Dance magazine editor Wendy Perron offers a reply to “to ballet-doomsday-sayer Jennifer Homans.”
Tag: 05.03.11
In Praise Of Georges Perec, ‘The World’s Tricksiest Writer’
Though he died in 1982, he “is still a member of a literary movement called OuLiPo: the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (workshop for potential literature) does not see death as an obstacle to membership. His love of writing work in eccentric, apparently impossible forms continues to inspire. But can a work written by such crazy systems ever be a masterpiece?”
Tony Nominations Announced
“You collaborate with people for so long, you struggle with plays that work and that don’t work and when you finally have one that you think succeeds — and then get some recognition for it — well, it’s pretty [expletive] special.”
Dallas Opera Musical Director Graeme Jenkins Resigns
He “cited the increased demands on his schedule, particularly in the major opera houses of Europe, as his reason for choosing not to seek an extension of his current Dallas Opera contract.”
The Tony Nominations Really Matter This Year, Especially For Best Play
Jason Zinoman: “[Even l]egends like Tony Kushner and Edward Albee didn’t get their most recent works produced on Broadway. … [But] Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Motherf****r [With the Hat] and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People remind us that ambitious, relevant, and entertaining plays by American writers can still open on Broadway.”
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Posts Record Attendance
“Shakespeare’s Globe played to 91% capacity across its Kings and Rogues season last year, which the venue claims is a record. …
The Globe’s annual review 2009/10 states that approximately 40% of the audience paid £5 for groundling tickets and estimates around half of the audience was under 35.”
NY City Ballet Reaches Agreement With Dancers’ Union
“Lengthy and tense contract negotiations between the New York City Ballet and its dancers reached a resolution at 12:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday. The dancers had been working without a contract since August. The new two-year contract represents a victory for the company [management] on one salary matter: no pay increases for the current year.”
No More Cuts To CBC, Promises New Canada’s New Conservative Government
“Conservative Heritage Minister James Moore says his government believes in the CBC as a key cultural institution and has no plans to cut its funding following his party’s recent electoral victory.”
We Behave Better When We’re Being Watched, Even If The Eyes Aren’t Real
“We tend to be on our best behavior when we know that we are being observed. While this may seem obvious, new research points to something far less obvious: it doesn’t take a fellow human being to make us feel ‘as if the world were watching,’ not even another living organism. All it takes is an image of a pair of human eyes.”
Abbottabad, The Poem (And It’s Really Bad)
“There is some argument over whether General Sir James Abbott founded Abbottabad. Herbert Edwardes, another soldier and administrator in the Punjab, has his claims. But it was Abbott who managed to put his name to the place, and he really should have left it at that. The encomium he composed when he left the hilltown he loved must be one of the worst poems ever written.”