“From Bangladeshi folk dance to the moves of Michael Jackson, [the star British dancer/choreographer] describes how he finds clarity within chaos.”
Tag: 12.09.09
Cats Vs. Dogs: The New Scientist Smackdown
The magazine compares feline and canine capabilities and characteristics in ten categories – including brain size and structure, problem-solving, vocalization, sensory abilities and eco-friendliness – and adds up the results to determine the superior species.
Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines Bequest To Support Inner-City Kids’ Music Training
A “$258,000 bequest from Hines’ estate will help support a UC Berkeley program that provides free music lessons to gifted low-income children in grades four to 12.” The late jazz pianist “lived in Oakland and once lectured on the Berkeley campus.”
PETA To Pounce On Kids At Pa. Ballet’s Nutcracker
“PETA is planning to hand out anti-fur stickers to children waiting to see the Pennsylvania Ballet’s staging of The Nutcracker at the Academy of Music on Saturday afternoon. The stickers … will be attached to leaflets explaining how animals suffer because of the fur, leather, and exotic-skins trade.”
Royal Opera House’s Manchester Plan Clears A Hurdle
The Lowry arts center in nearby Salford has withdrawn its opposition to the scheme, under which the Royal Opera House would have a presence at Manchester’s Palace Theatre. “Opera and musical theatre would be concentrated at the new facility at the refurbished Palace and the Lowry would concentrate on lyric theatre, ballet and dance.”
Villa Savoye And Barcelona Pavilion, In Gingerbread
Four major Chicago-area architectural firms took up the challenge of designing gingerbread houses — in one case, a village of them. Blair Kamin offers critiques: “The design achieves the clean-lined, sculptural look the architect desired, in part because the baker tossed out rigid gingerbread for the curving rooftop walls and substituted more malleable fondant.”
Australia Denies Visas To Five North Korean Artists
“The artists, from the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang[,] had been invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane to discuss their paintings,” but “Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has denied the men visas, saying their studio was a propoganda tool of Pyongyang.”
A Skateboard Park In The Shadow Of The Watts Towers?
Los Angeles officials who must decide whether the Watts Towers should get a skateboard park as a neighbor “figure to get an earful from advocates for the arts and backers of youth recreation, debating an immediate benefit for youngsters and a longer-range dream of a cultural district, anchored by the towers.”
Two Publishers Put Time Delay On E-Book Releases
Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group will fight back against the $9.99 e-book by releasing their digital books several months after the hardcovers. “I can’t sit back and watch years of building authors sold off at bargain-basement prices,” Hachette’s chief executive said. “It’s about the future of the business.”
Global Trend: Making Choral Music Of Everyday Complaints
“Recently a group of about 100 Tokyo residents put their complaints into a pile and a composer, Okuchi Shunsuke, turned them into a song. About 80 of the complainers (accompanied by an accordion, a bass cello and a tambourine) then performed the composition at various sites around the city, becoming the latest example of what has become known as a complaints choir.”