“A ballerina’s career is so short and it’s kind of hard for me to think that these are going to be the best years of my career and after that it’s just going to suck. You know? I don’t want to think about it like that.”
Tag: 09.28.15
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.28.15
Sudden Departure: Max Anderson Precipitously Leaves Dallas Museum Directorship
This is not how amicable resignations usually happen: The Dallas Museum of Art today announced that its director of less than four years, Maxwell Anderson, “has stepped down as director of the DMA … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-09-28
A Good Show Spoiled
With the weather in New York still fine – and warmish – on Saturday, I ventured up to the New York Botanical Garden for FRIDA: Art, Garden, Life, one of the Garden’s hybrid exhibitions that combines plants and paintings … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-09-27
Not the fast car
How do you dance a midlife crisis? Hofesh Shechter is one of Britain’s most popular choreographers – someone who tugs non-dance fans into the theatre, drawn by the meaty savour of whomping percussion and … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-09-28
Bud Powell At 91
Here it is nearly the close of Bud Powell’s birthday and I’ve had my nose too close to the grindstone to take note of it. He would have been 91 today. If I had to … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-09-27
Shostakovich and S & M in the Provinces: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Stalin walked out of a performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, saying the music was a muddle. This shows only that he … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2015-09-28
Unpacking your piano
My colleagues and I taught a seminar on writing for piano last Friday. Referencing a wide range of thinking going all the way back to Cristofori, we focused mainly on innovations of High Modernism to … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-09-28
Darkest Depths of the Soul?
The inconceivable advocacy of a large percentage of Americans for Donald Trump to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2016 began to make a little more sense upon reading the New York Times critic’s ode to political correctness in his September 25th review of the Metropolitan Opera’s seasonal premiere of Puccini’s Turandot. … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-09-28
Enough seen
Mrs. T and I are in Pittsburgh to see a play. Our last visit here took place four years ago, when we flew out to catch a rare revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s House and Garden, … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-09-28
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Opera Turned Inside Out
” Lost in Thought is an opera, but its plot is simpler than The Marriage of Figaro. The card reads: ‘Sit. Walk. Sit. Eat. Wash up. Sit Rest. Waking up. Sit. Play. Walk. Chant. Sit. Breaking the silence.’ It is suggested we meditate in the next four hours on what it is to sit, what it is to walk, what it is to eat.”
The Collaboration Fad Is Hurting Introverts
“Just last week the University of Chicago library announced that in response to ‘increased demand,’ librarians are working with architects to transform a presumably quiet reading room into a ‘vibrant laboratory of interactive learning.’ One writer on Top Hat, a popular online resource for educators, argued in a post last month that ‘cooperative learning strategies harness the greatest part of human evolutionary behavior: sociality.'”
Banned Books Week Is No Longer Necessary
“Once upon a time, if your local library and bookstores didn’t carry a book, it would have been very difficult to procure it elsewhere. But of course we’re now living in an era of unprecedented access to reading material. If your local library declines to carry what you want to read these days, there has been no time in history where it’s easier for you to read it anyway.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Arts Center Turns 10
“With such an exceptional, international career, you’d think the sign in front of his arts center would have ‘Baryshnikov’ in lights, but actually you can barely see it. ‘Misha didn’t want this place to be called the Baryshnikov Arts Center,’ says Georgiana Pickett the center’s executive director. ‘He wanted it to be more global, and some wise people told him, “That’s not a good idea. Let’s put your name on it.”‘”
The Art Of Witness: How Primo Levi Survived
“Primo Levi did not consider it heroic to have survived eleven months in Auschwitz. … But we who have survived relatively little find it hard to believe him. How could it be anything but heroic to have entered Hell and not been swallowed up? To have witnessed it with such delicate lucidity, such reserves of irony and even equanimity?”