Tag: 09.04.18

This Was Paul Taylor

Gia Kourlas: “I began interviewing Mr. Taylor in 1995, and talked with him (and his dancers) many times over the years. I realize I probably only scratched the surface of his singular, probing imagination, but that’s something. He would tease me relentlessly; that was fine. His amusement bought me time to ask another question. We talked about dance, of course, but we also talked about his life, his hobbies, his pets.”

Why Is Music Pleasurable? (No Really…)

“Perhaps then, pleasure and music are connected in some way further removed from both the obvious sonorous tickle that music affords or the formal demands that music places on the listener. Perhaps we haven’t gone far enough when we suppose that pleasure in music derives from the recognition within it of a passionate utterance, or an imitation of nature, or an intense game of challenging listening to be played. Perhaps we’ve been asking too many questions about what in music is pleasurable, and too few about how pleasure is a phenomenon with musical qualities.”

How We Separated Art From The Middle Classes

For all its sundry failings and inexcusable prejudices, conventional art history provided a fundamental framework for assessing quality. Grouping works according to such commonalities as place of origin, period and circumstances of execution, artistic intent, function and medium facilitated comparative judgments. In the last decades, academia largely rejected this sort of connoisseurship, because it was too often tied to “great man” narratives. Over the same period, professional art criticism was effectively obliterated by a journalistic obsession (both in the surviving print media and online) with glamour, scandal and money. While the art world was never entirely free from market forces, those forces are now essentially left alone to determine value.

FBI Sting Recovers Stolen Ruby Slippers From ‘Wizard Of Oz’

“The slippers were on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in the late actress’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when they were taken in 2005 by someone who climbed through a window and broke into a small display case. … The FBI said a man approached the insurer in summer 2017 and said he could help get them back. … After a nearly year-long investigation, the slippers were recovered in July during a sting operation in Minneapolis.”

At Old Vic, First Preview Changed To Dress Rehearsal, Then Cancelled When Star Collapses Onstage

It’s been a difficult beginning for the new hip-hop musical Sylvia at the London theatre. Sept. 3 was to have been the first preview performance of the show about suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, but the previous day, director Matthew Warchus, worried about the readiness of the production, rebranded the evening as an open dress rehearsal. Then, just after the second act began, the lead actress, Genesis Lynea, became ill and the performance was stopped.

Staffers Ran Into Burning National Museum Of Brazil To Rescue Parts Of Collection

“[Paleontologist Paulo] Buckup, who has worked at the National Museum since 1996, led the group’s harrowing entry into the museum. ‘There were constant collapses while we were inside. There were falling objects and lots of smoke. In one area we realized there was a real risk of the ceiling collapsing, we could not assess when the third floor would fall.'”

2018 Dance Magazine Awards To Crystal Pite, Lourdes Lopez, Ronald K. Brown, Michael Trusnovec, Nigel Redden

Canadian choreographer Pite, Miami City Ballet artistic director Lopez, African-American choreographer Brown, and longtime Paul Taylor Dance Company stalwart Trusnovec are this year’s honorees, and the magazine has added a special Leadership Award for Redden, longtime director of both Spoleto Festival USA and the now-discontinued Lincoln Center Festival.