“This year, like every other, the big ballet spring season brings to America… a series of 19th-century classics almost all attributed chiefly or partly to the choreographer Marius Petipa (1818-1910). The list is short. It varies little. Yet most of these ballets, as staged today, are laden with cliché; and much of what now bears the Petipa brand name has actually been rechoreographed by his successors.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Embarrassing Moments In Ballet
“One woman recounted her awful experience of having her skirt fall off mid-performance. Another in the class – a former male principal with a thick French accent – told us about a time when a faulty lift left him holding his female partner between his legs ‘like a piece of dental floss.'”
The Guardian‘s New Rules Of Audience Behaviour
In response to the contretemps between Bianca Jagger (blithely taking flash photos during a performance) and critic Mark Shelton (who chewed Jagger out, in person and then in print), The Guardian‘s arts writers conferred and came up with some sorely needed up-to-date guidelines. (Will the people who need them pay attention?)
Regifting Is Officially OK (Research Says So!)
“Regifting is often presented as synonymous with tackiness, but the taboo on the practice is partly the result of a misunderstanding: Recipients of gifts think the givers are far more offended by regifting than they truly are. Givers assume that they’ve passed on ‘title’ to the gift and that recipients can do what they wish with it. Receivers, meanwhile, feel constrained by the giver’s original wishes.”
New Art Is Gradually Becoming Less Appropriate(d)
Artists who appropriate images (those not in the public domain) have been facing ever-increasing legal headaches. (Exhibit A: Shepard Fairey.) Appropriators often cite the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons as justification. It turns out that those artists may have begun as copyright outlaws, but they ultimately decided that securing rights was more than worth the trouble.
Is ‘Theatre Hacking’ All That Bad? Maybe Not
Kelly Nestruck reviews the controversy over Olivier Choinière’s “hacking” of a Molière production in Montreal (via recorded commentary over headphones) and suggests that – far from being a “rape” (as the director of the Molière put it) – this could get interesting …
Futuro: The House Design That Really Did Look Like A (1960s) Spaceship
“Before the recession and the return of architectural probity, the phrase ‘like an alien spaceship’ was all over architecture journalism like a cheap suit. … Frank Gehry? Future Systems? Zaha Hadid? Yep, spaceship-mongers. Well there’s only one building where that simile is inescapable, and that’s the Futuro house, designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in 1968.”
Spanish Leftists Accuse Santiago Calatrava Of ‘Bleeding Valencia Dry’
Opponents of the region’s conservative-led government have launched a website – called “calatravatelaclava (“Calatrava bleeds you dry”) – on which they criticize what they see as the starchitect’s exorbitant design fees for Valencia’s futuristic City of Arts and Sciences.
NY City Ballet May Be Getting Too Pricey For Its Summer Hosts In Saratoga
“As the cost of hosting a two-week New York City Ballet season approaches the 2008 price of a three-week season, Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s outgoing chairman this morning hinted that the organization may need to turn to other ballet companies to fill next year’s season.”
Tampa Bay Arts Center’s New Chief Has Big Plans – $20M Worth
“Ruth Eckerd Hall has a new chief executive who likes to think big. In his first major fundraising effort, Zev Buffman seeks not only to upgrade the popular performing arts center but also to energize a stalled project to renovate the downtown Capitol Theatre.”