An American in Paris

(The Palace Theatre, 26 March 2014)

The production's stars are Bob Crowley, the set designer, and Natasha Katz, the lighting designer. They have found the balance between what should be carved out and painted, and what can be lit up and projected. The projections are not lazy, but necessary.

The desire to merely remake a movie betrays certain timidity of intention. Trevor Nunn would adapt classical musicals by capturing and amplifying their essence, which drew audiences to the big screen in the first place. Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation does not attempt to seduce; it addresses the fans of the genre, and this genre must be classical ballet, whose audience is as conservative as the musical's choreography. This audience will likely be more pleased by attending a performance by the National Ballet of Canada.

The music lacks daring and jazz; it sounds like a recording from an unidentifiable era, inhospitable to the musical's events. Improvisation projects freedom. Syncopations project joy. Sevenths project nuance and depth. These are the signatures of the time in which the story is set, and they are missing from the opening lines, the score, and the book.

The musical is well-acted, well-danced, and well-conceived. But it is a musical that follows, not leads, except, perhaps, in its "The Stairway to Paradise" number.

"Irrational Man" (2015)

Woody Allen’s latest picture is rare in that its title summarises its content perfectly. In the movie, a philosophy professor mistakes his disillusionment with moral philosophy for disillusionment with reason. He advocates following one’s gut feeling, intuition, instinct. The film illustrates how easily unchallenged gut feelings can lead to actions that are not only misguided but plainly evil.

One can be guided by intuition to form hypotheses. But one cannot ever convince another by arguing that one’s intuition is stronger than the other’s. One cannot aggregate knowledge by aggregating intuition.

Mission Fusion Extravaganza

(Foster City, 10--14 March 2016)

Freedom is trust. Trust requires intelligence and the expectation of intelligence. Effective intelligence is scarce if only because wealth is scarce and unequally distributed. Trust requires some commonality of experience or values. The exercise of trust requires the willingness to bear risks. This willingness is facilitated by wealth and also by the culture of restlessness, which promotes novelty seeking.

That freedom leads to joy and that joy (or at least its pursuit) is a worthy goal are relatively new (Enlightenment) ideas, not universally accepted.

fragmenta.dos (o tres)

(Un Teatro, 11 February 2016)

In bad dance, just like in bad poetry, it is hard to hide. Nor is one compelled to hide in dance (or in mathematics or poetry), as one is liable to believe (falsely) that the medium’s abstraction alone must obfuscate sufficiently.

Violence is an instrumental need. When the end is clear and a superior means is available, violence is not demanded. When the vision of the end is blurred, however, violence can bring direct gratification.

The dances prioritise expression over communication. The dancers talk at each other, past each other, but rarely to each other. Skills, just as violence, are embraced instinctively, for their instrumental value, and are deployed to awake, to feel awake, to challenge, to risk—with no clear end.

No narrative is offered or invited; causality is denied; instruction is inaccessible. Aesthetic gratification is limited.

"Markets Without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests" by Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski (2015)

The freedom of speech and the freedom of contracting are analogous in that they both bolster innovation: of ways of life, institutions, goods, and services. Indeed, the freedom of speech may be moot without the freedom of contracting. The purpose of speech is to coordinate individuals on acting differently, on contracting differently.

Brennan and Jaworski make a point that is rather obvious but apparently needs to be reiterated to the self-proclaimed moral philosopher: one cannot build a theory of morality by merely consulting one's prejudice (which is culture-specific) and instinct (which is animalistic). Nor can one make factual statements without consulting facts. Moral philosophy is a branch of social science, whose scientific method it must respect lest it never rise above demagoguery.

Like most men, moral philosophers are ill-equipped to ponder trade-offs. An act is either good or evil, moral or immoral. Rawls advocated the minmax criterion, presumably, because he could not conceive of a way to trade-off one individual's wellbeing against another's. Some moral philosophers today similarly castigate some acts as being so disgusting (to the refined observer) as to warrant an unqualified ban, even if its imposition costs lives. Such a dichotomous approach to morality might have been a decent rule of thumb for the troglodyte, but the modern man is intelligent enough to afford a more nuanced approach.

La Gaviota

(Foro Shakespeare, 25 December 2015)

Chekhov’s plays are about craving freedom from the constricting circumstance. Contemporary American and British theatre is about coping with the freedom. The latter is more intellectually stimulating.

Stage Kiss

(San Francisco Playhouse, 2 January 2016)

In life, one should set out the goals that make for better McGuffins.