“The New York City Ballet is speculating that, much like Billy Elliot, most young city-dwellers would love ballet if they just gave it a chance. In order to entice these folks to make that initial jeté into ballet, the NYCB is starting an annual collaboration with some contemporary artists, the fruits of which will be on display all around the city.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Diablo Ballet Tries Crowdsourcing Choreography Ideas
“In a process it dubs the ‘world’s first web ballet’,” the San Francisco Bay Area company “is taking suggestions starting Tuesday for a new ballet, via Twitter. Participants can cast votes for one of three choices of music and can suggest the mood of the work, the emotions of the dancers, or different dance moves to include.”
Steven Soderbergh Does Celexa
“It was only a matter of time before Hollywood, where antidepressants are common as after-dinner mints, turned them into a high-stakes movie thriller.”
Tenor On ‘Vocal Strike’ Over Opera Ad Campaign
Marc Hervieux, billed by L’Opéra de Montréal as “the prince of Québec tenors”, is refusing to sing during rehearsals because he’s angry that the company’s posters for Die Fledermaus feature models instead of singers.
A Hollywood Actress Who Actually Likes Getting Older
“There are those actresses – no names mentioned, of course – so eager to preserve their ingénue image that they bridle strenuously at the idea of playing a mother. Fine, so just give the part to Mare Winningham. ‘I rather like growing old. I’ve been playing a mom for a while now,’ the girlish-looking Ms. Winningham, 53, forthrightly said.”
When Charles Addams Illustrated Mother Goose
Published in 1967, “The Charles Addams Mother Goose … is exactly as darkly delightful as you’d expect it to be, bringing the time-honored characters to wicked new life.”
Turkey Lifts Bans On Thousands Of Books
“In July, the parliament adopted a bill stipulating that any decision taken before 2012 to block the sale and distribution of published work would be voided if no court chose to confirm the ruling within six months. The deadline came and went Saturday and no such judicial decisions were recorded.”
Miró On Loan Damaged At Tate Modern
“An important painting by Miró was damaged in 2011 while on loan to Tate Modern, in an incident that went unreported in the media. The work was on loan from the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and the cost of repairs and depreciation was £203,000.”
Jasper Johns Remembers Working With Merce Cunningham
“I don’t remember that I watched Walkaround Time rehearsals. I believe that I may have given Merce dimensions of the various ‘boxes’ to help him allow for their presence on the stage.”
Hungary’s Right-Wing Government Cracks Down On Culture
“The current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has rebranded Fidesz, once a liberal youth party … as a right-wing Christian nationalist organization. … The new constitution ‘recognizes the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood,’ and art that is deemed blasphemous or ‘anti-national’ is now the target of a full-blown campaign of suppression.”