“Jennie Somogyi, a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, tore the Achilles’ tendon in her right foot during a performance Saturday night and will be out for the rest of the season, the company said on Monday.”
Tag: 01.30.12
Beverly Sills Artist Award Goes To Angela Meade
“The soprano Angela Meade won the Beverly Sills Artist Award, a $50,000 prize for singers from ages 25 to 40 who have already appeared in featured roles at the Metropolitan Opera … Previous winners include Nathan Gunn, Joyce DiDonato, Matthew Polenzani, John Relyea, Susanna Phillips and Isabel Leonard.”
Carlos Fuentes Says Only Legalizing Drugs Can Save Mexico
The country’s most prominent author says that only decriminalization can end drug smuggling and the violence it has spawned in Mexico, leaving more than 50,000 people dead over the past five years.
A New Prize For Critics’ Hatchet Jobs
“‘A good hatchet job draws as much excited attention as a good book any day.’ That’s the late, great critic Wilfrid Sheed … On Feb. 7, The Omnivore, a British Web site that aggregates cultural criticism, will announce the winner of its first annual Hatchet Job of the Year Award for book reviews.”
Audience Member Could Face Jail Time For Booing ‘Mammy’ Dance
When a children’s dance company in northern Virginia did a skit called “Little Rabbit, Where’s Your Mammy?,” Jackie Carter, angered by the hoary old stereotype, began to boo. She returned the next evening, passed out fliers and made enough noise to disrupt the performance – whereupon she was arrested for disorderly conduct, a charge which carries up to one year in prison.
Why Writing About Music Is So Tough
“On top of the basic, if sometimes seemingly insurmountable, difficulty of crafting a good sentence, writing about music has a serious built-in problem, which is that the only thing worth doing is also nearly impossible: to convey something of what the emotional experience of listening is like.”
Jonathan Franzen Versus The EBook
“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.”
Netflix Starts Streaming Original Series
“Lilyhammer” is the first of five original series Netflix is developing as exclusive content for its 23.5 million streaming subscribers. The company, based in Los Gatos, Calif., is betting its future on streaming original content after losing nearly 2.8 million DVD-by-mail subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2011.
The Ways We Try To Learn? Some Of Them Are Just Wrong
“People tend to think that learning is building up something in your memory and that forgetting is losing the things you built. But in some respects the opposite is true.”
A ‘Cathedral’ Barn From The Middle Ages Is Saved For The UK
“Dating from 1426, early in the reign of boy-king Henry VI and not long after the death of Chaucer, the Great Barn was one of several built in an area now largely swallowed up by the outer west London suburbs.” After nearly being knocked out for a Heathrow runway and sold to a neglectful developer for £1, the barn now belongs to English Heritage.