Downtown dance’s equivalent to Off-Broadway’s Obies “are in the midst of an overhaul that … includes broadening the field to consider more types of dance (like ballet, Indian classical dance and Broadway); a departure from general categories to specific ones; and a new structure for nominating and voting.”
Tag: 09.11.10
An Elizabeth Bishop Alphabet
An A-to-Z of the poet’s life and loves, especially in Brazil: Petrópolis, the wealthy resort community near which Bishop and Lota Soares lived; “Questions of Travel,” a Bishop poem set at that country retreat; Robert Lowell, Bishop’s champion and mentor; Suicide, which Lota committed while visiting Bishop in New York; and so on.
Booker Prize Jury Chairman: We Didn’t Mean to Be Popular
Andrew Motion: “Booker-watchers have assured us that our longlist has sold better than any for several years. Although we didn’t set out to be ‘popular’, we were pleased to be told this. Isn’t one of the purposes of the prize to get people reading what they otherwise might not?”
Irwin Silber, 84, Non-Singing Father of the Folk Song Revival
He “found common cause with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and others who regarded folk music as a form of political protest and a way of affirming the dignity of working people.” In 1950 he founded the influential folk music magazine Sing Out!.
It’s the Season of American Plays in Paris
The Bouffes Parisiens theater is doing Kramer contre Kramer; Tennessee Williams’s Tramway nommé Désir is at the Comédie Française; other houses are presenting The Odd Couple, Speed-the-Plow and other well-known American dramas.
Coppola Wins Golden Lion at Venice
“Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, a comic drama about a bad-boy actor who’s stumbling through a life of Hollywood excess until his adolescent daughter turns up, won the top prize Saturday at the Venice Film Festival.”
Why a Tiny Dutch Theater Would Stage a Klingon Opera
Hanna Boender of the Zeebelt theatre in The Hague: “Well, a while back the municipality said we had to work on increasing our visibility. Well, how’s this for visibility?”