The 1980s really are back: “”‘I used to be kinda nerdy,’ said Luke Yi Hao, a former violin prodigy who works in biomedical engineering and started taking weekly classes at PMT last fall. The 28-year-old’s colleagues enjoy fencing and salsa dancing, but Hao turned to break dancing because, he said, ‘it looked cool.'”
Author: ArtsJournal2
The Demise Of Reading Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, Gallup Says
Sure, 16% of the people polled read no books in the past year, but the numbers of people reading is barely down from 2002, before smartphones, Twitter and Facebook.
Restoring A Millennia-Old Repository Of Rome’s Jewish History, At Long Last
A budget allocation, meant to restore the catacombs of Jewish residents of Rome from more than two millennia ago, has finally been realized, 10 years after it was first approved. “One of the grander niches has small columns at each corner and a frescoed cross vault with a depiction of a menorah. There are images of sacred Jewish symbols, including an ark with the scrolls of the Torah, and several inscriptions referring to synagogues in the city.”
Snowed In? How About Settling In To Watch This 1964 Communist Ballet?
“The Red Detachment of Women, which was adapted from a 1961 film of the same name, was based on the true experience of an all-female Special Company of the Red Army during the Chinese Civil War. They survived a brutal attack on Hainan Island while their male counterparts did not, and were honored by Mao himself.”
Dear Creative People: A 10-Point Plan For Getting Your Work Done In The Age Of The Soon To Be President
Author John Scalzi with a 10-point plan, including get off the internet for a while. Also, stop repeating the lie that chaos will lead to good art. “People who don’t make their living through creative endeavors often suppose turbulent times make for great art, but the truth is that for many artists, being worried or anxious or depressed steals away the ability to create. The new reality of Trump’s America means a lot of creatives have to readjust — find a new balance to get back to creating.”
Who Will Win – And Who Should Win – At The Golden Globes?
The low-down on La La Land, Manchester By the Sea, Moonlight, Arrival, and so. much. more. Despite his prediction that Manchester WILL win best drama, this critic says, “a win for Moonlight would certainly be a satisfying rebuke to the new fashion for crude and ugly reactionary politics – and a vote for humanity.”
How To Sound Book-Smart At Your Golden Globes Viewing Party Tonight
We can’t say it better than this: “If you happen to be attending a Golden Globes party with a bunch of book people (or just want to snob up the room a bit), here’s what you need to know, from the literary origins of the nominees to a few frankly outrageous literary snubs. Add a stiff drink, and you’re good to go.”
Looking At The Entirety Of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Career, Through The Recordings
James Oestreich: “Neither a composer himself nor active in contemporary music, he was as radically fixated on the musical past as Mr. Boulez was on the future. Yet he exerted a powerful influence on the present, having helped to negotiate a fruitful truce between mainstream practice and the early-music movement with his historically informed performances. The evidence lives in his recordings, said to number more than 500.”
The Shakespeare Detective Who Has Determined That Shakespeare Was, Indeed, Shakespeare
When she’s not making big data discoveries that slay the conspiracy theories about who else might have written the plays, the scholar Heather Wolfe is creating things like Project Dustbunny, “one of her initiatives at the Folger Shakespeare Library, [that] has made some extraordinary discoveries based on microscopic fragments of hair and skin accumulated in the crevices and gutters of 17th-century books.”
Thanks, Harry Potter (And Girl On The Train), For Saving British Book Sales Once Again
“Nielsen BookScan reports that a total of £83.3m worth of print books were sold in the run-up to Christmas, which marks the highest since 2007.” Perhaps not entirely coincidental that the (previously) final Harry Potter book was published in … 2007.