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Not to shock, nor arouse, but to titillate
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June 09, 2011 02:07 AM
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MAAMELTEIN: A relic of medieval town planning, Paris in the early 1800s was a warren of tiny streets and hugger-mugger buildings. A gigantic bottleneck, the center of the city suffered from terrible congestion and provided a perfect Petri dish for disease. Ascending the throne in 1852, Napoleon...
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Art meets experimental psychology in ‘s.t.a.n.c.e.’
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May 28, 2011 01:11 AM
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BEIRUT: I arrive at Tayouneh’s Sunflower Cultural Center flustered, late and slightly sweaty. Rush-hour traffic, a dilatory bus driver and the pervasive sunshine have transpired to substantially hoist my blood pressure. George Rabbath is standing in the Sunflower’s entrance. Debonair and...
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Supernatural Tetas and moon frogs
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May 24, 2011 01:40 AM
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BEIRUT: It’s the end of a sweltering weekend at the Sanayeh Garden. Kids are everywhere, whizzing on scooters, climbing trees or clambering around on benches. A few are becoming fractious; others are beginning to wilt. Parents are dispersed in chattering groups. Local news-junkies catch up with...
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A constellation of Beirut’s beauty
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May 14, 2011 01:16 AM
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BEIRUT: Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Rear Window” shows how nosiness can be elevated into an art form. Rendered immobile by a broken leg, James Stewart occupies himself by prying on the movements of his neighbors.Stewart eventually transforms from nosy neighbor to static sleuth as it transpires that...
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Beirut survives Spider Galaxies
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May 03, 2011 01:32 AM
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BEIRUT: When Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider first cranked into operation in September 2008, there were fears that the world would end. In an attempt to prove the existence of the hypothesized “Higgs boson” particle, and thus to help us understand the origins of the universe, the LHC smashes...
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A futuristic fusion of dance, sound and light
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April 30, 2011 01:26 AM
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BEIRUT: Proponents of futurism, the Italian art movement of the early 20th century, churned out almost as many manifestos as they did artworks. Filippo Marinetti, futurism’s founding father, particularly loved a manifesto. He composed dogmatic tracts on everything from painting to pottery to...
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Stony figures compelled to dance
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April 29, 2011 01:25 AM
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BEIRUT: Born 1207 in the Persian province of Balkh, part of modern-day Afghanistan, the poet Rumi became a surprise best seller in America at the end of the 1990s – several years before the Anglo-American invasion of his homeland – thanks to the lauded translations of Coleman Barks. Rumi’s...
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The future is bright, but dystopian
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April 19, 2011 12:35 AM
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BEIRUT: Dance and flashy technology are becoming increasingly snug bedfellows. Soon to release his three-dimensional film “Pina,” a paean to the titular director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, director Wim Wenders opined at this year’s Berlin Film Festival that “3D is almost tailor-made for dance....
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The wild relief of dance mania victims
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April 18, 2011 01:10 AM
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BEIRUT: Europe in the Dark Ages was afflicted by a condition that has come to be known as “dance mania.” From around the 10th century until its abrupt end in the 1600s, the continent witnessed regular outbreaks of frenzied mass dancing.Groups of men, women and children would writhe and twirl...
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Dancing the body to its physical limits
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April 16, 2011 01:03 AM
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BEIRUT: Teetering on tip-toe, leaping through the air and swooning in stylized distress – classical ballet is a preternaturally graceful art form. But, as Darren Aronofsky’s film “Black Swan” so ably demonstrates, there is something perhaps horrifying about ballet as well – the propensity for...
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Taking on the divine monster’s mantle
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April 13, 2011 12:00 AM
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BEIRUT: Castrati were the first superstars of the opera world. In the first part of the 18th century, the height of the castrati craze, figures such as Farinelli and Senesino raked in fantastic amounts of lucre and allegedly engaged in rock ’n’ roll lifestyles that might put Keith Richards to...
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An art of murder, and education
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April 12, 2011 12:00 AM
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rHARET HREIK: There are many buses in Beirut, but in the context of Lebanon’s Civil War there is only one: the Ain al-Roummaneh bus. At the center of a tit-for-tat massacre on April 13, 1975, usually pinpointed as the beginning of the 25-year conflict, the vehicle has a ghastly significance. The...
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Defying the cult of positive thinking
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April 05, 2011 12:00 AM
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BEIRUT: The cult of positive thinking is invading your life. Groaning shelves of self-help books, as well as magazine articles and TV shows, contend that a bright demeanor is a cure for everything from cancer to low salaries.Positive thinkers place grumpiness on a par with substance abuse or...
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The violence of dissonance and fight
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March 28, 2011 12:00 AM
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BEIRUT: Life and art, as we know, are fond of imitating one another. Of all creative endeavors – if the annals of popular culture are to be believed – theater is particularly prone to such cross-fertilization. From William Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to John Madden’s film...
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Bodies – mechanical, mystical and political
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March 25, 2011 12:00 AM
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BEIRUT: In 1970s New York, dance had a moment as the most vital of the performing arts. As the city descended into a recession-induced dystopia of crime and social dysfunction, a constellation of legendary choreographers and dancers – Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, George Balanchine and Suzanne...
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