“[The dancers are] skittering, you know, like water bugs moving across a pond. Sure, it’s hard to remain standing with that much speed across the floor, it’s difficult. But that’s how it should be. You think it’s easy for a bug to walk on water? If they stop, they go down.”
Tag: 10.07.11
Male Pole Dancers Fight For Equality
“With its roots in strip clubs and bedrooms, pole dancing has been dismissed as a misogynistic playground in which women contort themselves for the viewing pleasure of men. But lately some women have fought to transcend titillation by rebranding it as fitness. … But a lingering taboo surfaces when men seek to slide onto the pole, too.”
Retiring After 47 Years Of (Cleaning Up After) Disney
After almost five decades at Disneyland, the head janitor retires — and tells a few tales. “It was a little disconcerting at first, because Walt Disney was watching us,” Ray Sidejas says. “Then Walt would come and ask us what we were doing.”
Stolen Picassos Recovered in Serbia
A few years after they were stolen from Switzerland, two Picasso paintings worth millions of dollars have been found, and may be coming home soon.
Art For Art’s Sake, Or At Least Writing For Writing’s Sake
Novelist Richard Ford doesn’t understand why so many writers are all about “show me the money.” His first advance “was real money, okay. But it wasn’t ‘serious money.’ That, you got from a job. And writing wasn’t really a job. It was more of a lark.”
Those Mysterious Mayan Crystal Skulls? Probably Created In Germany
Museums all over the world collected “Mayan” crystal skulls in the 19th century. Oops. “Studies a few years ago with a scanning microscope showed, in fact, that the skulls exhibit traces of a processing method which lapidaries have used only for the last 150 years.”
Ouster At The Venice Biennale May Point To Larger Issues
“The Venice Biennale art exhibition now runs like a normal international event, with adequate toilets, refreshment points, marketing, press facilities and ticketing, and also manages to cover nearly 80% of its costs” — so why is its chairman losing his spot? Party politics, say some.
Drop This “Interactivity” Talk, And Just Read
The new Kindle Fire has been touted as a way for people to read books and more books. Whatever happened to “the future” – hypertext, interactivity, vooks and all of that? Maybe the future lies in the past.
Your Street Theatre Doesn’t Need Our Endorsement, Say Actors’ Unions
Other labor groups fall in to support Occupy Wall Street, but the protest movement may go without official performer group endorsements. (Who will provide entertainment at the encampments?)
As China Rises, The Art Market Morphs
“Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby’s chief executive, said the Chinese are spending about $4 billion a year on Chinese paintings world-wide. That’s more than Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales last year of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art combined.”