Author: ArtsJournal2

A Feminist Ballerina On A Mission To Change Classical Ballet

Ashley Bouder isn’t OK with how few women get to choreograph, or become company directors, in the world of ballet. So the City Ballet principal is trying to change that through her own company, in her free time. But it’s not necessarily easy: “Ballet is both a largely nonverbal art form and one that prizes conformity. ‘We’re used to being told to shut up and get in line and point your foot and turn out,’ Ms. Bouder said, noting that this pressure tends to weigh more heavily on women, who are more easily replaced than men.”

British Writers And Publishers Are Very, Very Unhappy With Each Other Right Now

Full-time writers in the UK earn less than ten thousand pounds a year, a new survey says. This seems … unsustainable for authors (publishers dispute the number): “The Society of Authors chief executive Nicola Solomon estimating that authors were paid just 3% of publishers’ turnover in 2016, based on their profits. ‘What concerns us is that during the same period that we see authors’ earnings plummet, the large publishers are seeing their sales rocket,’ she said.”

Donald Hall, Former Poet Laureate And Elegant Chronicler Of Rural Life, Has Died At 89

Hall was a prolific writer, whose essays, memoirs, freelance articles and poetry spread his readers across many genres. “Hall was one of the leading poets of his generation, frequently mentioned in the company of Robert Bly, James Wright and Galway Kinnell. In evoking a bucolic New England past and expressing a deep veneration of nature, he used simple and direct language, though often to surreal effect.”

Hollywood Calls On Kids To Solve Its Pipeline Diversity Issues

The Youth Cinema Project was founded years before April Reign started the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, but it could help solve the problem. “What sets Youth Cinema Project apart from other pipeline programs is that, starting at a young age, the kids are doing all the work, as opposed to the adults. The participating school districts have conducted studies that show real results of teaching hands-on filmmaking.”

Nina Baym, The Professor Who Found The Women, Has Died At 82

The University of Illinois professor had a question. She “was writing a book about Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1975 when she began to wonder why 19th-century American literature was so male-dominated. Hawthorne himself helped pique her curiosity. In 1855 he had famously complained that ‘a damned mob of scribbling women’ was cutting into his sales.” So she found those scribblers, and a whole lot more.

The Intense Responsibility – Burden Or Not – Of Inherited Family Art

It started with a deathbed plea and a promise – a promise that has meant decades of trying to figure out what to do with the art. “Selling the work was never part of Mr. Carlson’s plan anyway, nor has he ever tried to sell it. This wasn’t high art, but that wasn’t really the point. This was about a family relationship across generations, the weight of old promises that can keep you awake at night and, perhaps most of all, the mystery of a creative impulse quietly, relentlessly sustained.”

This ‘Game Of Thrones’ Armourer Has More Than One Catapult To Look After

Natalia Lee is the only woman armourer on the Game of Thrones set – something she’s used to. She made the Heartsbane Sword, aka the big one that (spoiler alert) Sam stole from his dad to take into future battle. Lee “has kept an eye out for young women on set, saying: ‘If it’s a stand-in or stuntwoman, I’ll always reach out and talk to them, I know how it is. Some days I’m the only woman in a male environment of thousands of men. I know it can be uncomfortable.'”

A Conversation About Jasper Johns’ Oeuvre Is The Perfect Time To Ask Who Gets Remembered, And How?

And there’s time for some anecdotes as well: “When you go to Lincoln Center, you see there’s a big sculpture that Johns made and one of the things I found out about it is that there’s a footprint by Merce Cunningham. He said to me Merce Cunningham had always wanted to be accepted into Lincoln Center and he never had been, so he got his footprint into the piece and the piece is now in Lincoln Center. That’s pretty performative. And it’s got a wonderful sense of humor that these two men must have just cackled over, because it also says something about society and a kind of rejection/acceptance. They kind of wiggled their way through it anyway.”

‘Sesame Street’ Provides Many A Lifeline For Traumatized – And Immigrant – Youth

The Sesame Workshop, says its head of global philanthropy, “has worked for years with immigrant communities and organizations in the U.S. to ‘help them help their children feel safe’ through the use of bilingual resources. And because many poor immigrants are in the country illegally, Westin said the organization is ‘often doing its work under the radar because the families are worried about having attention called to them.'”