“Again and again among dancers and teachers, I saw examples of generosity that were not simply random, but intrinsic to this world. The real-life counterparts of the ballet teacher who nurtures Billy Elliot and his talent turn out not to be the exceptions but the rule. The die-for-your-art histrionics of The Black Swan and The Red Shoes mercifully exist mostly in the realm of fiction.”
Tag: 12.16.14
OMG! Our City Is OVERRUN With Nutcrackers! WHY???
“I would call our Nutcracker The Great American Way Nutcracker! You get your Nutcracker in a half an hour, you can sit with your family, enjoy coffee, bagels, muffins, a balloon twister and dancing with the Nutcracker characters. And… photos with Santa! No mall lines!”
Have You Ever Noticed How Violent Kids’ Cartoons Are?
“Rather than being the innocuous form of entertainment they are assumed to be,” writes a research team led by Ian Colman, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Ottawa, “children’s animated films are rife with on-screen death and murder.”
The Problem With Academic Books (For Everyone Involved)
“There are certainly university press books that sell 350 books and that’s a copy sold to literally everybody in that sub-field and some libraries. So, that’s 100 percent market saturation. I consider that a kind of victory for a book.”
Janis Martin, Mezzo-Turned-Wagnerian-Soprano, Dead At 75
“To most opera lovers worldwide, Ms. Martin is best remembered for her potent mastery of the challenging soprano parts in the works of Wagner and Richard Strauss. She was a regular at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, dedicated to Wagner’s music, and she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Covent Garden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and other leading opera houses.”
Arts Council England’s New CEO: Boss Of UK’s Classic FM
“Arts Council England has appointed the managing director of Classic FM, the music radio station, to be its next chief executive. Darren Henley will take over at the country’s main arts funding body in 2015, replacing Alan Davey, who leaves after seven years in the role” to become controller of the BBC’s classical network, Radio 3.
Alexei Ratmansky Recreates One Of Petipa’s Classic Ballets
Marius Petipa more or less created what we now think of as classical ballet, but very few of his works have survived intact. “Together with Doug Fullington, an expert in Stepanov notation, he[Ratmansky] has painstakingly pieced together this 1881 Petipa ballet [Paquita], created for the Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg.”
Why Materialism Doesn’t Really Make People Happy
In a new press release from the American Psychological Association, “psychology professor Tim Kasser gives an interesting perspective from his research on just why placing a high value on stuff is no good. In a recent meta-analysis he published with colleagues from the University of Sussex, he found that materialism seems to undermine some of our deepest human needs.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.16.14
Restoration Scandal At Chartres Cathedral
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2014-12-16
The Middle Class Gets Crushed
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2014-12-16
Perform or Die
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil Published 2014-12-16
Recent Listening, Vinyly: Broadbent, Lowe, Horvitz, Chemical Clock, Kanda
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2014-12-15
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Have We Been Trying To Understand Race In The Wrong Way?
The authors argue that “quantitative researchers should acknowledge that any one person’s racial identity is more like a collection of many different factors — from skin color, to neighborhood, to language, to socioeconomic status. With this insight, it becomes possible to study race not as a single, unchanging variable, but rather as a “a bundle of sticks” that can be pulled apart and carefully examined one by one.”