“No one was injured when a woman accidentally drove a sport utility vehicle into the front of Kansas Ballet Academy on Tuesday morning.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Kevin McKenzie on Bringing ABT Back From the Brink
In 1992, American Ballet Theater was reeling from a $6 million deficit and an ugly breakup with artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov. “McKenzie – a plain-speaking former working-class Irish Catholic altar boy turned ABT principal dancer – was brought in to try to save the company.”
Pompidou Centre Will Open Satellite Museum in Málaga (Or Will It?)
The Andalusian resort city’s mayor says that the Paris contemporary art centre will display about 70 pieces from its collection in a new structure. The Pompidou itself says that “nothing is confirmed and negotiations are still ongoing. It is definitely not an outpost in the style of the Centre Pompidou-Metz.”
How Andy Warhol Explains China’s Attitudes Toward Chairman Mao
Under Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party decreed that the Great Helmsman was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong. “And this mixed legacy makes it hard to pin down exactly what about Mao Party leaders want to celebrate, and what about him they don’t. Who could have anticipated this? Andy Warhol.”
An Atheist Megachurch (Yes, It’s Real, and It’s Growing)
“The founders of the ‘Sunday Assembly’ in London say they’re not forming a new church, though they do meet on a Sunday. And they say they’re not trying to create a new religion, but their movement has a growing number of followers around the world.”
Getting Drunk and Making Resolutions on New Year’s Are Religious Acts
As University of Chicago Divinity School professor Wendy Doniger explains, our seemingly secular traditions around January 1 are echoed in religions all over the world.
Was Religion Itself Originally the Product of Psychotropic Drug Use?Was Religion Itself Originally the Product of Psychotropic Drug Use?
The idea – referred to by scholars as the entheogen theory – has certainly been discussed over the past 60 years or so. How much is there to it?
The New Year’s Eve Fireworks You Could Taste And Smell
Giant orange-flavored bubbles, banana-flavored confetti, peach-flavored snow, the scent of strawberries – sure beats the smell of gunpowder, right? London has these two inventive (and crazily-dressed) food scientist-artists to thank.
Peter Gelb On The Met’s HD Cinemacasts
“The business plan I had for it is that it would make a modest profit so from a financial point of view it has exceeded those expectations significantly. But, at the same time, we were very fortunate that it did because if it hadn’t we would be in trouble right now.”
U.S. Customs Officials Smash Musician’s Bamboo Flutes
A Moroccan-Canadian musician and U.S. green card holder says that agents at JFK airport inspected his 11 neys and two kawalas, decided they were untreated agricultural items, and destroyed them – and only told him about it afterward.