Culture and the Arts

Culture and the Arts
 
Talk about:
- Cultural life in a big city and a small town or a village
- Cultural life in your hometown
- Young people & culture
- Your attitude to culture
- Famous people in culture

Culture is:
a)  music, art and literature
b)  a group of people who share the same beliefs and attitudes. We can speak about political culture, youth culture and so on.

CULTURAL LIFE IN A BIG CITY AND A SMALL TOWN:
a) A  BIG CITY
In a big city there is usually a better choice of cultural facilities than in a small town/village. In a large city, you can go to:

- a cinema
- a theatre - in the theatre you can see different kinds of performance:
-  a drama – divadelná hra
-  a comedy
-  an opera
-  a musical
-  a ballet
If you want to see a performance in a theatre, you should buy or book the tickets in advance. Theatre performances take place in the evening and there is always special class atmosphere so people should wear nice clothes when they go to the theatre. After you come to the theatre, you leave your coat in a cloakroom and an attendant will show you your seat. When the performance ends, the audience applauds and the curtain falls. If the performance is excellent, the actors can get a standing ovation.

- an art gallery – in an art gallery, we can see exhibitions of classical or modern art. For example the exhibitions of:

-  photographs
-  paintings – obrazy, maľby
-  sculptures – sochy
-  book illustrations

- a museum – in the museum we can learn about the history of our country or the history of the whole world. You can see exhibitions of things which show us how people used to live in the past.

 
b) A  SMALL TOWN / A  VILLAGE
In small towns and villages there are not as many opportunities for cultural life as there are in big cities. Some villages have a community centre or a club where sometimes discos or balls are held on special occasions – for example on the Mothers’ day or during Christmas.
If people who live in a village want to see a film or a theatre performance, they have to travel to the nearest town or a city. If they don’t want to travel, they can watch a film on TV or they can borrow a video and watch it at home.
 
c) CULTURAL LIFE IN MY HOMETOWN:
I live in Čadca which is a small town. Cultural life in our town is not as rich as in large cities. In my hometown, we have these cultural facilities /zariadenia/: we can go to the cinema, sometimes to the theatre, dancing or we can stay at home and listen to the radio, watch TV or read books. In Čadca we have a cultural house where there is a cinema but there are also theatre plays performed. However, not many people come to the cinema nowadays because it is quite expensive. If you go to the cinema in Čadca, you don’t have to book tickets in advance – you can buy them in the cinema half an hour before the film starts.
In our cultural house dancing lessons, discos, balls and concerts are sometimes also held. In Čadca we also have an art gallery and a museum. In the art gallery we can see different kinds of exhibitions – for example paintings and photographs.
 
YOUNG PEOPLE AND CULTURE:
Young people like to go to the:

- cinema
- concerts – young people usually prefer pop concerts to classical concerts. Pop concerts are usually held in summer at sport stadiums or in the open-air theatres.
- music festivals – they are also held in summer and they are attended by many people
 
MY ATTITUDE TO CULTURE:
1.) My favourite book is ......................... (a romantic novel, an adventurous novel, an encyclopedia…).
Examples:
A romantic novel:  Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:
The main heroes are 2 young people Romeo and Juliet whose families hate each other. They fall in love but their families don’t like it and they want  them to break up (= chcú, aby sa rozišli). But they love each other too much and so they commit a suicide. I liked the book because it is about love, it has a tragic end and it is very romantic.
 
An encyclopedia:  People Who Changed the World (Ľudia, ktorí zmenili svet – Mladé letá).
It is a book about 50 famous people. It is a description of their life, work, and the inventions and things that made them famous. In the book you can read about Leonardo da Vinci (he painted Mona Lisa), William Shakespeare (a dramatist/writer), Beethoven (a composer), Fleming (he invented penicillin),  A. G. Bell ( he invented the telephone) and so on. From this book you can learn a lot about famous people in the history of the world.
 
2.) The cultural event that I have attended recently:
I have been to the theatre recently. I went there with my schoolmates and our teachers from our school and we saw a theatre performance called “Kocúrkovo”. We didn’t have to worry about the tickets because our class teacher provided them for us. When we came to the theatre we took our seats. Then we watched the play. It was very good and the actors acted really well. When it finished, the curtain fell down and we applauded. I liked it and I was glad we went to see that performance.
 
FAMOUS PEOPLE & CULTURE:
In MUSIC:

- Louis Armstrong – he is a famous trumpeter (=trúbkar) in jazz history
- The Beatles – an English music group famous in 1960’s – it had 4 members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr
- Elvis Presley – the king of rock-and-roll
- Madonna, Shania Twain …

 
In THEATRE AND CINEMA:
- Charlie Chaplin – an American actor of the “Silent Era”
- Woody Allen – the American comedy film director, actor
- Walt Disney – a producer of animated cartoon films
- Alfred Hitchcock – a film director – he directs horrors and thrillers
- Dustin Hoffman, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis…

 
In FINE ART:
- Andy Warhol – he is famous for his paintings – he is the son of Slovak immigrants

Other questions
- Do you prefer going to a cinema or a theatre? Why?
- Do you like folk music and folk dance performance? Why? Why not?
- What sort of dance do you prefer? (disco, folk, hip-hop, modern, ballroom…)
- Who is your favourite actor/singer? Describe him/her.
- What sorts of films do you enjoy watching?
- What are the advantages/disadvantages of watching a film at the cinema? On the video?
- Why do people visit the cinema less often than before?
- What is an Oscar?

Vocabulary:
share – zdieľať
a belief – viera (tu: názor)
an attitude – postoj
youth – mládež
compare - porovnať
choice – výber, voľba
facility – zariadenie
performance - predstavenie
different kinds  of performance – rôzne druhy predstavení
book tickets – objednať lístky
in advance – vopred
take place – konať sa
offer - ponúkať
cloakroom šatňa
attendant – uvádzač v divadle
audience - obecenstvo
applaud – tlieskať
curtain – opona
a standing ovation – búrlivý potlesk (diváci sa postavia a tlieskajú)
exhibition - výstava
half an hour – pol hodiny
an adventurous novel – dobrodružný román
hero – hrdina
each other – navzájom, jeden druhého
to fall in love – zamilovať sa
to break up – rozísť sa
to commit a suicide – spáchať samovraždu
invention - vynález
recently – nedávno
a schoolmate - spolužiak
to worry about (something) – báť sa, strachovať sa (o niečo)
provide – zaobstarať, zabezpečiť
an actor - herec
well - dobre
I was glad – bol som rád
cartoon films – kreslené filmy
prefer – uprednostňovať
what sort of – aký druh