Could Co-Productions Reinvigorate British Ballet?

“One of the key issues facing British ballet is the difficulty of building audiences for new choreography, especially in the smaller towns and cities, where 19th-century classics remain the default option at the box office. Would it be impossible for companies such as ENB, the Royal and Birmingham Royal Ballet to address this by collaborating on limited tours of small-scale, contemporary ballets?”

Art Genome? Ideas Without Form?

“Art.sy-ing feels more like shopping for designer clothes online than walking through an art gallery in real life. For fashion, e-commerce has been a boon with no signs of bust. But it hasn’t revolutionized the industry by making unknown designers suddenly famous, as MySpace did bands. Rather, it’s forced the establishment to design with an eye to how clothes look online, perhaps sacrificing how they feel on the body.”

The Obsessive Man Who’s Read 6000 Books

“My reading habits sometimes get a bit loopy. I often read dozens of books simultaneously. I start a book in 1978 and finish it 34 years later, without enjoying a single minute of the enterprise. I absolutely refuse to read books that critics describe as “luminous” or “incandescent.” I never read books in which the hero went to private school or roots for the New York Yankees. I once spent a year reading nothing but short books. I spent another year vowing to read nothing but books I picked off the library shelves with my eyes closed. The results were not pretty.”