It took quite a lot of planning and (re-)thinking about everything from pricing and number of people per car to turning the parking lot into a performance space to setting up quarantine pods of dancers and choreographers. – Los Angeles Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
1,300-Year-Old Temple Drawings Discovered In Japan
“Researchers surveying a temple in Japan’s Shiga Prefecture … used infrared photography to identify soot-obscured paintings [of eight Buddhist saints] on two pillars in the Saimyoji temple in Kora, about 40 miles northeast of Kyoto.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Please Declare Us Essential Services, Plead France’s Bookstores As Lockdown Returns
“French authors, booksellers and publishers are imploring the French government to allow bookshops to stay open because reading is ‘essential’, as the country enters a national four-week lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.” – The Guardian
How To Rebuild A Healthier, Fairer Theater Ecosystem? Bring Back Repertory Companies
Jim Warren, founding artistic director of the American Shakespeare Center, writes that the “revolutionary changes” he recommends — companies of 15 to 20 resident actors, performing shows in rotating repertory and handling administrative jobs as well as performing, and working 40-hour weeks with full benefits — “are a jumping-off point for righting a history of wrongs.” – American Theatre
Why composers shouldn’t attack each other in public
In the end, everyone comes out looking bad. And so it was when composer Matthew Aucoin, age 30, took on Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) in the Nov. 5 New York Review of Books. – David Patrick Stearns
Diane di Prima, R.I.P.
What I like is her poetry’s simplicity. I like its rich feeling, which is straightforward and strong and not at all sentimental. Her poems age well. I’d be surprised if her poetry didn’t last longer than the poetry of many of the Beats. – Jan Herman
Thieves Are Stealing Nazi Artifacts From Dutch Museums
“Amid huge global demand for second world war memorabilia, museums in Ossendrecht, in north Brabant, and in Beek, Limburg, have been ransacked in recent days and months. In response, a series of Dutch institutions have removed their most valuable exhibits from display or implemented stricter security measures over fears that the thefts are being carried to order.” – The Guardian
David Toole, Pioneering Disabled Dancer, Dead At 56
“A double amputee whose combination of physical power and bewitching delicacy created arresting imagery on stage and TV around the globe,” — most famously at the opening ceremony for London’s 2012 Paralympics — “[he commanded] remarkable control, buoyancy and adept physical displays, sometimes giving the impression that his body was in flight.” – The Guardian
Utah Is Actually A Dance Hotbed. How’d That Happen?
“We’re relatively small, yet boast a top-tier ballet company, the nation’s first repertory dance company, the first school of ballet at an American University, the world’s largest ballroom dance program and multiple powerhouse studios.” How did that happen? “Utah has a unique history that nourished dance,” says one local insider, and that history very much includes the Mormon settlers. – Salt Lake Magazine
Amazon Says It, Not You, Owns The Videos You Buy On Amazon Prime
“When an Amazon Prime Video user buys content on the platform, what they’re really paying for is a limited license for ‘on-demand viewing over an indefinite period of time’ and they’re warned of that in the company’s terms of use. That’s the company’s argument for why a lawsuit over hypothetical future deletions of content should be dismissed.” – The Hollywood Reporter