Beyond navigating COVID-19, Ms. Jaffe has big ideas for PBT and its growing school. She wants more diversity in choreography, more collaborations with museums and other institutions and someday, perhaps a choreographic festival in Pittsburgh. In regards to the PBT School, additional satellite locations are being considered as a way to bring ballet into more communities. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tag: 08.31.20
Where To Put On Dance In NYC Under COVID? On The Roof, Of Course!
Chelsea Ainsworth and artist Kyle Netzeband decided that presenting dance on film or online just wasn’t adequate. So they decided they’d try putting on a series of shows on the roof of their six-floor East Village apartment building. Amazingly, the landlord was game for it. – The New York Times
Why Algorithms Are Problematic In Education
“The global pandemic made it difficult to sit exams safely, so a solution needed to be devised. By looking at a combination of teacher’s predictions, past individual performance, and past school performance, grades were generated for every high school student in the UK. But as soon as the grades started to come in, thousands of students and teachers were shocked to see bright students getting poor grades. How it could it be that otherwise diligent and intelligent students from poor backgrounds were getting results which were demolishing ambitions?” – 3 Quarks Daily
Inside The Brains Of Jazz Improvisers
“How do singers such as Betty Carter take command of the present moment, seemingly bending reality to their will? While more romantic notions of creativity might point to Carter, and others like her, being ‘touched by the spirit’, there are less lofty explanations related to the physical dimension of making music with the human body, as well as the singer’s skilful musical interplay with the other musicians and the audience. There are also complex cognitive and psychological processes that drive the ‘real-time’ spontaneous creation of music.” – Psyche
The Future Of Our Lives Indoors
“Multiply your age by 0.9. If you’re forty, you’ve spent thirty-six of your years indoors. About a third of that is time spent sleeping, but still. Most humans who live in the United States and Europe spend more time indoors than some species of whale spend underwater. It may be that the minutes you spent walking to and from the subway on a Tuesday in January tallied up to fewer minutes than a whale spent on the surface, filling its lungs, that same day.” – The New Yorker
Here’s What It’s Like To Visit The Newly Reopened Met Museum
The new rules were evident inside the Met, where staff have installed an elaborate routing system designed to shuffle visitors from room to room without much crossover. Entrance into the Egyptian Wing, for example, brings attendees on a counterclockwise tour of the galleries. This makes for a more linear experience than usual, when meandering through different sections was a possibility. – Artnet
Time To Challenge The System That Supports Shakespeare?
The Shakespeare system is not simply Shakespeare’s written work, but the complex and oppressive role his work, legacy, and positionality hold in our contemporary society. Feeling defensive yet? – Howlround
Early Departure Of The Canadian Opera Company’s General Director Is A Good Course Correction
“What Alexander Neef failed to do spectacularly is build an audience. It is a failure that one might attribute to the vagaries of the economy, the advent of livestreaming, the price of parking or any number of standard-issue excuses that have potential validity anywhere. But there is a central and specific explanation for the underperformance of the COC: a parade of supposedly innovative productions that required a manifesto from the stage director to understand and a six-pack of Red Bull to sit through.” – La Scena Musicale
What A Time For Belarus Free Theatre To Be Starting A New Season
As protests against the latest rigged election of Alexander Lukashenko continue to rock the former Soviet state, “will the theatre, which has won increasing acclaim on tours abroad but puts on plays in a garage when in Minsk, finally be performing in a new, democratic Belarus? Or will Lukashenko launch a fresh crackdown that makes things even more unbearable for the arts?” – The Guardian
How Did A Removed Confederate Monument End Up At An African-American Museum?
The CEO chose to take it, that’s how. “Spirit of the Confederacy, a bronze sculpture of an angel holding a sword and palm branch, was removed from Sam Houston Park in June … and is now on display in the courtyard of the Houston Museum of African American Culture. ‘As an educational space, we wanted people to think about it and engage with it,’ said John Guess, the museum’s Chief Executive Officer.” – Hyperallergic