In 1963, de Mille sent a sealed envelope to her union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, with a handwritten note saying not to open it because it had the “eminently stealable” idea and outline for a play, and, at the time, she couldn’t copyright it. SDC decided to celebrate its 60th anniversary by calling for submissions guessing what was in that envelope, and a panel chose five of the submitters to make short dances based on their guesses. – Dance Magazine
Tag: 03.22.18
Symbolic Debate Over Ancient Gospel Manuscripts Hidden In Remote Monastery
The ongoing dispute over where and how the gospels should be kept, and who may see them, is intensely local yet symbolic. It revolves around the age-old traditions of an isolated monastery, but it exemplifies the scepticism sometimes aroused by Western heritage programmes. It encapsulates the rival claims of sacred rites and secular scholarship, raising questions about the aim of preservation and the ultimate ownership of a nation’s culture.
When Artists Have Jobs Outside Art (Is The Art Better?)
For these creators, a trade isn’t just about paying the bills; it’s something that grounds them in reality. In 2017, a day job might perform the same replenishing ministries as sleep or a long run: relieving creative angst, restoring the artist to her body and to the texture of immediate experience. But this break is also fieldwork. For those who want to mine daily life for their art, a second job becomes an umbilical cord fastened to something vast and breathing. The alternate gig that lifts you out of your process also supplies fodder for when that process resumes. Lost time is regained as range and perspective, the artist acquiring yet one more mode of inhabiting the world.
How Technology Is Changing Dance
What if composers, instead of translating into music what they see in dance and dancers, could build scores directly from their own bodies? Dancers master the art of embodying existing music in such a way as to reach and affect their audience. How much more of an impact could work be when dancers can literally craft the score to their movements?
Forget Chasing Youth – Venues Should Focus On Older Audiences To Survive: Study
“Arts organisations will need to focus more on older audiences over the next 10 years to cater for England’s ageing population, new research has claimed. Engagement with audiences by theatres and other cultural organisations, along with their workforces, business models and use of technology, is set to change over the next decade, according to a report by development agency Nesta commissioned by [funder] Arts Council England.”
Paul Ehrlich: Collapse Of Civilization Is Imminent
The world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today, he argues, and there is an increasing toxification of the entire planet by synthetic chemicals that may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change. Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen”.
Our Brain’s Internal GPS
All of the brain’s place cells together represent the entirety of an animal’s environment, and whichever place cell is active indicates its current location. In other words, the hippocampus is like a GPS. It tells you where you are on a map and that map remains the same whether you are hungry and looking for food or sleepy and looking for a bed.
An Orchestra Made Entirely Of DJs With Turntables
OK: “The piece is performed on Technics turntables, recreating the first ever pressed LP, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor by Nathan Milstein. Utilising groove screeching turntablist techniques, the group create a truly unique piece of music.”
Speaking Of Surreal: Britain Has Put A Temporary Ban On Shipping Dali’s Lobster Phone Out Of The Country
No, really: “Michael Ellis, the arts minister, has put a temporary export bar on the artwork, Lobster Telephone (White Aphrodisiac), by Dalí and Edward James, to give buyers a chance to keep it in the UK.” (By the way, if you have £850,000, you can save it for the UK.)
Inside The Secret Broadway Lab Where ‘Hamilton’ And ‘Frozen’ Got Put Together [VIDEO]
A video of this building, with a lot of show notes after the video. If you love Broadway, you’ll probably want to watch it a few times. Like, a lot of times, just to enjoy the building: “More than 800 Broadway musicals and plays have begun here. The building, run by a nonprofit established in 1990 to redevelop 42nd Street, has 14 rehearsal studios that are rented on a sliding scale — commercial producers pay more, and nonprofits pay less.”