Artistic director Edward Villella: “It’s the biggest success the company has had in 25 years. We are the talk of Paris. People are clamoring for tickets. They stop me in buses and restaurants. They have grabbed me in the aisles and told me they’ve never seen dancing like this.”
Tag: 07.17.11
Dances For An iPhone (It’s An Actual App)
The free app, by choreographer Richard Daniels and developer Samuel Toulouse, “features six modern dances, ranging from two to five minutes, performed by an accomplished bunch: Carmen de Lavallade, Deborah Jowitt, Regina Larkin, Christine Redpath and Megan Williams.”
Loving, Or Hating, Miranda July
“In one sense, July has been enjoying the Platonic ideal of creative success in the age of the hyphenate artist” with successes in film, literature and digital media as well as legions of fans. “Yet despite this (or perhaps because of it) she has also become the unwilling exemplar of an aggravating boho archetype: the dreamy, young hipster whose days are filled with coffee, curios and disposable enchantments.”
Book As Physical Object – We Should Just Get Over It
“Some of the qualms about digital research reflect a feeling that anything obtained too easily loses its value. What we work for, we better appreciate. If an amateur can be beamed to the top of Mount Everest, will the view be as magnificent as for someone who has accomplished the climb? Maybe not, because magnificence is subjective. But it’s the same view.”
Today’s Writing – All About The Plot (But What About The Rest?)
“Films won and books lost. That’s the story of the 20th century – the story of where the stories went,” Toby Litt observes. An emphasis on strong plot and the rejection of fiction’s digressive powers seems to be the order of the day. We just don’t do longueurs anymore.
Have Writers Stopped Writing About The Middle Class?
“While the upper-classes remain perennially interesting to publishers and readers alike, is it affluent middle-class or working-class characters who are being squeezed out of literary fiction?”
What’s Hot In Canadian Dance (All In One Place)
This year’s strongest trend seemed to be tackling weighty issues through dance – with mixed results.
How The Internet Is Increasingly Tracking You
“According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top 50 Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. The tracking technology is designed to personalize the Internet experience for each user and, more importantly, to optimize the efficiency of advertising online. The result is an Internet that is increasingly good at giving us what we want and increasingly bad at giving us what we need.”
The Oldest Commercial Recording
“This is the oldest known commercial recording. Made by Thomas Edison late in 1888, it’s a prototype for a line of talking dolls Edison hoped to bring to market.”
Sony – Recreating The Old Time Studio Star System
“Sony… has emerged as the perhaps the closest contemporary approximation of a classic studio. Its movies change, but those who make them remain remarkably consistent, thanks to personal relationships and shared tastes that have largely supplanted the rigid contractual arrangements that allowed Mayer to build an empire around the likes of Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore and Clark Gable.”