Catie Cuan, currently working on a mechanical engineering Ph.D. at Stanford: “There are a number of studies that demonstrate that how something moves is even more important [to a user] than how it looks. … I have a set of tools and ethics and practices and skills that I bring to the table, which is ingrained through years of dance training. I can bring those to the application of design, interaction and control mechanisms for robots.” – Dance Magazine
Blog
A Radical Rethink Of San Francisco State University’s Music Program
With the clarion call of the Black Lives Matter movement ringing in the background, Modirzadeh described the SFSU music program as fettered by “a deep intergenerational upholding of that archaic ‘separate but equal’ logic that miseducates, leaving our students perpetually revolving around a musical caste system stuck thick in ethnic myopia.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Ben Brantley Predicts That, Before Long, Theater Critics As We Know Them Won’t Exist
“I think the notion of criticism may expand, and people will write more culturally comprehensive mixed-discipline pieces. But it’s hard for me to imagine. It will be interesting to see how much people are actually willing to read in the future online, and whether most communication will be single lines, single impressions, condensations.” – The Stage
Construction Of Ancient Mega-Stone Henge Might Have Been Resistance To Progress
“You could look at it as the last hurrah of the stone age. They could see the changes coming and decide to resist them – they may have been thinking: ‘We don’t need these changes. We’ll build bigger and better monuments to our gods. We’ll knuckle down and stick with what we know’.” – The Guardian
Jan Myrdal, Radical Writer Son Of Legendary Parents, Dead At 93
He devoted much of his life, and his writing, to rebellion against his parents, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, each of whom won a Nobel Prize. But the body of his work was reportage and advocacy on Communism and those who lived under it; neither Scandinavian social democracy nor the Soviet system was leftist enough for him. He wrote the first Western eyewitness account of the lives of ordinary villagers under Mao, but his later years found him defending the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Khmer Rouge, and Holocaust denial. – The Washington Post
How Times Square Became A Hotbed Of Resistance Art
“For 20 years, Fran Lebowitz has been dreaming of tourists disappearing from Times Square. ‘Now there are no tourists in Times Square,’ she recently said, ‘but, of course, there’s no one in Times Square.'” Since New York, like nature, abhors a vacuum, along came the artists. – The Guardian
D.C. Begins Pilot Program To Restart Live Theatre
While almost all performance venues in the District remain closed, the first company there to produce a play under new local COVID-safety protocols is GALA Hispanic Theatre, with a staging of Spanish Golden Age playwright Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano (“The Gardener’s Dog”, usually known in English as “The Dog in the Manger’). Thomas Floyd reports on how it’s working. – The Washington Post
All That Campaign Money Saved The TV Ad Business’s Bacon
“In 2020, the company [Advertising Analytics] sees nearly $247.5 million being spent between Jan. 1, 2019, and Election Day — marking a 200% increase over the prior record. … The dynamics are welcome ones for TV networks and stations, which [due to the pandemic] have seen advertisers claw back the usual commitments they make each year.” – Variety
Jersey City Voters Approve Dedicated Arts Tax
Nearly two-thirds of the voters in New Jersey’s second largest city, just across the Hudson from Lower Manhattan, supported the property levy, which would amount to roughly $25 annually for a house worth $500,000. The ballot question was non-binding but gives the City Council a political green light to approve the measure. – The New York Times
Mass Layoffs And Orchestra Rebellion As Opera Australia Prepares To Reopen
“Opera Australia will [announce] its summer season on Thursday, still reeling from a turbulent past six weeks that saw the company hit with a slew of unfair dismissal cases, and its orchestra deliver a vote of no confidence in its concertmaster.” – The Guardian