“Societies come together slowly, but can fall apart quickly, say researchers who applied the tools of evolutionary biologists to an anthropological debate.”
Tag: 10.14.10
Alternative Theatre, Really
“The Red One Theatre Company has been producing theatre in alternative venues for about four years, and doesn’t disclose the location to audience members until they’ve booked their tickets, and sometimes even later. In last June’s production Howard the Rookie, audience members were told to meet at the corner of College and Grace Sts. The show started when two actors raced by yelling Irish profanities at each other, and the audience followed them to a transformed alleyway where the rest of the play took place.”
Semyon Bychkov, Orchestra-less Conductor
“Having just concluded a 13-year stint as music director of the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Germany, he finds himself for the first time without a steady post. “I have always had a major commitment to some institution. Now I have only one commitment – to myself. It’s an amazing feeling.”
The Great Art Walk Debate
“Do they boost the Southern California art community or dilute it? Do they build the foundation for sales and create collectors or draw looky-loos opting for a cheap night out? There are almost as many opinions as there are participants in the more than 20 art walks in greater Los Angeles.”
It’s Simple – Here’s Why Students Are Deserting The Humanities
“Universities in fact bear a considerable responsibility for the brain drain away from the humanities. By raising the cost of education to stratospheric levels, we oblige students to seek a higher return on their investment. It is this sort of economic calculation, I suggest, and not some alleged generational change, that is driving students in droves towards preprofessional degrees.”
Booker Prize Winner Gets A Big New Print Run
“Bloomsbury are to print 150,000 fresh copies of Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question, which won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday. The book had sold 8,500 copies before it was announced as the winner, according to Nielsen BookScan.”
Michigan Opera Theatre Working To Buy Time With Banks
“MOT general director David DiChiera said he hopes to have details finalized soon that will keep the company’s loan payments at half their previous levels until the beginning of 2012.”
Italian Court Drops Charges Against Curator Marion True
“The trial of former Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True ended in a bureaucratic whimper Wednesday in Rome when a three-judge panel halted the proceedings, ruling that the statute of limitations had expired on criminal charges that she had conspired to traffic in looted art.”
Meanwhile, in Canada, Governor-General’s Lit Award Shortlist Revealed
The anglophone fiction candidates include only one title that was nominated for both of the country’s other two major book prizes (the Giller and the Writers’ Trust). Meanwhile, the GG finalists for non-fiction in English include three titles (out of five) that feature on the other two shortlists.
Slavic Neo-Traditional Modern Dance: Les SlovaKs
Five Slovakian men who had been folk dancers when young and met up while studying and working in Brussels, the members of Les SlovaKs Dance Collective create quasi-improvisational dance, wearing modern dress, based not so much on the vocabulary as on the rhythms of traditional Slovak dance.