The Montreal company, which is setting out on a four-week tour that includes debuts in Egypt and Israel, “is short $150,000 because of the cancellation last year of Promart and Trade Routes, two government programs that supported the export of Canadian culture. … Alain Dancyger, Les Grands Ballets’ executive director, says corporate and private sponsors at home and abroad are bewildered that the Conservative government is not one of the tour’s supporters.”
Tag: 05.20.09
The Kundera-Secret Police Scandal And Its Kundera-esque Paradox
“Whatever one concludes about [his] guilt [in allegedly betraying someone to the secret police in 1950], it is possible to imagine that the allegation was less dismaying to the writer than the form it took and the attention it drew. Having one’s past splashed across front pages and reduced to a sound bite seems like the nightmare fulfillment of the issues Kundera has been exploring in his nonfiction for the past twenty years.”
Enough With These Slurs On Architects
If the architecture profession was “interested only in icons and cash”, why are they earning less than other professions and why are more RIBA awards not given to the “glass boxes, blobs and phalluses” that developers the world over are so fascinated by? Our awards are far more likely to recognise ”modern designers” who “have worked well within the rhythm of Âexisting city streets”.
The ‘Creativity Chemical’ (It Depends On IQ)
“There may be more to creativity than simply letting the ideas flow – brain measurements of a ‘creativity chemical’ are revealing a complex interplay between ingenuity and intelligence. While high levels of the chemical in a certain part of the brain seem to increase creativity in really smart people, the reverse is true in those of average intellect.”
Where ‘Authentic’ Performance Has Ended Up
Stephen Pettitt: “[I]t comes as quite a shock to compare a late Haydn symphony played by a period-style orchestra like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with the same work conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. They aren’t worlds apart.”
How Can We Possibly Appreciate Classical Chinese Poetry? Yet We Do.
“[S]o many of the features of the Chinese language” – the vocal tones, the lack of verb tenses, the very fact of words as ideographs rather than groups of letters – “which poets manipulate in complex and subtle ways, are totally untranslatable into English.” Yet there’s an abundance of classic Chinese verse in English: “despite all the barriers, this poetry does communicate, even urgently, to modern Western readers.” How do translators make this communication happen?
In Brussels’ Magritte Museum, Nothing Is Quite As It Seems
“Too bad for Rene Magritte, his museum really is a museum. As of Wednesday, the 20th century surrealist who famously painted a pipe with the comment ‘this is not a pipe’ finally has his own temple, in the heart of his home city of Brussels. But, like the artist himself, the ultra-classic museum front gives away little of the tricks that lie inside.”
With Acosta, Royal Ballet Will Make Its Cuban Debut
“England’s Royal Ballet will make its first visit to Cuba in July with performances that include a homage to Cuban ballet legend Alicia Alonso, ballet executives said on Wednesday. The Cuba visit came about in part because the Royal Ballet’s principal guest dancer, Carlos Acosta, is a Cuban and was anxious to perform in his home country….”
Publisher Sues Tavern On The Green For Not Buying Book
“Tavern on the Green is being sued by a publisher left waiting for a check. The restaurant’s boss, Jennifer LeRoy, and her mom, Kay, owe Workman Publishing $218,426.19 plus interest for allegedly going back on a deal to buy 10,000 copies of their own book, ‘Tavern on the Green,’ the suit claims.”
Novelist: After Firebombing, British Publishers Lost Nerve
“Sherry Jones, author of a controversial novel about the child bride of Muhammad, has accused British publishers of being too afraid to publish her book in the wake of a firebomb attack on the office of Gibson Square, the London-based publisher which had been set to release it last year.” In the U.S., “The Jewel of Medina” did find a new publisher after Random House dropped it on warnings of violence, but reviews were poor.