Michael Grandage: “One of the jobs of a director, and certainly I see it as one of my jobs, is to make sure the rehearsal period is such that when you get to that first preview, you are effectively getting to an opening night. … Opening previews will be opening nights before too much longer in some form. They already are, if you like, because of social media.”
Tag: 10.27.16
‘The Red Detachment Of Women’ Is Coming To Australia, And People Are Fussing About Commie Propaganda
“Chinese-Australian members of the Australian Values Alliance … are drawing up a petition against four Australian performances of The Red Detachment of Women by the National Ballet of China in February at the Melbourne Arts Centre. … The alliance says The Red Detachment was orchestrated by Jiang [Qing, Mao’s wife] ‘to brainwash civilians during the horror of the Cultural Revolution’.”
Ah, Those Merry Days Of Dadaism
Alfred Brendel (yes, the pianist): “Has there ever been a major avant-garde movement that was so closely tied to laughter and the grotesque? Laughter was the Dadaists’ favorite instrument … Traditionalists see Dadaists as silly people. To a degree, they are right. Silliness was liberating from the constraints of reason. Silliness has the potential to be funny, to provoke laughter, and make people realize that laughter is liberating.”
The Gifts Of John Cage
“He opened doors—floodgates, really—and dissolved definitions; if most of his own compositions now seem less interesting than the ramifications of his ideas, there can be little doubt that his oceanic spirit changed the topography.”