Controversies broke out on a few fronts this week. – NPR
Blog
Rethinking Dance Performance
“We don’t have to remain in our Brady Bunch squares. It was great to walk by and see the dancers sweating and breathing. We still do that. We are all choreographers now. People are starting to think more spatially.” – Dance Magazine
Booker Prize Longlist Announced
On a longlist packed with surprises and debuts, chosen from 162 novels, Mantel is up against major literary names including US author Anne Tyler, picked for Redhead by the Side of the Road, a work judges called “a very human tale of redemption”, as well as the Irish-American author Colum McCann, longlisted for Apeirogon, about a Palestinian and an Israeli, both of whom have lost their daughters. – The Guardian
New York Is Getting Loud Again
“The pandemic offered a temporary reprieve from sound, both in cities and in oceans, giving scientists a once-in-a-lifetime (we hope) chance to study the sudden onset of quiet. The lockdown created a deeply unsettling soundscape, like the hush after an explosion, which extended on week after week. The quietude was revelatory, but not serene. Birds in neighborhood trees assembled into a network of local choirs, and the bated traffic let them be heard. The nights were laced with sirens, but devoid of laughter, arguments, and music.” – New York Magazine
Music Of America’s First Known Women Composers Is Headed To Disc
Their names were Sister Föben, Sister Katura, and Sister Hanna, and they were members of the Ephrata Cloister, a radical commune of Pennsylvania Dutch Evangelicals in the mid-1700s. Baritone and musicologist Chris Herbert (of New York Polyphony) has digitized and transcribed the manuscript in which these composers’ hymns (“just devotional, simple music,” he says) were found, rounded up four singers, and recorded the works in the Ephrata Cloister Meetinghouse. – NPR
Where Are The Thousands Of Musical Instruments Looted By The Nazis?
There has been a lot of research into the Nazis’ plunder of Jewish-owned artwork in Europe during World War II, though far less attention has been paid to the looting of instruments. But a number of scholars have been focused on bringing this facet of Nazi crimes to light. – NPR
Australia Is Raising University Tuition For Arts And Humanities Degrees And Lowering It For STEM Degrees
“Education Minister Dan Tehan said the government wanted to ‘incentivise students to make more job-relevant choices’. The next wave of graduates would have to power the post-Covid economic recovery, he stressed. ‘A cheaper degree in an area where there’s a job is a win-win for students.'” Many education professionals are skeptical (to say the least), and evidence suggests that the new pricing won’t change students’ choices. – BBC
Why It’s Important To Learn A Poem Right Now
Robust poems committed to memory can counteract the corrosive effects of self-pity. They can offer a different way of viewing the world, particularly to generations that did not suffer the buffetings of the early and mid-20th century, and are now bewildered by the calamities that seem to arise from nowhere, and leave them powerless. – The Atlantic
At Least There’s One Live Dance Festival Happening In The U.S. This Summer
Kaatsbaan, a Hudson River-side farm that has been offering retreats and workshops for dancers for 30 years, is presenting public performances for the first time this year. (Thanks to COVID, they’ll be outdoors, with a spread-out and masked audience.) Stella Abrera, the recently retired ABT star who’s now Kaatsbaan’s artistic director, is programming the festival with executive director Sonja Kostich and three Black dance artists: Alicia Graf Mack, Lloyd Knight, and Calvin Royal III. – The New York Times
Finally: Scientists Figure Out Where The Stonehenge Stones Came From
David Nash at the University of Brighton in the UK and his colleagues have identified the source of 50 of the 52 large boulders, known as sarsens, that make up the monument’s iconic stone circle. By analysing the stones’ chemical composition, the team has traced their origins to 25 kilometres away from the monument, in the West Woods in Wiltshire. – New Scientist