If English had not changed in exactly these kinds of ways forever, we’d all be speaking the language of Beowulf. Some might wish it so, but count me out. Pronouns change, just as we do. We celebrate language change that has already happened as pageant, procession, progress. Why not celebrate it while it’s happening?
Tag: 09.04.18
Four Longtime Paul Taylor Dancers Explain What They Learned From Him
Annmaria Mazzini, Eran Bugge, Michael Trusnovec, and new Taylor company artistic director Michael Novak tell writer Ann Votaw how, as Novak puts it, “Human movement never lies,” and why what Taylor wanted to watch dancers do in auditions was walk.
A Shocking Decline In UK Arts Teachers (And Arts Education)
Current debates about social class in the arts miss a vital point. How are working class young people going to access the arts if they don’t experience them in school?
Bobby Lynn Maslen, 87, Whose Bob Books Helped Millions Of Kids Learn To Read
“She compiled three sets of books, with about 12 books in each set and no more than a dozen pages in each book. … Readers encountered only four letters — M, A, T and S — and three-letter words. The texts became gradually more complicated, as letters were added until the first set introduced everything but Q, culminating in a sequence that featured a vet, a van, a big cat and a bad leg: ‘The cat ran zig zag. The vet ran zip zap. ZAM!'”
Michael Feingold: Paul Taylor, Great Playwright
“I once told a friend associated with Taylor’s company that I was thinking of writing an essay about Taylor as one of America’s great playwrights, continuing the themes of Eric Bentley’s famous essay projecting a similar role for Taylor’s mentor Martha Graham. I will never write that piece now (unless this is it), but several points that would have gone into it seem to have stuck in my head.”
Carole Shelley, Tony-Winning Actress, Dead At 79
The current generation of Broadway fans probably remembers her as the original Madame Morrible in Wicked, but she won her Tony for playing Madge Kendal opposite Philip Anglim in the original Broadway run (1979) of The Elephant Man. She’s also remembered, by an earlier generation, as one of the Pigeon sisters in the original stage and screen versions of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple.
San Antonio Requires All Funded Arts Orgs To Do Data Analysis
“San Antonio nonprofit arts organizations that receive City funding have been tasked with using a data analysis tool to help measure their overall effectiveness in marketing, staffing, fundraising, and other aspects of management. By Sept. 30, just before the City’s new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, each of 47 arts agencies will have submitted data on their operations and use of public funding.”
‘We Wanted To Be The HBO Of Opera’: Opera Philadelphia Changes The Model
Company general director David Devan, on the O17 and O18 festivals devoted to new work as well as about changes to regular-season programming: “Our industry is hanging on by a thread to models that were created in the ’50s-’70s. A subscription model focused on excellent performance in the traditional repertoire … This would be like ignoring the streaming movement and sticking to network television. We wanted to be the HBO of opera.”
Apparition At Lourdes: Artist Who Poses Nude In Front Of Famous Nude Paintings Visits Pilgrimage Site (Nude, Of Course)
The Luxembourgeoise artist Deborah de Robertis, who has been arrested multiple times for displaying herself alongside displays of some of the world’s most famous female nude paintings, “has been charged with ‘sexual exhibitionism’ after she stood in the famous grotto at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, hands clasped as if in prayer, wearing nothing but a blue veil on her head.” (She titled the performance “The Origin of Life.”)
US Media Giants Invade The UK
The vaunted “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain is thriving in the media and entertainment space. But with Brexit clouds overhead and other countries emerging as international content hubs, the question is whether the feverish trans-Atlantic dealmaking will cool down — or whether it might actually heat up further as the FAANGs (digital players Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) enter the game.