“Fagan’s blend of Afro-Caribbean and modern dance is technically challenging, requiring changes in rhythms and speed. … But Fagan’s choreographic process begins in silence, when he has the dancers learn the movement and rhythms. ‘They learn the parts of the body that they should and shouldn’t use,’ added Fagan, ‘then I bring the music and their eyes light up.'”
Author: Matthew Westphal
When Critics Become Playwrights
“From George Bernard Shaw to Nicholas de Jongh, there is a tradition of reviewers penning their own scripts. So can you learn to write plays by watching them? And does being a playwright make you a better critic?”
Are Single-Artist Museums Limited? Not This One
The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver has exceeded every expectation in its first three years of operation, “quieting some who doubted that Still, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism but never a household name, could carry a single-artist museum, let alone one constrained by a will dictating that no work by any other artist could be ever be shown there.”
What If Montaigne Wasn’t The Man Who Invented The Essay?
John Jeremiah Sullivan suggests that the form might just have, literally, a royal pedigree.
Remembering Saul Steinberg At 100
Ian Frazier: “He said that he always tried to draw like a child. The portrait photo he engineered of his adult self holding hands with a life-size cutout photo of himself at age six shows how seriously he took this idea. The goal was to draw like a child who never stopped drawing that way even as he aged and his subject matter became not childish.”
What Will Daniele Gatti Bring To The Concertgebouw Orchestra?
“The orchestra’s recently released 2013 annual report warns that unless the orchestra receives immediate government support, [it] is in danger of folding by 2016. Now, whether that’s a substantive fear or Met-like, Peter Gelb-style brinkmanship remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Gatti is coming into an orchestra that’s artistically at the top of its game, yet financially threatened as never before.”
For Scotland’s National Trust, It’s Overhaul Or Financial Meltdown
The country’s largest historic preservation group will have to spend many millions over the next decade for maintenance and restoration of its properties, which include castles, battlefields, and even a few islands.
Facebook Or No Facebook, How Many Friends Can A Person Really Have?
Maria Konnikova explores “the Dunbar number” – really a series of numbers describing how many friendly acquaintances, good social friends and close confidantes the human brain can generally handle – and whether social media is making Dunbar’s concept irrelevant.
David Cronenberg Says Writing A Novel Is “Like Being Out Of A Straitjacket” (And That All His Movies Are Comedies)
“It’s very liberating to write in this medium because it’s not only more intimate, but it’s more freedom to just move around a lot. … A screenplay is a very limited and rigorous kind of form, … [and] if you’re making a movie that’s costing millions of dollars, you have a lot of restrictions that, even if you’re not conscious of them, you are mindful of them.”
The Prado Will Not Have To Give Up Its Bosch And Tintoretto After All
“Spain’s minister of education, culture and sport, José Ignacio Wert, has dispelled any fears that some of the Museo del Prado’s Renaissance masterpieces could be transferred to a planned Royal Collections museum, due to open in 2016.”