Bunch, speaking of Eugene Ballet Artistic Director Toni Pimble: “There were times when I’d play what I had for her, and she’d say, ‘That’s great, but I’m going to need probably twice that length, because of the time it’s going to take people to get off the stage.'”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Add This Mirrored Tunnel Of Books To Your Bookstore Bucket List
Whoa. “The dizzying space contains a grand optical illusion that you only see once you’ve set foot inside. Its lobby is a cavernous tunnel that most notably features striking black mirrored flooring. Together, the reflective ground and curved shelving creates the feeling that you’ve stepped into a perfectly circular room, making you question which way is up.”
British Writer And Civil Rights Activist Darius Howe Has Died At Age 74
Howe took on the entire police system of Britain and won in the 1970s. In 2003, Howe, a broadcaster as well as a writer, “wrote and presented the controversial series White Tribe, which explored the idea of Englishness and involved travelling around the country.”
A Palestinian Author Flees After Facing Death Threats And A Ban On His Novel
His earlier novels were controversial, but when he included a gay man in his fourth novel, “angry Palestinians wrote on his Facebook page, and their own pages, that they wanted to lynch Yahya and burn bookstores and libraries carrying Crime in Ramallah.”
What Is An Elite College Really Worth?
Turns out that’s the wrong question. First of all, 70 percent of 29-year-olds don’t have a bachelor’s degree. And secondly, “after correcting for a student’s pre-existing talent, ambition, and habits, it’s hard to show that highly selective colleges add much earning power, even with their vaunted professors, professional networks, and signaling.”
Gary Austin, Founder Of The Improv Theatre Troupe The Groundlings, Has Died At 75
Austin’s influence on Saturday Night Live actors was also huge. “His improvisational teaching technique involved creating scenes based on arbitrary suggestions with performers then committing to agreement on the premise of the story — no matter how far-fetched — and then performing to reflect the truth of the scene and characters.”
Freedom Of Speech Is So Complex That We Need To Break It Up Into Different Parts And Laws
The theory: “Put free ‘speech’ as such to one side, and replace it with a series of more narrowly targeted expressive liberties. Rather than locating actions such as protest and whistleblowing under the umbrella of ‘free speech’, we could formulate specially tailored norms, such as a principle of free public protest, or a principle of protected whistleblowing.”
Top AJBlog Posts From The Weekend 04.02.17
A Museum Exhibit That Keeps Moving
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Work/Travail/Arbeid at the Museum of Modern Art, March 29-April 2. Members of Rosas in Work/Travail/Arbeid/. Counter-clockwise from bottom left: Igor Shyshko, Carlos Garbin, Böstjan Antončič, Julien Monty, Samantha van Wissen, Marie … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2017-04-01
Aretha Franklin’s got it at 75
I saw Aretha Franklin last night from the Chicago Theater’s nosebleed seats, unable to make out her features but sure from the moment she first raised her voice that she’s a national if not global treasure, … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond JazzPublished 2017-04-01
A Man With Moxie Plus
When Asger Jorn heard that he’d been awarded a Guggie, he told them to fuck off. … read more
AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2017-03-31
Evaluating Virgil Thomson, Cantankerous Musician And Music Critic
Would Thomson get away with this today? “He was hardly a model critic. He gave friends positive reviews, enemies negative reviews, and usually made sure his own music was reviewed by a stringer (occasionally he did it himself). He routinely slept through performances he was reviewing, had a penchant for making sweeping and sometimes perplexing generalizations, and dismissed beloved works and composers with little explanation.”
Dear Citizens Of The United States: You Get The World You Pay For, So Please Pay For Art
The president’s plan to defund the arts (even further) should be a call to arms. But “because the arts seem glamorous, and can indeed be fulfilling and fun to do, it’s easy to regard them as something different — a lark, a hobby. The fact that some artists make art whether or not there’s money to be made might be taken as an argument that they don’t need to be paid because they’re just doing what they like. … But even crayons cost money.”