Toni Messina, a “50-year-old suburban mom and lawyer from New Jersey” who has studied and danced flamenco for years, writes of her journey to Jerez – ground zero for flamenco – in search of duende.
Tag: 08.10.11
Stephen Sondheim Slams ART’s Revised Porgy And Bess
“More dismaying is the disdain that Diane Paulus, Audra McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks feel toward the opera itself. Ms. Paulus says that in the opera you don’t get to know the characters as people. Putting it kindly, that’s willful ignorance.”
In The Time Of The Citizen Reviewer, Do We Still Need Professional Book Critics?
“It is the reader-review that has prompted the recent and widespread suggestion that the critic is dead; that the paid-up arbiter of elegance is finished. Actually, I like reader-reviews – or I did, until I wrote a book. Then I decided that several reader-reviewers were both wrong and, indeed, crap.”
Musicians’ Union Says Philadelphia Orchestra Donor Documentation Is Inadequate
The union lawyer “says the lack of records about specific donor wishes bolsters the union’s suspicion that the orchestra cannot prove that its $120 million in various endowment accounts is donor-restricted. That being the case, he says, parts of the endowment can be used to satisfy the union’s potential claim as the largest creditor in the bankruptcy.”
The Norway Killer’s Warped History Of 20th Century Critical Theory
“He devotes almost 30 pages of single-spaced text to a peculiar tour of 20th-century thought. It is poorly informed but passionate. Anders Breivik thinks of himself as an enemy of critical theory, which, by his reckoning, has ruined modern culture by undermining the rightful authority of European males. “
England Says: Bring Me Your Oscar-Winners, Your Emmy Winners, Your…
“To be eligible, applicants must have won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe or an Emmy Award or have been nominated in the five years before applying. The government has set aside 300 spots for anyone who meets the requirements.”
US Pay TV Subscribers Are Canceling In Droves
“The U.S. subscription-TV industry first showed a small net loss of subscribers a year ago. This year, that trickle has turned into a stream. The chief cause appears to be persistently high unemployment and a housing market that has many people living with their parents, reducing the need for a separate cable bill. But it’s also possible that people are canceling cable in favor of cheap Internet video.”
Philip Levine Named US Poet Laureate
“The Library of Congress will announce on Wednesday that Philip Levine, best known for his big-hearted, Whitmanesque poems about working-class Detroit, is to be the next poet laureate, succeeding W. S. Merwin.”
Conceptual Artist Roman Opalka, 79, Painted Numerals To Infinity
“Starting at the top left of a canvas measuring a little over four by six feet, and using acrylic paint, he used a fine brush (No. 0) to inscribe 20,000 to 30,000 white numerals … in neat rows that ended at the bottom right corner. Each succeeding canvas, or ‘detail’ as he called it, picked up where the previous one left off. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million.”
Alec Baldwin Wants To Be Mayor Of New York
The actor – a longtime film, stage and television star as well as the radio and TV voice of the New York Philharmonic – “said that he would probably sit out in 2013 but run in a later election, and that he wanted to educate himself about the mayor’s office first.”