“We may be at the bottom of the EU list when it comes to numbers of pupils learning a foreign language, but we are top of the EU list when it comes to the range of languages on offer in our schools.” And for adults, it’s “easier to learn a minority language” – from Czech to Turkish to Tamil – “in Britain than almost anywhere else.” (Well, except North America.)
Tag: 06.13.10
The Eternally Adaptable Myth Of Orpheus
David Patrick Stearns: “This time, might the story come out differently? So says your brain at every encounter with [the] Orpheus and Eurydice [story] … This time, Eurydice won’t die on her wedding day. And then she does. But when her husband Orpheus goes to the underworld to retrieve her, he won’t ruin his second chance with a forbidden backward glance. And then he does.”
New York City Ballet, Champion Of Modern Music
Anthony Tommasini: “[The] idea that unadventurous audiences keep classical music conservative is part of the accepted narrative within the field. From what I can tell, no comparable resistance to contemporary music has afflicted ballet, least of all New York City Ballet,” which has been working with new scores for its entire existence, going back to the Balanchine-Stravinsky partnership.
‘The Olympics Of Ballet’ Opens In Mississippi
The USA International Ballet Competition – an event held every four years, in which young dancers from more than 30 nations compete for medals before an international panel of judges, and which even features an Olympic-style torch in its opening ceremony – has gotten underway in Jackson, Miss.
Painter Sigmar Polke Dead At 69
“[His] obsessive quest [was] to unearth innovative materials and utilise well-established ones in unusual ways. His career was a constant stream of experimentation: he made prints and sculpture in his youth; satirised American Pop Art in the 1960s; explored photography in the 1970s; refocused on large-scale painting in the 1980s; and continually returned to drawing throughout his life.”
Moby-Dick And The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (Guess Who’s Captain Ahab)
“In the weeks since the rig explosion, parallels between that disaster and the proto-Modernist one imagined by Melville more than a century and a half ago have sometimes been striking – and painfully illuminating as the spill becomes a daily reminder of the limitations, even now, of man’s ability to harness nature for his needs.” (Not to mention that whaling was the oil industry of the 1800s.)
The Bachelor‘s Spawn: Reality TV’s Vaudeville Circuit
“Since [2002], the Bachelor franchise, which features 26 fresh characters every season, has become a rigorous farm team for a modern-day vaudeville circuit that features hundreds of reality-show vets … [N]early all of the Bachelor alumni try to extend the characters they developed in concert with ABC’s producers to do commercials, paid appearances and, of course, other reality shows.”
Reality TV Dance Competitions Are Good/Bad For The Art (Choose One)
“No one in the dance world disputes the influence of these shows, which have given a broad swath of viewers their largest – and in some cases only – exposure to dance.” For all the resulting growth in interest, some worry that the shows lead viewers to expect only fast and flashy moves – and lead dancers to become jacks-of-all-styles and masters of none.
Marian Seldes, And Why We Adore Her
“It is [her] blend of Old World manners and youthful exuberance, her journeyman work ethic, paired with a sense of privilege at being in the theater, that has made her a legendary figure within it. In the mirrored bubble of show business, where people see only themselves, she sees everyone else. More than that, she celebrates them.”
Isherwood: ‘The Broadway Musical Seems To Have Lost Its Voice’
“More gently one could say it appears to be in tentative search of a new one, and in the interim has increasingly relied on sounds from other realms of music, namely rock and pop, to provide the central ingredient in the theatrical recipe.” Like the television series Glee, Broadway is “using repurposed spare parts from the cultural trove of the past half-century to spin fresh forms of entertainment.”