A former accounting employee at the Orange County Performing Arts Center has been sentenced to ten years in prison after admitting she embezzled $1.85 million from the center. She “started working at the center in 1995 and from September 2000 to September 2005 pocketed cash that was supposed to be deposited into bank accounts. She then created false records to show that the money had been deposited, prosecutors said. She was ordered to pay back the money, plus 10 percent interest.”
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Broadway Gets Back To Pre-9/11 Box Office
“During the 2004/5 season, 1,302,590 international visitors attended a Broadway show. That total is on a par with figures for 1999-2000 of 1,320,617. It marks a significant improvement on figures from 2000/1 to 2003/4, which were 1,106,284, 525,834, 651,093 and 1,241,786, respectively. Additionally, internet purchases of theatre tickets have drastically increased over the last five years, with 29% of those surveyed mentioned that as the preferred method of purchase, up from 7% in 1999-2000.”
Ballet Meets West African
Cincinnati Ballet is learning African dance. “Essentially, ballet is an attempt to reject gravity. Almost everything a ballet dancer does is trying to deny the existence of it. Leaps, pirouettes – even pointe shoes themselves. They’re about giving an appearance of weightlessness. In much African dance gravity is an ally, a force to work with, not against.”
A New Era For Dance Umbrella?
London’s Dance Umbrella is 25 years old, and now founder Val Bourne is close to retirement. “Not since Ninette de Valois founded the Royal Ballet has a British dance institution been so intimately identified with a single individual. From the early shoestring days to Umbrella’s current high profile, it has been Bourne’s own tastes that have governed the festival’s programming. It was Bourne who nurtured the London careers of American choreographers such as Trisha Brown and Morris, and Bourne who doggedly supported native talent such as Michael Clark.”
French TV Gets Colorful?
French TV has its first black news reader. “So are France’s mainstream channels becoming more, well, colourful? Up to a point. ‘It’s a step forward but there’s still a huge gap between the reality of French society and how it’s represented on television’.”
Brain Game That Makes You Smarter
“Next month, Nintendo is releasing Brain Age, a DS game based on the research of the Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima. Kawashima found that if you measured the brain activity of someone who was concentrating on a single, complex task — like studying quantum theory — several parts of that person’s brain would light up. But if you asked them to answer a rapid-fire slew of tiny, simple problems — like basic math questions — her or his brain would light up everywhere.”
Berlin Biennial: A Story To Tell
The Berlin Biennial is not just another mix-and-match show. “Flawed and frequently jarring it may be, but this is an important, timely exhibition. This is no survey show, no feebly themed free-for-all. It is not just another biennial. The curators have attempted to construct if not a narrative, then a journey.”
British Museum’s MIA List
The British Museum says that more than 2000 items are missing from its collection and that 28 items have been stolen in recent years. “While the thefts represent a tiny fraction of the 150 million items in the library’s possession, the stolen items are valued at £100,000, with a number of rare maps and illustrated plates ripped from antique books by international thieves. A single plate cut from a 1522 volume on Pompeii is worth £45,000.”
Will Digital Downloads Save Classical Music?
“Proportionately, classical sells better digitally than on CD. Whereas classical accounts for about 3%-4% of total sales of music in shops, on iTunes it accounts for 12% of sales…”
After The Eye (Then What?)
David Marks and Julia Barfield spent years getting the London Eye built. It’s become a modern landmark icon. So what do you do as a followup? There is that problem of being typecast…