Author: Douglas McLennan

DANCE THIS

Where are the new choreographers coming from? “Ballet has recently drawn on modern-dance choreographers for the new works it needs to sell a season. But some new ballet choreographers are developing from within companies like Dance Theater of Harlem.” – New York Times

MORRIS MAJOR

London’s Soho Theatre, founded in 1968, was one of the city’s first fringe venues and launched the careers of several famous playwrights. But by the early 1990s, the company had lost its way, not to mention its audience – until Abigail Morris took the helm as artistic director. “In just eight years the Soho has gone from bust to boom, and Morris, whose only previous experience was running a feminist theatre company in the late 1980s, has become a major player in Britain’s new-play culture.” – The Guardian

IS THE REBUILT GLOBE AUTHENTIC?

London’s rebuilt Globe Theatre has become one of the city’s leading tourist attractions. But an Elizabethan scholar contends that the building is not an authentic replica of the old Globe, as the theatre claims.  “Joy Hancox, who looks a bit like a British Angela Lansbury, has for the last several years waged a kind of crusade, contending that she holds the key to unlock a complex architectural mystery that has the Globe at its center. Indeed, she is beginning to convince others that the new theater is not the precise replica its designers have claimed, and that it is only a matter of time before it will have to be torn down and rebuilt.” – Architecture Magazine

COSTLY LITIGATION

The Seattle Art Museum is fined by the court for causing unnecessary litigation expenses for  New York’s Knoedler Gallery, whom the museum is suing over a Matisse that the gallery sold to a SAM donor. The painting later turned out to have been stolen by the Nazis, and after deliberation, the Seattle museum returned the painting to the original owners’ heirs. – The Art Newspaper

LICENSE TO PLAY

After extensive negotiations with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the U.S. Justice Department agreed Tuesday to revise a 1941 court order regarding the licensing of music for performance and broadcast (including over the internet). ASCAP currently licenses 50% of all musical performances in the U.S. – Nando Times

PERIOD INSTRUMENT CHIC

“With such high-profile modern instrumentalists and institutions dabbling in – one can’t quite say embracing – the period instrument movement, it’s clear that the once daunting walls between period and modern performers have tumbled down (though there are holdouts like violinist Pinchas Zukerman, who describes period performance as “s—“).” – National Post (Canada)

“ENHANCING” OPERA

Last year the New York City Opera installed a “sound enhancement” system. After a season to get used to it, how did it work? “The results, to these ears at least, were troubling. On some nights, the opera sounded more or less normal (more when seated in the First Ring, less when seated mid-orchestra). On other nights, one heard odd echoes, bizarre imbalances between stage and pit, voices losing what one thought was natural focus, strange thumps and gurgles. After a while a curious psychological affliction set in: the tendency to listen to the sound rather than the music. A little knowledge can be a distracting thing.” – Opera News

COMMON TONGUE

English is becoming the common language of education worldwide. “The development is unprecedented. Not even Latin, the European scholarly language for almost two millennia, or Greek in the ancient world before it, had the same reach. For the first time, one language, English – a bastard mixture of old French dialects and the tongues of several Germanic tribes living in what is now England – is becoming the lingua franca of business, popular culture, and higher education across the globe.” – Chronicle of Higher Education 09/05/00