When PostClassical Ensemble produced an hour-long film about Dvořák and “the American experience of race” last September, we hardly envisioned turning it into a 45-minute public radio special for the holidays. But that’s what happened, thanks to an invitation from Rupert Allman, who produces the nationally distributed radio magazine 1A. – Joseph Horowitz
Blog
The Argument Over Who Controls The New Digital Public Squares
The speech platforms are rather closer to a form of mass voluntary intellectual pornography: a marketplace that lauds the basest instincts, incentivizes snark and outrage, brings us to revel in the savage burn. – National Affairs
What It Takes To Revive A Dead Language
The obvious case of a language being brought back to full life is Hebrew, which was used in Jewish religious ceremonies and texts but hadn’t been a full-fledged spoken language for about two millennia when a conscious decision was made to revive it for use in what would become Israel. Yet there was a couple of key conditions present for Hebrew’s success that weren’t there in the case of, for instance, Irish. – JSTOR Daily
The Death Of Letter-Writing?
Fundamentally, whether you’re convinced that instant communication heralds the death of the literary letter depends on how you define a letter. – Times Literary Supplement
What Stand-Up Comedians Have Learned From Working On Zoom For Nine Months
“Vulture spoke with [11] comedians about how pivoting to virtual and outdoor shows in 2020 were (and weren’t) helpful for preparing material, lessons they learned about performing during the pandemic, and how they see themselves evolving as performers in response to the radical shift we’ve all faced this year.” – Vulture
The Relationship Between Writing And Drinking
“Nothing slows the flywheel, nothing treats the node of unease on the ribs, like a drink—you don’t have to be an alcoholic to know that. And for writers, there might even be a fragile biochemical moment when the drinking helps.” – The Atlantic
Bollywood Depended Even More On Ticket Income Than Hollywood Did. Here’s How India’s Finally Embracing Direct-To-Streaming.
The fallout from the pandemic reduced box office grosses by about 75%, “making it easier for streaming services to land new movies, even with some theaters reopened. … The investments by streaming services in Bollywood content have also led to a surge of creativity. Instead of the usual romantic or action-hero films with all-star casts, more shows and movies are now centered on women, war and other topics.” – The New York Times
Why Barcelona’s Bookstores Are Thriving During COVID
“The pandemic has made people aware of the need to support their local bookshop,” said Maria Carme Ferrer, president of the Catalan booksellers’ association. “Bookshops are local cultural centres.” – The Guardian
The Recipe For A Viral TikTok Dance Hit
“Drawing from a lexicon of hip-hop-inspired moves, … the micro-dances of TikTok are typically front-facing and most animated from the hips up, tailored to the vertical frame of a smartphone screen. Governed by time limits of 15 or 60 seconds, they also tend to stay in one place; you can do them pretty much anywhere. While these TikTok dances might seem purely fun and frivolous, there’s an art to creating and performing them in such a way that gets attention.” – Dance Magazine
Barbara Weisberger, Founder Of Pennsylvania Ballet, Dead At 94
At age 8, she became George Balanchine’s first student at his School of American Ballet. Later, in Philadelphia in 1961, with a couple of graduates of SAB and a Ford Foundation grant, she founded the Pennsylvania Ballet, the first company in what became the regional dance boom of the 1960s and ’70s. – The Philadelphia Inquirer