Alexandra Danilova was the first of George Balanchine's lifetime of muses. Balanchine created 18 ballets for her, the first of which was 1921's "Poeme." The partially spoken-word piece was one of the first "modern ballets" -- and positioned Danilova as the first of the "modern" ballerinas.
Born to
Taniguchi Buson, or Yosa Buson, was an influential painter and poet during the Edo period. Born in a suburb of Osaka, Japan, Buson was an orphan who eventually moved to Edo to study painting and haiku poetry in the tradition of Basho. He first gained notice for his visual art -- like much traditional
The arts at the beginning of twentieth century saw a turn from social realism to a more expressionistic pathos, and the work of Yasunari Kawabata (Kawabata Yasunari) was no exception. In the 1920s his association with the Neo-Sensualists says it all: these writers employed lyrical and impressionistic
"The Ice Storm" scrutinizes a suburban family's travails at the height of the 1970s in upper-middle-class Connecticut. Given the film's intense exploration of the period and the locale, it comes as a surprise that this poignantly accurate piece was directed by a native of Taiwan who only arrived in t