What accounts for the huge popularity of programs such as the summer dancing on the plaza at Lincoln Center? “Dance is something you already know even if you think you don’t. Look in the street or in a schoolyard, and you will know right away if a person is sad or happy by the way they hold themselves, by the way they walk.”
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Hollywood Looks Around… And Thinks Older
Hollywood has always been obsessed with youth. “But where does that leave truly older audiences, fossils over 50 or 60 or even 70? To Hollywood these have been the perennially invisible men and women. Yet change is afoot. Some filmmakers and smaller distributors have discovered a secret society of mature moviegoers, and they have decided that this audience may actually be worth courting.”
In Mexico – A Challenge To Intellectual Firepower
In Mexico, where the term ‘intellectual’ usually connotes a person possessing mental gravitas, serious literary chops and at least a few friends in high places, intellectuals have enjoyed a degree of name-brand recognition that’s rare in all but a handful of countries — France comes to mind — at least among the educated chattering classes. Along with that acclaim, intellectuals reap other rewards: generous government stipends, cultural and academic sinecures, ambassadorships and access to those wielding power. But lately something funny has been happening on the way to the symposium. Mexico’s powerful mass media, particularly television and radio commentators, are steadily usurping intellectuals’ power to shape public opinion.”
Why Has Toronto Theatre Tanked?
“Toronto audiences have simply gotten out of the habit of going to the theatre, a trend far different from periods in the 1990s when audiences were enticed by a number of big, concurrent productions, which then lent extra vitality to mid-sized theatres and the grassroots fringe scene. Theatrical productions, particularly independent shows not included in package theatre subscriptions or unusual cases such as Rings, which needed to attract sell-out crowds to survive, are struggling to get arty, urban audiences to fill the seats.”
Turning That Flat-Screen TV Into Art
“Want to pretend you don’t have a TV? Get the Groove Tube, a low-tech way to turn a high-tech TV into a light sculpture. Designed by Seattle artist Matt Griesey, it’s a translucent box made of paper and plastic with a grid of opaque dividers that attaches to the screen with suction cups. When the TV (or computer) is on, the Groove Tube averages the picture pixels and creates an ever-changing display of colors in each square. Just turn down the sound and turn up the stereo.”
Theatre Aspen Doubles In Size, Goes Year-Round
In only a year Theatre Aspen (Colorado) has doubled in size. And the growth will be even steeper. “That three-year plan to open a $10 million performing-arts institute for Theatre Aspen has now grown into more of a $50 million project that will include other local arts organizations.”
Colorado Shakespeare Honcho Moves On
Dick Devin is leaving after 17 seasons as director of the Colorado Shakespeare Fesival. “Shakespeare may have written only 37 plays, but Devin will have seen 107 stagings and overseen 68 by season’s end. Way back in 1975, the CSF had become only the seventh theater company in the country to complete the entire canon, so repetition is inevitable.”
Controversy Over Chicago Symphony Musicians’ Barenboim Honor
As Daniel Barenboim was finishing his tenure as music director, a group of Chicago Symphony musicians got together and voted to name him their honorary “Music Director for Life”. But now other musicians who were not present at the meeting are objecting that the designation was not put to a vote of the entire orchestra.
Chicago’s Greatest Artist?
Harry Callahan was “the greatest visual artist who ever grew to maturity in Chicago,” writes Alan Artner. He was “up there with Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. His work has been collected by every major art museum and has been seen in several retrospectives. But while most Chicagoans have heard of Adams, ask about Callahan and you’re likely to hear only about the movie cop played by Clint Eastwood, suggesting that special measures need to be taken.”
McDonald’s Reinvents Its Look
“The new, Starbucks-like look that McDonald’s has rolled out in this classic Middle American test-market tickles the design palette in a way that no knock-your-eyes-out architectural whammy by Frank Gehry or Santiago Calatrava ever will. We visit museums by those architectural stars, but we practically live in McDonald’s. The company estimates that more than 25 million people a day eat at its U.S. outlets. And now McDonald’s is playing a controversial, high-stakes game of architectural catch-up, transforming its harsh, plastic-heavy interiors into soft, earth-toned places where you might linger with your laptop in an upholstered chair beneath a stylish pendant light.”