Wendy Whelan is retiring from New York City Ballet at age 47. Her farewell performance, “which will include a new work created for her by Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon, two of ballet’s biggest choreographic names — sold out within minutes.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
We Might Finally Be Entering The Age Of Floating Architecture
“It wasn’t until the last decade or so that more fully realized, just-might-actually-happen sea-based urban endeavors have emerged, made more urgent by rising sea levels and rural-to-urban migration.”
The New Weekly Magazine That Doesn’t Give A Rat’s Ass About New York
“Why launch a new print publication on the opposite coast from the country’s magazine publishing hub? Being at the heart of so many American subcultures, from tech to entertainment, makes California inherently interesting, McGray says.”
Facebook Will Never Stop Manipulating Us
“Facebook has every reason to manipulate the News Feed to optimize for whatever user engagement metrics correspond to the best returns for advertisers, which in turn correspond to the best returns for Facebook. And it has every reason to use other experiments in an effort to improve other parts of its operation.”
Rebuilding The Tapestries Of The ’60s At The Ford Foundation
“It is far from common for an artist to revisit the site of a commission to recreate the work of decades past. In [Sheila] Hicks’s case, the effort is particularly unusual. She turned 80 in July. She lives in Paris. She had to finance much of the project herself. And at this stage in her career, she had nothing to prove.”
‘About A Boy’ Author Nick Hornby Says Just Ditch The Classics If You Can’t Get Into Them
“Hornby argued reading should be seen more like television or the cinema, and only undertaken as something people ‘want to do.'”
That Time Britain Put On More Than 120 ‘Fun Palaces’ To Honor A Legendary Theatre Director
“In 1961, partly inspired by traditional pleasure gardens and working men’s institutes, [Joan Littlewood] tried to build a venue where visitors could enjoy performances, learn practical crafts and skills, watch events on giant screens or just eat and drink.” More than 50 years later, theatres in the UK mounted 120 productions in her honor.
New Languages Get Invented All Of The Time. Why Do Some Catch On With Hollywood?
“It would be wonderful if there were tons of conlangers working with fantasy authors, working with science fiction authors, where the author can spend their time on the story and the conlanger can spend their time on the language, so by the time it gets picked up and it becomes the next blockbuster, whether on film or television, they actually have a language there to go along with it.”
The Experimental Theatre Director Fled The USSR But Returned In Triumph To Russia
Yuri Lyubimov has died at 97 after an intensely dramatic life. “The Taganka Theater in Moscow, which Mr. Lyubimov founded in 1964, was known for breaking rules. Its flashy, fast-moving productions included song, dance, poetry and provocation. Actors spoke directly to the audience, sometimes even when the script didn’t call for it.”
Yes, Images Have Meaning (And Matisse Proves It)
“Matisse wanted to control the beholder and specify how and what she would see, but he also wanted something like the opposite. The viewer must be led by the work, but her attention must at the same time be self-conscious — both hypnosis and resisting hypnosis are part of engaging the work.”