“There may be two painters on this year’s Turner prize shortlist, but traditionalists should pause before sighing with relief. One of them paints landscapes in the kind of enamel paint used for decorating model trains and aeroplanes; the other counts lipstick, bath bombs and bronzing powder among her unorthodox materials.”
Tag: 05.04.11
BBC, Accused Of Being Risk-Averse, Will ‘Dial Down Compliance’
“David Jordan, the BBC’s head of editorial policy, has said he aims to ‘dial down compliance’, following complaints from programme-makers that the corporation has become too risk averse in its commissioning.”
The Developing Science Of Weeping
“Some new research efforts are helping to piece together the biological and cultural forces behind crying, showing that there are different types of tears as well as differences in the way men and women cry.”
The Guardian Explains (Or Reminds Us About) Hans Van Manen
From the latest Step-by-Step Guide: “[The] Dutch choreographer … has been called the Mondrian of ballet, the Versace of ballet, the Pinter of ballet and the Antonioni of ballet – but really, he is just the Hans van Manen of ballet, with a distinctive personal style that mixes formal austerity and glassy elegance with erotic charge.”
James Levine On His Un-Flashy Conducting Style
“If your orientation [as an audience member] is to watch the conductor, you get your aural sense interfered with in a way that is not completely controllable and conscious – because you see the conductor gesturing in a way that shows something about his feeling about the passage. And this, unconsciously, you measure against what you hear.”
A Theatre Where The Public Chooses The Programming
Theatre Royal Stratford East’s Open Stage project “has now gone online to offer web users the opportunity to suggest and vote which plays, musicals and pantos they’d like to see. The winning play (picked through a distinctly no-AV voting system) will then be performed on stage with the audience able to interact, blog and from 10th June, tweet from the upper circle.”
Albert Brooks May Write About Disasters, But He Won’t Think About Them
“For a guy who just wrote a whole book about the myriad catastrophes that could befall the United States in the next 20 years, Albert Brooks says he’s not interested in end-of-the-world scenarios and, more to the point, he’s too nervous to contemplate them.”
Ibsen’s Forgotten Stage Comedies
“‘It is easy to forget that sometimes Ibsen could be incredibly funny,’ says director Giles Croft. ‘Though the play was very popular in his lifetime, The League of Youth has been overlooked because people now find it hard to reconcile the lighter elements of romantic comedy with Ibsen’s deeper moral concerns’.”
Wayne McGregor To Choreograph 2000 People In Trafalgar Square
“Royal Ballet resident choreographer McGregor will direct the large-scale routine at the centre of the [2012 Big Dance] festival, which will become nationwide [that year] as part of the Cultural Olympiad.”
A Six-Course Formal Luncheon On A Moving Subway Train
“In the era of pop-up restaurants and speakeasies, flash mobs and social stunts, it was perhaps inevitable that a formal luncheon for a dozen people would be staged aboard the Brooklyn-bound L train.” The second car “was transformed into a traveling bistro, complete with tables, linens, fine silverware and a bow-tied maitre d’hotel.”