“Almost seven months after averting closure in July, Syracuse Symphony Orchestra again is in financial distress. Without $375,000 to meet its payroll and expenses by Feb. 4, the SSO will be left with no choice but to end its 2010-2011 season four months early.”
Tag: 01.26.11
Dancing on Air: Spider-Man‘s Choreographer Speaks
Daniel Ezralow: “Dancers like to be rooted. They aren’t trying to defy gravity. But in this show, they’re picked up without their control, which is scary. A talented aerial performer makes it look natural, like he’s doing it all by himself. The rest freeze up.”
Orhan Pamuk Attacks ‘Marginalisation’ of Non-English Writers
“The Nobel prize-winning Turkish novelist … has complained that the majority of human experience is being ignored because the literature that describes it is not written in English. And he has criticised the response of British and American literary critics to his work, saying they perceive him in narrow terms defined by his nationality.”
Term Paper Writer-for-Hire Gets Book Deal to Write About Helping Students Cheat
“When an anonymous pen-for-hire wrote a tell-all article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about his booming career writing papers for cheating undergraduate and graduate students, it caused a stir across college campuses. Now Bloomsbury USA has signed the writer … for a book about cheating in higher education.”
Picasso’s Dachshund-on-a-Plate
“When forgotten Picassos aren’t turning up in the most unlikely places, they’re depicting the most unlikely subjects.”
99-Year-Old Woman Is Japan’s New Star Poet
“Toyo Shibata only started writing when she was 92; now, as she prepares to celebrate her 100th birthday, her poems are finding an eager audience in Japan … [Her] anthology, Kujikenaide [Don’t Lose Heart], has sold 1.5m copies since its publication, in late 2009.” (A poetry volume that sells 10,000 copies is considered successful in Japan.)
Get Your Own Bag of Genuine Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds
“Anyone who missed the chance to romp among the handpainted ceramic seeds created by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern will soon get another opportunity – but the close encounter will cost up to £120,000. For the first time a sackful of the seeds is to be sold officially at a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art next month.”
Bernd Eichinger, 61, Giant of Germany’s Film Industry
He turned Munich’s struggling Constantin Film into a European powerhouse and produced an extraordinary range of films, from The Never-Ending Story to The Name of the Rose to Last Exit to Brooklyn to The Baader-Meinhof Gang to Smilla’s Sense of Snow to the controversial Hitler biopic Downfall.
Cuts Force RSC to Drop Residency in Newcastle
After appearing in the city annually for 33 years, the company has “scrapped this year’s dates – as a direct result of the cuts in RSC funding, at a time when the new theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon is increasing their costs.”
Mystery Solved: How a Grand Piano Washed Up on a Miami Mudflat
“Like many grand ideas, this one started out when many were drunk. … The solution to the mystery involves a guy with a bagpipe, a rollicking New Year’s Eve party and a teenager looking to make a splash on his college admissions.”