“[P]eople handle anger differently when they’re lying on their backs, compared with sitting upright. University students who heard personal insults while seated exhibited brain activity linked to so-called ‘approach motivation’ – the desire to approach and explore something. This potential urge disappeared when students took their insults lying down, despite their anger remaining.”
Tag: 08.11.09
NY City Ballet 2010 Winter Season To Feature Full Rep Retrospective
To celebrate its 45 years at Lincoln Center, the company “will present a yearlong retrospective of its repertory … [with] 11 ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins and five full-length ballets, including Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake.” The opening-night gala will feature a new work by Peter Martins to a score by John Adams.
Resisting Temptation Is Hard (As The Ancient Greeks Knew)
“Mortals not only overestimate our ability to resist temptation, we also tend to miscalculate the amount of temptation we can handle. Homer was onto it: Odysseus put wax in his shipmate’s ears and had himself tied to the ship’s mast before being exposed to the Sirens’ song. But humans today may need a sociological study to understand that our abilities to control impulses are not what we think they are.”
Come Fly With Twyla: Tharp’s New Sinatra Show Headed For Atlanta, Tour, Maybe Broadway
Come Fly with Me, “previously announced for a world preem at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater this fall, will launch a national tour next summer. Beyond that, producers … see Gotham as one of several possibilities.” The show “strings together Sinatra songs in a nightclub setting, where a group of people, portrayed by a cast of 15 performers, fall in and out of love.”
Autry National Center In L.A. Abandons Expansion Plans
“In a move that concedes a measure of victory to long-term opponents, the Autry National Center [of the American West] has bowed out of a protracted battle for a $175-million expansion of its facility in Griffith Park.” The city of Los Angeles would not approve the plans unless the Autry committed to support the nearby Southwest Museum of the American Indian, with which the Autry merged in 2003, “as a fully functioning art institution in perpetuity” at its current location.
Fidel Issues His Own ‘Little Red Book’
“The Diccionario de pensamientos de Fidel Castro, or Dictionary of Fidel Castro’s Thoughts, runs to 339 pages and contains 1,978 of the former Cuban president’s sayings” – arranged alphabetically – “taken from the speeches, statements and writings he gave during the 49 years he ran the country.”
New York’s Knitting Factory To Reopen In Hipster Central
“The Knitting Factory, which ceased regular programming in TriBeCa at the end of last year after two decades in Manhattan, will reopen in a smaller space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sept. 9.” The club “opened in 1987 on East Houston Street on the Lower East Side, earning a wide reputation for its mix of rock, jazz and avant-garde music, and in 1994 it moved to … TriBeCa.”
How Leonard Bernstein’s Mass Creeped Nixon Out
“Because ‘Mass’ was scheduled to have its première at the Kennedy Center, a shrine to a fallen President, Nixon felt some pressure to attend. But the F.B.I. warned that Bernstein might be perpetrating something ghastly, and other disturbing reports reached the White House in the summer of 1971. Some of the more curious characters on Nixon’s staff went to work on the problem,” as these memos attest.
Edinburgh Fest Director Breaks A Leg — Well, An Ankle
“The old theatrical term is ‘go break a leg’. It is usually meant as a message of good luck. But Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, has done just that. Mr Mills has fractured his right ankle on an uneven area of Edinburgh pavement.”
Woman Throws Ceramic Mug At Mona Lisa
“A Russian tourist sparked a security alert when she threw a mug at the Mona Lisa, the world’s best-known painting, officials at Louvre Museum in Paris have revealed. Screams erupted from the 40-odd tourists jostling for position around Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic painted lady when the empty terracotta mug flew over their heads and smashed into the portrait,” which was unharmed behind its bullet-proof screen.