Blog

We’ve Got To Do Better At Teaching Teenage Male Dancers About Dance Belts

When Avichai Scher was a young student, no teacher or other authority figure ever said a word to him about when or how to start wearing a dance belt, which led to some very embarrassing moments when he was 13. His experience was, and is, all too common, he writes, though there are a few teachers and one company who are starting to deal with this issue properly. – Dance Magazine

Unlikely Success: How Small Publisher Faber & Faber Got To Be 90 Years Old

“The Faber story certainly speaks volumes about the mix of passion, shrewdness, and luck that it takes to keep such an operation afloat; it also raises the question of who, ultimately, a publishing house like Faber & Faber really belongs to. Is it the stockholders, whose involvement in the day-to-day life of the company is sometimes remote? Is it the staff—publishers, editors, and others—who set the tone and direction during their tenure? Or is it the writers, whose work is the company’s real raison d’être and lifeblood?” – The New Yorker

Art Exhibition About Censorship In Japan Closed By Censorship

To be clear, government censorship wasn’t involved, although a number of right-wing politicians criticized the show. Titled After “Freedom of Expression?”, the exhibition at the Aichi Triennale in Nagoya featured artworks that had been kept out of other museums and shows, and it was cancelled after repeated threats of violence, including one to set fire to the venue. The issue? A statue of a Korean “comfort woman” — an extremely sore subject between Japan and Korea ever since the end of World War II. – The New York Times

Longtime Composer For ‘The Simpsons’ Files Wrongful Termination Lawsuit

“[Alf] Clausen joined The Simpsons during its second season and worked on the show for 27 years. When he was let go in 2017, he said he received a call from Simpsons producer Richard Sakai, who said the show was seeking ‘a different kind of music.’ In his new lawsuit, filed Monday, Clausen countered, saying, ‘This reason was pretextual and false. Instead, Plaintiff’s unlawful termination was due to perceived disability and age.'” – Rolling Stone

Don Suggs, 74, Inventive Artist And Influential Teacher, Hit And Killed By Driver

“The painter, known for his wry, carefully composed investigations into the nature of art making — say, analyzing every shade of paint used in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, then rendering those shades in abstraction — was also profoundly dedicated to his students as a professor of painting and drawing at UCLA, where he taught for more than three decades.” – Los Angeles Times

New York City Told Its Museums To Get More Diverse Or Lose Funding. Here Are What Museums Are Doing And How The City Will Enforce The Mandate.

“Directions on how institutions should incorporate these objectives were left intentionally vague. Rather than issuing blanket checklists, the city wanted individual institutions to formulate plans that made sense for their respective audiences and agendas.” Reporters Taylor Dafoe and Brian Boucher talk to leaders at the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, Queens Museum, and Brooklyn Children’s Museum about how they’re responding to the city’s directive. – Artnet

James Levine And Metropolitan Opera Settle Their Lawsuits Against Each Other

“The settlement brought the court battle to a close just as it threatened to air more dirty laundry about both Mr. Levine … and the Met” — which would be why settlement terms weren’t disclosed and neither side will comment. Even so, Michael Cooper’s story has a few eyebrow-raising details as well as a good summary of the progress of the ugly suit-countersuit. – The New York Times

Nine Unpublished Stories By Proust Will Finally See Print (And Why Weren’t They Published Before?)

“The pieces were originally composed by Proust in his early 20s for inclusion in his first book, Les Plaisirs et les jours (Pleasures and Days), a collection of poems and short stories first published in 1896. But for some reason, Proust decided to cut these nine works from the book.” (He may have decided that their subject matter was too scandalous.) – Smithsonian Magazine

First Great Cellist Of Period-Instrument Revival, Anner Bylsma, Dead At 85

He began his career on conventional instruments and spent six years as the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s principal cellist before becoming one of the key artists of the European period-instrument movement in the 1970s and onward. Among his dozens of recordings as soloist and chamber musician, he’s most admired for two recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites, each considered revelatory in its time. – The Strad