25 years ago this month, the choreographer suffered a fatal heart attack backstage at the Royal Opera House during a performance of his ballet Mayerling. Crisp, who was there, remembers the fateful evening and pays tribute to MacMillan’s “fascination with the psyche rather than the fouetté … [his] interest in movement’s capacity to convey psychological complexity.”
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The Strange Capital That Starchitects Built For A Dictator
As part of “Secret Stans”, a series about the cities of the little-known former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Oliver Wainwright visits Astana, Kazakhstan, where president-for-life Nursultan Nazarbayev brought in the likes of Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava to create a futuristic capital city from scratch.
The Falcon, The Iron, The Jug, The Disco Balls: The Wildest, Weirdest New Architecture In Central Asia
A photo tour of the strange and fabulous (in more than one sense) buildings that have gone up in the cities of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, where the dictators were not going to let themselves be outdone.
Alexei Ratmansky And His Favorite Composer
Marina Harss talks with the choreographer and Leonid Desyatnikov, the only composer from whom Ratmansky has ever commissioned a score. Their sixth collaboration is about to open at American Ballet Theater.
More Than A Third Of Museum Visitors Don’t Consider Museums ‘Culture’ – And Other Takeaways From The 2017 Culture Track Report
“For many respondents, going to the park or eating at a food truck counts as a cultural experience, while attending a museum does not. … Below, we spotlight seven findings from the study could have major consequences for how traditional cultural hubs like museums think about audience outreach, development strategies, and cultural participation in the 21st century.”
St. Louis Symphony Posts First Surplus In 17 Years
Other good news from last season includes new contracts with the musicians and stagehands, the engagement of Stéphane Denève to succeed David Robertson as music director, and an uptick in box office revenue, with a third of attendees at core classical concerts being new to the orchestra’s home concert hall.
How Three Decades Have Changed ‘M. Butterfly’ (And Vice Versa)
“[The character Song Liling’s] true gender was the meant-to-shock big reveal of the original Broadway production … [But] by now, the play has been in the repertory for nearly 30 years. As [actor B.D.] Wong said by phone recently, ‘The cat is out of the bag.’ Yet here’s the thing, as I saw when I bought a ticket and went to an early preview: [David Henry] Hwang has made a new cat, and [Julie] Taymor has put it in a very different bag.” The playwright talks with Laura Collins-Hughes about that brand new bag.
How ‘M. Butterfly’ Changed My Life: Five Asian-American Theater Artists Speak
Laura Collins-Hughes talks with actors B.D. Wong and George Takei, playwrights Julia Cho (Office Hour) and Jason Kim (KPOP), and National Asian American Theater Company co-founder Mia Katigbak.
Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra Loses 20% Of Subscribers As It Moves To Temporary Venue
While the Tonhalle itself undergoes a major renovation, “the exiled orchestra can be seen in action for the next three years at the Maag Hall, part of an industrial complex in Zurich West … CHF10 million has been invested in the acoustics, but there are 300 fewer seats than in the Tonhalle, and one in five orchestra subscriptions has been cancelled.”
George Saunders’s ‘Lincoln In The Bardo’ Wins Man Booker Prize
“Saunders is the second American in a row to win the Booker prize, after last year’s winner Paul Beatty. Saunders’ win falls four years after eligibility rules were changed to allow writers of any nationality writing in the English language and published in the UK. There has been fierce criticism of the rule change.”