“Unlike scripts for plays or scores for symphonies, ballets have no physical record for choreography. This is a relatively new concern for the dance world. Coming into the 21st century and losing many of the choreographers – the great geniuses of the 20th century – made it more apparent to us that we must conserve our heritage and do everything in our power to pass that legacy on to the next generation. Financed through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the project will attempt to preserve all aspects of a ballet.”
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The Pesky Meddling Artist Who Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone
The release of the complete Star Wars series on DVD has revived a “long-standing debate about the right of artists to alter their work. George Lucas, who never made a movie he couldn’t touch up years later, has become a living symbol of this debate since he seems unable to leave his creations alone.”
Where Is The UK’s Cutting-Edge Theatre?
Plymouth, that’s where, as increasingly the Theatre Royal pushes the envelope. “Plymouth may be geographically isolated, but London theatre gets stuck in its own cultural ghettoes. Because we are not metropolitan and fashionable, we have to look very hard at what we can give artists, and one of the things we can offer and develop is a collaborative rather than a competitive culture. I think one of the reasons that writers and companies keep coming back is because we actually talk to them, discuss what they want and how we can help them do it. It is not about the vanity of creating the next big thing but about creating a culture where people can thrive.”
Tomlinson Resigns From CPB Board, Disputes Auditor’s Report
Former Corporation for Public Broadcasting board chairman Ken Tomlinson has resigned from the board. “The board has been reviewing a CPB Inspector General’s report–called for by a pair of congressmen–on Tomlinson’s relationship with the board stemming from Tomlinson’s attempts to add more conservative programming. The board said in a statement: “[F]ormer chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson has resigned from the CPB board. The board does not believe that Mr. Tomlinson acted maliciously or with any intent to harm CPB or public broadcasting, and the board recognizes that Mr. Tomlinson strongly disputes the findings in the soon-to-be-released Inspector General’s report.”
Strike Over, Radio City Locks Out Musicians
A day after musicians went on strike against Radio City Music Hall, they decided to go back to work. But they were locked out as management replaced them with recorded music. “The musicians, their instruments in hand, pulled down their picket line and returned to work Thursday morning after a one-day strike. But they wound up stranded outside Radio City as thousands of ticket-holders streamed past to attend the first show of the season.”
San Antonio Pol Questions Arts Funding
A San Antonio city councilman wants to rethink all the city’s grants to the arts. “I think there’s a lot of other things that the city ought to be concentrating on first, before we start looking at the arts.” Councilman Kevin Wolff said “the process for awarding arts grants is ‘flawed’ and ‘too politicized’.”
Is Conservation Killing Culture?
“It’s no secret that millions of native peoples around the world have been pushed off their land to make room for big oil, big metal, big timber, and big agriculture. But few people realize that the same thing has happened for a much nobler cause: land and wildlife conservation. Today the list of culture-wrecking institutions put forth by tribal leaders on almost every continent includes not only Shell, Texaco, Freeport, and Bechtel, but also more surprising names like Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).”
US To Investigate Plundering Of Tibetan Artifacts
“Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican representative in the United States Congress and a long-standing critic of China’s human rights record, has announced he will lead an investigation into what he suspects was the systematic looting of Tibetan art and objects by Chinese authorities since the 1949 Communist revolution. The inquiry has coincided with a high profile auction in Beijing of artefacts that previously belonged to Tibetan monasteries, and which seeped out into international markets sometime last century before being bought by the leading Taiwan-based collector Wang Du.”
Amazon: Books By The Page
Amazon says it will start selling some books by the page. “The Amazon Pages service will let customers buy portions of a book online, as little as a single page. The cost for most books would be a few cents a page, though it might be higher for more specialized works.”
Prairie Home To Hit The Road?
Garrison Keillor’s wildly popular radio variety show, A Prairie Home Companion, is leaving its longtime home at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota at the end of December, and details are extremely sketchy about where the show will find a home, and whether the host wants a home base at all. “PHC is negotiating to broadcast several shows from… the University of Minnesota and from the State and Orpheum theaters in downtown Minneapolis, as well as several locations around the region… The departure of St. Paul’s biggest star also puts a damper on the city’s drive to bring in more entertainment.”