Matthew Westphal – Page 1786 – ArtsJournal Wayback

A Serbian/Kosovar “Romeo And Juliet”

The Capulets are Serbs, the Montagues are Kosovo Albanians, and each family will be speaking its own language. There are no subtitles. “There are people in Belgrade who don’t speak Albanian,” says the director, “but they will understand.” (Do most people in Pristina, where the production opens next month, speak Serbian?)

How I Found Georges Perec’s Lost Novel

David Bellos: “Preparing for [a] move in spring 1966, [Perec] stuffed redundant paperwork into a cardboard suitcase intended for the dump, and put his literary papers in a different case of similar appearance. In the move, the wrong case got junked. All of Perec’s manuscripts and typescripts prior to the writing of Things disappeared. The story led me to expect I would never get to read those lost works.”

Frederick Douglass, Defender Of The Liberal Arts

“[His] example offers a helpful corrective to the tendency of contemporary education debates to fixate on economic questions. … Douglass’s own life testified to the ability of the liberal arts – fields such as literature, philosophy, the physical sciences, and social sciences – to inspire internal emancipation as well.”

Brooklyn Academy Of Music Chooses New President

“[BAM] hasn’t had to search for a new president in a very long time. Since the impresario Harvey Lichtenstein stepped down in 1999, Karen Brooks Hopkins has held the position, becoming a fund-raising powerhouse and building the institution into an anchor for a cultural renaissance in Downtown Brooklyn.”

Washington Ballet Launches Program To Develop Dancers And Choreographers Of Color

Artistic director Septime Webre says that the new project, called “Let’s Dance Together,” isn’t “just about community outreach and scholarships … [It’s] to try to build an integrated faculty, and an integrated company so dancers can see themselves in the grownups onstage.”

Watch The 1000-Year-Old Dance Tradition Nearly Killed By The Khmer Rouge

“Charya Burt trained in and taught classical Cambodian dance in Phnom Penh, where her family suffered oppression by the Khmer Rouge. Now in the Bay Area, she’s passing on her art – and pushing it in new directions.” (video)

Two Beds And The Burdens Of Feminist Art

Rebecca Mead considers Tracey Emin’s famous installation My Bed and the mattress that Columbia undergrad Emma Sulkowicz has been carrying with her on campus, an art project (which she is submitting as a thesis) inspired by a rape she alleges happened in her dorm room.

Julie Wilson, 90, Celebrated Cabaret Singer

“Ms. Wilson began her career as a musical theatre actress, both in New York and London. But, beginning in the 1980s, she began to focus on the smaller stages of the cabaret world, finding acclaim for her interpretations of songwriters such as Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter.”

More Genuinely Useful Advice For Classical Newbies: When To Clap At Concerts

As with advice on what to wear, just telling uncertain newcomers to clap when it feels right and don’t worry about shushers isn’t necessarily helpful. Holly Mulcahy offers “some general guidelines I’ve observed both from the stage and as an audience member.”

Author: Matthew Westphal