At the Youth America Grand Prix, says founder/artistic director Larissa Saveliev, “You don’t have to win to get the prize. The real prizes are the scholarships. And for those, you just have to be noticed by one director. We are the biggest matchmaker operation in the ballet world.” – The New York Times
Tag: 04.16.19
Here’s What’s Happened To The Art, Artifacts, And Organ Inside Nôtre-Dame
So far, it appears that almost all of the major art objects and relics in the cathedral were saved, thanks to a human chain formed during the fire; most will be taken to the Louvre for conservation and storage. Amazingly, neither the stained-glass windows nor the grand organ appear to have suffered severe damage. – Smithsonian Magazine
Is The French Church Or The French State Responsible For Historic Sites Like Nôtre-Dame? Well, That’s The Problem …
In a newly relevant article brought back from the archives, Jerome Bernard explains that this question has been argued over ever since France legally separated church and state in 1905 — and that dispute is why places like Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris have been allowed to deteriorate so badly. – The Art Newspaper
New Russian Film About USSR In Afghanistan Infuriates Politicians And Vets
Pavel Lungin’s Leaving Afghanistan (Russian title Bratstvo, meaning Brotherhood), based on the real-life experience of an officer who went on to become the head of the FSB (the successor to the KGB), is said by its director to be about “the senselessness and cruelty of war.” The head of one veterans’ organization calls it “dirt and filth” and a senior member of parliament says it’s unfit for “educating young people with a sense of patriotism.” – The Guardian
Barbara Schultz, TV Exec Who Stood Up For Serious Drama When Rest Of Industry Wanted Comedy, Dead At 92
“One of a very few women in television’s executive ranks at the time, [she] oversaw CBS Playhouse in the late 1960s and the PBS series Visions in the 1970s, … offer[ing] writers a platform free from interference by corporate sponsors in exchange for stories that explored contemporary American themes.” – The New York Times
Game Of Thrones Premiere Shatters Ratings With 17.4M Viewers; Most-Watched Scripted Show Of The Season
GoT is the extremely rare drama that has managed to grow its audience every single season (AMC’s Breaking Bad was another). AMC’s The Walking Deadused to top Game of Thrones in the ratings, but the zombie drama has recently fallen to around 5 million weekly viewers. – Entertainment Weekly
An Art Professor’s Painstakingly Detailed Scans And Images Of Notre Dame Could Help Rebuild It
In 2010, Andrew Tallon, an art professor at Vassar, took a Leica ScanStation C10 to Notre-Dame and, with the assistance of Columbia’s Paul Blaer, began to painstakingly scan every piece of the structure, inside and out. They mounted the Leica on a tripod, put up markers throughout the space, and set the machine to work. Over five days, they positioned the scanner again and again—50 times in all—to create an unmatched record of the reality of one of the world’s most awe-inspiring buildings, represented as a series of points in space. – The Atlantic
UK Survey: Forty Percent Of Those Who Drop Out Of The Arts Workforce Leave Because Of Family Obligations
The survey of over 2,000 current or former arts workers, carried out by Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (PiPA) and Birkbeck, University of London, found that 43% of respondents who had left the industry cited being a parent as the biggest factor behind their decision to leave. – Arts Professional
Is Fighting A Bad Idea? (Philosophically Speaking, Of Course)
The upside of winning is pleasure and glory, but the cost of always winning is never getting to know how much more was in you. The only way to find the limit is to cross it. But you can’t lose unless you fight your heart out. Which is why I say, more fighting, more biting. – The Point
Outdoor Piano Concert Attracts Bats. The Ravel Made Them Furious!
Boris Giltburg: “Those critters just wouldn’t budge. They seemed to appear on the keyboard out of nowhere and then stayed there, lethargically, utterly unresponsive to any shooing movement I managed to produce while playing. I had a choice: to close my eyes and constantly risk my fingers landing on one, or keep my eyes open and observe a mass of insects all moving ever so slightly on the keyboard.” – The Guardian