This spring Jamison steps down from the Ailey company’s helm after 20 years of keeping her mentor’s mission alive. “Alvin would have hated that word, ‘mission.’ It gets used because we’ve turned into an organization, so therefore we have a mission. I think vision is the word, because he was a vi-sion-ary.”
Tag: 11.30.09
The Nature Of Consciousness? A Dangerous Question
“The failure to solve it without resorting to religion or quasi-religious ‘intelligent design’ … strikes many observers as dangerous. Dangerous because it threatens the foundation of scientific rationalism and materialism. Dangerous because it disrupts one’s sense of any order in the universe and opens the floodgates of chaos.”
Pacheco Wins 2009 Cervantes Prize, Spanish-Language Lit’s Nobel
“Veteran Mexican poet and novelist José Emilio Pacheco has won the [€125,000] Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award for writing in Spanish.”
Want To Get Your Audience Out Faster? Put Something In Their Way
We’ve all experienced the problem after seeing a performance. “No matter how big the exit is, everybody gets jammed up and it goes really slowly. Engineers in Japan have been looking at what’s going on and how to fix it. What they found makes no sense to us, but it seems to work. Obstacles speed up exiting crowds.”
History’s Cabinet Of Cartographic Curiosities
“During the Age of Discovery, explorers plotted islands and continents where none existed. First, writers, and later, propagandists, discovered that a fake map can lend legitimacy to wild ideas. Maps are more than 2-D renditions of 3-D topography. They can, and often do, express complex fantasies.” Even today …
Brian Eno To Direct 2010 Brighton Festival
“Musician, composer and record producer Brian Eno is to be the guest artistic director of next year’s Brighton Festival. He will be responsible for curating a collection of events across the city featuring 77 Million Paintings, a newly commissioned sound installation.”
The World Looks Different, Literally, If You’re Depressed
“People with the condition find it easy to interpret large images or scenes, but struggle to ‘spot the difference’ in fine detail. The finding hints at visual training as a possible treatment.”
N.M. Symphony Musicians Ratify Contract; Season To Start
“The NMSO had to postpone several concerts after the master agreement with the musicians expired in August. The symphony said in October it was facing a $1 million deficit and needed to cut $690,000 from its budget.” NMSO trustees are now “launching a major fundraising campaign,” the orchestra says.
Dormant Coconut Grove Playhouse Springing Back To Life
“Three years after it abruptly shut down with more than $4 million in debt, Miami’s historic Coconut Grove Playhouse has a new operator — the award-winning GableStage and its producing artistic director, Joseph Adler — and plans to build a new theater.”
Theatre Artists Are Noticing: Kids Make Great Audiences
“Unlike adult audiences, children come with no expectation of what they’re about to see. That makes for a deliciously free space in which to create work, in which innovation, experimentation and risk can thrive.”