“It is one of only five states without any sales or use tax, meaning that a Manhattan collector who might owe, say, $887,500 in sales tax on the purchase of a $10 million painting at Sotheby’s in New York, would owe nothing by shipping the art to Delaware directly after purchasing it.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
In Ballet, Real-Life Romance Is The Enemy Of Onstage Chemistry
“You don’t need real-life love to make great art, but what it’s invaluable for is publicity. … Knowing that the dancers on stage also share a bed may add a frisson for the audience, but that’s all about projection rather than the performances themselves. … You didn’t get more electric than the most famous onstage couple, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, but he was gay and she was 20 years his senior. There have been suggestions they were lovers – but that seems more like fan fiction than fact.”
Is Satire Legitimate If It’s Not Directed Against The Powerful?
Siddhartha Deb: “Without principles beyond that of pushing the boundaries of what one has the right to say – and without empathy and engagement with the diversity of the world in which we live – all satire can reliably do is add to a sense of outrage, the one universal quality we still have in common.”
James Parker: “Satire, to do its moral work, must itself be more or less moral. And the law is this: Broadly speaking, if it strikes upward, outward or inward, it’s satire, if it strikes downward, it’s bullying.”
What’s Missing From ‘Narcos’, The Netflix Series About Pablo Escobar? Colombians
It’s not just the lack of Colombian accents in the Spanish. “For many Latin Americans, Escobar’s story isn’t a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction biopic. It’s a case study, a cautionary tale that all too often hits close to home. … In taking true events and presenting them through a lens of literary fiction, the series is implicitly separating the viewers from the terrible tragedy of Escobar, and from the very real lives he shattered.”
Real Ballet Dancers Fact-Check ‘Flesh And Bone’
“Some critics have embraced the show, but what I wanted to know is what professional dancers thought of its depiction of their world. So we talked to three dancers who aren’t involved with the production. Here’s what they had to say about Flesh and Bone‘s first episode.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.09.15
The 4 Types of Audiences
You want to attract, grow, diversify and sustain your audience? Great! But the biggest mistake you can make is to think of that audience as a single entity. True, “your audience” converged at some point … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2015-11-08
Entr’acte
Between performances of Lo, her new quasi-violin concerto, Caroline Shaw paid a visit to our Composition Department yesterday. Her visit came in two chunks: first coaching a graduate string quartet in her 2011 composition Entr’acte, … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-11-09
Recent Listening In Brief: Fortner, Salvant, Giuffre
Sullivan Fortner, Aria (Impulse!) In Sullivan Fortner’s debut album as a leader, the shaded subtlety of his keyboard touch is only one of the young pianist’s notable attributes. His harmonic inventiveness, grasp of the jazz … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-09
Three Veteran Adventurer-Choreographers Get Together
First time I’ve been to JACK, where Neil Greenberg, Yvonne Meier, and Jennifer Monson are sharing a program. The Brooklyn space reminds me of the original Dance Theater Workshop of the 1960s, when it sprang up in Jeff Duncan’s loft at 215 West 20th Street in Manhattan. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-11-08
Even the Most Brilliant Musicians Are Mortal
Death is not taking a holiday. I learned on my way to California that my good friend Martha Herr died on Halloween. She had survived breast cancer twice, and this time succumbed to … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-11-08
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Easy Come, Easy Go: New Bosch Identified, Old Bosches Discredited
“Experts at the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) have confirmed that a drawing previously attributed to one of Hieronymus Bosch’s workshop assistants was actually rendered by the Flemish master himself. … The news closely follows a similar but less celebratory announcement that two other paintings, long believed to be authentic Bosches, were actually imitations.”
Contagion, Poison And Trigger: Books Can Be Dangerous
The current fuss over trigger warnings for university courses “is probably the first time in history that young readers themselves are demanding protection from the disturbing content of their course texts, yet reading has been seen as a threat to mental health for thousands of years.” Frank Furedi looks at that history.
Five Dumb Reasons Why Hollywood Won’t Hire Women Directors
“Vulture’s list of ‘Shit People to Say to Women Directors‘ chronicles some of the crazy things that people say directly to female filmmakers’ faces, but behind their backs, there are even more dumb reasons given why women don’t get to direct more movies, and I hear them all the time. Here are five of the most misinformed.”
The Worrisome Takeaway From October’s ‘Box Office Bloodbath’
“What’s worrisome is that this is going to be the takeaway from the October Bloodbath: not the equally loud belly-flops of bloated fairy-tale origin story Pan or kitsch cartoon adaptation Jem and the Holograms, but the underperformance of challenging pictures like Steve Jobs and Crimson Peak. It may stand to reason that the grown-up audience Hollywood ignores the rest of the year is a no-show in fall too. And the implications of that are very grim indeed.”