“Some of the world’s most glorious sights can only be experienced if you crane your neck. Jonathan Glancey looks up.” (And the Sistine Chapel didn’t even make the cut.)
Tag: 03.17.16
The World’s Biggest Street Dance Competition
“Dancers from all over the world compete in the international tour of Juste Debout in the hope that they will get the chance to battle in the preliminary rounds in France and perform at the finals in Paris. This year, for the first time, the judges are all women who have previously won in the four main categories: popping, locking, hip-hop and house.” (video)
How ‘Bookchat’ Came To Devour Literary Discourse
“There are listicles of books or about books: there was even one recently about ‘The Top Ten Squirrels in Literature.’ There are interviews and aspirational how-tos. There are publicity statements, which are circulated and regurgitated into light critical opinion – as much as any book review. There is the relatively new phenomenon of the author self-testimonial: upon publication of his novel, the author will write a piece about writing the novel.”
If Belgium Has A Terrorism Problem, This Author/Playwright Has Part Of The Solution
“‘We have to mix,’ he says. The 39-year-old playwright grew up the son of Moroccan immigrants in Brussels. His comedy Djihad, about young Belgians going off to fight in Syria and becoming disillusioned along the way, has been playing to sold-out audiences for more than a year now.” (includes audio)
NPR Appears To Be Fighting The Future (And It’s Not Pretty)
“NPR can’t promote NPR One — the lauded, loved app that is basically the future of NPR — to what is literally the group of people that would be most interested in it, NPR radio listeners. NPR is investing substantially in developing podcasts — but it isn’t allowed to tell radio listeners where to find them or how they can listen to them. This seems dumb to a lot of people, both inside and outside public media.”
The Violin Thief Who Stole A Strad And Got Away With It
“The fact that Johnson could play the instrument publicly is less a show of daring than a symbol of how far he had fallen. The hotshot violinist, once a standout, was so anonymous that he could play a stolen Stradivarius – and no one noticed.”
The Ticket Lines For “Hamilton” Have Gotten Completely Out Of Hand (And A Hotel Takes Action)
At around 6:30 Wednesday morning, hotel security from the neighboring Marriott Marquis shooed the line it had tolerated for months from its property, saying, according to fans in attendance, they were “banned.”
She Wasn’t Just The Topless Cellist: Restoring Charlotte Moorman To Her Place In The Post-War Avant-Garde
“Why are Charlotte Moorman’s contributions … so underappreciated and relatively unknown today? … Because she was a woman, because she was married, because she was naked, because she was a performing artist with a ‘repertoire’ rather than a ‘practice'” … ?
Moralizing Museum Art? Peter Plagens Responds To Holland Cotter
“There’s not a kind of art on Earth now or in the past whose societal context doesn’t include great evils. Do we need to be told in wall text or brochures–in order to look at the art–that Victorian England was a quagmire of exploitation, that Napoleonic France was nasty, that whatever dynasty in China wasn’t exactly democratic…”
Venice Declared As Europe’s Most-Endangered Heritage Site
“Europa Nostra and the EIB Institute – following a firm recommendation from an international advisory panel of experts – decided that the Venice Lagoon in Italy should be declared the most endangered heritage site in Europe, given the paramount importance of this heritage landmark to Europe and the world, as well as the complexity and magnitude of the challenges posed.”