“The planned £100m transformation of Stratford-upon-Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre is to get a £20m grant from the regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands. The project has already secured £50m from the Arts Council of England.”
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The Machine That Sees Inside Your Head
“Functional magnetic resonance imaging – fMRI for short – enables researchers to create maps of the brain’s networks in action as they process thoughts, sensations, memories, and motor commands. Since its debut in experimental medicine 10 years ago, functional imaging has opened a window onto the cognitive operations behind such complex and subtle behavior as feeling transported by a piece of music or recognizing the face of a loved one in a crowd. Now fMRI is also poised to transform the security industry, the judicial system, and our fundamental notions of privacy.”
Dance As A Visual Art?
“Ballet, in the present day, has lost much of its dialogue with the progressive visual arts, which have raced into post-modernism and beyond. It risks getting left behind unless it can, once more, find a willing partner in another art and achieve a synchronous rebirth.”
Aussie Dance Scene Is Starved For Support
“In Australia, dance, the art form that epitomises our ideal image of ourselves as a nation of youthful athleticism, is in peril. Melbourne is home to many significant dance institutions. This city was once noted for its feisty, provocative and prolific independent dance scene, but the dance performance calendars of the past two years suggest the creative ferment is dying for lack of sustenance.”
Coronation Street Tops UK TV
“The biggest Coronation Street episode of the year was on 21 February when 14.35m viewers followed the storyline of Katy’s relationship with Martin. An EastEnders episode on 18 February saw 14.34m watch Dirty Den’s murder.”
Welsh National Opera Hires A Star
“Glasgow-born John Fisher will take over the running of WNO in May. He replaces Anthony Freud, who has left after 11 years to take over Houston Opera in Texas. Mr Fisher’s track record includes being the first non-Italian ever to run an Italian opera house – La Fenice, in Venice. He has also been head of music at La Scala, Milan, and is now director of music administration at the Met.”
Authors Phone It In
Want your favorite author to talk to your book club. These days they might just do it. “Book clubs are a growing force in the publishing industry, and publishers and authors view the call-ins as a way to show their appreciation, build loyalty and market their books. ‘This is the next step in the evolution of the relationship between book clubs and publishers’.”
Jerry Rice Dances With The Stars
Jerry Rice, one of the NFL’s best receivers ever, is dancing. He starts this week as a contestant on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars.” “They approached my agent and we thought it would be something that would be interesting. It is something that really takes me out of my comfort zone and I felt like it would be very challenging. And that’s been true. It’s very challenging. It’s been more than I expected. Just because you have rhythm doesn’t mean you can ballroom dance and all of that stuff.”
Legal Life As Lit
Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch to consider the literary merits of legal filings. And yet… “Has there ever been such a deluge of mass-consumed legalese in a condensed period? Indeed, this is a golden age for the turgid and stultifying, a wave of indictments, plea bargains and “informations” interspersed with three Supreme Court justice nominations in a five-month period, with all of the poetic briefs, memos and opinion-writing those can yield.”
The Turner From The Inside
Louisa Buck was a judge for this year’s Turner Prize. “Critics of the prize, such as the tedious Stuckists, say that it is an inside job. Well you wouldn’t ask someone who knows nothing about dogs to judge Crufts, would you? All I can say is that I had my eyes opened and my mind changed on several occasions.”