“The Nashville Opera will unveil its new $6 million headquarters with an April 30 ribbon-cutting. The 26,000-square-foot Noah Liff Opera Center includes office, studio and warehouse spaces, as well as large community spaces for special events.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Shepard Fairey Turns The Tables On AP
“But the real attention-grabber was Fairey’s assertion that the AP itself violated copyright laws when it used a photo of the artist’s ‘Hope’ poster without getting permission. In other words, he’s arguing that the AP can’t reproduce an image by Fairey that the artist himself appropriated from the AP.”
Nevada Ballet’s New Broom Sweeps Clean
The company’s new artistic director, James Canfield, “likes his dancers athletic, his programs edgy and his company energetic.” His first season in Las Vegas will be all new productions, no story ballets (except for a revamped Nutcracker), and “a series of impromptu performances at public venues” on a portable 4-by-8-foot stage.
Even IQ Is All About The (Lack Of) Money
“If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong.”
Orlando Opera Suspends Operations
“The 51-year-old company is a victim of lower ticket sales, reduced contributions and defaults on pledges, said Jim Ireland, the company’s president and CEO. The group announced three weeks ago that it could not continue if it did not raise $500,000. A recent three-week fund drive brought in only about $25,000.”
ABT Receives $5M Gift
“American Ballet Theater announced on Thursday that it had received a gift of $5 million from Toni and Martin Sosnoff … the single largest it has received from a private donor.” The money will be put into a fund dedicated to supporting all new ballets that ABT commissions.
Finding Real-Life Love In A Virtual World
“Technologies like Second Life are allowing us to rethink what being ‘together’ really means. They’re inverting our laws of attraction, thrusting us into a zone where desire can be more abstract than pure physical lust, and where intimacy begins not with a partner’s touch, but with the things that usually come much later – the emotional candor that can take years to achieve.”
Concerts Cheaper Than Cappuccinos In Miami Beach
“Seeking new audiences and mindful of crushing economic times, the [New World Symphony] orchestral academy has launched a new mini-concert series, for the mini price of 2.50 dollars. Each concert runs 20 to 30 minutes, and dress is casual. You are welcome to walk in from the beach in Bermuda shorts and baseball cap, but skateboards must be checked.”
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 58, Godmother Of Queer Studies
“[She] broke new ground when, drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of the French poststructuralist Michel Foucault, she began teasing out the hidden socio-sexual subplots in writers like Charles Dickens and Henry James. […] Several of her essays became lightning rods for critics of poststructuralism, multiculturalism and gay studies – most notoriously ‘Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl’.”
The Top Ten Novels Of Brotherly Love
Novelist James Runcie: “You can’t beat it as a subject: submerged emotions, intense rivalries, unrealistic expectations, differing levels of secrecy, betrayals both major and minor, and the genetic identity we can never escape. And if you then factor in the male ego, and tell a story of brotherly love and resentment then surely you can’t go too far wrong?” (Yes, The Brothers K is no. 1.)