“[They] were an improbable pair. One was very much the bluff Scottish Victorian gentleman, educated at a minor Catholic private school; the other a largely self-educated Hungarian immigrant to the US who had spent most of his life in rackety vaudeville. The two men were brought together by a shared interest in spiritualism, but it was also spiritualism that destroyed this unlikely friendship.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Can Envy Be Good for You? (Definitely, Sometimes)
“Admiration is seen as a noble sentiment – we admire people for admiring others, detecting, in their admiration, a suggestion of taste and humility. Envy, by contrast, is thought to be inherently bad … Is that really the case? Or can something frustrating and painful lead, almost in spite of itself, to positive ends – to even better ends, perhaps, than its more admired counterpart? Not all envy, we are learning, is created equal.”
‘Center Stage’ Meets ‘Breaking Bad’: A Look Inside Starz’s New Ballet Series, ‘Flesh And Bone’
“If you think it’s strange that an Emmy-winning veteran of Breaking Bad has moved on to a show about ballet, then clearly you haven’t seen what can happen to feet crammed inside toe shoes all day.” (video)
W.B. Yeats, The Art Teacher And An Evening At The Sexologist’s
We’re not making this up. “It’s a story that has lain hidden in a plastic bag at the back of a dusty drawer and forgotten for more than 40 years before being uncovered, alongside faded letters and old diaries – a description of an extraordinary encounter between an art teacher and WB Yeats during a debate on methods to restore sexual potency.”
How A Word Coined In A Comic Strip Turned Into A Dance Craze (And Launched Louis Armstrong To Stardom)
“The phrase heebie-jeebies was, as far as we can tell, coined in 1923 by cartoonist Billy DeBeck in his popular comic strip Barney Google. Before long, the phrase was popping up all over … [it] implied eccentric movement and vague associations with mental disturbance, which made it the perfect name for a dance that aimed to satisfy the mid-1920s fascination with cutting loose and stepping out of convention for a couple of happy minutes.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.11.15
“Softening” The Museum Brand
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-08-11
Lookback: incivility and the internet
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-08-11
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Tenor Fractures Spine After Stage Collapses Underneath Him
During a performance of Turandot at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, Italy on Friday, tenor Marco Voleri, playing the Emperor Altoum, was sitting on his throne when a cable snapped and the platform fell in, causing him to tumble more than six feet.
L.A. Phil Has An Exciting New – And Female – Associate Conductor
Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla – increasingly known as simply “Mirga” after rapturously received concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and Disney Hall this past season – was a Dudamel Fellow and assistant conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic; she’s now being promoted to associate conductor, effective next summer.
Where They’re Turning Old Railroad Tunnels Into A Permanent Performance Space
“Railway tunnels in Bristol that date back 175 years are to be transformed into a new performance space. The underground venue, which will be called the Lo-co Klub, is located in the arches beneath Bristol’s Temple Meads station, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1840s.”
What We Do When Our Icons Tumble Or Crumble: A Field Guide
“For as long as humans have lived with symbols we have created strategies for effacing or revaluing them. Destruction is the most dramatic. But statues can also be reinstalled in less symbolically fraught places … Forgetting is a powerful force, as well … Iconoclasm can be accidental or purposeful, an act of liberation or oppression, and there’s never any guarantee that it will work.”