Author: Douglas McLennan

OPERA WITHOUT SINGING

John Moran’s “operas” stretch the form. Not just for the odd subject matter, or that the pieces are performed by theatre rather than opera companies. In Moran’s operas, the performers don’t sing. “What they lip-sync is mostly speech, from which Mr. Moran teases melody by repeating phrases and fragments until the shapes of their inflections are as familiar as what is being said.” – New York Times

DRIVING EDWARD VILLELLA

In the 15 years since he founded it, Edward Villella has turned Miami City Ballet into a respectable, successful company. “But Villella, though exhausted by years of overwork and in failing health – he has a bleeding ulcer and underwent his third major hip operation last May – keeps pushing toward new peaks. It’s almost as if the closer he gets to the mountaintop, the harder he drives himself – and the more frustrated he becomes at not reaching it.” – Miami Herald

SAVING THE NEA

  • NEA chairman Bill Ivey on the NEA’s travails in the past decade: “Our supporters in Congress, in the administration, and around the country in state arts agencies and arts organizations have become a lot more sophisticated and organized around their advocacy efforts. Some of that came from the need to protect the agency when it was under attack a few years ago. In the long run, I think we’ll look back and say [those] attacks were actually beneficial to the Endowment.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 11/18/00

ART OF FAITH

An Australian prize for religious art begs the question – just what does “religious” art mean today? “There are plenty of examples of modern religious art, but not too many that come bounding to mind. In part, of course, this is because of the loosening of religion’s grip on the modern psyche. But, even more, it is because modern art put a lot of time, effort and rhetoric into becoming a religion of its own.” – Sydney Morning Herald

THE HUMAN BODY

“Though nudes are one of the most coherent traditions in photography of the last century, a serious public discussion about the motif of the human body, which has been used extensively in all forms of communication and especially in advertising, could not take place in such a codified area.” But in the last century, medical-technical photography, which goes from X-ray images and video probes to the screening and scanning of single cells it has delivered increasingly spectacular and at the same time abstract views of the human body. – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung