New York based writer Jennifer Cody Epstein has just published her first novel "A Painter from Shanghai" based on the life of Chinese painter Pan Yuliang. The book traces Pan Yuliang's tumultuous life and her relentless pursuit of artistic fulfillment against the backdrop of seismic political and social change in the China of the early 20th century. Jennifer's novel has been called "luminous" by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly says it "captivates to the last line". She recently "sat" down for an online interview with Shortcut to discuss her new book, her transition from journalist to writer, and what drew her to write about a woman a century and a continent removed from her.

Jennifer's book is available at Amazon.com

You are an American writer, based in New York. How did you hear about Pan Yuliang and what were your intentions in writing about her?

It actually began at the Guggenheim Museum, about ten years ago. My husband and some relatives and I were at an exhibition on Modern Chinese Art, and there was just one image by Pan Yuliang on display. But it drew me over immediately. It was a typical Pan Yuliang in that it was very evocative of Matisse and Cezanne, and the bright, bold colors and distinctly Western setting (as compared to the huge propaganda-style images and much more subtle ink paintings around it) really stood out for me. I went over to see more and when I read about Pan’s story (prostitute-concubine-Post-Impressionist icon; really?!) it just blew me away. I’d never heard of her before—but I couldn’t, at that moment, understand why---it struck me that everyone should know about her.

Click to read more ...

 
NYCB is returning to Copenhagen with an all Balanchine programme on September 6. Serenade is included.

Get tickets here: billetnet

photo via ballet blog the winger 

check the revamped new york city ballet website for videos on balanchine and other choreographers

by jason jobson via pierce mattie public relations

With all the "reality" shows that run the networks these days, it is so refreshing to discover a novel that you can dive into as a distraction to all the noise around us. Yes, thats right - remember books? I know you can read!! I recently tore through one I could not put down and had to share it.
The Last Day of Paradise is one of those books you pick up because of the interesting cover art and unusual title. It doesn't take long to discover the double entendre of the title and realize the book is not at all what you thought. That is how the best works of fiction usually hook you. What you think is coming doesn't - and what you find you weren't looking for!

Click to read more ...

Traveling with a boring guide book? Not happy with the restaurant listing of your Lonely Planet? Annoyed because there's no word on golf courses/spas/vintage clothes boutiques/ you name it in your TimeOut edition?

Brighter times are ahead.

Take an online trip to Viamigo, the brainchild of San Francisco based creative/journalist  jeff goldsmith, and pick from a vast menu of local guides that you don't have to lug around: living, breathing residents who are willing to put their arduously collected personal expertise at your disposal. Need a historian to explore the finer nuances of Sicilian baroque? Chances are you might find one on viamigo. Or maybe you feel like sharing your city wisdom with others? Sign up as a guide.

More on viamigo: 

VIAmigo.com helps global travelers find authentic, local experiences and insider adventures - by connecting them with personal tour guides from everywhere. We simply let independent tour guides tell everyone what travelers can see chez eux - and we let travelers rate guides. VIAmigo.com is, pardon the jargon, a one-to-one destination marketing platform. Go beyond the guidebook. Go everywhere. Get into everything.

It's been quiet on the interview front at Shortcut, but here's a special treat: I've talked childhood friend Linda Heydegger into letting me interview her about her work as a painter and showcase some of her pieces in digital form on the site. Linda's been painting and drawing since i first met her at age 11 and she's done so with increasing success. Her last exhibition, a series of still lives, was a delightful amalgam of mundane objects set off by dazzling colours: these are household items glimpsed perhaps casually on kitchen tables across Europe, but rendered with fastidious detail and arranged sensually like objets d'art before the viewer. Each piece barely bigger than a large-sized envelope, the still lives evoke a series of postcards conveying multiple domestic worlds, each with its inherent cultural flavor. And yet these multiple, disparate words, nudged into careful composition and bathed in glistening colours, converge into fundamentally the same vision: an image of home.

Linda was born in Basel but raised between Arizona, Germany, Switzerland and now lives in France.

Read the interview or enter the gallery

Shortcut: You've been painting for years and have had several exhibitions. At what point did painting become more than a hobby for you?

Click to read more ...

by  jnoelbell

It's a new year for Londoners, and two things are certain: hangovers and transportation price hikes.

The cost of taking the Tube goes up every year, but no more so than this year, with a whopping 33% increase to single cash journey bus and Tube fares. Going into central London's Zone 1 now costs a staggering £4, if you care to pay in pounds. Hopping the bus costs £2. The Tube has become far and away the the single most expensive transport system in the world.

Click to read more ...

... Joyeux Noel, Feliz Navidad -

and that's where my language skills start to falter. The Shortcut editorial team are - yes, you guessed it - off on our yuletide travels.

We wish all of you and all of our contributing bloggers a snowy/sunny/crisp/balmy Christmas, depending on where you are.  Some erratic blogging could take place between Christmas and New Year's, but no guarantees. We're definitely back again in January 2007!

And for those who can't tear themselves from their laptops during the holidays, here's our most popular posts of 2006:

1. London - Mad for the Soccer Wives 

2. Stockholm - Oral Sex is bad for you 

3. Paris - Twisted French Style 

4. Snapshots - Vitriolica's Portugal

5. Portrait of a Blogger - Jared Bibler 

6. Copenhagen - Ten Reasons not to visit Denmark 

7. Berlin - Irresistibly Beautiful Armpits 

8. Zurich - Gay Chic for the Masses 

9. Madrid - Great New Hotels 

10. London - Toilet Spotting 

 -------------------------------------
Photo credit: Jaclynt

From the Shortcut Flickr Pool Urban Europe, three perspectives on architecture.

Twisted - Hannover

by Decor8

Click to read more ...

 

A bit of NEWS before Christmas:

Shortcut finally has a spanking new, shiny digital address: www.shortcutblog.eu.

And that's not all. We also have a major announcement to make on the editorial front! Yes, it's been quiet around here, but after a period of slow posting, we're bouncing back to a more regular publishing schedule thanks to a new editor: Rhiannon Davies has bravely agreed to helm the editorial side of things at Shortcut. She'll be overseeing the weekly inflow of content from our contributors across European cities . She also pretty much has carte blanche to put her own opinionated spin on the site and - if time permits - to add new editorial features. Or scratch old ones :-)

Rhiannon is a what you'd call an accomplished copywriter and writer. She is currently based in Copenhagen, where she turns out immaculate copy for Nike at digital agency Framfab. Welsh, but raised in Canada, she has lived in London before moving to Scandinavia 3 years ago. Her expat life has turned her into a seasoned networker and she loves to jet off on weekends to visit yet another European city - what better match for a European city blog?

Comments? Suggestions? Want to write for Shortcut? Contact Rhiannon at shortcut.europe@gmail.com
Or skype us at Shortcutblog

Great opportunity for a soccer fanatic to kickstart a high-profile soccer blog. Preferably already an English language blogger/writer with prior experience managing blog tools and/or covering the football beat. Passion for football is more important than blogging skills. This is a temporary assignment of a few weeks, approx. 1 day per week. Could go longer. You will be credited and receive some form of compensation. Send a sample entry or a link to your own sports blog/articles to shortcut.europe@gmail.com. Please write "Football blogger" in the subject line. Contact Shortcut for further details.

by eye prefer paris 

My first Paris play: Isabelle Huppert in “Quartett”, directed by Robert Wilson at the Odeon Theatre.

My friend Olivier generously invited me to the theater last night and what a stellar introduction it was with a performance by one of France’s greatest actresses at the most prestigious theater in Paris.

Officially titled the Odeon- Theatre of Europe, it was built in 1827 and was the first theater in France to present Shakespeare in English and introduced French audiences to Ibsen, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Stindberg. Its mission is “to foster joint work and projects by stage directors, actors, and writers for the purpose of presenting new original works and bringing life to the artistic heritage of Europe “. The theater, recently reopened after extensive renovations, is a beautiful formidable structure with creamy white columns outside, gorgeous sculptures and chandeliers in the lobby, and the theater itself a marvel of gold gilt and velvet.

Click to read more ...

by rhiannon davies

For 10 days Copenhagen is the hub of the international documentary film scene. From 10-19 November, 150 documentaries from some of the world’s best documentary makers will be shown at cinemas across the city.

CPH:DOX 2006 is the fourth edition of Scandinavia’s largest documentary film festival and there’s an impressive programme choose from. Click on the calendar on the left for the day’s showings.

There is something for everyone with subjects ranging from the first elected woman in Afghanistan, gangs in Port au Prince’s worst slums, impoverished musicians in Africa, love, integration & separation, to finding the perfect Hitchcock look-a-like, and taking a closer look at Zinedine Zidane or Maradona.

It is time to get excited because many of this year’s feature films are coming to Copenhagen fresh from major international film festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Venice. Work by directors like Alan Berliner, Romuald Karmaker and David LaChapelle to 11 brand new, Danish success stories.

Click to read more ...

by sara bertoni

We arrived at the Odeon at 21.30 on a “quiet” Saturday evening in Amsterdam. Nothing special was going on that evening, so a perfect evening to explore a place situated in the heart of Amsterdam’s Canal Belt.

Having a look at the website I found out that the Odeon has a rich cultural heritage. The building was originally constructed in 1663 as a beer brewery, and was rebuilt in the 1830s as Amsterdam’s first real concert hall. It was later used as a cinema and an auction house, and in the late 1980s as a discotheque purchased by the owner of Hotel Arena in 2003 and after a complete renovation reopened in 2005. Odeon had a notorious reputation as a separate underground gay hang-out in the 70s and 80s, frequented by the likes of Elton John and Freddy Mercury.

Click to read more ...

by michael scott moore

This appalling man Udo Voigt is not just head of a marginal neo-Nazi party but now a duly-elected politician in the Treptow-Köpenick district of Berlin. He's the guy who said, last year in a town called Gera, in a speech delivered between sets by white-supremacist hatecore bands, “We don’t want a multicultural society! We know what that brings! In Berlin we’ve learned about the first school without a single German child. Should this be the future of Germany? [...]

“Anyone who wants this to be the future of Germany should vote for the established parties! Whoever doesn’t want this to be the future of Germany should send the NPD to the national parliament! [...] We need, in Germany, at last, a true national politics. We have a dream — that the Federal Republic of Germany should go into the dustbin of history, as quickly as possible, just like the GDR. That’s our dream. We dream of a free and prosperous and peaceful Germany for true Germans […] We have the blood of our fathers flowing in our veins and we are proud!”

Click to read more ...

by sam baron

As a part of the Fabrica exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Fabrica Design Department created a temporary  store that will only last for five months. The store is a project exploring the process of creating a retail space using materials and local resources. 

Where is all this taking place? Artés 135, rue Saint Martin, 75003 Paris. And when? 6 October - 13 November 2006

The concept behind the store is this: Five designers had five days to make the space and 50 products to display. Each designer was involved in sharing their personal and cultural views on the retail experience. Concept, resourcing, organization, and execution was a collective effort.

Inside the store you'll find a shelving sculpture made out of metro shelving in the gallery space, a stock room of yellow customised products, a colors magazine reading room, as well as many Fabrica Features objects made specifically for the store.

Click to read more ...