“Last May, The Guardian reported that Judith Mackrell would step down from her post after a 23-year run, and Alastair Macaulay announced he was giving up his position as The New York Times‘ chief dance critic, effective this past January. Luke Jennings left The Observer in the UK in December, and this winter, The New Yorker quietly replaced Joan Acocella with the historian Jennifer Homans. … In one fell swoop, criticism has lost decades of experience and memories, and these writers won’t be easily replaced.” – Dance Magazine
Tag: 08.07.19
Can Korngold’s monster opera be saved? Even by Bard?
Getting to know opera via recording is like on-line dating — no reason why it shouldn’t work, and it often does. Then you walk into something like Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane with well-founded hopes, and you leave trying to reconcile what you thought it was on recording with what you’ve just experienced. – David Patrick Stearns
What Stands May Fall
I didn’t read any of the program notes for the Wendy Whelan-Maya Beiser-Lucinda Childs-David Lang piece the day at Jacob’s Pillow. I didn’t even read the spoken text. Why then, did I find tears pricking at my eyes as the piece neared its end? – Deborah Jowitt
Is Dance A Sport Or Not? Does It Matter?
Lauren Wingenroth: “A Google search of that question will yield hundreds of results of impassioned arguments about whether or not we should consider dance a sport. The fact that breaking was recently provisionally added to the 2024 Summer Olympics program is certain to make the conversation even more heated. I would like to make a counterargument: Those on both sides of the issue seem to agree more than they disagree. So who cares?” – Dance Magazine
Oh No – One Of Our Favorite Sources Is Closing Down
Pacific Standard has about 20 full-time employees, 25 writers on contract and dozens of freelance writers who contributed to the publication, Nicholas Jackson said, adding that the employees were offered severance packages. – Los Angeles Times
Watching A Play, In Black And White: Two Critics Discuss How Who You Are Affects The Way You See African-American Theater
“In a cultural medium whose producers, audiences and critics are still predominantly white, [Jackie Sibblies Drury’s] Fairview challenges playgoers to think about how the different backgrounds and assumptions they bring to the theater may produce vastly different results once inside.” Jesse Green and Salamishah Tillet talk about that issue with respect to Fairview and African-American plays more generally. – The New York Times
Does Imagining Our Extinction Change Who We Are?
As ideas go, human extinction is a comparatively new one. It emerged first during the 18th and 19th centuries. Though understudied, the idea has an important history because it teaches us lessons on what it means to be human in the first place, in the sense of what is demanded of us by such a calling. – Aeon
Finally, There’s A Distributor Willing To Handle Errol Morris’s Steve Bannon Documentary
“After [premiering at] Venice, American Dharma screened at the Toronto and New York film festivals and picked up strong reviews. But the idea of Bannon getting a platform at all ignited a backlash … that made the film radioactive for buyers. … [Now] Utopia, co-founded in February by musician and director Robert Schwartzman (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola), has acquired U.S. rights to the film from the Oscar winner behind The Fog of War.” – The Hollywood Reporter
David Zimbalist: Time To Clean House At Curtis Institute
“The program at Curtis is one of the most intense and stressful of any educational programs in the world. My cousin [a former director of the school] believed in its mission. It will and must continue, but it is time for Curtis to clean house. The fact that there were those who allegedly used their roles as mentors inappropriately is bad enough, but the cover up that has been waged in their defense is far worse.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
Yeah, The Nicholas Cage New York Times Magazine Interview Is As Weird As Everybody Says
Not David Marchese’s writing; he does a fine job. But Cage showed up for the interview wearing “oversize sunglasses, a dragon ring the size of a walnut and a black velveteen jacket over a Bruce Lee T-shirt.” He says that he has based various performances on his pet cobras, Woody Woodpecker, Stockhausen, and Pokey. (That’s Gumby’s sidekick, the orange horse.) He talks about his grail quest that was and was not metaphorical. (The Holy Grail, he has determined, is the Earth.) And he says about his acting, “I’m [now] at the top of my game.” – The New York Times Magazine