“Søren Kierkegaard was not an atheist. He was a Christian.” Nevertheless, “today, at the 200th anniversary of his birth, Kierkegaard seems as relevant as ever. That’s because there is a public discussion about faith in America today. Kierkegaard’s central concern was faith and the problems of faith.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Jonah Bokaer Dances With His Father
“In February 2011 the choreographer and dancer Jonah Bokaer was to perform a duet, Replica, in Carthage, Tunisia. The performance, significantly, would have been Mr. Bokaer’s first visit to his father’s native land. But things didn’t go quite according to plan.”
UK Circus Artists Fear Education Reform Will Endanger Their Jobs
“Equity is warning that a proposal to remove a section of the Education Act, which allows travelling performers to educate their children on the road, would ‘have a huge knock-on effect not just for child performers but also for experienced professional performers with families who could be forced to give up their careers’.”
Haruki Murakami On Why He Translated The Great Gatsby
“To the best of my recollection, I was in my late thirties when I started telling people I was going to translate The Great Gatsby when I turned sixty. … Metaphorically speaking, I had placed Gatsby securely on my kamidana, the high shelf that serves as a household shrine to the Shinto gods, and then lived my life glancing up at it from time to time.”
Coming Out Of The Closet As A Gatsby Hater
Kathryn Schulz: “I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; I think we kid ourselves about the lessons it contains. None of this would matter much to me if Gatsby were not also sacrosanct. Books being borderline irrelevant in America, one is generally free to dislike them – but not this book.”
Sydney Theatre Co. Launches $20 Ticket Program
“In a major new arts funding partnership, Sydney Theatre Company and Suncorp have announced a deal that will make a selection of tickets available for just $20 for every STC performance.” The scheme, a longtime plan of artistic directors Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett, is modeled on the Travelex £10 ticket program at the National Theatre in London.
Getty Splurges On A Rembrandt And A Canaletto
“Stepping up the effort to strengthen its European art collection, the Getty Museum has acquired two major Old Masters paintings: an exuberant early self-portrait of Rembrandt from around 1628, and a classic scene of the Grand Canal in Venice by Canaletto from around 1738.”
Artists Sue Honda, Ad Agency For Copyright Infringement
“Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, the artists behind the famous 2005 Houston art piece Inversion have filed a copyright infringement suit against the Honda Motor Company and commercial directors for using their iconic inverted sculpture in a TV ad for their relaunch of the Honda CR-V.”
Flash Mobs Go Corporate (At Least It’s More Paid Work For Dancers)
“The original flash mobs often had little obvious purpose and were decidedly noncommercial gatherings by amateurs, says Bill Wasik, who is widely credited with creating the first flash mob, in 2003.” No more. “Dance Mob Nation, based in Los Angeles, says it charges an average of $2,000 to $4,000 per event and as much as $10,000, depending on the presentation.”
Warhol Superstar Taylor Mead Dead At 88
“[He] was the quintessential Downtown figure. He read his poems in a Bowery bar, walked as many as 80 blocks a day and fed stray cats in a cemetery, usually after midnight.” Mead estimated that he appeared in 130 films in all, including 11 by Warhol.