Tag: 06.12.05

ABT’s Male Eloquence

American Ballet Theatre has some great male dancers these days. But none act as well as Marcelo Gomes. “The danseur (male ballet dancer) often treats parts of his body as means to an end. We notice the legs, for example, only insofar as they propel him into the air, or around and around. Gomes’ legs – like his arms, his hips, his neck – speak with the eloquence of a ballerina’s, though at a masculine pitch.”

A Taste For Mexican Art

There’s a surge in interest in Mexican art – both the classics and new hotshots. “While rich collectors such as film producer Joel Silver, former HBO boss Michael Fuchs, and Daniel Filipacchi, the chairman of Hachette, favour 20th-century Mexican masters, a younger generation of collectors – mostly Latin Americans, Americans and a sprinkling of Europeans – buy work by a new generation of Mexican artists breaking new ground.”

A Rich Legacy

Andrea Rich has been leading the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for ten years. “The museum has stable finances, longer hours, grand plans and, yes, fully operative telephone and computer systems. With star architect Renzo Piano poised to lead an expansion and reorganization of the crowded, confusing campus, the $130-million projected cost of phase one is already in the bank. These facts alone, many museum professionals say, should qualify Rich as a triumphant turnaround artist. But the closer you look, the more complicated that picture becomes…”

The Rise Of Reggaeton

“The sound of reggaeton is just about everywhere these days. Think of it as the Spanish version of mainstream hip-hop, but with the bouncy beat of Jamaican reggae. Born out of a spontaneous musical dialogue between Panama and Puerto Rico, this fusion of Spanish reggae, Latin hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall has been embraced wholeheartedly by a young Hispanic demographic in the U.S. Reggaeton albums routinely dominate the Latin Billboard charts, and a recent Reggaeton Invasion tour featuring several heavyweights of the genre enjoyed resounding success on the West Coast.”

Cliburn, 2005

Another Van Cliburn piano competition is in the books, and John von Rhein gathers his impressions: “Among this year’s medalists, there was general agreement about who deserved the gold. Bespectacled and skinny, Russia’s Alexander Kobrin, 25, looks like a nerdy bookworm in need of a “Queer Eye” makeover. But he capped off his successes earlier in the finals with a Rachmaninoff “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” that was as thrilling as only a native son with superior pianistic chops can make it. Unlike some of his peers, he didn’t have to emote at the keyboard, because the emotion was invested in the music.”

Foucault’s Iranian Journalism Debacle

In the fall of 1978 French philosopher Michel Foucault went to Iran to be a journalist. “Foucault’s Iranian adventure was a “tragic and farcical error” that fits into a long tradition of ill-informed French intellectuals spouting off about distant revolutions, says James Miller, whose 1993 biography “The Passion of Michel Foucault” contains one of the few previous English-language accounts of the episode. Indeed, Foucault’s search for an alternative that was absolutely other to liberal democracy seems peculiarly reckless in light of political Islam’s subsequent career, and makes for odd reading now as observers search for traditions in Islam that are compatible with liberal democracy.”

Pianists For The Video Age

In decades past you wouldn’t have exactly touted top pianists for their glamorous fashion sense. That’s changed, as exhibited at the just-concluded Van Cliburn Competition. “You couldn’t help notice the snazzy, slinky gowns a lot of the women were wearing, and the big smiles and confident strides as they walked out onstage. In a noticeable change from the 2001 Cliburn, these were emphatically pianists groomed for the video age.”