Shanno Khurana first became a star performing in Punjabi folk operas in 1950s Delhi, but she was a fully classically trained singer who wanted to do serious classical work. So she devised and composed fully through-sung music-dramas based strictly on classical ragas and following their rules, and she toured her operas all over India right through the 1970s. (She’s still alive today, and still occasionally concertizing at age 91.) – Scroll (India)
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The Problem With How We Get News? The Incentives Are Misaligned
Cal Newport, a computer-science professor at Georgetown University, marshals evidence that the addictive properties of our devices are not accidental but, rather, the product of careful thinking by tech companies about the feedback loops that will keep people returning to them. Newport’s main indictment is of social-media platforms, but he also argues that people need to rethink the way they consume news. – The New Yorker
15 Ways Of Looking At What America Will Be Like In 2024
“We asked 15 playwrights to imagine America five years into the future” — among them Lynn Nottage, Terrence McNally, Jeremy O. Harris, Adam Rapp, Jocelyn Bioh, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Nassim Soleimanpour, and Paul Rudnick. “Alongside six of the plays you’ll find videos in which actors including Nathan Lane, Kerry Washington and John Lithgow perform the works.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine
Washington State Reverses Ban On Allowing Prisoners To Get Books By Mail
“Concerns about contraband introduction led me to issue the original directive. After conducting further review, the data does not support continuing the restriction on donated, used books.” – Seattle Times
Ballet Memphis’s New Choreographers’ Residency Aims To Create ‘Research-Driven, Community-Oriented Work’
During the company’s two-week New American Dance Residency, which starts up for the first time next week, “the dancemakers will visit important Memphis cultural sites … and meet with local experts on Memphis music history, Southern literature and social justice. The goal is to both help develop new choreographers and to encourage the pursuit of research-driven, community-oriented work.” – Dance Magazine
How Social Impact Philanthropy Is Impacting Arts Such as Theatre And Dance
A case study: “First, its focus on social impact theatre provides another illuminating example of a funder embracing the red-hot field of socially focused arts programming. And second, its work underscores the growing influence of institutional funders operating in fields like dance and theater that traditionally lack robust individual and government support.” – Inside Philanthropy
Who Gave Us A Critical Theory Of Binge-Watching? Theodor Adorno (Who Died In 1969)
The German-born sociologist/philosopher first examined the mechanisms that producers use to get us to binge-watch streaming series — which are really no different than the ones used for decades to catch and keep TV viewers — in his 1954 scholarly article “How to Look at Television.” Writer Jake Pitre surveys Adorno’s ideas about the medium and those of later scholars who have applied his ideas to digital viewing. – JSTOR Daily
What Kind Of Computer Is The Brain?
The claim that the brain is a computer is not just a metaphor. The cognitive sciences are full of hypotheses to the effect that the brain computes such-and-such in so-and-so a way. Many of our perceptual capacities, for example, are understood in computational terms, and there aren’t any viable alternatives around. – Aeon
Bob Fosse’s Trademark Moves: An Analysis Of The Only Dance He And Gwen Verdon Ever Filmed Together
“If you’ve seen dancers flare their fingers in the flexed position often mockingly called ‘jazz hands,’ then you’ve seen Fosse, especially if those dancers were also sitting into one hip and hiding their eyes beneath a hat.” Not only did these moves become Fosse’s signature style, they’ve become completely incorporated into the American dance vocabulary. Critic Brian Seibert shows us those moves and their effectiveness in the mambo from the movie version of Damn Yankees. – The New York Times
America’s Most Famous Constitutional Scholar Meets The Creator/Star Of ‘What The Constitution Means To Me’
Laurence Tribe, who’s taught at Harvard Law School for 50 years and is familiar to many a public TV and radio listener, went to see Heidi Schreck’s hit theater piece in its pre-Broadway run in Manhattan’s East Village. He loved it, and he wanted to meet her. And so he did, after a Broadway performance of the show last month. Journalist Peter Marks got to come along. – The Washington Post