“The Chicago musical icon died Wednesday at age 80 of complications from gastrointestinal surgery less than four weeks after her last performance, at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, Tenn. There she collected her record 29th Blues Music Award, capping an era in which she became the most revered female blues vocalist of her time with signature hits ‘Wang Dang Doodle,’ ‘I’m a Woman’ and ‘Hey Bartender’.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Annette Bening To Star In New Medea At UCLA
“UCLA Live will kick off its 2009-10 performing arts season with a world premiere production that also represents the first original production to be created by the UCLA Live series: a new interpretation of the Euripides classic Medea, starring Annette Bening and directed by Croatia’s Lenka Udovicki.”
US Customs Seizes Long-Missing Pompeii Fresco
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today seized a Pompeii wall panel fresco from a Manhattan auction house that was reported stolen in Italy 12 years ago. … The panel, rectangular with a white background depicting a female minister, white wash on plaster with a modern wooden frame, was previously located at the excavation office in Pompeii.”
Invented Languages: Esperanto (Easy) Vs. Klingon (Extremely Difficult)
“One could look at the media universe, where mass-based broadcasting has been replaced by niche-based narrowcasting, for a parallel. (If Esperanto is a failed broadcast medium, Klingon is a highly successful narrowcasting one). More broadly still, the entire modernist project of utopianism, which produced [Esperanto inventor] Ludwik Zamenhof as surely as it produced Karl Marx, has become disreputable.”
Forget Baby Einstein – How About Baby Baryshnikov?
“Baby ballet is becoming increasingly popular [in Britain], with children starting classes at as young as six months and many dance schools reporting long waiting lists.”
I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Is Big In Britain – Why Not In The States?
“Why does this particular franchise work in other places, but not for an American audience that seems so suited? Perhaps it is that people in Britain have more of an appetite for watching celebrities being punished … for the sins of being famous and having all the perks in life. This could be less appealing to a US audience … because celebrity is – like any other part of the American Dream – a form of self-built success?”
Roberto Benigni Makes NY Stage Debut – In English
“Those who were expecting the giddy clown of his Oscar-winning 1997 film Life Is Beautiful would have been largely disappointed, although there were glimpses of that persona in the first part of the [one-man] two-hour show [titled Tutto Dante], a poetic analysis of Canto V of Dante’s Inferno.”
Downed Air France Flight Takes Toll On Brazil’s Arts World
Among the passengers presumed lost on AF 447 were Silvio Barbato, former chief conductor of the opera houses in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro; vocalist Juliana Ferreira Braga de Aquino; and German architect Moritz Kock, who had been meeting with colleagues from the firm of Oscar Niemeyer.
Dancers Who Beat Susan Boyle Get Film Gig
“Dance troupe Diversity, winners of TV’s Britain’s Got Talent, are to appear in a new British film to be shot in 3D. … The film, Street Dance, follows a dance crew in training for the Street Dance Championships who are forced to work alongside ballet dancers.”
What’s The Opposite of Repugnance?
“What is interesting about repugnance is how it shifts over time. My favorite example is life insurance. Until the mid-19th century, this concept was widely held to be repugnant – it meant placing a bet, after all, on the untimely death of a loved one. … [But there’s] something that’s perhaps even more interesting: the opposite of repugnance … ‘transactions that, as a society, we often seek to promote, for reasons other than efficiency or pure political expediency.'”