Author: Matthew Westphal

Just Like Lamb: Royal New Zealand Ballet Sees Itself As ‘An Export Commodity’

The troupe’s recent two-week tour of China “received a rapturous response from press and audiences alike” and, thanks to performance fees, per diems and sponsorship, broke even completely. Says company general manager Amanda Skoog: “Touring to China is a lot less stressful than touring around New Zealand, where we take full financial risk.”

When High Romanticism Met The Spirit Of Scientific Inquiry

From Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder: “Romanticism as a cultural force is generally regarded as intensely hostile to science, its ideal of subjectivity eternally opposed to that of scientific objectivity. But I do not believe this was always the case, or that the terms are so mutually exclusive. The notion of wonder seems to be something that once united them, and can still do so. In effect there is Romantic science in the same sense there is Romantic poetry, and often for the same enduring reasons.”

Capturing The Face Of Death

“Death doesn’t lie, so death masks – a cast of the face in wax or plaster, taken just hours after breath has gone – promise truthful representations of the departed. In an era before photography, these masks give us each beauty and blemish, a living presence in unchanging material. But how were they made? And what is their uncanny allure?”

Big Brother Will Be Watching – And Feeding You Ads

“For example, a system developed by Singapore’s research agency lets advertising screens detect the genders of passers-by: it will soon be able to tell how old they are, too. … Computer vision is sophisticated and cheap enough to make it possible to spot the logos on your drinks cup or shopping bags, and serve up ads in response – whether to reinforce your choice or promote a competitor.”

John Calvin And The Making Of Americans

“Others have noted the surprising ways that Calvinist ideas helped to legitimize representative political institutions [and the rise of capitalism]. Less widely acknowledged, though no less historically significant, is the profound impact of Calvinist assumptions on the formation of American patriotism – and in particular on the country’s sense of itself as an exceptional nation empowered by providence to bring democracy, liberty, and Christian redemption to the world.”

Florida’s Opera Naples Buys Its First Home

“Opera Naples, like many first-time homebuyers this year, has taken advantage of the market to snare its own administrative and activities base, a 10,000-square-foot commercial space in East Naples.” The facility will enable the four-year-old company “to create and store sets and costumes, rehearse for productions and even stage some workshop operas.”