“Only a year ago, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s rehearsal studios at 466 W. 152nd St. were quiet. …. There were no professional dancers, only students who one day hoped to make it to the world stage. And now, after an eight-year hiatus brought on by a $2.3 million debt, the studios are alive again as DTH prepares to launch its 2012-2013 season.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
France Scraps Plan To Include Works Of Art In Wealth Tax
“In a broadside at the proposed change, France’s top museums” – including the Louvre, Versailles and the Pompidou Centre – “sent a letter to the government warning that such a move could drive historic collections out of France and wreak destruction on the art world.”
San Diego’s Old Globe Chooses Shakespeare Maven As New Artistic Director
Barry Edelstein comes to the Old Globe from New York’s Public Theater, where he was director of the Shakespeare Initiative, which included overseeing the popular Shakespeare in the Park series. And from “1998 to 2003, [he] was artistic director of New York’s Classic Stage Company, an off-Broadway house that won six Obie Awards during his tenure.”
The Guardian‘s Not The Booker Prize (A Mug) Goes To The Best Electioneer
Ewan Morrison’s Tales From the Mall won more reader votes than the next two contenders combined. But Morrison did some last-minute e-mail campaigning that prize honcho Sam Jordison found both unseemly and self-contradictory – and then he got into a weird exchange with Jordison himself.
Michael Asher, 69, Pioneering Conceptual Artist
“But unlike other artists grouped under that umbrella, his work was not fueled by political dogma as much as intelligence and curiosity: How will your art experience change if you alter a choice operating assumption, often in the form of a key architectural element?”
Why Milwaukee Ballet Did Away With The Principal-Soloist-Corps System
Artistic director Michael Pink: “I don’t subscribe to the class structure; I mean especially an organization where there’s so few dancers – if you have 25, 24 dancers, they’re all going to have to work equally well … You see the obvious people that can do those things, and I think we have less ego and less ego issues – we don’t have any issues with anybody who assumes they’re greater than anyone else, and that’s lovely.”
Actor And Author John Clive, 79
“Clive, who was the voice of an animated John Lennon in Yellow Submarine and appeared alongside Michael Caine in The Italian Job, died on Monday. His other credits include several Carry On films, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and two Pink Panther movies. … In later life, Clive went on to become a best-selling author.”
How Did Rebecca Get Derailed? Suspension Of Disbelief
Suspension of disbelief by the producers, that is. “They relied on a stranger, a nattily dressed Long Island stockbroker with no history in theater, to come up with $4.5 million … They continued to believe in him even after the stockbroker, Mark C. Hotton, announced that his lead investor had died, of malaria contracted in Africa, before he could write a $2 million check.”
Johnny Depp (Yes, The Actor) Gets His Own Imprint At HarperCollins
The imprint, called Infinitum Nihil (“nothing is forever,” and also the name of Depp’s film production company), already has several titles in the works, including a Bob Dylan biography by historian Douglas Brinkley and an unpublished novel by folk singer Woody Guthrie.
Matthew Bourne’s Designer On How They Work Together
Lez Brotherston: “Matt doesn’t come to me and say, ‘Oh, I want to have male swans’ … Matt looks at everything I draw, and one idea spins off to the next. Some of what we come up with is rubbish, and Matt changes his mind at every meeting, which can be frustrating and brilliant. But the whole thing becomes so enmeshed that we can’t remember whose idea is whose.”