Roman Baca, who trained in ballet before deploying to Fallujah, has founded Exit12 Dance Company, “a small troupe with a goal of inspiring conversations about the lasting effects of violence and conflict. Through Exit12, he began to get involved in art and healing for military veterans.” (includes video)
Author: Matthew Westphal
Choreographing A Piece For An Ancient Egyptian Temple
Andrea Miller, the Met Museum’s current artist in residence (she’s the first dancemaker in the post), talks to Brian Schaefer about creating Stone Skipping, her site-specific work for the muesum’s Temple of Dendur.
Most Of The Pathology Around Poverty Comes From Feeling Poor, Not Being Poor
“People who see themselves as poor make different decisions, and, generally, worse ones. … One explanation for this is that poor people engage in riskier behavior, which is why they are poor in the first place. By [research psychologist Keith] Payne’s account, this way of thinking gets things backward.”
Remembering The Man For Whom Leonard Bernstein Left His Wife
In an article previewing the coming centennial year of the composer-conductor, Los Angeles Times classical critic Mark Swed devotes a few paragraphs to Tom Cothran, who was a high school friend: “I don’t know how Bernstein ultimately felt about Tom. He was a verboten subject. Nor could I ever get Tom to talk much about the personal side of Bernstein. He felt it was his job to keep Bernstein from being too neurotic, but he may well have made him more so in the process. Still, as Bernstein’s inner monster grew, so, too, did his giving side. Shamans can be like that.”
Taking A Scholarly Look At UrbanDictionary.com
“So just how good is the Urban Dictionary at capturing new words, and how does it compare with more conventional approaches to producing online dictionaries? Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Dong Nguyen at the Alan Turing Institute in London and a few pals, who compare the Urban Dictionary and its content with Wiktionary, another crowdsourced dictionary.”
‘Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede’, A Sort Of Civil-War-Themed ‘Medieval Times’, Drops The ‘Dixie’ Part After Criticism
Slate‘s Aisha Harris: “Last summer, I made my way from Yankee territory and into the land of cotton to review Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. … a kitschy dinner theater show best summed up as ‘Springtime for the Confederacy.’ … Seeing it in 2017, just a week after protests over Confederate monuments led to the death of an innocent woman, made it especially shocking. I articulated this sentiment last August, and my review stirred up no shortage of debates over history, Dolly, and Southern pride.” Now the producer of the Parton-themes shows seems to have heard those debates.
Good Art From Bad People And The Dangers Of The #MeToo Moment
Charles McNulty: “Directors who have taken advantage of the casting couch, actors who have grotesquely exploited their stardom, conductors who have preyed on their young charges deserve to have the rug pulled out from under them. If the work they’ve done lives on, it will do so apart from the memory of their shameful deeds. This will take time. … But like many who feel a pang of obligation to due process, I can’t help wondering if in the collective rush to right historical wrongs we aren’t in danger of losing sight of other values. Justice, as symbolized by the scales, is an art of delicate calibration. But watershed movements aren’t subtle. They can’t afford to be.”
Katie Roiphe And Harper’s Were Going To Out Creator Of ‘Shitty Media Men’ List – Here’s What Happened When Word Got Out
Literary Twitter erupted; a co-founder of The Toast offered to pay writers if they pulled their articles from Harper’s in protest; writers did – and other publications lined up buy those articles. Madeleine Aggeler reports on how things went down and how the magazine responded.
Woman Who Created ‘Shitty Media Men’ Spreadsheet, About To Be Outed, Comes Forward, Reveals What’s Happened To Her Since
“A slew of think pieces ensued, with commentators alternately condemning the document as reckless, malicious, or puritanically anti-sex. Many called the document irresponsible, emphasizing that since it was anonymous, false accusations could be added without consequence. … Eventually, some media companies conducted investigations into employees who appeared on the spreadsheet; some of those men left their jobs or were fired. None of this was what I thought was going to happen. … It was intended specifically not to inflict consequences, not to be a weapon – and yet, once it became public, many people immediately saw it as exactly that.”
Boston’s Museum Of Fine Arts Is Training A Dog To Sniff Out Insects That Eat Art
The MFA’s newest security employee is Riley, a three-month-old Weimaraner who belongs to the museum’s director of security services. Known for their powerful sense of smell, “Weimaraners are a particularly good breed for such tasks since they have stamina and can work for long hours without getting bored.”