“Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser will meet with arts leaders in all 50 states and Puerto Rico over the next year, he said, beginning with visits to New York, Kalamazoo, Mich., Indianapolis and six other cities in the next two months. Since February, the center’s ‘Arts in Crisis’ initiative [www.artsincrisis.org] has offered emergency planning advice for fundraising, budgeting, marketing or other strategies as box office revenues decline, along with donations and endowment income.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
A Pina Bausch Naysayer Eulogizes Her Work
Alastair Macaulay: “What is scarcely diminished by Ms. Bausch’s death is the art of dance. There were good dance moments in her work, but they were usually of secondary interest and choreographically of no lasting import. Her big-scale dance episodes were mainly wild and vehement forms of not quite coherent expressionism. Another strange component of Ms. Bausch’s dance style was bad ballet. The way her performers would make a point of forcing themselves to do adagios, turns and jumps … was part of the extraordinary masochism she often placed onstage.”
Jude Law/Donmar Hamlet Headed To New York
“That collective ‘oooh’ you just heard from Broadway is the sound of theatergoers whose solid (or sullied) flesh has melted and resolved itself into a dew after learning that Jude Law is headed their way.”
Met Opera Strikes Money-Saving Agreement With Stagehands
“The Metropolitan Opera and stagehands’ union Local One have struck a deal, postponing a promised salary increase this summer in exchange for an extra year on the current contract, with the raise to come a year from now.”
Ezra Merkin Sells His Rothkos And Giacomettis
“Bombarded by lawsuits accusing him of fraud” – his hedge funds lost $2.4 billion in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme – “Merkin and his wife have arranged to sell their impressive collection of paintings by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, as well as some valuable sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, according to legal papers filed Tuesday. An anonymous buyer has agreed to pay $310 million for the trove” – money that will go into a victim compensation fund.
After 17 Years, Mamet’s Oleanna Will Finally Play Broadway
“The revival of David Mamet’s 1992 play, starring Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman and directed by Doug Hughes, opened at the Mark Taper Forum on June 5 to largely positive reviews. It will open at the John Golden Theater on Oct. 11. … Oleanna had its world premiere in May 1992 in Cambridge, Mass., around the time of the he-said/she-said Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings … [and] premiered off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre the same year.”
Meanwhile, The Little Mermaid Is Leaving Broadway
“Ariel and her underwater friends have officially run out of air. Producers … announced today that the musical will end its run Aug. 30 after 685 performances and 50 previews. A national tour is set to begin in fall 2010. Based on the 1989 Disney animated film, The Little Mermaid opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in January 2008 to scathing reviews.”
Vibe Magazine Abruptly Shuts Down
The soul/hip-hop equivalent of Rolling Stone revealed its demise without warning on Tuesday. “In a memo to staff members announcing the closure, Steve Aaron, chief of the Vibe Media Group, wrote that for months, the company tried in vain to either find new investors or ‘to restructure the huge debt on our small company.'”
No More Vibe? Not So Fast, Says Quincy Jones
The music mogul, who founded Vibe in 1993, says, “I’m trying to buy my magazine back now. … They just messed my magazine all up, but I’m gonna get it back. You better believe it, I’m’a take it online because print and all that stuff is over.”
Always Look On The Bright Side: The Life Of Brian, No Longer Banned In Glasgow
“When [the Monty Python film] was released 30 years ago it was described as a motion picture destined to offend nearly two-thirds of the civilised world and severely annoy the other third. In 1980, Glasgow councillors agreed and refused to allow it the 15 certificate agreed by the British Board of Film Censors. Instead they insisted it could only be shown as an X-rated adult movie, resulting in it never being screened in the city.”