THE MAGAZINE
Ballet Across the Globe: Marius Petipa
If ballet has dialects, the Russian one was written by Marius Petipa. His choreography for Swan Lake, Don Quixote, La Bayadère, and The Sleeping Beauty set the template for classical ballet as we know it today. Read on.
Guest Artist: Mikako Ohmatsu, Tokyo University of the Arts
Guest artist Mikako Ohmatsu treats memory as a luxury material: fragile, elusive, and always on the verge of dissolving. Through faded photographs, translucent skins, and locket-sized relics, she constructs quiet, intimate worlds where the past flickers in and out of view. Read on.
Are Orchestras in Need of an Update?
Is the symphony orchestra a doomed relic, or simply overdue for reinvention? As UK institutions confront funding cuts and shrinking audiences, ensembles like Aurora Orchestra and Manchester Collective are rewriting the rules of performance. With young listeners engaging with classical music in record numbers, the future may lie not in preserving tradition but in reshaping it.
Sargent’s Madame X: The Portrait That Hurled Painter and Sitter into Scandal
John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X didn’t just scandalise the 1884 Paris Salon—it reshaped the possibilities of modern portraiture. Beyond capturing Paris’s infamous “it girl,” Virginie Gautreau, the painting exposed subtler tensions: artist versus sitter, authenticity versus artifice, ambition versus expectation. Read on to explore its reception and enduring cultural reach.
From London with Love: A Night with Vivaldi
A night at St James’ Church turns into an unexpected meditation on memory, music, and the pull of live performance. In this TWoA letter, Maya listens to Beethoven and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by candlelight—and finds herself tracing the moments that stay with us long after the final note.
Taking the Scenic Route: A Timeline of Landscape Painting
How do artists choose to see the world, and what do their landscapes reveal about us in return? From ancient frescoes to Turner’s tempest and Lucas Arruda’s meditative pseudo-horizons, this timeline traces how painters have reimagined nature across centuries. Read on.
Encrypting Secret Messages in Music: Mercury, or, the Secret and Swift Messenger
Before espionage had satellites and surveillance, it had something subtler: music. Step into the seventeenth century, where court musicians slipped secrets into their scores and John Wilkins sketched a cipher that transformed music into a covert script. Read on to find out their secrets.
Ballet Across the Globe: Bournonville and the Danes
August Bournonville’s choreography gave Denmark a ballet identity of its own: rounded arms, delicately musical footwork, and allegro that seems to float rather than land. Learn how this nineteenth-century master shaped a national style that remains unmistakable on stages today.
From New York with Love: The Frick Collection
With the Frick’s 2025 reopening, a visit to the Upper East Side feels less like a museum trip and more like slipping into a remembered century—emerald rooms, gold-leaf frames, and women whose painted gazes echo across time. Olivia writes from New York about art, weather, and the selves we meet in between.
Grounds for Rebellion: Bach’s Coffee Cantata
“If I can’t drink my bowl of coffee three times daily…” Bach’s Coffee Cantata begins as a lighthearted story about a girl and her devotion to caffeine—but beneath it runs a quiet feminist rebellion taking shape in 1730s Leipzig.
A Tale of Two Portraits: Degas and the Anatomy of Family Life
Degas treated the family portrait as an incision point—clean, controlled, and made to reveal. Through The Bellelli Family and Henri Degas and His Niece, he turns the domestic interior into a stage where the anatomy of family life—resentment, duty, longing—can finally bleed out.
Guest Artist: Kazuto Muraki, Tokyo University of the Arts
Contemplate the tension between external perception and inner selfhood through the work of Kazuto Muraki, a Tokyo University of the Arts painter whose still, grain-textured images explore the fragile border between memory and identity.
Lea Brückner, Violinist and Climate Activist: “You Can Drive Social Change Through Culture.”
Lea Brückner is a violinist, moderator and climate ambassador who has carved out a unique career for herself, combining her passion for music with her commitment to sustainability. TWoA talked to Lea about the role culture can play in the battle against climate change, and about the specific steps cultural organisations can take towards becoming more sustainable.
Helene Schjerfbeck: Painting the Soul
Why does Helene Schjerfbeck’s gaze feel like it looks straight through you? In this gripping TWoA exploration of Finland’s most enigmatic modernist, discover the stories behind her haunting self-portraits, her pioneering role in shaping Finnish art, and the quiet resilience that made her one of Europe’s most radical women painters. A must-read for anyone fascinated by modernism, identity, and the art of painting the soul.
Pointe Shoe Rewind: A Brief History of Ballet’s Signature Shoe
How did a delicate pink slipper become ballet’s most powerful symbol? From flying machines and broken-in satin to Maria Taglioni’s game-changing rise en pointe, TWoA traces the wild, glamorous, and sometimes dangerous evolution of the pointe shoe. Discover the hidden history behind ballet’s signature shoe—and why its design still shapes the way dancers defy gravity today.
From London with Love: A Night at the Moulin Rouge
Soho isn’t just a postcode—it’s the pulse of London after dark. In this glitter-soaked TWoA City Letter, follow Maya into the heart of the West End for a night at Moulin Rouge: neon windmills, velvet decadence, and the kind of London chaos where theatre, food, and nightlife blur into one unforgettable story. If you want to know London the way Londoners do, start here.
Whispers in the Wings: Meet Josephine Baker, Dancer and Spy
She wasn’t just the Jazz Age’s brightest star—she was a spy, a trailblazer, and a force for civil rights. In this electrifying TWoA profile, step behind the curtain with Josephine Baker, the dancer who rewrote the rules of fame, weaponized performance against racism, and risked everything in the French Resistance. A gripping story of art, power, and unapologetic brilliance.
The Swing of the Affair: Fragonard, Infidelity, and the Art of Heedlessness
What if the most iconic Rococo painting is really a masterclass in cheating? TWoA dives into the hidden symbols, erotic secrets, and deliciously scandalous backstory behind Fragonard’s The Swing—a painting that turns infidelity into an art form. From kicked-off shoes to voyeuristic lovers in the bushes, discover why this flirtatious masterpiece still seduces viewers and exposes our own appetite for mischief.
The Mathemagical Music of Michael Maier
What if a piece of music could unlock the secrets of the universe? Step inside the strange, exhilarating world of Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, where alchemy, mathematics, and melody fuse into a single “mathemagical” code. In this TWoA deep dive, discover how Early Modern magicians used music as a tool for cosmic knowledge—and why their mystical sounds still intrigue scholars today.
From New York with Love: The New York Philharmonic
What does a night with the New York Philharmonic feel like? In this luminous TWoA City Letter, follow Olivia up Ninth Avenue into a transformed David Geffen Hall, where Gustavo Dudamel leads Varèse, Ravel, and Gershwin on a voyage that turns New York into something mythic. A love letter to the Philharmonic, to spring, and to the magic of hearing a city through its orchestra.