Joseph Carman: “where are the great prima donna roles of the 21st century? Many of today’s top choreographers concoct ballets with impressive corps de ballets that form dizzying, computer-graphic-like patterns. Numerous male and female soloists grab the audience’s attention and then disappear back into the group. … But are they quick to spotlight those juicy ballerina roles? Not really. To many current choreographers, building a ballet around just one commanding female dancer feels like a moth-eaten method of choreographing. To others, it feels too restrictive.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How The Producer Of ‘The Band’s Visit’ Turned A Small Israeli Movie Into A Tony Award-Sweeping Musical
“The origin story begins in 2007, when [Orin] Wolf took his wife, who was born in Israel, to the Other Israel Film Festival at J.C.C. Manhattan on the Upper West Side. There was a new Israeli film playing that they wanted to see — The Band’s Visit, a fictional story about an Egyptian police orchestra that gets stranded for a night in an Israeli desert town. Mr. Wolf was, at that point, a producer largely in his dreams.”
Lionel Shriver Attacks Penguin Random House’s Diversity Drive
In a furious article in The Spectator, the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin wrote, “Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’etre as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some.” The publishing house responded, “We firmly believe that giving a platform to more diverse voices will lead to a greater richness of creativity and stories.”
Opera Theatre Of St. Louis ‘Orfeo’ Canceled Mid-Show After Fatal Heart Attack
During intermission on opening night of the company’s production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, an audience member suffered a heart attack. “Paramedics were called, and worked with doctors who were in the audience for a half-hour before taking their patient to a waiting ambulance, where he later died.”
Lorraine Gordon, Owner And Keeper Of ‘The Greatest Jazz Club In The World, Period,’ Dead At 95
“Once called ‘the Camelot of jazz rooms,’ the Village Vanguard hosted Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, to name just a few of the legendary talents who’ve graced its tiny stage. In 1935, Lorraine Gordon’s late husband Max opened the club on the site of a former speakeasy; she inherited her role as its honored caretaker when he passed away 54 years later. She became almost as much a fixture as the club itself.”
How I Invented The Berlin Biennale: Klaus Biesenbach
“In the piece below, Biesenbach, who is the director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator at large at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, narrates the founding of the Biennale and its first edition, working with artists like Sarah Sze, Christoph Schlingensief, and Carsten Höller in a very different Berlin.”
Ireland Finally Comes Up With A Cultural Policy (And Money To Back It Up)
“In April, the Irish government announced a new strategy: ‘Investing in Our Culture, Language and Heritage 2018–2027’. Astonishingly, although the Irish state has been in existence for almost a century, this is the first long-term plan ever devised for the country’s culture and heritage. For that reason alone, it should be welcomed. Furthermore, the scale of proposed investment in national cultural infrastructure – almost €1.2 billion over the next 10 years – is unprecedented. More money and better planning: it’s not often that either, let alone both, is on offer.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.11.18
Refreshing an Old Story
American Ballet Theatre premieres Alexei Ratmansky’s remounting of Harlequinade. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2018-06-10
Infernal “Heavenly Bodies”: How the Directorless Metropolitan Museum Went Astray
Where’s Max Hollein when we really need him? Several “what-were-they-thinking?” moments jolted me recently at the Metropolitan Museum, reaffirming my belief in a bedrock principle of museum management: … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-06-11
Lorraine Gordon, RIP
Lorraine Gordon, who inherited the Village Vanguard after her husband Max died in 1989, remained its proprietor and no-nonsense guiding spirit until her death yesterday in New York. She was 95. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-06-10
The Sacred Art of John August Swanson
Even as a lifetime religious skeptic, I’ve long been fascinated by artists, writers and other culture-makers who bring religion, spirituality, and related matters into their work. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2018-06-11
Queering The Language: How Camp Gay Slang Seeps Into Everyone’s Conversational Speech
“Many contemporary memes and slang terms in mainstream pop culture such as ‘yas Queen’ and ‘throwing shade,’ for example, were appropriated from the unique linguistic practices of the queer community, often coined decades before. It’s a phenomenon that seems to replicate across different cultures, such as Bahasa Gay, a gay speech style of Indonesia, which has made its way into mainstream Indonesian life without the public being particularly aware that gay people even exist. How does this happen?” Linguist Chi Luu explains it all.
New York Times Declares Cincinnati An Arts Mecca
Jada Yuan: “What I’d failed to pick up from those gauzy recollections [from my college freshman roommate], though, was just how vibrant and inspiring of an arts scene I would find. … This time around, I got to dig deep on the wealth of murals in public spaces; an architectural history to make your jaw drop; and three newly renovated, world-class performing arts venues in a roughly four-block radius.”