“Bolshoi Theater artistic director Sergei Filin appeared at the theater Tuesday to help kick off its 238th season, nine months after being splashed in the face with acid in an attack that shocked the world. Standing up at the event and looking around wearing protective sunglasses, Filin said he was ‘very happy to see everyone’ before proceeding to talk about the upcoming season and introducing new dancers.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Saudi Arabia Nominates Female Director’s Film For Oscar
“It was a film that seemed guaranteed to enrage its homeland: the first feature from a Saudi Arabian woman director, which painted the Kingdom as an oppressive society in which women are second class citizens and girls are forbidden to laugh in public. And yet Wadjda, the critically acclaimed drama from Haifaa Al Mansour, has been selected as Saudi Arabia’s official nomination for the best foreign film Oscar.”
Lexington Philharmonic Musicians Vote To Authorize Strike
“The musicians of the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra have voted to strike Friday night’s season-opening concert if they cannot come to terms with management on key points of a new contract before the performance.”
Italy’s Special Anti-Mafia Force Investigates Pompeii
“The Direzione Investigativa Antimafia is investigating conservation projects in Pompeii. The Naples-based agency is working closely with the ministry of culture and police to weed out the involvement of organised crime from the archaeological site, which has come under fire from Unesco for failing to address damage to the ancient city’s damaged buildings and frescoes.”
Eli Broad’s L.A. Museum Will Have Free Admission
“Besides stocking the museum with their nearly 2,000-piece collection of art from the 1950s to the present at the museum, the Broads are providing at least $395 million to build and endow it.”
Spike Lee Wins $300K Gish Prize
“The filmmaker Spike Lee is this year’s recipient of the $300,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the largest in the arts, the Gish Prize Trust announced.”
Salt Lake’s Ballet West Begins Work On New $31M HQ
Monday saw a ceremonial groundbreaking on a new building for administration, rehearsal, and classes called the Quinney Dance Center. The project also includes renovation work on the adjacent Capitol Theater, the company’s home performance space.
Is This The Most Depressing Psychological Study Ever?
“Say goodnight to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, media literacy or reason can provide the tools and information that people need in order to make good decisions. … We want to believe we’re rational, but reason turns out to be the ex post facto way we rationalize what our emotions already want to believe.”
Where They Get Into Bar Fights Over Immanuel Kant
“A ‘passionate argument’ about [the] 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher … ‘deteriorated into a fistfight’ between two men waiting in line for beer during an outdoor City Day event in the southern Russian metropolis of Rostov-on-Don, police said Monday. The argument ended when one of the debaters pulled out an air gun and shot the other in the head.”
Getting Inside Wayne McGregor’s Brain
“[The choreographer’s] most notable collaborators over the years have been scientists. He engages with science not in a token way but in serious long-term research, his dancers becoming lab rats for neuroscientists, cardiologists and experimental psychologists.” The results of these ongoing investigations are the focus of a new exhibit at London’s Wellcome Collection.