“Dudley Williams is still dancing onstage at 65. Having joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1964, Mr. Williams is the longest active member of the company, perhaps one of the longest active professional dancers anywhere.”
Month: December 2003
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“This was a year in which the publishing industry kept its literati tendencies in check and infused a Hollywood-style razzle-dazzle into contests and other promotions intended to nudge books into at least a glimmer of the popular culture spotlight. With book sales down from last year, publishers are being forced to abandon their high-brow position above the fray and dive right in with movies, TV and other competing forms of popular culture.”
Rijksmuseum Closes For Renovation – Foreign Visitors Mourn
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is closing for renovations for five years. This will have a big impact abroad. “British visitors are crucial to the museum’s finances, which are more perilous since privatisation of the Dutch museum sector eight years ago. Britons and Americans each contribute 25% of its roughly million visitors a year, followed by the Japanese and French – with Dutch visitors trailing a long way down the list.”
Kirov’s Dangerous New Direction
“Questions about the Kirov Ballet’s direction and management — and their effect on the company’s good name — have dogged the troupe for months.” One of the company’s star ballerina’s defected to the Bolshoi in August, and Artistic and General Director Valery Gergiev says that he is planning a major “restructuring” of the Kirov’s leadership team. All the uncertainty is adding to a growing sense of fear and unrest inside the Kirov, which has struggled for years to make the transition from a state-sponsored troupe to a privately funded ballet company competing on the international stage.
Pittsburgh Symphony Sued For Age Discrimination
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is being sued by its former ticket manager, who claims that she was the victim of age discrimination when she was dismissed without cause at the age of 60, and replaced by a 30-something employee who made a lower salary. The plaintiff “is seeking back pay and benefits, compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees.”
The Composer Who Didn’t Kill Mozart
Ask your average classical music buff how Mozart died, and most will probably answer that he was murdered (or at least driven to the grave) by his jealous rival, Antonio Salieri. This theory has been around for centuries, and was firmly embedded in the modern consciousness by Milos Forman’s 1984 film, Amadeus. But the truth is that Salieri had very little motive to kill off Mozart, and there is nothing but the thinnest anecdotal evidence to link him to the master’s death. Furthermore, Salieri was hardly the hack composer that Amadeus made him out to be, and a newly revived interest in his operatic work is sweeping across Europe.
‘Storefront Theater’ Fights City Hall
Chicago is teeming with theater groups, and in recent years, a lively subculture of theaters performing in semi-converted grocery stores and abandoned warehouses has sprung up, to the delight of audiences and critics. But many of the performance spaces are not even remotely up to city building codes, and “2003 may be remembered as a year not unlike 1999, a year in which the city cracked down, hard, on small theaters operating without a license… Unless the city streamlines the process by which a small theater can open its doors legally and affordably, 2003 may be remembered as the year the pendulum swung too far – and Chicago theater never quite recovered in full.”
Melbourne’s Building Boom – Slums In Waiting?
Melbourne has been on a building boom, luring thousands of new residents downtown with a wave of new apartment construction. This is slowing growth of the suburbs. But there’s a downside. “We are building what will become ghettos of poor quality, cheap, badly built, high-maintenance houses in the sky. These towers will form an urban and social blight within 10 years that will scar the tissue of the city. They are badly built and unsuited for renovation. They will most likely be demolished when their investment use-by date is up.”
Dancing For Two
Dancers are more or less expected to exhibit a flawless body type at all times, and dancers who do not conform to the classic “look” are frequently nudged out of the spotlight, or out of the profession entirely. So when a star dancer at a major American ballet company chooses to continue performing while pregnant, as Julie Kent of the American Ballet Theater did this fall, it is a big story. Kent says it was an easy decision: “If I had chosen not to dance, I think I would have been wondering why — you’re not injured, you’re not sick, and there’s nothing that different about you except your waistline’s growing.”
A ‘Pocket Of Classical Resistance’ In The Deep South
“The defensive posture of classical music these days has been much argued. But in the face of folding orchestras, diminishing finances, vanishing record sales and retracting audiences, there exist stubborn and imaginative pockets of resistance determined, for example, to put string instruments into the hands and ears of children. The University of South Carolina, now a model for the rest of the country, is doing work here that may at best keep the violin a mainstream instrument and at worst provide it a permanent niche. It will not be allowed to become an antique.”