Put simply, the state’s dance scene has taken a body blow. Indeed, industry leaders fear that some companies won’t recover from this crisis at all and others could come back in a weakened or reduced form. – Chicago Sun-Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Brown Paper Tickets Systems Overwhelmed, Artists And Venues Can’t Get Their Money
“The 20-year-old BPT, which has grown from a local company to an international ticket broker, handles tens of thousands of events around the world each month. But in the past few weeks, an avalanche of pandemic-related pressures swamped the company, overwhelming its systems. In a flurry of confusing event cancellations and postponements, BPT founder and president William Scott Jordan said, the company and its bank lost control of their financial machinery — together, they decided to shut down the account that paid artists and organizations.” – Seattle Times
Soooo… We Were Trying To Cut Down Our Screen Time Before This Happened. How’s It Going?
Covered in screens these past few weeks, I have noticed some positive changes. I FaceTime my friends so much that I know them better than I did before. I decided to learn what TikTok was, and I love it. I spend hours with my chin tucked into my chest and a weird smile on my face, watching. I’m using Duolingo, an app to learn languages. – The New York Times
Chinese Movie Fans Turned To Piracy Sites As Theatres Shut
China’s 70,000 theaters shut down in January amid coronavirus concerns during the weekend of the Chinese New Year, which is typically the country’s busiest moviegoing time. Piracy data company Muso released a report on Wednesday that shows how piracy has already increased in the region because of the closures. – Business Insider
Study Dance Online? Not So Fast…
“The internet may be exploding with resources for virtual classes, from top dancers teaching barre to free warm-ups courtesy of the Merce Cunningham Foundation, but in academia, teachers face many restraints. Copyright laws, federal privacy regulations, varying tech platforms and grading rubrics all make teaching dance online a challenge.” – Dance Magazine
Major Development In A Landmark Decision About Artists Rights
“At issue is the aspect of copyright law that allows authors to terminate copyright grants to publishers. The putative class action was brought by John Waite and Joe Ely, musicians who alleged that Universal Music Group routinely and systematically refuses to honor termination notices. The judge is allowing a group of plaintiffs to move forward, but not without a pretty huge caveat.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Classical Music Is Thriving As We Quarantine Ourselves
Locked out of the concert hall because of global coronavirus concerns, endangered in physical and financial terms, classical music is fighting to survive and finding more paths than ever to listeners. Part of this phenomenon is that we’re quite literally a captive audience. But another part is the odd compatibility between classical music and digital media. – Washington Post
The Music Schools That Were Quite Prepared For Distance Learning
Unlike so many other institutions, the major music schools of America were uniquely prepared to make the transition to online instruction. The fact is, they’ve been preparing for it for years by enhancing and expanding their Wi-Fi capabilities, installing and becoming adept at the use of multiple learning and communication platforms, developing and honing online teaching skills, all while working with a student body that is totally comfortable with the relationship between education and online technology. – San Francisco Classical Voice
Will LACMA’s New Building Free It Or Destroy It?
The debate here echoes similar ones going on throughout the art world. What is the purpose of the encyclopaedic museum: to present a rational version of the world in discrete categories, as they’ve functioned since the 19th century, or to challenge those hierarchies, taking into account the opening up of the canon that is taking place? – Apollo
The Culture We’re Losing Beyond The Non-Profits
Los Angeles is full of odd and quirky cultural enterprises, many of them precarious in the best of times. Mandatory closures that may extend for weeks, if not months, might end up converting temporary shutdowns into the permanent closures of some of Southern California’s most overlooked fountains of culture and history. – Los Angeles Times