“If moviegoers find the sensory experience of watching the new silent film The Artist dramatically different from taking in the average 3-D blockbuster, it’s not just in their heads – audiences are actually using the auditory parts of their brains to create their own soundtracks.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Life In The Royal Ballet
Three of the company’s dancers – a young corps member, a soloist, and principal Zenaida Yanowsky – and a company member from the 1950s and ’60s who is now a major donor talk about their experiences.
So What Exactly Is A Catalogue Raisonné?
It is “a scholarly undertaking independent of the market. It is an analytical or ‘reasoned’ compilation of all the works created by a given artist. Unlike an exhibition or book, a catalogue raisonné is not a selection. It presents the full breadth of the artist’s accomplishment, with nothing left out.”
Hugh Jackman Fashions His Own Kind Of Masculinity
Charles McNulty: “How many other movie star pinups are also giddy song-and-dance men? His new concert show is a glitzy advertorial for his career that combines action hero with ripped abs and what I’d affectionately call (draining the term of any homophobic taint) a show queen, a category that can no longer be limited to gay men.”
Scott Joplin’s Ragtime Opera As More Ragtime Than Opera
Treemonisha‘s first modern revival, in 1975 at Houston Grand Opera, was in a European-style grand opera orchestration by Gunther Schuller. A new edition, just released on record, is based on Joplin’s scoring notes in his own piano score and on the makeup of old ragtime bands.
A Nutcracker Movie With No Ballet
“When the news broke last week that director Adam Shankman would be helming a new feature film version of The Nutcracker, fans of Shankman’s career could be excused for assuming the movie would evoke the classic ballet.” (He began his career as a dancer and choreographer.) Yet Shankman is clear: “No ballet.”
How ‘Hardware Junkie’ Elizabeth Streb Choreographs For A Giant Shed
Streb talks about how she’s using the space at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory for “Ascension, in which dancers demonstrate an eternal climb on a 21-foot rotating ladder, and Human Fountain, a heroic translation of the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas.”
Garrison Keillor Changes His Mind About Retirement (Again)
After suffering a mild stroke in 2009, the popular host of A Prairie Home Companion began publicly mulling a departure from radio; earlier this year, Keillor had even set a date of spring 2013. Now he says the idea of retirement “panicked me. … The show is going well. I love doing it. Why quit?”
UK Parliament Launches ‘Arts Index’ To Measure Sector’s Health
“A new Arts Index has been launched at the House of Commons, a kind of annual health check for the state of the sector and there are lots of interesting facts and statistics to ponder.”
One In Five Ballerinas At La Scala Is Anorexic, Leading Dancer Claims
“Breaking an unspoken rule never to discuss eating disorders among Italy’s elite dance corps, Mariafrancesca Garritano told the Observer that one in five ballerinas that she knew was anorexic and, as a result, many were now unable to have children.”