Ayman Safiah, the first (and only) Palestinian man to go through ballet training, just graduated and simply wants to make his art. Can he go home? “The arts in Israel are more segregated than before, but I am not interested in that sort of environment. I don’t like politics having a role in the arts. I just want to dance.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
A Slight Southern Drawl That Sounds Like Classical Music In L.A.
Brian Lauritzen of KUSC: “Vin Scully once said that what he does to evoke the image of baseball is to make the ballpark atmosphere enticing. That really resonated with me. If there’s some way a concert on the radio can demystify it for someone who might not know all the etiquette…. If I can get one person into the concert hall, it’s been worth it.”
Downton Abbey Actors Ordered To Burn Their Scripts
As they film the third season, the actors have been ordered to burn or shred scripts – not just recycle or toss them – so the storylines stay secret.
Lending E-Books? Watch Out For Authors
LendInk, a site to help facilitate e-book loans, “has effectively been put out of business by a virtual lynch mob of authors claiming it breached their rights, even though what it was doing was perfectly legal.”
Sailing Into Fall Concert Season Fully Prepared, Thanks To YouTube
In the off-season, “spend a few leisurely hours in advance getting ready for music that is new to you. In most cases, it is not difficult to track down a recording and some reading material about the piece and the composer. This way, you’ll arrive at the performance fully alert — and entitled to look ever so smug.”
St. Petersburg, Cultural Mecca Of The 18th Century, Goes Culture-Mad Again
The island of New Holland sits at the center of the Russian city that Peter the Great hoped would be a “new Venice.” Now a Russian oligarch has created a mixture of contemporary arts center and something like New York’s High Line (organic garden included, of course).
Britain’s Prime Minister Slights ‘Indian Dance’ As Not Very Athletic
David Cameron: “A lot of schools were meeting [their target exercise time] by doing things like Indian dance or whatever, that you and I probably wouldn’t think of as sport.”
Digital Projectors Might Mean The End For Little Movie Theaters
“Since the first flicker of a nickelodeon, movie-theater owners have invested in many upgrades, from stereo sound to stadium seating, even while losing large portions of their audience to television, home video and the Internet. But the cost of the digital conversion is unprecedented: about $50,000 per auditorium.”
Larry McMurtry’s Last Book Sale (For Real – Of 300,000 Books)
“Now 76, Mr. McMurtry, the country’s highest-profile book dealer, recently decided to whittle his [four-bookstore] enterprise down to one building, which will remain open with an inventory of about 150,000 books.”
Malcolm X Actor Albert Freeman Jr., 78
The actor played Malcolm X in the 1979 TV series Roots and Elijah Muhammad in Spike Lee’s 1992 Malcolm X.