“A meeting of Australia’s arts and cultural ministers in Adelaide … has seen a major overhaul of the way the Major Performing Arts sector is funded through the Australia Council for the Arts, and contemporary circus company Circa – whose Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz once described the system as a ‘protectorate of the privileged’ – welcomed into the fold of Major Performing Arts companies.” – Limelight (Australia)
Author: Matthew Westphal
Stella Abrera To Retire From ABT
“Ms. Abrera, 41, joined Ballet Theater in 1996. Five years later she was promoted from the corps de ballet to the rank of soloist. A serious injury in 2008 made further advancement difficult, but she fought her way back to health and was made a principal dancer in 2015. Ms. Abrera, who was promoted on the same day as Misty Copeland, became the company’s first Filipino-American principal.” – The New York Times
Confronting the MoMA Monster: How Its Rehang Lynches the Collection
How do I not love the Museum of Modern Art’s reinstallation of its permanent collection in it expanded, renovated galleries? Let me count the ways. – Lee Rosenbaum
Solomon Volkov on Stalin and Shostakovich
On Stalin: “People underestimate the level of control that Stalin maintained. I once tried to count the number of people in the arts that Stalin controlled personally – it was close to one thousand. This was Stalin’s habit.”
On Shostakovich: “I wouldn’t dare to record him [in an interview]. He was mortally afraid of a microphone.” – Joseph Horowitz
Recent Listening: “New” Ones By Anne Phillips And Roger Kellaway
Until recently, it may have seemed that the singer and songwriter Anne Phillips had resigned as a performer. She had not. Coincidentally, one of her colleagues on her most recent album, pianist Roger Kellaway, has a new disc of his own. – Doug Ramsey
The twenty-five record albums that changed my life (5)
After watching Leonard Bernstein’s “Bach Transmogrified” Young People’s Concert (back when I was a young person), I went to Smalltown USA’s local music store the very next day hoping to find a recording of one miraculous piece. I did, and I’ve been listening to it ever since. – Terry Teachout
Russell Thomas is much more than a black tenor. Now, he’s tackling ‘Otello’ and the field’s stereotypes.
“‘I am not an Otello,’ Thomas says … [Yet] suddenly, it seems that Otello is all anybody wants to hear from him. … The problem [is] that there are very few tenors, white or black, who are able to sing the role. Thomas, now, is one of them, and the opera world is eager to seize on him, not only as an Otello but also as a representative of the diversity that the field claims to be desperately seeking.” – The Washington Post
Goose Gone Wild: A New Video Game Lets You Be An Angry Waterfowl Running Amok
Untitled Goose Game “sees you play as a single-minded goose making her terrible way through a village. Your palette of interactions is limited yet sufficient: you can grasp at objects, flap your wings, or honk. Through this trinity, you terrorize the villagers, partly in pursuit of a goal that is revealed only in the game’s final moments, and partly just for the sheer hell of it.” Simon Parkin makes the case that this game is just the thing for a time of moral crisis. – The New Yorker
There’s A New Dark Horse Contender For Best Ballet Company In South America
In 2010, Argentine dancer and former ABT principal Julio Bocca was named artistic director of Uruguay’s flagship company, the Ballet Nacional del Sodre. Since then, under Bocca and successor Igor Yebra, what was once a small, poorly attended troupe has become a dynamo: it has increased the number of rehearsals and performances, tours within the country and abroad, and sells more than 100,000 tickets a year in a country of only 3.3 million people. – Yahoo! (AFP)
American Theatre’s New Hot Topic: Recovery And Sobriety
“With overdoses at troubling heights and recovery no longer a sotto-voce secret, a new wave of plays dealing with the realities of rehab and the challenges of sobriety have started to emerge, often created by playwrights who have dealt with such problems themselves. And part of their mission, the writers say, is to destigmatize these struggles.” – The New York Times