“A meeting of Australia’s arts and cultural ministers in Adelaide … has seen a major overhaul of the way the Major Performing Arts sector is funded through the Australia Council for the Arts, and contemporary circus company Circa – whose Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz once described the system as a ‘protectorate of the privileged’ – welcomed into the fold of Major Performing Arts companies.” – Limelight (Australia)
Tag: 10.15.19
Reading As An Active Sport (No Really)
“The main contention of What We Talk About When We Talk About Books – that reading print can be a sociable, active, and even seditious activity – is so sensible that it seems incredible that this long-form, evidence-based case hasn’t been made before. Why does it matter? Perhaps not only because we should think about whether our fantasies about the printed word are true, but also because we should ask why these particular fantasies have become so dominant.” – Times Literary Supplement
When Schools Utterly Fail At Sex Education, Fanfiction Fills In The Gaps
That’s right: Fanfiction, with its hookups of likely and unlikely characters, its absolute refusal to live by the rules of the world set by authors like J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins, educates the teens of the world about sex, friendship, and much more, especially for LGBT youth: “Where the education system failed us, our fellow horny teens stepped up.” – BuzzFeed
Sean Dorsey Has Blazed A Trail For Trans Dance Artists
“Now in its 15th season, Dorsey’s award-winning San Francisco company, Sean Dorsey Dance, is heralded for intersectional dance-theater works that celebrate trans, gender-nonconforming and queer identities. Along the way, Dorsey, 47, has become the first trans choreographer to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (seven grants to date, totaling $115,000), and the first U.S. trans artist presented by the American Dance Festival and New York City’s Joyce Theater. Today, he’s the role model he always wished he had.” – Dance Magazine
Why Orchestras Giving Free Concerts Is A Very Bad Idea
Aubrey Bergauer: “Giving it away for free, whether by regularly scheduled programming or by striking or locked out musicians, is not getting the job done. It’s not growing audiences, it’s not building tons of new support, and — please hear this — it hurts us when people don’t see how much it costs to produce this art. [Here] are five reasons why free concerts are not serving us well.” – Medium
Stefan Edlis, Leading Chicago Art Collector, Dead At 94
“Long known for a premier collection of Pop art that he built with his wife, Gael Neeson, Edlis made a star turn in a recent HBO documentary about the art market, providing one of the film’s most poignant moments.” – ARTnews
So What Exactly *Is* The Interrogation Method At Issue In The Ava DuVernay/Netflix Lawsuit?
This week the law enforcement consulting firm John E. Reid and Associates sued Netflix and director DuVernay for defamation over the Central Park Five miniseries When They See Us, alleging that the script makes false statements about an interrogation method developed by the firm called “the Reid Technique.” Here’s an explanation of what the Reid Technique is and why it’s controversial. – The Guardian
‘Salvator Mundi’ Probably Won’t Be At The Louvre’s Leonardo Retrospective — And There May Be A Good Reason For That
Very few people even know where the world’s most expensive painting is right now: it’s supposed to be at the new Louvre Abu Dhabi, but it’s never appeared there. (There’s a report that it’s aboard Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s megayacht.) The painting was expected to be a centerpiece of the (Paris) Louvre’s big Leonardo 500 show, but the museum is hearing nothing from its owners. Sebastian Smee observes that there’s one powerful incentive for those owners not to send it to France. – The Washington Post
Cambridge University Loans Art To Its Students. In 60 Years None Of It Has Been Damaged
Students can hire up to two artworks for the year for £20 each. A visitors’ book shows the former director of the Tate, Sir Nicholas Serota, borrowed a Henri Gaudier-Brzeska drawing when he was at Christ’s College in the 1960s. – BBC
Morphing ‘Swan Lake’ Into A Modern Irish Folk Tale
Choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan has taken the kernel of the Tchaikovsky/Petipa classic’s story and transplanted to in the milieu of contemporary Ireland to create Swan Lake/Loch na hEala, with a score of Irish and Nordic folk music accompanying a narrative of a depressed loner and a young woman molested by a priest and changed into a swan so she can’t tell anyone of his crime. – The New York Times