Those jaw-dropping priices we’ve seen over the past few years? $70 million for a Rothko and $250 million for a Cézanne? “It has become increasingly clear that those masterpieces and many more have been purchased by Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country with enormous wealth and cultural ambitions to match: it is buying art at a level never seen before.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
A Dance Critic Looks At Flight Attendants’ Safety Demonstrations
“But whether in the flesh or on-screen, real flight crews don’t want you thinking too hard about the what-ifs … so their moves in safety demos are stylized and abstract. … The life-vest pantomime is a smooth upper-body ballet, each move linked to the next. You’re lulled by the legato; your focus is on the confident visual swirl – inflation tubes, lipstick, finger placement – not on the threat of drowning that underlies it.’
Japan’s Communist Party Introduces Cartoon Mascots
“Japan’s newest Communists are a motley bunch. There is Ikuko Kosodate, a mother of 10 with fierce-looking eyebrows and a baby strapped to her back. … There is Master Poken, a strict disciplinarian. And then there is Yoko, a ‘mysterious’ 25-year-old job hopper who ‘always wears sunglasses and a trench coat, and is rumored to hide a whip inside her coat’.”
Bollywood Falls Out Of Love With The Swiss Alps
You didn’t know Bollywood had been in love with the Swiss Alps? Oh goodness, yes: swoony love duets depicting couples cavorting through blooming Alpine meadows had become de rigueur. But not so much anymore – and that’s not only because it’s finally gotten safer to film in Kashmir.
Ballet Is Like Porn? Tamara Rojo’s Rhetorical Jujitsu
“Rojo’s argument … is a serious one, directed at the differences between male and female choreographers and the reasons why so few of the latter are working in ballet. Yet with one effortless flick of a porn reference, she’s spun this rather specialist issue right into the middle of the media’s attention.”
Broadway Spider-Man To Get Tell-All Book Treatment
The Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History, written by Glen Berger, who co-wrote the show’s script, promises to recount the backstage drama surrounding the gestation and birth(s) of Julie Taymor’s notoriously troubled and expensive project.
The Godfather Of Modern Dance In China
Hong Kong-born and U.S.-educated, Willy Tsao founded his hometown’s first contemporary dance company in 1979. (He kept it afloat with money from his family’s business.) He went on to create the first professional modern dance company in the People’s Republic (1991 in Guangzhou), and in 2005 he established Beijing Dance LDTX.
Ergonomic Seat Cushions Begin Appearing In New York
Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera House are among the venues that are installing “cushions developed by the British company NuBax. They are designed to tilt the pelvis forward and straighten the spine, increasing blood flow and, therefore, attention spans.”
Composer Sues Cathy Rigby Over Peter Pan
“Cathy Rigby, the former Olympic gymnast turned stage actress, is being sued for millions of dollars by a composer who claims that he hasn’t been properly paid for his work on a production of Peter Pan that her company presented … [beginning] in 2004.”
The Meaning(s) of Cooking
“We make decisions every day about what to eat, and rarely do we choose our meals by empirical measures of biocompatibility or organic composition. The determination of what may be considered food – let alone what makes food ready to eat – is largely a cultural distinction. So Claude Lévi-Strauss noted when he observed and recorded the eating habits of tribal societies of North and South America in the mid-20th century. “