“My objection isn’t so much to the idea that it’s wrong to use your own experiences as a guide to explain how you interact with the items under review as it is to the fact that so many of the critics who are doing it are boring, grasping people whose experiences are mundane at best and often comically overvalued given how empty and insignificant they are.”
Tag: 04.14.16
Evaluating Steve Reich As He Turns 80
“If music was invented to restore our emotional and psychological equilibrium, Music for 18 Musicians is one of the great pieces of music ever composed.”
The Next Big Playwright Just Might Be A Quiet British 29-Year-Old
“Even at this stage of her career, Ms. Mitchell said, Ms. Birch is an important writer, in the tradition of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield — ‘those tough women who can also do exquisite lyricism.'”
What A Play Is, Or Could Be, And Certainly Is Not
“If your friend wrote the play, do not tell her upon curtain that ‘the actors were really talented.’ Actors are popsicle sticks painted with eyes and animated by her mind and your praise can immolate itself on a bonfire stoked with those sticks, thanks.”
The 2016 Finalists For The International Man Booker Prize
“The Nobel prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, Chinese dissident Yan Lianke, Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa, Austrian Robert Seethaler and South Korean Han Kang have all been shortlisted for the award, which celebrates the finest global fiction translated into English.”
The Best View In Rotterdam Is From The Roof. So The City Is Building A Grand Staircase To Get You Up There
“Today, Rotterdam is a hub for landmark buildings and experimental construction, with new projects including MVRDV’s market hall and the OMA-designed De Rotterdam. The Stairs will be built next to another of these new additions – the railway station by Benthem Crouwel, MVSA and West 8.”
Romanian Prime Minister And Culture Minister Say They’ll Intervene In Kobborg Crisis At National Ballet
Responding on Facebook to an open letter from Alina Cojocaru, prime minister Dacian Cioloş said he hopes that “the ensuing dialogue of today (which will continue in coming days) with Culture Minister Vlad Alexandrescu will find a solution to the situation at the [Bucharest National] Opera.” Alexandrescu, also writing on Facebook, said, “The Ministry of Culture wishes to continue working with Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru … [and] is currently looking for solutions that … respect artistic quality, creative freedom, and the international nature of the projects at the Opera … The Ministry intends to use this opportunity to re-launch and re-calibrate the relationship between creators and administration within the institutions under its authority.” (Emphasis added.) (in Romanian; Google Translate version here)
Why Are Movies Based On Words And Not On Images?
“For 8,000 years we’ve had lyric poetry, for 400 years we’ve had the novel, theatre hands its meaning down in text. Let’s find a medium whose total, sole responsibility is the world as seen as a form of visual intelligence. Surely, surely, surely the cinema should be that phenomenon.”
Miami City Ballet, Reborn
“MCB is also one of the most diverse companies in the United States without us trying to be. One thing is saying I believe in diversity and I’m going to seek it out and another thing is saying it is who we are. When you look at the roster of MCB, half of them are from Latin America, the other half is from the US and we have a few from Europe.”
Advertising Company Starts Recording Label For Street Musicians
“Passersby can film a short video of a street musician they like and post it to the Sound of Change website with the hashtag #soundofchange, including a geotag and the musician’s contact information in the description. Hungry Boys monitors the most popular musicians on the site and connects them with recording opportunities at nearby studios, the output of which is distributed through channels like iTunes and Google Play.”