cervantes Made His Characters Seem Real

“Underlying all his characters was his fascination with how different people might experience differently the same situation. … Where Tasso’s verses describe for Tasso and his readers the essence of war, Cervantes’ prose describes how his characters perceive and misperceive war. Tasso’s words paint heroes; Cervantes’ lines animate characters.”

Take That, Borat! And Putin! Kazakhstan Creates Its Own ‘Game Of Thrones’

Spurred by a remark from the Russian president that “the Kazakhs had never had statehood” as well as ongoing chagrin that their nation is best known to much of the world for a fictional, dysfunctional journalist in a mankini, the country’s film industry is producing a lavish 10-part miniseries about the founding, amid the collapse of the Golden Horde, of the Kazakh Khanate in 1465.

The Fantasy Coffins Of Ghana

Over the past 50 years, abebuu adekai – “proverb boxes,” fantastical caskets hand-carved from wood – “have become one of Ghana’s most unique cultural exports. The curious tradition of burying people in coffins shaped like everything from lobsters to busty women is primarily practiced in Accra and has spawned over 10 workshops in the capital city.”

Experimental Theatremakers, Think Carefully Before You Take That Mainstream Gig

Lyn Gardner: “In a tight funding climate, it’s not surprising that independent theatre-makers are attracted to the opportunities and financial support that the mainstream can offer. But those opportunities sometimes come at a price … Sometimes it leads to a leeching of the very things that made an artist’s work most distinctive in the first place.”