Michael Flatley is “52, and under those well-cut clothes, there is a definite roll of middle-age spread. The Sunday Times Rich List has him down as worth £246 million. So why on earth would he want to put himself through the kind of punishing routines that — even the last time he danced them — left him lying for hours backstage, with his legs encased in ice?”
Tag: 07.06.10
Conservatives Get An Entertainment Channel All Their Own
“Currently, RightNetwork has just three shows. One of them is a stand-up comedy series taped at a club in Los Angeles called Right 2 Laugh.” In the series’ trailer, a comedian “jokes that he’s ordering one of those coins with President Obama’s face on it because, he says, ‘any collector will tell you a coin is worth a lot more when there’s an obvious mistake on it.'”
Inside The Redness That Is Nouvel’s Serpentine Pavilion
“Jean Nouvel likes red. But then so did Matisse who said, ‘things only become what they are when I see them with the colour red.’ And that’s Nouvel’s point too. It is not simply about redness, but how it affects the other colours that are within its glow.”
Paper Mill Playhouse Exec. Dir. Mark W. Jones Steps Down
“Mr. Jones, who came to the [Millburn, N.J.,] theater in November 2007 after four years at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., helped to bring Paper Mill back from the financial brink with a real estate deal in June 2008.”
Dance Theater Of Harlem Co-Founder Arthur Mitchell Speaks
“I didn’t want to be a ballet dancer. My motivation was the musicals. Vaudeville was incredible. The Apollo, fantastic. Fred Astaire? When I auditioned for the High School of the Performing Arts, I rented top hat, white tie and tails, and sang ‘Steppin’ Out With My Baby.’ They took me not because I was good but because I had so much nerve.”
Can’t Tell The Edinburgh Festival From The Fringe? Blame The ‘Lazy’ Media, Says Mills
“Edinburgh International Festival director Jonathan Mills has criticised media ‘laziness’ for the public being confused about the difference between EIF and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which run alongside one another every August.”
Mikhail Pletnev Questioned In Underage Sex Case
“Famed Russian conductor [and pianist] Mikhail Pletnev has been released on bail after Thai police searched his home in Thailand as part of a probe into paedophilia, the Russian consulate said Tuesday. Pletnev, artistic director of the acclaimed Russian National Orchestra, was released on bail after the search in the Thai resort of Pattaya.”
Billy Collins Undresses Emily Dickinson
At the climax of an interview with Terry Gross about the unique qualities of Dickinson’s verse – such as the fact that you can sing almost all of it to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” – Collins reads a poem of his own in which he imagines his own “wild nights” with her.
Squirrels Are Just Like Us
“In the acuity of their visual system, the sensitivity and deftness with which they can manipulate objects, their sociability, chattiness and willingness to deceive, squirrels turn out to be surprisingly similar to primates.” They’ve even been observed watching humans for cues in deciding when it’s safe to cross a busy street.
Pittsburgh’s August Wilson Center Is Struggling
“The Wilson Center opened last fall with $6.1 million in cost overruns for construction, a $5 million gap in fundraising and a slowdown in receipt of state money. The center later received a two-year, $8 million loan, which it cannot afford to repay from operating money even if it refinanced its debt.”