Author: Matthew Westphal

What It Takes To Tour Politically-Charged Works To Places Where The Message May Not Be Welcome

“Touring with a message is not for the faint of heart. From considerations about how to market the work to concerns about safety, touring to cities where, in general, that message may not be so welcome requires companies to figure out how they’ll respond to opposition. Yet many artists find that venturing away from their typical audiences offers an unparalleled opportunity to raise awareness, spark conversations and, in the best cases, even change minds.” – Dance Magazine

How To Neutralize The Ugly Chinese Stereotypes In ‘Nutcracker”s ‘Tea’ Dance

Phil Chan And Georgina Pazcoguin have become the go-to advisors on this subject since then-NY City Ballet chief Peter Martins asked them to address it in the company’s Balanchine Nutcracker. “We’ve discovered three areas in the divertissement,” they write, “where creative questioning can help productions become more respectful to Chinese culture, while remaining faithful to the artistic visions of the past.” – Dance Magazine

Orlando’s Soon-To-Open Performing Arts Center Is Finally Settling Rent Dispute With The Groups It’s Being Built For

“The Orlando Ballet signed a contract with the [Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts] on Tuesday morning after protracted negotiations that saw accusations of unreasonable demands amid high-profile social-media and mass-mailing campaigns to sway public opinion. Opera Orlando and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra are still in discussions, an arts-center spokeswoman said, but ‘we anticipate signing agreements with them soon.'” – Orlando Sentinel

Robert Provine, America’s Great Scholar Of Laughter And Hiccups, Dead At 76

“[A neuroscientist,] Dr. Provine embodied the spirit of the popular scientist, one who takes his or her pursuits out of the laboratory and into the public square, from university libraries to public libraries, and from lecture halls to radio and television. He was the author of two books for popular audiences, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (2000) and Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond (2012).” – The Washington Post

Why 120-Frames-Per-Second Ruins The Cinema Experience

“Our suspension of disbelief — the very thing that we need for the art form to work — dissipates. The smoothness and clarity of the image doesn’t make us feel like we’re sitting in a room with the characters from Gemini Man, it makes us feel like we’re suddenly sitting on the set with the actors from Gemini Man, watching them struggle through their lines.” What’s more, explains Bilge Ebiri, Ang Lee, who loves 120 fps tech so much, “is possibly the major director least suited to trying to make high frame rates work.” – Vulture

One Of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms Is At The Center Of A $14 Million Lawsuit

“The lawsuit [filed in Miami-Dade County] concerns a group of works that Miami dealer Inigo Philbrick and his gallery are allegedly withholding from Fine Art Partners (FAP), a Germany-based financial services company specialized in the art market.” That set of artworks includes pieces by Donald Judd, Christopher Wool, and Wade Guyton, as well as Kusama’s All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins. – ARTnews

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between The World And Me’ Is Now A Play, And It’s About To Tour The U.S

One of the first things that Kamilah Forbes did when she became executive producer at the Apollo Theater in Harlem was contact Coates, an old friend from college, and ask to adapt his award-winning memoir. “Book reading can be so solitary; we read our books by ourselves, and unless you’re part of a book club, do you really engage within the topics or in the actual writing or primarily the topic that the book discusses?” Forbes said. “The question was about how can we use theatre as this collective form of communication to have the broader conversation with the book.” – American Theatre

Less Than A Decade Ago, The Detroit Symphony Seemed Doomed. Now, It’s Thriving

On top of a declining audience and debt, the orchestra had to weather a huge loss of endowment value during the Great Recession, a very bitter 2010-11 strike, and the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Now the DSO is expecting its seventh consecutive balanced budget, lower ticket prices and concerts in Detroit neighborhoods have led to a spurt of audience growth that includes students, and the orchestra made its first overseas tour in 16 years, wowing audiences in China and Japan. And much of the credit for all this good news goes to CEO Anne Parsons. – The Detroit News

Seems France Thinks ‘Salvator Mundi’ Might Still Arrive For Part Of The Louvre’s Big Leonardo 500 Show

Just last week, the French government amended the document indemnifying all loans of artwork for the exhibition to cover Salvator Mundi if it arrives anytime before the end of this year. What’s more, documents show that France was negotiating for the loan of the painting up to the last week of September. – The Art Newspaper