Blog

Broadway’s Mixed Year

What kind of season was it on Broadway? Mixed. “It’s been a tough season, with so many flops and shows that are struggling. The stuff just hasn’t been compelling. The new plays, in particular, haven’t done well, and I think it just has to do with their quality. I don’t think it’s a case of resistance to serious drama from the audience. Give them an established drama like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and they come.”

China To Review Online Games

Online games are hugely popular around the world. Now China wants to monitor and censor what games its citizens play. “Ministry of Culture officials said all online and wireless games produced outside the country will now be subject to examination first before they can be legally distributed within the country. Foreign producers of online games already in distribution must submit those products to MOC examinations by Sept. 1, or face punishment.”

What World Problem Would You Try To Fix With $50 Billion?

What would you do if you could spend $50 billion fixing one of the world’s great problems? “To answer that question, Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and environmental iconoclast, brought eight economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, to this harbor city last week to rank the world’s 10 worst problems. Forget politics, they were told, just look at how to get the most bang for the buck. After studying all the contenders and running the numbers, the economic “dream team” decided”

Oakland Ballet Running Out Of Time

“The financially troubled Oakland Ballet has given itself another month to raise the $500,000 it needs to keep from going under. And it has laid off two staff members as part of its bare-bones survival plan. In April, the respected company, which has a $250,000 debt, canceled its fall season, didn’t renew the contracts of its 22 dancers and announced it would fold if it couldn’t raise $500,000 by May 31. So far, the ballet has raised $300,000…”

The Crowd Knows

Crowds are more often right than the individual. “The simplest demonstration of this is the jellybean experiment. Ask a group of 50 people how many jellybeans are in a jar, and the group’s average answer will be uncannily accurate — within 2% of the right number — and it will be better than the answers of nearly everyone in the group. And though the jellybean experiment is artificial, the truth is that groups demonstrate the exact same intelligence in the face of far more complicated problems.”

Sexual Politics Of Dance

“It’s remarkable how prevalent is the assumption that dance draws up its skirts in panicked withdrawal from anything resembling real life. In the arena of sexual politics, for instance, there is no art form better equipped to portray the physical dynamics of relationships or to confront the issue of body image. In fact, rewriting the roles of men and women has been one of the major choreographic projects of the past 100 years.”