“A study by sociologists has revealed a sharp decline in the performance ability of Britain’s lap dancers since the financial crash of 2008. The study by Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy from Leeds University warns of ‘de-skilling’ across the industry. Dr Sanders said many dancers had ‘never even used a pole’.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Experimental Author Christine Brooke-Rose, 89
“The author of more than a dozen novels, as well as short stories, essays and criticism, Ms. Brooke-Rose was one of relatively few Britons to maintain a long association with experimental fiction. Her stylistic techniques – playful, polyglot, punning, postmodern and slyly self-referential – are more typically associated with writers of the French Nouveau Roman school.”
CBC Cuts Shows And Jobs As Budget Cuts Bite
“The one-hour TV news program Connect with Mark Kelley, the radio show Dispatches and drama programming on Radio One will be eliminated as part of cost-cutting measures to CBC English Services to cope with planned budget cuts.”
Protesters Block Montreal Streets Over National Film Board Cuts
“About 200 people staged a sit-in outside the National Film Board’s CineRobothèque in downtown Montreal Tuesday, blocking traffic at the intersection of de Maisonneuve Boulevard and Saint-Denis Street over the noon hour. The protesters are upset about the looming closure of the film theatre and screening centre.”
Johannesburg’s Two Professional Dance Companies Merge
“The South African Ballet Theatre (SABT) – formed in 2001 by dancers after the closure of the State Theatre Ballet – and Mzansi Productions, a classically based contemporary dance company … founded in 2008,” are combining resources (not least, public funding) to create a classically-based troupe that can work in contemporary and African genres as well.
What It Takes To Play Billy Elliot
“The young actor playing the 12-year-old Billy in the adaptation of the acclaimed 2000 film directed by Daldry must sing, tap, perform ballet, do acrobatics, master a Northern England accent and demonstrate acting chops.”
Why Whit Stillman Loves Dancing
“[T]hroughout his 22-year, four-film cinematic career, Stillman has repeatedly turned to dancing for its potential as a narrative allegory, as a plot device, and as a remnant of the old social order he seems to long for. And also, yes, to underscore his characters’ lovable eccentricities.”
Malaysia Bans (Sort Of) Gay Characters From TV, Radio
A directive issued Thursday via Facebook said, “Effective immediately, radio and
“Are they in or are they out? That’s the question many Malaysians are asking after the latest clarification by their government on an alleged ban on the portrayal of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) characters on state-owned television channels. In the fifth clarification on the matter since Thursday, Information, Communications and Culture Minister Rais Yatim said that no such ban exists” – though he “reserved the right to select content suitable for the general public.”
Now Even Israelis Are Criticizing Habima’s Plan To Perform At Shakespeare’s Globe
“Ilan Ronen, Habima’s artistic director, speaking in Tel Aviv said: ‘In Israel they are saying, we shouldn’t take this play [The Merchant of Venice] and perform it at all, they think of it as an anti-semitic play. We are under pressure from both sides. I don’t see the play as anti-semitic, it deals with racism, and xenophobia.”
The Key Weakness Science Shares With Religion
Stanley Fish: “[With] respect to a single demand – the demand that the methodological procedures of an enterprise be tethered to the world of fact in a manner unmediated by assumptions – science and religion are in the same condition of not being able to meet it (as are history, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and all the rest).”