The Engine

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY: DIAGHILEV AND THE BALLET RUSSE AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM Diaghilev's creation of the Ballet Russe, an amalgamation of talents from diverse backgrounds, was a response to the drying up of creative opportunities in Russia in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) and the subsequent revolution of that year. Diaghilev began to move westward in order to exploit those opportunites to be found in Paris and other Western European capitals. The Ballet Russe was eventually to tour Western Europe and North America, but seems to have been especially popular in countries like Spain (where the show visited every large city) that lagged behind the rest of Western Europe and North America economically, but not artistically. Likewise the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) also moved to Paris, where he came under the influence and the spell of the music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918). Stravinsky synthesised the music of his mentor, Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1...

October Tue 5, Wed 6, Fri 8 - Sun 10 at 8pm coproduction: Berlin International Opera & Theater Thikwa The Medium & A Hand of Bridge Two American Chamber Operas A bright flippant bridge game suddenly turns into a dark seance, but in the end, they all play at cards again. An ingenious conflation of Samuel Barber's society satire "A Hand of Bridge" and his friend's Gian-Carlo Menotti's esoteric thriller "The Medium". "a musical and theatrical bull’s-eye" (Orpheus-Magazin) produced by Berlin International Opera & Theater Thikwa Venue: Theater Thikwa, Fidicinstraße 40, 10965 Berlin Kreuzberg TICKETS: 16 / 10 read more http://www.kulturkurier.de/veranstaltung_208339.htm

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, PIMLICO, LONDON, SEPTEMBER 2010  This is a major retrospective of the Anglo-American photographic artist Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was born Edward Muggeridge in Kingston on Thames in 1830, departing for the US in 1852. His changes of name possibly chart an attempt to distance himself from supposed, yet to us unknown, painful events of his past, or to chart a new artistic beginning. Muybridge was one of the first pioneers of photography, very quickly realising that the new art form belonged not only to a new century, but also to a new continent. In France the Impressionists had adapted photography into their work, realising that so-called photographic realism was a separable aesthetic that needed to be integrated into their practice. For Muybridge photography meant commerce and the place for his commercial activities was America, more specifically the west, with its great unexplored vistas, rising cities, railroads, Indians, settlers...