“Over the past 18 months Swedish photographer Fredrik Lerneryd, who is based in Nairobi, has joined [teacher Mike] Wamaya and the girls for about two dozen of their Wednesday ballet lessons.”
Tag: 02.26.18
Should Homes For The Elderly Be Hiring Pole Dancers To Perform? Why Not?
When one such community in England did this, many tongues were clucked and pearls clutched. “Why inappropriate?”, writes Michele Hanson, “It looked more like gymnastics than rudeness to me. … [The residents] were perhaps sick and tired of bingo, singalongs, banging tambourines, crosswords, telly, chair-yoga, arts and crafts, mindfulness and reminiscences. Not that I want to criticise these pastimes – they’re all lovely, if that’s what you like – but pole dancing makes a refreshing change.”
Music Is Not, In Fact, A Language We All Understand (Sorry, Stevie Wonder)
“Every so often, a study grabs headlines as researchers attempt to answer the question: ‘Is music a universal language?’ The way that chords can tug at heartstrings and tear ducts without words might lead people to assume that music can transcend differences of speech to convey emotions. Ethen of the Sideways YouTube channel, however, makes compelling case for why the answer is a strong ‘No.’ Or, at least, a thoughtful ‘This is a badly worded question.'”
How ABT’s Isabella Boylston Became Jennifer Lawrence’s Dance Stand-In
“I think they were really committed to being as accurate as possible, so they wanted a principal dancer, a real ballerina,” Boylston says. “Justin Peck, the choreographer, is a good friend of mine — we had worked together before on our own film that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival a couple of years ago. He called me and was like, ‘I think you’d be a great fit for this project.’ And I was like, Francis Lawrence? Jen Lawrence? Sign me up.”
How Do You Measure Creativity? (It Ain’t Easy)
The wide range of approaches to creativity—from psychoanalytic, to psychological, to neurobiological—generally reveals the diversity of the field, but has led some to describe it as “a degenerating research program,” as Mark Batey, a senior lecturer in organizational psychology at the University of Manchester, wrote in a 2012 article on measuring creativity.
What Directors Do About That Damned Dagger In ‘Macbeth’
“Few visual moments are as strange as the scene at the beginning of act two, in which Macbeth sees a dagger floating in the air, apparently leading him to Duncan’s bedchamber. This hallucination provokes one of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches: ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’ … For this strangest of plays, the paradox is fitting: its best-known prop is almost certainly invisible.” Andrew Dickson looks at the ways some of the great actors and directors have handled the scene.
Twenty Years Of Rotten Tomatoes And How It’s Changed Hollywood
Can Rotten Tomatoes really make or break a movie? It definitely has an impact, says Ethan Titelman, a senior vice-president at the Hollywood market research firm National Research Group (NRG). According to NRG’s annual survey, 50% of regular moviegoers frequently check the site, often immediately before buying their cinema tickets. And 82% are “more interested” in seeing a movie if it has a high Tomatometer score, while two-thirds are deterred by a low score.
All The Lies Great Novelists Have Told In Their Autobiographies
“Long before the rise of ‘autofiction’, … many writers in the first half of the 20th century were experimenting with the limits of autobiography. Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, HG Wells, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf: all wrote memoirs as inventive, in different ways, as their novels (which were often themselves very autobiographical). And that list is only the tip of the iceberg.”
How The Crop Of New Academy Voters Is Changing The Oscars’ Dynamics
“What kind of effect are these new voters having on the films and artists that are ultimately chosen to contend for an Oscar? … Of the 14 new members we talked to, who span several of the Academy’s branches, more than half were women, and more than a third were people of color. All of them spoke anonymously and with great candor.”
Lyn Gardner: So What If Reviews Give Away The Ending?
There is an undoubted pleasure in watching a classic play unfold to an unknowing audience. I once saw Hedda Gabler in a regional theatre where it was clear from the gasps that most of the audience had no idea that she – spoiler alert – kills herself. But very few people would decide against seeing Three Sisters again because they already know they never get to Moscow – or feel no desire to watch Medea because they are aware she kills her kids.