“Far from the macho, heroic projects that were the hallmark of the first generation of earth artists, – some of whom, like Michael Heizer, have spent close to 40 years moving tons of dirt to create massive, remote sculptural environments – ‘leave no trace,’ or at least, leave an ecologically enhancing trace, are the watchwords of many artists working in the field.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Strapped UCLA Considers Shuttering Arts Library
“Facing drastic budget reductions this year, UCLA has begun implementing cuts across its departments to make up for an estimated $131-million shortfall. Among the proposed victims is one of Los Angeles’ largest cultural resources – the arts library on the Westwood campus.”
Dance (The Joffrey, No Less) Returns To Ohio’s Blossom Fest After Two-Decade Absence
“The last time the Cleveland Orchestra accompanied ballet from the pit at Blossom, in performance with Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Ballet, it was 1984. (The Joffrey last performed at Blossom in 1979.) Reopening the pit after 25 years and preparing the pavilion to host ballet again has been no easy matter.”
Glimmers Of Hope For New York City Opera
Anthony Tommasini: “In February, when [George Steel] took over, even those most hopeful about his potential wondered whether any manager, let alone one with so little experience in opera, could stabilize the tottering company. … [Yet] Mr. Steel’s steadiness and youthful enthusiasm (he is a boyish 43) seem to have paid off.”
Budget Slashed At Fresno Art Museum
“The Fresno Art Museum this week is cutting its budget by a third, laying off a still undetermined number of its 15 employees and declaring furloughs for those who remain. The museum also is reducing the number of days it will be open.”
LACMA Stays Mum In Face Of Grassroots Campaign To Restore Its Film Series
“They’ve written e-mails. They’ve organized a petition. They even got the attention of director Martin Scorsese, who has sent a letter to LACMA protesting the decision to shutter the museum’s weekend film program.” The group “Save Film at LACMA said that the museum has corresponded with them, but that ‘so far we’ve seen form letters and boilerplates filled with double-speak’.”
Fred And Ginger: They Embodied Dance-As-Romantic-Love Like Nobody Else
Alastair Macaulay: “Dancing together, Astaire and Rogers expressed many of love’s moods: courtship and seduction, repartee and responsiveness, teasing and challenge, the surprise of newfound harmony, the happy recapture of bygone romance, the giddy exhilaration of high spirits and intense mutual accord, the sense of a perfect balance of power, the tragedy of parting and, not least, the sense of love as role playing.”
Britain Now Has A Dance Czar – Does It Need One?
“This week … the Secretary of State for Health, announced that he had appointed the redoubtable Arlene Phillips as a ‘dance champion’, charged with getting the nation up on its flabby legs and into dance classes.” Yet “she would be the first to acknowledge that the nation is already in the grip of something like dance fever.”
Theatres Going Dark (Literally) At Edinburgh Fringe
“At this year’s fringe, dark theatres are something of a subgenre” – with an adaptation of the Iliad acted out in complete blackness, “Don Quixote performed to a blindfolded audience and His Ghostly Heart, a new one-act drama by Skins writer Ben Schiffer, played with the lights out” and a couple in bed dimly visible.
Are Human Facial Expressions Universal? (Probably Not.)
“Facial expressions, Charles Darwin argued … are a universal window into emotion. But new research challenges that notion, showing that east Asian people struggle to recognise facial expressions that western Caucasians attribute to fear and disgust. By focusing on eyes and brows, Asians miss subtle cues conveyed via the mouth.”