“In the nation of Colombia, a dance troupe known as ‘The Body School’ is gaining widespread attention for helping members of the company to escape lives of violence and hardship.”
Month: June 2008
In Lebanon – A Struggle For Contemporary Dance
“In Lebanon, popular culture remains committed to folk forms like dabkeh and belly dance, while the middle classes – the natural audience for contemporary dance – remains emaciated after 15 years of civil war, civil unrest and migration.”
Average Network TV Viewer Is Now 50
“The five broadcast nets’ average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That’s the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago — and the first time the nets’ median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo.”
Music Industry Increasingly Gets Its Income Elsewhere
“Activities such as licensing songs, merchandising and tours, helped boost sales by 13.8% to £122m in 2007. The BPI – the British record industry body – said these deals now account for 11.4% of the income of firms.”
The Unknown (Prolific) Composer
“The Philadelphia composer created 3,000 works over 60 years – 32 symphonies, an opera, songs inspired by Lord of the Rings – but was barely known to artistic colleagues living only blocks from his apartment at 19th and Pine. His concerts were off the grid, his recordings few, his recognition level nothing remotely resembling what composers crave – and need, in order to grow.”
Real Friends Of The Barnes
“The most cogent argument for not hijacking the Barnes to Philadelphia wasn’t that it shouldn’t be changed at all, that Dr. Barnes wouldn’t approve. He has been dead for 57 years. It was that the foundation represented a rare historical artifact, whose distinctive genius loci, like that of Bartram’s Garden in Southwest Philadelphia, described a precious and irreplaceable historical context for novel innovations in art education.”
Behind China’s Classical Music Boom
“While classical musicians around the world fight for a glimmer of media attention, their counterparts in China have no trouble drawing the spotlight. Western classical music is big business, or, at least, official business.”
Standing Online (Digitally) For Those Movie Tickets
“It’s become a fact of life for New York moviegoers: If we’re catching a blockbuster on opening night, then we should probably buy our tickets before even hopping on the subway. Today, in the lobbies of most Manhattan multiplexes, the longest lines are not those of people waiting to purchase tickets, but those of people waiting to pick up prepurchased tickets from computer kiosks.”
The New Cleveland Museum Unveiled
“The reopening will mark completion of the first part of a $350 million expansion and renovation aimed at transforming the museum. By 2012, two new wings will rise to bracket the 1916 building and the 1971 education facility, joined by a huge glass atrium. The museum sees it as a project that will lift the city’s fortunes along with its own.”
Chicago Finally Honors A Tiffany Masterpiece
“In a global city where architecture is a constantly evolving art form on an ever grander scale, the Tiffany dome is more of a cherished family heirloom, one that nearly got tossed in the rubbish, but luckily escaped.”