Michelle Herman: “In that very first class, long before I had any idea what I was doing, … I had a moment of what seemed like perfect clarity: My body and my mind were working as one. And this was something I had no experience of. During the brief periods of my life when I’ve exercised — when I’ve taken up swimming or aerobics or yoga — I had always turned off my mind in order to attend to my body. That was why it was fun (when it was fun), and I wanted it to be fun — how else could I get through it? But I saw, that first day in the dance studio, that it was the work of ballet that appealed to me — the mental work, I mean.” – Slate
Tag: 01.20.20
Nancy Pelosi Said That ‘America Will Heal Through The Arts.’ Don’t We Wish …
The Speaker of the House told a town meeting last month, “I truly believe that [the arts are] something where we find our common ground.” Would that it were so, writes Lucas Justinien Perez: “The ‘arts’ are more divided than ever. Schismatic tribal ‘factions’ generate and consume art and media that’s increasingly characterized by blatant political partisanship, and overt contempt for ideological dissidents. … This impasse of perceptions precludes the possibility of Pelosi’s prognostication ever coming true.” – Hyperallergic
What Has Happened To Audiences? Have They Forgotten How To Behave In Theatres?
The woman next to us very politely turns round and shushes them. It does no good. They are out for the afternoon, they are going to make a loud and long fuss over a Capri Sun and they are going to keep talking about their hunger levels for the entire performance. It’s not long before another woman brings her mobile phone out and starts taking photographs of the stage. – The Herald (Scotland)
Keeping Indonesia’s Traditional Drag Dance Alive
“Rianto, is a master of the Lengger Lanang, a traditional [Javanese] dance performed by men dressed as women. But Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, has seen rising intolerance in recent years towards the LBGT community. And there are fears it could affect this traditional art form.” (video) – BBC
Linda Shaver-Gleason, The Internet’s Favorite Musicologist, ‘Assassinated By Cancer’ At 36
“Writing on her blog, Not Another Music History Cliche!, and standing as a pillar of classical music’s niche on Twitter, Linda elegantly deployed her encyclopedic knowledge, research skills, and quick wit to cut through common classical music anecdote-myths, such as The Rite of Spring provoking a riot at its premiere. Not content to simply explain the truth and leave it there, she also delved several layers deeper to analyze why the myths persisted, and urged her readers to think critically about the information they were fed by advertising and clickbait.” Zoë Madonna pays tribute. – VAN
This Woman Was One Of The Very First Pioneers Of Cinema — Why Has She Been Almost Forgotten?
“[Alice] Guy-Blaché was in the room when the Lumière brothers held the first-ever cinema screening, in Paris in March 1895. By the following year, she was making her own films. And while the Lumières were still hung up on cinema as a technological spectacle – ‘Look! A train!’ – Guy-Blaché immediately saw its potential for telling stories. … As time went on, Guy-Blaché helped write the rules of this brand new medium. She incorporated now-standard techniques such as editing, primitive special effects and hand-tinted colour. She might even have invented the music video.” – The Guardian
The Social Justice Wars Come To The Quilting Community
“A usually cheery online community of quilters has been ripped apart by a sewing challenge depicting a No. 2 pencil erasing the ‘in’ from the word injustice. Some members of the National Quilt Museum’s Block of the Month Club, which gives out quilting patterns from an array of artists, objected to the January block, claiming it introduced politics into the 13,400-person group. The design was created by the Social Justice Sewing Academy, a California nonprofit loosely tied to Black Lives Matter.” – The Washington Post
Special Multi-Company Auditions Offer Too-Rare Opportunity For Nonwhite Ballet Dancers
The sessions, attended by leaders from New York City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and Charlotte Ballet, were held in conjunction with this past weekend’s conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance. Reporter Ellen Dunkel sat in. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Van Gogh’s Weirdest Self-Portrait, Long Considered By Some A Forgery, Is Genuine
Doubts about the authenticity of the painting, which depicts the artist giving some serious side-eye, first arose in 1970. But research conducted jointly by the National Gallery of Norway (which owns the work) and the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has determined that the portrait is no forgery — and that it’s the only one van Gogh ever painted while hospitalized for psychosis. – Yahoo! (AFP)
Computer Can Tell It’s You By The Way You Dance
Studying how people move to music is a powerful tool for researchers looking to understand how and why music affects us the way it does. Over the last few years, researchers at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have used motion capture technology—the same kind used in Hollywood—to learn that your dance moves say a lot about you, such as how extroverted or neurotic you are, what mood you happen to be in, and even how much you empathize with other people. – Phys.org