“The Trout Breaks the Ice is based on the story of Mikhail Kuzmin, who disappeared into the official obscurity imposed by the Soviets on artists considered deviant or who were out of favour. The play’s success comes amid fears that the relative freedom enjoyed by Russian theatre is under threat.”
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Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.12.18
Fear and loathing in the Renaissance church: Stile Antico sings Victoria’s Holy Week music
Sacred music began tumbling from heaven to earth in the late 16th century, when the words it was sung to became something more than liturgical reference points. It took on more qualities of human speech … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-04-12
What Obstacles Will Max Hollein Need to Surmount as Metropolitan Museum’s New Director?
Max Hollein will have two strikes against him — one insignificant, one potentially serious — when he walks in the door this summer as the Metropolitan Museum’s new director. The first liability is irremediable, unless he’s planning a sex-change: … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-12
Recent Listening In Brief (short…capsulesque…itty-bitty…not long)
Danny Green Trio Plus Strings, One Day It Will (OA2)
Jeremy Pelt, Noir en Rouge Live In Paris (High Note)
Kairos Sextet, Transition (Dafnison Music)
The Three Sounds, Groovin’ Hard, Live At The Penthouse 1964-1968 (Resonance) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-12
The New Met Museum Director’s First Two Big Challenges
When Max Hollein joins the Met he will share responsibility for running the institution with Weiss in a new power-sharing arrangement which may prove difficult to manage. Similar arrangements have proved dysfunctional at the Getty and at the Guggenheim, leading to premature departures by high-profile directors who felt interfered with or undermined. The leadership-by-committee model is in stark contrast to the Met’s hierarchy under Campbell and especially his predecessor, Philippe de Montebello, who ran the Met like a semi-divine sovereign.
Netflix Pulls Out Of Cannes
Cannes earlier banned any films without theatrical distribution in France from its Palme d’Or competition. That essentially rules out Netflix movies, which are released either day-and-date — on Netflix and in some theatres — or simply go straight to Netflix. In France, it’s a law that films can’t be released on home entertainment platforms until 36 months after their theatrical release.
Reining In The Surveillance Capitalists
These days, virtually every aspect of day-to-day life is fed into corporate databases and used to predict and influence all kinds of behavior. Surveillance corporations don’t just respond to consumer wants; they also shape and drive those wants toward their own ends.
How Dance Has Mitigated My OCD
Neurologists and psychiatrists admit they still don’t fully understand OCD or how it works. The condition can’t be cured, but it can be managed, dialing down the barrage of obsessive thoughts — and the compulsive behaviors or physical tics that briefly relieve them — so they aren’t so overwhelming. And for reasons that also aren’t fully understood, some highly trained athletes and performers find that being onstage or on the field, in front of thousands of people — an environment most people find highly stressful — actually reduces their anxiety.
Immersive Theatre Is Hot. But The Growing Pains Are… Growing
Even the term ‘immersive’ has become overused. It is being used to flog everything from fine dining to frozen roast potatoes. Some theatre companies liberally sprinkle their marketing copy with the word ‘immersive’ because they know it can add £10 to the ticket price. As Alexander Wright of the Guild of Misrule observes: “People know they can sell immersive shows. Audiences want them. But there can be a point where it stops being art and is just capitalism.”
Sebastian Smee: Aesthetics And Bad Behavior Are Difficult To Reconcile
I believe that art has its own life, independent of the people who make it. And I know that artists are, at least as much as the rest of us, complex creatures. I don’t enjoy damning anyone. I am an art critic, not an ethics panel. I only want to register my dismay.
Lithuanian Government Proposes Law To Ban Books That “Distort” History
Whereas several Eastern European countries have laws that limit free speech about the Holocaust, including Poland, Ukraine and Latvia, the bill targeting the sale of critical books “would be, if passed into law, one of the most blatant and harshest of them all,” said Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff, who co-authored Our People with Rūta Vanagaite, a best-selling novelist.
Talent And Behavior – One Does Not Excuse The Other (It’s A Cultural Thing)
It’s not just men, often of a certain generation, who seem unsettled by this newfound determination to speak out – demonstrating cultural leadership while doing so. I’ve heard some women in theatre talking about MeToo as a “bandwagon”. These are often women who have scaled the ladder of success and found their own ways to deal with predatory male sexual behaviour. The argument is that to make a fuss about an unwanted hand on a knee or a breast casts women in the role of victims, when of course it is a women’s job not to make a fuss and to deal with these advances from men. Because boys will be boys. But that does nothing to change the culture in which such behaviours thrive.