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Can Hip Hop Dance Show Hold A Whole Evening Off-Broadway?

“There’s a massive hole,” producer Lyndsay Magid Aviner said of the lack of urban dance on New York stages. Coming from the circus world, the Aviners said they believe there’s a broad audience for physical storytelling. Justin Peck’s popular 2017 work “The Times Are Racing” for New York City Ballet, danced in sneakers, convinced them that audiences would embrace the kind of work the Madrids are doing. Taking a cue from movement-based hits like “Blue Man Group,” “Stomp” and “Fuerza Bruta,” the Aviners went the for-profit route. They said they raised $200,000 for the San Diego run, then held their breath. – The New York Times

How Margaret Mead’s Reputation Eroded

Within anthropology, Mead is still revered, but mostly as a way to understand the discipline’s origins. In the popular mind, Mead’s name has all but vanished, her reputation whittled down to an apocryphal quote found on coffee mugs and dorm-room posters: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ What’s more, Mead has become a target of vitriolic dislike for a particular kind of cultural conservatism. – Aeon

The Very Controversial Start Of Asian-American Literature Studies

Students of Asian American literature have often been far more familiar with what is wrong with Aiiieeeee! than with Aiiieeeee! itself. From the earliest days of its publication, many Asian Americans did not hear themselves in the scream of Aiiieeeee!, did not see themselves in the “our” of its “fifty years of our whole voice.” They chafed against what they saw as the editorial limiting of “authentic” Asian Americanness to “Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese Americans, American born and raised.” This act of border drawing, by excluding Pacific Islander, Korean, and South Asian Americans (among others), further contributed to critics’ rejection of Aiiieeeee!’s brand of Asian American cultural nationalism as more divisive than unifying. – Paris Review

The Quicksand Of Cultural Politics In Russia: The Case Of Kirill Serebrennikov

“Serebrennikov was a particularly Russian type of rebel: one who sought, and attained, mainstream success, often with the blessing and support of the state.” Until, that is, his sudden arrest in 2017 on charges of embezzlement widely believed to be trumped-up — and his unexpected release last year. “Just as your downfall may come with no warning or explanation, so, too, can your redemption.” An excerpt from Joshua Yaffa’s Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia. – The Guardian

Beware Arrogance

There exists in the hearts and minds of at least some in the nonprofit arts sector a sense that the work they present is superior to most or all popular culture — and that those who patronize such culture are inferior. This sets up a monumental barrier to connecting with new communities. And even if it is unconscious and unspoken, the attitude itself is easy for people to spot when it is directed at them. – Doug Borwick