“It is only appropriate, given the subject matter, that … all parties in this fracas have reasonable claim to Kafka’s papers yet also clearly shouldn’t be anywhere near them. The story [author Benjamin] Balint tells is one of an interminable trial between doomed parties, in which physical struggles morph into questions about identity, self, and existential belonging. If only there were some author whose name is now an adjective used to describe exactly such stories!”
Tag: 09.10.18
My Career As A Busker
The first day we busked in Manchester with the double bass, we broke £100. Part of the key to our financial success was having a “bottler” – someone who would walk around the crowd with a hat while the band were playing, ensuring that no pocket went unemptied. Legend has it that the word “bottler” came from a tradition whereby someone would go from table to table in pubs collecting money for the musicians, with a hat in one hand and a bottle in the other.
Choreographer Trajal Harrell Deconstructs The Old-Time Hoochie-Coochie Dance
Harrell was exposed, sort of, to hoochie coochie during his rural Georgia childhood, when his father would take him to traveling fairs but leave the boy with friends while he went out at night. “As I got older, I started to realize that they were going to see naked ladies dance. They were going to see a hoochie coochie show, and that was my first understanding of dance as a spectacle. Because I never actually saw it and we never talked about it, it’s always something that’s been lurking in my consciousness.”
This Free Video Game Makes Its Money Selling Dance Moves – And Those Dance Moves Are Crossing Over Into Real Life
“The goal in [Fortnite: Battle Royale], as in most multiplayer shooter games,” writes Sarah Kaufman, “is to blow your enemies to shreds.” What does that have to do with dance? Well, players can buy preprogrammed moves for their avatars called “dance emotes,” which they use to dance on the dead bodies of the enemies they’ve blown to shreds. Dance emotes are so popular that the game pulls in $126 million every month, and players are starting to bust those moves themselves offline.
Three New EGOT Winners In One Night
“John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice have been awarded Emmys for their TV production of Jesus Christ Superstar, earning them EGOT status – meaning they have each won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. EGOT winners are an exclusive club: including the trio, only 15 people have ever managed to achieve the four wins, including Audrey Hepburn, [Whoopi Goldberg,] Mel Brooks and John Gielgud.”
Iran Jails Director And Theater Manager For Staging ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’
“Cultural official Shahram Karami told the official IRNA news agency Monday that Iran’s judiciary had ordered the detention of the play’s director, Maryam Kazemi, and the manager of the theater that hosted it, Saeed Assadi. … Both were taken into custody Sunday evening, after the broadcast of a video trailer about the work.”
Berkeley Rep Theatre Chooses A New Artistic Director
Johanna Pfaelzer, who is currently the artistic director of New York Stage and Film, a nonprofit best known for its Powerhouse Theater summer program at Vassar College, will become the next artistic director of Berkeley Rep starting next fall. She will succeed Tony Taccone, who has been at Berkeley Rep for 33 years, 21 of them as artistic director.
Burning Man: Celebrating The Great Nothing
Routinely exposing a population of 80,000 to a perfect barren in relatively safe circumstances should be seen as an ingenious experiment. After all, philosophers from Edmund Burke to Arthur Schopenhauer have recognised that qualities in nature can be appreciated as sublime only if they fall just short of absolute threat.
Monday Recommendation: Emil Viklický, ‘Humoresque’
Emil Viklický, Humoresque (NCML)
Last spring, Czech pianist Emil Viklický traveled from Prague to visit relatives in the American Midwest. Never one to forgo a playing opportunity, while he was there he gave a concert at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Tate Outsources Bio Info To Wikipedia?
A Tate spokeswoman says that the gallery does “not have the resources to create biographies for every individual” in its collection, or to update biographies for living artists. Wikipedia provides “the most up to date and reliable biography possible within the constraints of our resources”, she adds.