“Filmmakers are pushing hard against, and sometimes dispensing with, storytelling conventions, and audiences seem willing to follow them.”
Tag: 11.21.11
How Neuroscience Is Changing Our Understanding Of Economics
“The brain, the computer, and the economy: all three are devices whose purpose is to solve fundamental information problems in coordinating the activities of individual units – the neurons, the transistors, or individual people. As we improve our understanding of the problems that any one of these devices solves – and how it overcomes obstacles in doing so – we learn something valuable about all three.”
Modern Dance Company In Philadelphia Shuts Down
“After 12 years of creating dance, commissioning work from world-class choreographers, and opening a theater and studio in a converted mechanic’s shop, former Martha Graham principal dancer Jeanne Ruddy announced Monday that she was folding her Philadelphia modern dance company.”
Are The Arts Irrelevant To The Next Generation? (In Norway, Maybe So)
“A study just published in the journal Poetics suggests art forms such as literature and classical music ‘are becoming increasingly more irrelevant for most students’ cultural lives.’ This points to ‘an increasingly precarious position for traditional highbrow culture’.”
The Grapes Of Wrath, Still Relevant After Seven Decades
Melvyn Bragg writes that John Steinbeck’s novel “seems as savage as ever … It is just as alive, with its fine anger against the banks: ‘The bank – the monster – has to have profit all the time. It can’t wait … It’ll die when the monster stops growing. It can’t stay in one place’.”
It Had To Happen (Or Did It?): Rocky, The Musical
“Two Ukranian boxing brothers have teamed up with Sylvester Stallone to stage a musical version of Rocky in Hamburg, Germany.”
Nikolai Tsiskaridze Shoots Off His Mouth (Again) About Bolshoi Restoration
“I think that what they did with the theater is simply vandalism. … Nikita Shangin is an unfortunate architect who created the plan of the Bolshoi Theater, I feel very sorry for him. He just does not understand what he has done. He does not even know what a crime he had committed, that he will be cursed by more than one generation.”
Benjamin Millepied Founds New Dance Company In Los Angeles
“The Music Center is giving birth to a splashy, blue-chip contemporary ballet company devoted to artistic experimentation, with a Hollywood pedigree, to boot. L.A. Dance Project, founded and directed by Benjamin Millepied, is being launched with a commission, expected to last two years, from Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center.”
Tel Aviv’s Historic Habima Theatre, Now Renovated, Reopens
“Massive renovations were needed for the Habima building designed by Oscar Kaufman and dedicated in 1936 … not only because the building was outdated and neglected,” but to change the theatre’s auditoriums – especially the overly large, overly deep main hall, whose limitations hobbled Habima’s programming.
Playwright Shelagh Delaney Dead At 71
“The feisty Salford-born writer, who drew on the gritty reality of working-class life, was one of the pioneers of the ‘kitchen sink’ realism movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. She was just 19 when A Taste of Honey premiered in 1958 and became an instant success.”