Gag orders, secrecy, defensiveness. Boston Ballet’s leadership prefers to conduct its business outside the glare of public scrutiny, writes one reporter. – Boston Herald
Author: Douglas McLennan
ANOTHER NEW DANCE COMPANY
It’s taken 11 years to put it together, but former New York City Ballet star Suzanne Farrell’s new 19-member company debuted at last week’s Balanchine Festival at the Kennedy Center. “Reviews of her company have been generally rapturous, a two-week Kennedy Center engagement is already set for next fall, and a related tour is being planned.” – Los Angeles Times
- REVIEW of Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center. Los Angeles Times 09/19/00
STOLEN MONET
Monet’s 1882 painting “Beach in Pourville” has been stolen from the Polish National Museum. Thieves cut the canvas from its frame and replaced it with a copy which was discovered Tuesday. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)
DESIGN SUCCESS
“Half the towns in Europe now dream of building a modern masterpiece like the Bilbao Guggenheim. Amazingly, sedate Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, achieved one 65 years ago. The De La Warr Pavilion is a masterpiece twice over. First because of its supremely elegant design by Europe’s leading Expressionist architect, Erich Mendelsohn, and secondly because it still functions almost exactly as intended – as a highly flexible community and arts centre, thronged with people all day, with a theatre playing to packed audiences almost every evening.” – The Sunday Times (UK)
OF THE PEOPLE
The community public art movement started 33 years ago in Chicago. “It is art where art is unexpected. And, more, it is art that is subversive. An art that undercuts expectations about creativity, ownership and power. An art that is rooted not in a fashionable world of galleries and collectors and appraisers and museums, but in neighborhoods, often poor neighborhoods, and in the people who live there.” – Chicago Tribune
FUNDING STORIES
California developer gives the Smithsonian $80 million to refurbish the National Museum of American History. “The museum should talk about who we are. Sometimes it is easy to forget how we started, who made the country. I hope we can put something here to inspire people to chase the American dream.” – Washington Post
THE FRIDA KAHLO STORY
“Julie Taymor is negotiating to direct Salma Hayek in the Miramax biopic ‘Frida Kahlo’. Antonio Banderas and Ashley Judd have already agreed to appear in supporting roles, and Edward Norton in a cameo.” – Variety
IT’S ABOUT TIME
For the first time in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 125-year-old history, a black actor has been cast in the role of an English monarch: 24 -year-old David Oyelowo will play the title role in the upcoming “Henry VI Parts I, II, and III.” – BBC
TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?
- After two decades of underfunding, Britain’s regional theatres were promised a £37 million rescue package from the Arts Council of England (to be paid out between 2002 and ’04). But “there is a general acceptance that regional theatre must reinvent itself. [It’s] at a crossroads, a crossroads littered with signs pointing in different directions.” – The Telegraph (UK)
THE GENIUS ECLIPSED
The revolution that was Michel Fokine – and then eclipsed. “Before Fokine, choreographer, set designer, costumer and composer each worked in isolation on a dance; Fokine set about bringing these arts together.” The onset of Nijinsky helped prematurely end Fokine’s career at age 34. – New Statesman