“A new report released by the Dance Data Project — a nonprofit launched earlier this year to assess gender inequity in ballet — looks at the 2018-2019 seasons of America’s 50 largest ballet companies [by budget]. … 81 percent of works last season were choreographed by men … Looking at just full-length ballets the number grows worse: 88 percent were choreographed by men.” – Dance Magazine
Blog
Art Protest Changed This Week – The Whitney Resignation Changes All
When people scrutinize this moment as an era-defining case study, it will be worth assessing: What was it about this intervention that enabled it to so dramatically achieve its aims? – Artnet
Why I Let Criticisms Of Putin Get Edited Out Of The Russian Translations Of My Books
Yuval Noah Harari: “As a thinker and author, I do my best to reach diverse audiences around the world, and not just readers in Western democracies. … Some will no doubt disagree, but I think that as long as local adaptations of books are done in the form of altering specific examples rather than core ideas, they are worth the price.” – Newsweek
Design Is Changing As The Environment Forces Us To Adapt
The Cooper Hewitt’s curators are illuminating how environmental challenges are scrambling the roles of designers, scientists — and the museum itself. – The New York Times
Drag Queens, Officially Approved By The Chinese Communist Party (But Only One Kind)
“Wang Zhi … says he can make a tidy 2m yuan ($290,000) a year from his cross-dressing routines. … He regularly appears on nationally televised variety shows. Officials often invite him to entertain people in poor areas.” And why does Xi Jinping’s increasingly conservative government tolerate this? Wang Zhi and his fellows do drag Beijing opera-style. – The Economist
Yao Li, ‘Silver Voice’ of Shanghai, Dead At 96
“With her soft, high voice, Ms. Yao was long referred to as one of the seven great singing stars of Shanghai, … [whose popular music] bore not only the rhythms of jazz, but also global sounds like Cuban rumba and the Hawaiian steel guitar. … She was not famous well beyond Asia, but at least two of her songs made an impact in the United States.” – The New York Times
The Rockettes Are Looking For Something They’ve Never Had Before: An Artistic Director
“While the iconic precision dance troupe has of course always had artistic leaders for each of its shows, its parent organization, Madison Square Garden Company, is now looking to hire someone to oversee the artistic vision of all of the Rockettes’ year-round programming. That includes workshops, outreach activities and, intriguingly, new productions.” – Dance Magazine
Woodstock 50 Is Saved! (But It Won’t Be Anywhere Near Woodstock)
“The troubled anniversary festival … will now be at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater in Columbia, Md., the producers confirmed on Thursday. It will be held from Aug. 16 to 18, almost exactly 50 years after the first Woodstock. But it was unclear what artists would be performing.” – The New York Times
$200K Egon Schiele Drawing Discovered In New York City Thrift Store
The drawing Reclining Nude Girl (1918) was found by a part-time art handler at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in the Queens neighborhood of Woodside and authenticated by Jane Kallir, who wrote Schiele’s catalogue raisonné. – The Art Newspaper
London Philharmonic Names Edward Gardner Its Next Principal Conductor
“At 44, he’s also making a triumphant return to London after the rollercoaster ride of being music director of English National Opera from 2007 to 2015 — one of the most troubled periods of that company’s turbulent history.” Gardner succeeds Vladimir Jurowski in the fall of 2021. – The Times (UK)