“Claxton’s drive to make dance happen took her globe-trotting beyond her adopted country, Scotland, to Australia [her birthplace], New Zealand, the USA, Japan, Taiwan, India, Spain and the Netherlands. Her passion for prising dance out of conventional spaces, revealing it to the ‘accidental audience’ saw her company perform in zoos, parks, museums and galleries.” Her final triumph, titled POP Up Duets, was created in 2016 for the galleries of the National Museum of Scotland and has since toured internationally, with a huge success this summer at Jacob’s Pillow.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Kids’ And Young-Adult Lit Join The Resistance
“Children’s books have always been political, of course — that’s why they are fixtures on lists of banned or censored books. … [But] if the old image of a writer for children was a wise-child genius in the mold of Maurice Sendak — one who spoke up for kids and when necessary challenged the political powers that be, but indirectly — these days, children’s authors might not only hold signs at protest marches, they may also volunteer to strategize for a State Assembly race, or even run for office.”
The Court Battle Over The Archive That Wasn’t Even Supposed To Exist (Kafka’s)
“It is only appropriate, given the subject matter, that … all parties in this fracas have reasonable claim to Kafka’s papers yet also clearly shouldn’t be anywhere near them. The story [author Benjamin] Balint tells is one of an interminable trial between doomed parties, in which physical struggles morph into questions about identity, self, and existential belonging. If only there were some author whose name is now an adjective used to describe exactly such stories!”
Why Helen Hayes Was ‘The First Lady Of The American Theatre’
“As theater professor Cheryl Black explains, she became a household name for her naturalistic on-stage portrayals of historic women, like Queen Victoria and Mary Queen of Scots. ‘She was very, very human and really did seem to have that ability to tap into the soul of a character. She was ahead of her time in her simplicity.'” (podcast)
‘Julia’ – Diahann Carroll’s Sitcom Was Both Milestone And Millstone For Blacks On American TV
When the NBC series about a widowed nurse and her son debuted in 1968, it was an immediate hit, and the first show to take an ordinary African-American family (and one whose breadwinner didn’t work as a servant) as its main subject. But for its entire three years on the air, both Julia and its star were attacked for showing a sanitized, middle-class version of black American life at a time when a third of African-American families were below the poverty line.
Why Composing Operas Feels So Natural To Missy Mazzoli
“Since I was a little kid, I was interested in figuring out other people and why they did the things they did. Even when I was doing purely instrumental work, I always thought of the melodies and the form as a kind of interplay between characters. Different forces in the piece, maybe chords, were working with each other or against each other. I was putting human dramas onto this music all the time, even if I was the only one who ever knew it.”
Choreographer Trajal Harrell Deconstructs The Old-Time Hoochie-Coochie Dance
Harrell was exposed, sort of, to hoochie coochie during his rural Georgia childhood, when his father would take him to traveling fairs but leave the boy with friends while he went out at night. “As I got older, I started to realize that they were going to see naked ladies dance. They were going to see a hoochie coochie show, and that was my first understanding of dance as a spectacle. Because I never actually saw it and we never talked about it, it’s always something that’s been lurking in my consciousness.”
The Joke I Most Regret: 13 Comedians Share Their Biggest Mistakes And What They’ve Learned From Them
“As the discourse rages on about whether or not political correctness is destroying comedy (spoiler alert: it isn’t), these 13 comedians decided that self-interrogation is ultimately a good thing. They opened up about the material they’ve performed that hasn’t aged particularly well and how owning up to it has helped grow their comedic voices.”
What I’ve Learned Doing Stand-Up At Dozens Of College Campuses: Sara Schaefer
“When I started touring universities, my first impression was not Wow, these softies can’t take a joke! It was Oh dear God, they are so young! … Some of them are only 17. A lot of them are virgins. For many of my student audience members, it’s the first time they’ve seen comedy in person. It is actually kind of scary for them: What is this strange adult woman going to do? Is she going to point me out and embarrass me in front of my hallmates?“
Classical Music Won’t Be Saved By Another Leonard Bernstein: Alex Ross
“His charisma was indeed potent, but as Bernstein recedes into history he seems more a product of his time than an agent of transformation. … The aspirational America of the mid-twentieth century was looking for a Bernstein — a native genius who could knock off Broadway tunes as fluently as he conducted Brahms — and one was duly found. There will not be another, not because talent is lacking but because the culture that fostered him is gone.”