“In ballet, the muscles on the inside part of your legs work, but here you use the muscles on the outside of your legs. There’s a lot of pressure on the knees, which you don’t get in classical ballet, and you dance practically barefoot, which is also unusual. Lots of falling movements – when we were rehearsing we were covered in bruises, all beaten and battered!”
Author: Matthew Westphal
You Know Who Else Is Worried About The Met Opera Negotiations? Cinema Owners
“Movie theater owners throughout the world are fretting over the possibility of a lockout at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Met’s live broadcasts into theaters on Saturdays have generated an estimated $300 million since Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute was beamed into cinemas in 2006.”
Is This America’s Ideal Theater Company?
“So often in my conversations with artistic directors I’m dismayed by their willingness to accept the status quo. If mindless musicals are what draws in the crowds, then mindless musical it will be … Box office becomes confused with artistic merit, making it easier to let fiscal expediency dictate taste.” But Charles McNulty has found one house that’s getting it right.
Multidisciplinary Public Art Event Actually Wins TV Ratings (It Was Amazingly Popular In Person, Too)
Lumenocity, a collaboration between the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Ballet, and video artists Brave Berlin – projecting intricate images onto the façade of Music Hall – was that media market’s top-rated TV broadcast last Saturday. And all 42,500 free tickets available for the three-night run were snapped up in 12 minutes. (includes video)
So Cincinnati’s Lumenocity Was A Massive Success – What Next?
“The hard part now may be turning a moment into a movement. Will the tens of of thousands of people who watched the show help create a cohesive community, one that acts and spends and advocates for the arts? One that celebrates place? We may be about to find out.” (includes video)
Here’s What Black Ballet Dancers Really Go Through
“Racism is less about what happens to you and more about what doesn’t happen to you.” As ABT’s Misty Copeland prepares to dance the White and Black Swans for the first time, she and several of her dark-skineed colleagues (including Carlos Acosta) talk about the challenges they still face (yes, including hate mail and physical threats) and the progress that’s being made.
FringeNYC – Not Your Father’s Fringe Festival? Well, It Is Now
“Common sense might suggest that artists well ensconced in their careers would look askance at FringeNYC’s no-frills, DIY ethic … But to Ms. Prince and other longtime grown-ups, the chance to present a show cheaply in New York is a potent lure, even if each production has only 15 minutes to put up its set and 15 minutes to strike it afterward.”
The Metropolitan Opera House Is Too Damn Big (And Opera In The Entire U.S. Is Messed Up Because Of It)
Joseph Horowitz, looking back at what U.S. opera houses were before the 20th century (smaller, more eclectic, and more popular), argues that the size of the Met’s auditorium, along with the company’s outsize influence, has led to “a presiding notion of opera giving priority to big voices hurled into big spaces, singing words in foreign tongues set by deceased European composers … a notion of ‘grand opera’ that is increasingly unsustainable.”
Peter Sculthorpe, Australia’s Leading Composer, Dead At 85
“For many, Sculthorpe defined what it meant to be an Australian composer and defined a uniquely Australian sound. … He would become our most acclaimed contemporary composer, admired for pieces like his 1960s series Irkanda – ‘scrub country’ – … and later work such as Kakadu (1988), Memento Mori (1993) and the Rites of Passage, originally commissioned for the opening of the Sydney Opera House.”
Robert H. Ellsworth, 85, Major Dealer Of Chinese Art
Said former Nelson-Atkins Museum director Marc Wilson, “He became the No. 1 purveyor of things Asian, especially objects, in the Western world. When it came to objects, he was unbeatable.”