“Colin Peasley first agreed to do ballet under sufferance with two conditions: that it was a private lesson and he didn’t have to wear tights. More than 50 years later, Peasley, 77, is leaving the Australian Ballet as its longest-serving member, working as a principal dancer, educator and artist in residence at the company he founded in 1962.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Peter Nero Agrees To Retire From Philly Pops
“Peter Nero will lead the Philly Pops next season in Verizon Hall and then, at the end of 2012-13, pass the baton to a successor after 3½ decades of Gershwin, film music, Broadway, and a smattering of core classics. He also, at that point, turns over his rights to the name of the ensemble” – unless the orchestra misses any of Nero’s severance payments.
New French Gov’t Thinks Pursuing Illegal Downloaders May Not Be Worth The Effort
“In a new interview this week with the French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur (French), the new French minister of culture slammed Hadopi, France’s controversial anti-piracy regime, and seemed to indicate that it will be shut down.”
The Trouble With TED
“TED is no longer a responsible curator of ideas ‘worth spreading.’ Instead it has become something ludicrous, and a little sinister. Today TED is an insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering – a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity … [where] books become talks, talks become memes, memes become projects, projects become talks, talks become books – and so it goes ad infinitum.”
Downton Abbey As “Parvenu-cracy’
“All of the Grantham daughters’ situations are a product of their status as hybrid creatures – all are the daughters of an heiress who cannot in turn be heiresses themselves. They are prevented from becoming their mother, and they know it … The story, then, is of an American matriarchal fortune wearing the court dress of a British patriarchy, and resenting it in ways it cannot quite express.”
Attendance, Ticket Income Up At Cincinnati Symphony
“At a challenging time for orchestras and when the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was between music directors, the orchestra increased both its subscription sales and attendance last season. … Average attendance for classical concerts at Music Hall was 1,891, an increase of nearly 8 percent. That uptick follows a banner year the previous season – Paavo Järvi’s last as music director.”
ABT Launches Apprentice Program
“Developing young dancers will be a new focus at American Ballet Theater. The company has announced the creation of a program for six dancers to work as apprentice members of Ballet Theater’s corps de ballet.”
Baritone With No-Longer-A-Swastika Tattoo Says He’ll Never Give Another Interview
“Opera singer Evgeny Nikitin left this summer’s Bayreuth Festival in disgrace after the German media claimed he had a swastika tattooed on his chest. The body art was never intended to look that way, Nikitin tells SPIEGEL, and he is outraged over the media’s handling of the story.”
Tales Of The Book Of Kells
The extraordinary illuminated manuscript offers more than just gorgeous artwork and Gospel text and commentary: looked at carefully, it can tell us some things about the lives of its creators.
Not Your Ancestors’ Cradleboard: Contemporary Native American Art
“On one side, Donald ‘Babe’ Hemlock’s Ironworker Cradleboard (2011) looks like the cozy abode devised by American Indians to swaddle an infant … Painted on the cradle’s wood support is a Mohawk ironworker, balancing on one foot atop a construction girder that is vertiginously suspended over Times Square.”