“This joyful staging is the first by Theater 55, a new Twin Cities company that celebrates elders as artists. And it requires more than an average suspension of disbelief. The 26-member cast singing about the Age of Aquarius is distinct for its abundance of unapologetic wrinkles, dad bods and artificial joints. … And that, they might tell you, is the point.” — The New York Times
Tag: 02.07.19
The Symphony Orchestra Of India (And Why There’s Only One)
Western classical music, and orchestral music in particular, has caught on in a huge way in East Asia, but it has only ever had the most tenuous of holds in the Indian subcontinent (which has a long and still-vibrant classical tradition of its own). Writer Simon Broughton looks at the history of attempts to establish orchestral music in India — culminating in the Symphony Orchestra of India, founded in Mumbai in 2006 and about to make a tour of the UK. — Gramophone
Birmingham Reduces Its Latest Round Of Arts Funding Cuts By Half
Last October, the city government announced its third round of cuts in cultural spending in the past four years. Those cuts amounted to just over £1 million, a third of the already reduced budget. After complaints and a petition, the council’s latest budget plans show a cut of only £500,000. — The Stage
We’re outliers
Sometimes people say, not very pleasantly, that a classical concert can be too much like a museum. But it’s been true for quite a while that this isn’t true, because museums are far more oriented toward the current world than we are. — Greg Sandow
What’s An Idea Versus What’s Real
The notion of reality is one of the most basic and most abstract ones we have. Raising questions about the very idea of what’s real has led to some of the most important, classic work in philosophy – from Parmenides to Aristotle to Avicenna to Aquinas to Immanuel Kant. It also, however, has a tendency to produce the kind of frustrating, easily caricatured work that leads people – including many philosophers – to wonder whether certain questions are simply pointless or even illegitimate, and to adopt a kind of skeptical stance towards abstract questions in general. – Aeon
Minnesota Opera Purchases 350-Seat Theater
The Lab Theater, a converted warehouse, is right next door to the company’s own rehearsal and office space (called the Opera Center) in Minneapolis’s North Loop. Since 2006, independent dance and theater troupes have performed there, and Minnesota Opera expects to continue renting to such groups when not using the space itself; the company also hopes to expand its youth training program there. — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Treasures From The World’s Largest Archive Of Dance Materials
That would be none other than the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. “It regularly films dance productions in the city, preserving the present for the future; it aims to have a copy of every dance book ever published; it possesses treasures going back centuries. And its doors are open to the public as well as to specialist researchers.” Alastair Macaulay looks at a few of its gems, from a 1453 treatise to 1933 films of Balinese dance. — The New York Times
Meet the “New MoMA,” Same as the Old “New MoMA”
It was déjà-vu-all-over-again when I returned yesterday from a California sojourn to the “news” about how permanent-collection installations in the new MegaMoMA (my sobriquet, not theirs) will contrast with those in the current iteration of the ever-expanding Museum of Modern Art. — Lee Rosenbaum