“The first black principal of the Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta was adamant about not being typecast. He has been a pioneer in the extension of colour-blind casting from opera to classical ballet. ‘The fact that I’m the first black Romeo – and I make people forget it – is a big achievement,’ he says. ‘If they’d judged me for my looks, and put me in a box, the world would never have seen the Romeo that lies beneath me … In New York there are black dancers and their aspirations are constantly killed.’ Yet in his view, recruitment of black people into classical ballet, as opposed to contemporary dance, remains a problem.”
Blog
London Symphony Goes Young
In search of building audiences for the future, the London Symphony Orchestra targets babies…
Why Aren’t Books And Culture On American TV Or Radio?
“In America, when people advocate gutting government support of PBS and NPR, which Congress tried again this year despite President Bush’s mild opposition, they often cite cable TV and talk radio as the marketplace’s answers to any audience needs. That’s hardly the case when one considers what laughably passes for books-and-arts coverage on cable or talk radio. I’ve detected no such programming on commercial radio, except when another culture-war distraction flares up. And there’s precious little on cable.”
Needed: A Map Of The Academic World
“It is now relatively easy to produce and distribute content. But it also proves a challenge to find one’s way around in a zone that is somehow expanding, crowded, and borderless, all at once. With such difficulties in mind, then, I want to propose a kind of public-works project. The time has come to create a map. In fact, it is hard to imagine things can continue much longer without one. At very least, we need a Web site giving users some idea what landmarks already exist in the digital space of academe.”
“Rings” Scores Hit With Orchestra Audiences
The hot work on the orchestra circuit these days? Howard Shore’s symphony made up of music from the “Lord of the Rings” movies. “Shore’s two-hour distillation of his epic, 11-hour soundtrack to the film trilogy has been making the rounds, not always endearing critics, but delighting the people who matter most. It received its 100th performance over the weekend in San Francisco’s Davies Hall.”
Chinese Investors Drive Up Art Prices
“Chinese investors are beginning to collect contemporary Chinese art as they accumulate wealth. Oil paintings, statues and other works created by artists since the 1980s used to sell for no more than $1,000 a piece a decade ago. Today, they can go for $600,000 or more. Sales at the latest autumn and spring contemporary art auctions in Hong Kong more than doubled to HK$276 million ($35.5 million) from a year earlier.”
London’s Frieze Fair Bans Print Dealers
“The organisers of Frieze have sent a letter to print publishers such as Alan Cristea, Paragon Press and Two Palms saying that “a certain category” of exhibitor will not be admitted this year. The reasons given are that “prints don’t look good in a fair”, and that the dealers do not have “primacy of representation” of the artists they show.”
Vatican To Collect Modern Art
The Vatican Museum houses one of the world’s great art collections, but it doesn’t own much contemporary art. Now the Vatican says it’ll start collecting modern art. “The Vatican’s museums are among the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with three million visitors seeing its art, sculptures, tapestries and maps every year.”
Is There Any Other Theatre Like Chicago’s Steppenwolf?
“Most regional theaters would have hesitated to produce a single one of the works in the current Steppenwolf season (which can now be viewed as a whole). Steppenwolf willingly took seven doses of box office poison in the name of its art. Back to back. Especially because it took an inevitable and fiscally sobering toll on subscription levels, it’s an accomplishment worthy of note and admiration. But the anniversary season also reveals something about how much this theater has changed under artistic director Martha Lavey.”
A Grand Plan To Reconsider Shostakovich
“Valery Gergiev, the director of the Mariinsky (formerly Kirov) Theatre, has come up with a grand plan to rebut these fatuities, commanding, on the centenary of the composer’s birth, a fabulous spread of Shostakovich’s work to be set before the world’s cities. All 15 Shostakovich symphonies are being performed, under Gergiev’s own baton (at the Barbican), along with all his less well known operas and ballets, in a celebration that the conductor hopes will convince the world to see the composer differently.”