“The dancing of Cunningham’s work by other troupes isn’t a new phenomenon. Ballet and other dance companies have been selectively performing Cunningham over the years. … But now, with Cunningham’s own troupe gone, his creations will rest in the hands of outsiders.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Merce’s Oher Legacy
Wendy Perron on two generations of post-Cunningham choreographers: “[That] is the other legacy. Cunningham’s effect goes beyond the Legacy Tour and beyond the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. There’s a piece of Merce in all of us.”
How The Internet Is Changing The Nature Of Knowledge
Harvard researcher David Weinberger: “In the West, knowledge begins as a winnowing process. … That idea … not by coincidence fits perfectly with the paper medium that we used for it. Paper is expensive, libraries are small, very few people can get published. … In the digital age we filter forward instead of filtering out. As a result, all that material is still available to us and to others to filter in their own ways, and to bring forward in other contexts.”
The Problem With The Modern Sense Of Time
“Despite our increasing reliance on the mechanical measurement of time to structure our lives, many of us find some part of us resisting it. We find it confining, too rigid perhaps to suit our natural states, and long for that looser structure of the medieval village (while retaining our modern comforts and medical advances, of course). What is behind this resistance?”
Indie Bookstores Begin Publishing Books Themselves
“Rather than trimming their sails, a number of independent booksellers are taking a page from Amazon by producing titles themselves” – in particular, books by local writers or of local or regional interest.
Double-Blind Violin Test: Which One’s The Stradivarius?
A research team “gathered professional violinists in a hotel room in Indianapolis. They had six violins – two Strads, a Guarneri and three modern instruments. Everybody wore dark goggles so they couldn’t see which violin was which. Then the researchers told the musicians: These are all fine violins and at least one is a Stradivarius. Play, then judge the instruments.”
Why Portlandia Makes Fun Of Virtuous Hipsters
Series co-creator Carrie Brownstein: “I guess that they are ridiculous, but at the same time they’re things that I embrace – it’s a set of behaviors and an ideology that I enact, and that I think many of us sort of perform or follow. … [But] it takes a certain amount of good fortune, privilege and entitlement to have those things be what you’re worried about. And I think that most of us know that.”
Dulwich Picture Gallery Restores ‘Stunning’ Baroque Canvas – Now, Who Painted It?
“It was in the most sorry state imaginable – terribly torn, with parts peeling off, no frame, and almost black – and for about 150 years lay unloved at the back of the stores in one of the world’s oldest public galleries.”
The Odd End Of Ashley Page’s Tenure At Scottish Ballet
“In a decade at the helm of Scottish Ballet, Page is credited to transforming it from a company on the verge of becoming an artistic laughing-stock to a top-ranking troupe with unswerving performance standards. … [Yet the] company has been in an odd kind of limbo since Page’s departure was announced more than a year ago, in an episode that still hasn’t been quite explained.”
The Problem Of ‘British Culture’ In 2012
“[A]nyone seeking to promote ‘British culture’ – a key marketing concept in the year of the 2012 London Olympics – faces the problem that the definition of the United Kingdom is contracting while the definition of culture is expanding.”