From the Guardian archives, a quick and easy guide to “the Zen master of modern dance.”
Tag: 09.16.08
A Netflix of Magazines?
Maghound, a new service from Time, Inc., lets its subscribers choose different magazines to receive each month. “Assuming Maghound takes off, it will offer a pure look at what consumers want to read… when offered a broad array of choices. It could become the Billboard charts of magazine popularity… it allows you to sample issues without paying the price of a subscription or the higher price of a news stand copy.”
Xanadu To Close This Fall
“Xanadu, the Tony-nominated musical based on the infamous flop film of the same name, will play its final performance at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre Oct. 12. When it closes the musical will have played a total of 49 previews and 528 regular performances.”
Struggling With The Idea Of “American” Music
“Why do we keep insisting there can be such a thing as American classical music, as opposed to classical music that happens to be made in America? Viewed from numerous perspectives, classical music doesn’t fit an American mold.”
The Last TV Sitcoms Left Standing
At one point in the 1990s, NBC had 16 half-hour sitcoms on the air. This fall, it has four. And two of those four–The Office and 30 Rock–though critically beloved (both are up for Best Comedy Emmys on Sunday, Sept. 21), are struggling to be embraced by mainstream audiences.
Robert Hughes: All That’s Wrong With The Art Market
Hughes’s film “argues that art is the biggest unregulated market in the world apart from drugs. Contemporary art sales, such as Hirst’s, rake in £10billion a year. Modern art is dottily expensive to buy not, says Hughes, because it’s so good, but because investors believe it will yield quick profits.”
In Economy Meltdown – Cable TV May Thrive
“The logic is this: People like TV. They don’t want to give it up even if the economy is going to hell in a handbasket. Actually, they may be less willing to sacrifice it in a recession, according to some Wall Street analysts.”
Vaclav Havel, Playwright, 20 Years Later
“He doesn’t much like it when his story is told as if it were a piece of theatre in its own right, for fear that it trivialises that time of mighty shifts in the world order. Yet when you look at this extraordinary life it is hard to ignore completely the parallels between his progress and the sometimes absurdist tone of his work.”
Celebrating The Best Of NYC Dance
“The Bessies — more formally known as the New York Dance and Performance Awards — are often described as the dance world’s equivalent of the Oscars.” The 24th annual presentation of the Bessies took place on Monday night, with plenty of emotion and few surprises.
Russia’s MoMA? Or Just A Billionaire’s Toy?
“The celebrity girlfriend of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich on Tuesday opened a major new Moscow art gallery billed as Russia’s answer to London’s Tate Modern and New York’s MoMA… Some in the Moscow art community have expressed scepticism that Zhukova, a onetime fashion designer, is much of an art expert.”