Tag: 04.10.19

Frederic Rzewski: We Should Abolish All The Conservatories (And Other Provocative Opinions)

“I could never find my own style, no. I have never done anything original. Everything I’ve done I’ve stolen from other people. I mean, Mozart also stole right and left, and so did Bach. All good composers were thieves. It’s totally normal. You pick up something, do it your own way and it no longer belongs to anybody. This idea of genius is absolutely irrelevant to art. Genios in the original latin means daemon. It is something that everybody has! So it is the opposite of our concept of it. It is a meaningless word today.” – Van

Is The Met Fashion Gala Falling Out Of Fashion Itself?

Tickets are expensive – $35k per person – for the “Oscars of the East.” But the event, managed by Vogue is showing some signs of waning. No magazine, not even Vogue, has the same influence over the industry that it once did and social media has given advertisers, brands and designers a lot of their own power to create “moments” and “brand awareness.” – Women’s Wear Daily

It’s A Brave Choreographer Who’ll Replace Jerome Robbins’s Dances For ‘West Side Story’

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker is creating new steps for Ivo van Hove’s Broadway production in December, and Justin Peck is doing the same for Steven Spielberg’s movie version. But arriving before those is this spring’s new production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, making Aletta Collins the first choreographer to replace Robbins’s work in a major professional staging. Says the director, Sarah Frankcom, “Robbins was saying something about where dance was at that time. The relationship between dance and theatre is really different in 2019.” – The Guardian

Sculptor Claude Lalanne Dead At 93

“Her imaginative [metal] sculptures sometimes carried a Surrealist touch, such as Pomme d’Hiver (2008), a large-scale bronze apple, Choupatte Géante (2016), a cabbage with chicken feet, and a series of Crocodile benches. Lalanne also made sinuous jewellery and pieces of furniture that appear to be fashioned from twisted branches, leaves and flowers.” – The Art Newspaper

Hip-Hop Playwrights Turn Their Keyboards Toward Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Justin Bieber, And ‘Pygmalion’

A Q&A with Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, author of P.Y.G., or The Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle (two black rappers are Henry Higgins to Bieber figure’s Eliza Doolittle), and Psalmayene 24, who wrote Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of A Native Son (Wright as Jay-Z and Baldwin as Kanye). – The Washington Post

‘No More All-White Seasons’ — Activists Slam One Of Philly’s Largest Nonprofit Theatres

“Titled ‘No More All-White Seasons,’ the [open letter on Facebook] praises the [Philadelphia Theatre Company’s] current 2018-19 season for its diversity — then condemns a lack of it in the theater’s upcoming 2019-20 season [of three plays]. In the process, it points to the sometimes acrimonious diversity debate underway at local and national theaters.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer