“Indeed, the world’s love of flamenco has long created problems within Spain, where the performance was once considered a vulgar and pornographic spectacle. Over the years, many Spaniards considered flamenco a scourge of their nation, deploring it as an entertainment that lulled the masses into stupefaction and hampered Spain’s progress toward modernity. Flamenco’s shifting fortunes show how Spain’s complex national identity continues to evolve to this day.” – Zócalo Public Square
Tag: 10.24.19
‘Rocywood’, Gritty Homegrown Cinema From Rio’s Favelas
Named for Rocinha, with 70,000 residents the largest favela in Brazil, Rocywood is a production company formed by five young Rio filmmakers. Their budget per film averages around $50 (US), with favela residents providing everything from the cast to rented equipment to hair and makeup. “The films, made for locals by locals, are screened on the streets of Rocinha using a projector and an improvised tarp as a screen, but are also available on YouTube for a worldwide audience to see.” – Hyperallergic
Why Theatre Isn’t My “Other” Job
Only two per cent of actors actually make a living from acting alone and 90 per cent of actors are out of work at any given time so that means, more often than not, actors have to make money elsewhere. – Metro News
University of South Wales Closes Its Dance Program
A spokesman for the University of South Wales said “projected recruitment figures for the degree mean that we will not have enough students in future to be able to continue to provide a high quality education”. – The Stage
Landmarks Theatre President Suddenly Quits. Is The Quality Movie Business In Jeopardy?
Ted Mundorff: “Since 1927, attendance has gone down, though box office remains the same. It usually sits around $10 and a half billion dollars. I’ve always been very bullish on movie theaters, and I don’t think they are going away, but I do think these past two years we have seen closures of theaters.” – Deadline
Elijah Cummings: Librarians Helped Me Most
“The people who helped me the most were the librarians,” Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood. – School Library Journal
Why Are The NYT, WSJ And Others Making TV Shows?
“So what are newspapers and web producers up to, besides making extremely expensive pivots-to-video? And why are these outlets willing to bet people like their journalism enough to watch entire TV shows about it? Maybe it’s because they aren’t really about journalism. The best producers money can buy aren’t interested in “all the news that’s fit to print.” What works best on television is one kind of journalism that has a long track record of success, especially for the big-city tabloid newspapers.” – The Baffler
What Happened To The Great Cultural Critics?
What has become of the commanding figure of the critic in the last 20 years? Where are the successors to Sontag and Steiner, and to Empson and Richards, FR Leavis, Raymond Williams and Frank Kermode? …They wrote books such as Culture and Society (Raymond Williams, 1958), The Death of Tragedy (Steiner, 1961) and Culture and Imperialism (Said, 1993). They moved literary criticism from poetry and the novel to subjects such as illness and photography, orientalism and the Holocaust. Yes, they were lively speakers, often provocative, but they were also accessible. – New Statesman
National Dance Institute Has A Plan To Be More “National”
Jacques d’Amboise started the nonprofit organization while he was a principal dancer at New York City Ballet to expose children to what he feels is the transformational power of dance. Today 6,500 children in New York City participate in N.D.I. school programs each year. The N.D.I. Collaborative teaching program will offer on-site intensive training and professional workshops to teaching artists, dancers and classroom teachers at the institute’s Harlem headquarters. It will also provide consulting services to other dance education organizations. – The New York Times
London Review of Books Isn’t Just Surviving, It’s Thriving. Here’s How
As newspapers and magazines experience diminishing revenue, plunging circulation and attacks from both terrorists and government leaders, the L.R.B. has not merely survived but also flourished, and its circulation has risen consistently since 1985, to its current 78,000 — substantial in a country where the glossy men’s magazine Esquire reaches 57,000 — by doing the things readers are said not to be interested in anymore. – The New York Times