Tag: 06.12.06

Dancer Sues Over Firing because Her Body Changed

A performer in “Movin’ Out” is fired, because, she alleges, her breasts got too big. “The dance world doesn’t necessarily view such firing decisions as hypocritical; they are merely business as usual. The Body Police enforce specifications that have nothing to do with the ability to perform. Some women have resorted to breast reduction to conform with the slim standards of ballet.

Toronto Gets A New Opera House

The $120-million building will be home to the Canadian Opera Company and the national Ballet. “Opening day was full of oohs and aahs from more than 600 politicians and dignitaries who floated up and down the facility’s illuminated glass staircase and lingered in the five-storey transparent atrium that puts the city — and opera-goers — on display.”

The Critic As Museum Director

Before Ralph Rugoff was a curator and museum director, he was a critic. “For more than 15 years, the new director of the Hayward Gallery in London has shaken up art audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, inspiring them to engage with the kind of puzzling, cerebral work that tends to put off all but the most dedicated of contemporary art aficionados.”

Lincoln Center To Get A New Entrance

Lincoln Center’s plaza is to get a makeover, even if the changes seem more like tweaks than a redo. “In addition to a slightly modified fountain, the designs call for a new grand staircase stretching over an underground drop-off point for cars. Currently people heading to a Lincoln Center performance from the east side of Broadway must cross 11 lanes of traffic just to reach the sidewalk, then ascend a short staircase and traverse two lanes of cars dropping people off. Taxis must stop for crossing pedestrians, creating a line of cars and congestion at curtain time.”

The New New London

London is to be transformed by large buildings. “Power and money are what have made it both ugly and voraciously successful. It’s a largely unplanned city, with buildings that come and go. Little or nothing stays still in London. The drive for money makes it a restless creature, forever biting off its own limbs and watching them grow back in new, bigger and shinier forms.”

Oh My Ojai

“Ojai used to be the music world’s best-kept secret. Now it is in danger of becoming too successful for its own good. Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez and Peter Maxwell Davies are among the composers who have succumbed to its simple charms. Michael Tilson Thomas and Kent Nagano are two of the performers it recognised before they reached the limelight. Ojai is synonymous with musical adventure and yet the festival takes place in a small town 90 minutes’ drive north of Los Angeles, the last place you would expect to find an iconic festival experience.”

Was Picasso Really That Great?

“By general agreement, he was the best artist of the twentieth century. How good was that? His sheer significance, as the god of modernity in painting, has always beggared ultimate judgment. Now the issue is being forced, at the Prado and the Reina Sofía, by direct comparisons of his work with that of the Old Masters who, from time to time, were important to him, either as models or as goads—notably Velázquez and Goya.”

Controlling James Joyce

“Stephen Joyce is James Joyce’s only living descendant, and since the mid-nineteen-eighties he has effectively controlled the Joyce estate. Scholars must ask his permission to quote sizable passages or to reproduce manuscript pages from those works of Joyce’s that remain under copyright—including “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake”—as well as from more than three thousand letters and several dozen unpublished manuscript fragments… His audacity and his pique have amused some Joyceans, and at times the Joyceans have provoked him.”