Sarah Kaufman: “As a lifelong ballet lover but ambivalent dance mom, here’s my cri de coeur: Do your kids a favor and banish the thought. Yes, there are options galore for parents looking for a dance class for their toddlers — even for babies. Dance schools will be delighted to fulfill your sparkly pink dreams. But the best dance class for a very young child looks nothing like that.” – The Washington Post
Blog
Why Do People Support Their Orchestra? This Couple Gave Tens Of Millions To The Toronto Symphony
Mary and Tom Beck emigrated to Canada in the 1950s from Europe. “When Tom got to England, not being an English-speaking person, the school didn’t know what to do with him. They took him at any opportunity to the symphony. Music is a universal language. It doesn’t matter your language skill set and I think that was where he became really exposed. It really made a lasting impression on him.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Meet The Eton-Educated, Non-Binary British Iraqi Draq Queen
Amrou Al-Kadhi: “When I started doing drag, it felt like the ultimate rejection of everything I was taught in the Middle East. … I felt like I was lying. I was trying to live out things that I didn’t actually believe about myself. Everyone was looking to me as this voice of liberation. And I just wasn’t that … Whenever the drag came off, I would have a nervous breakdown.” – The Guardian
Hacking The Museum Tour – Entertainment With Attitude
“I found some of the interactive portions of the tour superficial and a bit corny, but the younger, millennial members of the group seemed to enjoy them. Bringing games, imagination and creativity into the art viewing experience certainly makes the museum seem less stuffy and more relatable.” – Los Angeles Times
Who’s The Father Of Today’s Black Theater Renaissance? August Wilson? No, It’s Tyler Perry
Wesley Morris: “Maybe it’s not immediately obvious. But it makes sense. He’s the biggest black playwright in America. If you were a kid, teenager or barely an adult in the 2000s, living in a black city and attracted to the stage, it would be hard for Perry not to become someone to revere, reckon with or resist.” – The New York Times Magazine
London’s Creative Industries Are Growing Much Faster Than In The Rest Of The UK
Productivity in London’s creative industries has grown much more rapidly than in the rest of the UK, at 2.7% per year compared to 0.4%, calculations based on DCMS data from 2011 to 2017 show. – Arts Professional
The Play That Made Me Understand Why ‘Porgy And Bess’ Can Be Stifling
Soraya Nadia McDonald: “Does it still make sense to present an opera written by [four whites] as the opera about black American life? Is it a collection of insulting stereotypes set against gorgeous orchestrations, or something more? Attending a performance of Porgy and Bess helped clarify some of those questions for me. But it was another show altogether that helped me reframe how to think about them: Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor.” – The Undefeated
Coachella’s Desert X Partners With Saudi Arabia (And Three Artist/Board Members Resign In Protest)
Although the Saudi exhibition signals growing international interest in Desert X, three of 14 members on the organization’s board of directors resigned over the decision to work with a government responsible for human rights abuses and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The three are artist Ed Ruscha, art historian and curator Yael Lipschutz and philanthropist and former fashion stylist Tristan Milanovich. – Los Angeles Times
Jeffrey Epstein Gets Dragged Into $200 Million Battle Over Brancusi Sculpture
“In court filings, John H. McFadden — scion of one of the founding families behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art — denied claims that he stole a bronze cast of one of … Brancusi’s most famous works from Stuart Pivar, a prolific Manhattan art buyer and onetime friend of Andy Warhol. Instead, McFadden maintained, Pivar agreed to sell the work, which the collector valued at $100 million, for a pittance because he needed quick cash and could not attract another buyer, due in part to his longtime friendship with Epstein.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Piece So Hard Even Barbara Hannigan Couldn’t Sing It
“On paper, John Zorn’s Jumalattaret … looks impossible: breathless vocalise; abrupt transitions from head-spinning complexity to folk-song simplicity; and, within the span of a single measure, whispering, squeaking and throat-singing like a winter storm. It’s the kind of piece that leaves you asking, repeatedly, over the course of its 25 minutes: Can a voice even do this? The answer, for Ms. Hannigan, is yes. It took a lot of practice, a thwarted summer vacation, and a well-timed email to get there.” – The New York Times