Saudi Arabia Says It Will Invest $64 Billion In Entertainment

“The plans include Saudi’s first opera house after concerts had been banned for the past two decades. This follows the recent lifting of a 35-year ban on public movie theaters, opening up a what is expected to be a lucrative market. It all falls under the progressive Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 program. These sorts of reforms are revolutionary in what has been an ultra-conservative Kingdom. Women were recently granted the right to drive and attend football matches.”

The Problem With Today’s Literary Reviews – The View From Nowhere

Reviewers are neither arbiters of taste nor are they ushers doing the job of wheedling readers to get under a particular set of covers. Consideration of a book is an engagement with its context, and even more crucially an enunciation of the alchemy between its content and the inevitably subjective experience of reading it. In this sense, the unique subjectivity of every reader will inevitably interact differently with a book; this prismatic aspect of what individual readers “get” from literature is part of the intimacy of reading, its inherently individual aspect.

Misty Copeland Talks About Diversity And Parity In Ballet

Copeland said that ABT and ballet in general are naturally moving in a direction that favors gender equality and more diversity on stage, but key to ballet’s survival is the diversification of its patrons, too. “Bringing diversity into the theater is going to keep ballet thriving and relevant and alive. To me, that’s so critical and so important,” she said.

We Are Our Anxieties (And That’s A Good Thing)

Samir Chopra: “The Buddha and David Hume considered the self to be a bundle of ever-changing perceptions and thoughts and images. Similarly, I propose a ‘self-as-bundled-anxieties’ theory: we are a bundle of anxieties; by examining them, to see what vexes us, what makes us anxious, we come to know who we are. Anxiety is a reminder that our selves are rather more diffuse and disorderly than we might imagine, that there are more bits to be seized as they swirl ‘about’ and ‘inside’ us.”

Why Isn’t Ski Ballet In The Winter Olympics?

“The internet sank its teeth into a now-defunct Winter Olympics event this week: ski ballet. And it makes sense. When you see footage of actual ski ballet competitions from years past it’s hard to deny the novelty of it all, while simultaneously taking in the raw athleticism and artistry of the event. There’s also an extremely ‘What the hell am I watching?’ quality to ski ballet. … But really, no words can truly do it justice.” (includes video)

Where Are The Hotbeds Of Theatre In America? Here’s A List

Collectively, the cities on this list are responsible for generating more than $112 million in wages for Equity actors and stage managers during the 2016-2017 theatre season. The market leaders are Central Florida – home to roughly 1,000 Equity members, many of whom work on Disney productions on a daily basis – Washington, D.C./Baltimore, Twin Cities, St. Louis, Milwaukee/Madison, Kansas City, Denver, Seattle, Houston/Galveston, and Cincinnati/Louisville.

Ismail Kadare’s Long Journey Out Of Stalinist Albania

“From the start of his career, Kadare broke with the prescribed literary mode of socialist realism to write fiction rooted in history, myth, and allegory. But he never became a full-on dissident. Doing so probably would have meant execution. … He saw his books banned and experienced internal exile, but he also served as a minister of parliament. … He describes his own relationship to the dictator as a game of ‘cat and mouse’: He wanted to survive, remain in his homeland, and continue writing; [Enver] Hoxha ‘didn’t want to be seen as an enemy of writers.'”

E-Books Aren’t Stupid Or Uncreative – They’re Revolutionary

“I was a relatively late convert to the e-reader, getting my Kindle five years ago when it became clear that reading 600 pages of A Suitable Boy while breastfeeding wasn’t going to work,” writes author Erin Kelly (He Said/She Said). “Hachette Livre CEO Arnaud Nourry recently called ebooks ‘stupid’ – but last summer, they changed my life” as both author and reader.

Now There’s Another Campaign The Russians Are Messing With – The Oscar For Best Documentary

Russian media outlets and government officials, right up to President Putin, have been thunderously denouncing two of the nominees for Best Documentary Feature: Icarus, about the Russian doctor who blew the whistle on the country’s athletic doping program, and (perhaps more surprisingly) Last Men in Aleppo, about volunteer emergency medics working amidst Syria’s civil war.

Composer Julius Eastman Finally Gets A Publishing Deal (Too Bad He Died In 1990)

The
rediscovery of the distinctive Minimalist composer Julius Eastman
… took a major step forward on Wednesday, when the publisher G. Schirmer announced it would restore, reconstruct, publish and promote his music.
The publishing deal will ensure that the recent Eastman renaissance – spearheaded by a dedicated group of former colleagues, scholars and family members – will continue and grow. And it promises to restore the neglected work of a gay, black composer to the modern-music canon.”