– Lyon, where for four days buildings throughout the city are illuminated in fabulous ways for the annual Festival des Lumières.
Author: Matthew Westphal
A Christmas Tree Made Entirely Of Crockery (And It Looks Great!)
In the Belgian town of Hasselt, “local designers MOOZ built a glowing kerstboom for the town center out of discarded crockery. Five thousand cups, bowls and plates donated by residents make up the 30-foot ‘tree’.” (This could make up for that pile of green boxes they put on the Grand-Place in Brussels.)
LA’s Colony Theater Inches Back From The Brink
After making it through an emergency $49,000 fundraising campaign this fall, the Burbank company has a well-gregarded show onstage. “The theater is working toward a larger $500,000 fundraising goal by January … [to] cover the next two productions and reestablish marketing and fundraising.”
Qatar Philharmonic Chooses Female Music Director: Han-Na Chang
“Founded just five years ago, the ensemble has now chosen a musical director who really stands out from the classical music crowd: she’s a woman, she’s Korean and she’s only 29 years old” – and already has an international reputation as a cellist.
The Forgotten Heroine Of British Ballet
“In 1941, when she was 22, Mona Inglesby founded the International Ballet. For the next 13 years, through some of the worst austerity Britain has ever known, she ran it entirely on the basis of its box-office success. It’s a feat never repeated by any ballet company since.”
Why Humans Speak So Many Different Languages
“Around the world today, some 7000 distinct languages are spoken … more languages in one species of mammal than there are mammalian species. … If language evolved to allow us to exchange information, how come most people cannot understand what most other people are saying?” Because of a deep human instinct …
Benjamin Millepied’s Multimedia L.A. Dances Begin Popping Up On YouTube
“One goal of his L.A. Dance Project, formed earlier this year, is to present dance outside of the traditional confines of theater walls” – a goal he began realizing this summer in a pair of site-specific duets with artist Mark Bradford at MOCA. Now there’s “a video from the show on MOCAtv, the museum’s YouTube channel that launched in October.”
An Ideological Throwdown At This Year’s Oscars
Andrew O’Hehir: “With an impressive number of high-quality and high-visibility movies in the mix, movies that offer markedly different worldviews, interpretations of human experience and dramatized real-world events, the Academy Award struggle of 2013 ought to be a heated cultural imbroglio with all sorts of ideological overtones, one that lays bare some of the fault lines in American society.”
Milwaukee Symphony Players Cede Some Pay But Keep Labor Peace
“The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and its musicians have ensured labor harmony through the 2014-15 season by extending and modifying their collective bargaining agreement. … Under the terms of the new agreement, the Milwaukee musicians relinquished most of a previously planned raise for the 2012-13 season.”
Does Ian McKellen Have Prostate Cancer Or Not?
“In a series of tweets, the actor gave an explanation for a bizarre twist Tuesday in which a major British [tabloid] newspaper quoted him as saying he had cancer, and then McKellen’s agent claimed he didn’t.”