Kirill Serebrennikov, chief of Moscow’s Gogol Center and best-known in the West as director of the Bolshoi’s off-again/on-again ballet Nureyev, “was placed under house arrest in August on charges of embezzling 68 million rubles ($1.1 million) in government funds in a case widely seen as political. … The judge denied Serebrennikov’s request to be released for five days to complete the filming of a movie about rock legend Viktor Tsoi and to visit the Bolshoi Theater Dec. 9-10. The director will remain under house arrest until Jan. 19 next year.”
Blog
Oklahoma City Ballet Gets Brand-New Home And $2 Million Gift
Up to last year, the company was based in a cramped building with three studios and a leaky roof. In February they acquired a former fitness center, which has now been renovated into a spacious, light-filled, multi-studio headquarters. To celebrate, the family of the company’s founding donor has made a major new gift.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.17.17
Excellence and Engagement: II
Last time I began a discussion of excellence in community engagement … This time I continue with a consideration of three potential categories of excellence that are often not part of our discussions in the arts. … read more
>AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-10-17
Warhol Effect: Can Leonardo’s Strange Bedfellow Make Christie’s Bidders Salivate for Salvator Mundi?
It seems Christie’s couldn’t resist the chance to pair Leonardo da Vinci‘s Jesus with one (or, more accurately, 60) by art-market megastar Andy Warhol, whose 32-foot-long Sixty Last Suppers (riffing on the Italian Renaissance master’s … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-10-17
Not just for rich white people
In which I tell orchestras in the US — or at least the National Symphony — that maybe they should stop taking so much time to thank donors (and other upper-crust supporters) — at their opening galas. They should greet the community instead. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2017-10-17
A Song as Halloween Approaches
Like many of our holidays, Halloween has morphed into something far from its origins. Now it is a time for children to dress up as just about anything, and ask for candy, and for adults to put on masks and behave very badly. … read more
AJBlog: OtherWorldly Published 2017-10-17
Rotoscope – Wher Dance And Interactive Animation Meet
“Taking inspiration from the rotoscope – an early filmmaking device that allowed animators to trace over live-action – the Japanese design group EUPHRATES used an innovative computer algorithm to capture outlines and extract other information from a video of a ballerina, Kurimu Urabe of the Bolshoi, dancing in a ballet studio.”
Music In The Museum – Plenty Of Upside (And Some Down-)
“When it comes to presenting music, museums aren’t necessarily ahead of the curve. Yes, it’s great that they do it — and they do it a lot. Most of Washington’s major museums present concerts, from the diminutive Kreeger Museum, which fills its central exhibition space with chairs for a small chamber music festival every year in June, to the National Gallery, where the foliage and statuary of the West Garden Court, despite its distorting echoes and uncomfortable folding chairs, often conspire to make events feel delightful. And yet most museum concert halls lack such charm.”
Are These The Worst Classical Music Album Covers Of All Time?
It’s a crowded category, but here are fifteen “covers from hell.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda Interviews Stephen Sondheim
Sondheim was one of the first people I told about my idea for a piece about Alexander Hamilton, back in 2008. It was in this townhouse, on the first floor. I’d been hired to write Spanish translations for a Broadway revival of “West Side Story,” and during our first meeting he asked me what I was working on next. I told him “Alexander Hamilton,” and he threw back his head in laughter and clapped his hands.
Want To Be A Know-It-All? The ‘Very Short Introduction’ Books Are Here For You
“Some of these books are concise introductions to topics you might later wish to pursue in greater depth: Modern India, say, or Shakespeare’s Tragedies. Others, like Teeth, contain pretty much everything the average layperson would ever want or need to know. All of them, however, take their Very Short commitment seriously. The length of each book is fixed at thirty-five thousand words, or roughly a hundred and twenty pages. … Never mind that the Roman Empire got some four thousand pages from Edward Gibbon, and that was just to chronicle its demise; here it gets the same space as Circadian Rhythms, Folk Music, and Fungi.”
The Movie Industry Thinks Rotten Tomatoes Has Ruined Criticism. But Has It?
“The question then becomes, are the scores on Rotten Tomatoes just reflective of the history of criticism, and thus of conventional opinion? Or are the Rotten Tomatoes contributors themselves the critics who prop up these reputations, and thus pave the way for smarter conversations about film online?”
Doing Stand-Up Comedy In East Asia Means Getting Your Act Past The Censors
“In Asia, where a youthful stand-up comedy scene is still developing, comedians in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia are finding creative ways to tell jokes about sex and politics, while coming up against cultures of censorship and taboos.”