Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker is creating new steps for Ivo van Hove’s Broadway production in December, and Justin Peck is doing the same for Steven Spielberg’s movie version. But arriving before those is this spring’s new production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, making Aletta Collins the first choreographer to replace Robbins’s work in a major professional staging. Says the director, Sarah Frankcom, “Robbins was saying something about where dance was at that time. The relationship between dance and theatre is really different in 2019.” – The Guardian
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why Is this Museum Exhibition So Troubling?
Several weeks ago, I visited the Dallas Museum of Art to see an exhibition of works by Jonas Wood. His paintings, mostly, are striking. They have wall power. They are easy to like. But the whole thing makes me queasy. The museum is being used. – Judith H. Dobrzynski
Music that sends cats hunting
This headline is not kidding. To judge from the playlist for pets Yannick Nézet-Séguin created, his three cats are mostly Romantics. But the tastes of David Patrick Stearns’s four cats run more toward the experimental — and one piece, about a squid, brought out Daddy’s Little Predator. – David Patrick Stearns
Dressed To Kill: A Brief History Of Judith Beheading Holofernes In Art
Angelica Frey surveys the subject from the 12th century to the 21st, looking at how the bloody Biblical tale has been used to symbolize “womanly virtue” and modesty, defeating a larger and more powerful adversary, female rage and vengeance, a literal femme fatale, and even resistance against Stalinism and white supremacy. – Artsy
Keeping Endangered Mexican Languages Alive On A California Radio Station
“Radio Indígena (indígena means indigenous in Spanish) is one of the first indigenous Mexican radio stations in the United States. The community-run station [in Oxnard] boasts 40 hours of original programming every week, broadcasting music and talk shows in a handful of indigenous languages, as well as Spanish programming too. The station is a welcome cultural lifeline for thousands of farm workers who speak Mixteco or other indigenous Central American languages.” – NBC News
What I Learned Teaching Art In Georgia State Prison
“Must we change our lives? Honestly, I don’t know. I am certainly changed by this work, call it art or god or—what we care about at Common Good—dignity. But I’m not much convinced by this poem that art asks of us any such thing.” – Americans for the Arts
After 40 Eventful Years, Gay Men’s Chorus Of Los Angeles Tries To Fight Off Bankruptcy
“Fiscal mismanagement, as well as recent sexual misconduct allegations leveled at former board chairman and former West Hollywood Mayor John Duran (accusations that Duran denies), have left the chorus on life support … The chorus has reduced its paid staff, dramatically cut production costs and promised to settle debts to vendors as quickly as possible, but the misconduct allegations have presented other challenges.” – Los Angeles Times
Sculptor Claude Lalanne Dead At 93
“Her imaginative [metal] sculptures sometimes carried a Surrealist touch, such as Pomme d’Hiver (2008), a large-scale bronze apple, Choupatte Géante (2016), a cabbage with chicken feet, and a series of Crocodile benches. Lalanne also made sinuous jewellery and pieces of furniture that appear to be fashioned from twisted branches, leaves and flowers.” – The Art Newspaper
Hip-Hop Playwrights Turn Their Keyboards Toward Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Justin Bieber, And ‘Pygmalion’
A Q&A with Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, author of P.Y.G., or The Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle (two black rappers are Henry Higgins to Bieber figure’s Eliza Doolittle), and Psalmayene 24, who wrote Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of A Native Son (Wright as Jay-Z and Baldwin as Kanye). – The Washington Post
‘No More All-White Seasons’ — Activists Slam One Of Philly’s Largest Nonprofit Theatres
“Titled ‘No More All-White Seasons,’ the [open letter on Facebook] praises the [Philadelphia Theatre Company’s] current 2018-19 season for its diversity — then condemns a lack of it in the theater’s upcoming 2019-20 season [of three plays]. In the process, it points to the sometimes acrimonious diversity debate underway at local and national theaters.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer