Audience demand for First Nations performing arts is growing. yet, aside from one superstar company (the dance troupe Bangarra), “many independent Indigenous dance and theatre artists are struggling for funding and autonomy, and fighting against stereotypical audience expectations and tokenistic programming decisions.” – The Guardian
Tag: 08.29.20
After ISIS: Syria’s Damaged Architecture Is Being Restored
Syria’s architectural legacy has been a well-known victim and propaganda tool of the civil war. Islamic State famously took pleasure in detonating the temples and tower-tombs of Palmyra, with the delicate paintings and sculptures that they contained, and making sure the world knew about it. – The Guardian
Fake Rembrandt May Be Fake News
In other words, the painting fragment consigned to the basement of the Ashmolean at Oxford may be a real Rembrandt. – The Guardian (UK)
How Chadwick Boseman Made Dignity Look Interesting
That’s a hard task for any actor, and Boseman had to – got to – play Thurgood Marshall, James Brown, and Jackie Robinson (not to mention embodying the fictional King of Wakanda, T’Challa). “I’ll confess to finding it odd that Boseman played these three roles so quickly. It seemed at first like a joke on the movies’ ongoing obsession with stories about exceptional Black Americans or like Hollywood was too lazy to imagine anyone else inhabiting the exceptions. The truth is that Boseman actually cornered a market with his inner elasticity and, at least for me, exploded the parameters of what biographical moviemaking ought to be.” – The New York Times
Figuring Out Love, And Intimacy, In The Middle Of A Pandemic
Writer Akwaeke Emezi and photographer Texas Isaiah, with the help of many couples, try to figure it all out. “I have never spent this much time with myself;to become my own favorite companion is a new and strange thing for me. I was always looking for someone else, and now I’m terrified of finding them. Perhaps they don’t exist outside of my imagination.” – The New York Times
CAMI Abruptly Shuts Down
One of the most powerful agencies in the classical music industry, Columbia Artists Management Inc. sent a statement to its clients on Saturday saying that, due to the “prolonged pandemic environment,” it is closing its doors on Monday (Aug. 31) and entering liquidation. – Yahoo! (AP)
The Hollywood Bowl In The Time Of The Pandemic
There’s no summer season of music for the L.A. Phil at the Hollywood Bowl. But there are food banks, a take-out restaurant from those who usually make food for the concerts, and a lot of musicians, socially distanced, trying to record music, and live through this. – Los Angeles Times
Falling In Love With A Poem Across The Centuries
This is the way of powerful literature, across hundreds (or thousands) of years. “It landed in the hands of a schoolgirl who would one day fall in love with it. At first, she pushed it away, bored as she always was by homework, but the poem wouldn’t let go of her. It let itself be found again and again, until at last she fell for its charms.” – Irish Times
The Leonard Cohen Estate Is Considering Legal Action After RNC Uses Hallelujah – Twice
The RNC asked for permission, and the Cohen Estate said no. According to estate’s legal representative, “if the organizers had requested to use Cohen’s 2016 song ‘You Want it Darker’ then ‘we might have considered approval.'” – Slate
In London, South Bank Arts Workers Rally For Their Jobs
Workers from the Tate, the Southbank Centre , and the National Theatre rallied for their jobs and against what they call callous job cuts on Saturday. One explained that now, “You’ve got the emotional labour of thinking, ‘I’m going to lose my job, how am I going to pay my rent?’ A lot of us in the arts live week by week, sometimes month by month.” – The Guardian (UK) (PA Media)