The financially troubled Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, which recently made waves with a decision to lay off its orchestra in favor of recorded music, has canceled five of the performances it was scheduled to give of The Nutcracker this holiday season. It was the second such announcement in only a few months: back in June, PBT announced it would cut Nutcracker back to 17 performances from the 23 it mounted last year. The ballet says that its holiday schedule has been hurt by the addition of the traveling Radio City Christmas Spectacular into Pittsburgh’s fall arts lineup, but members of the laid-off ballet orchestra suggest that the public may not be interested in attending a Nutcracker with canned instrumentals.
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One Singular Sensation Without A Home
The glut of shows looking for homes on Broadway has gotten so bad that an $8 million revival of one of the Great White Way’s biggest smash hits ever has been reduced to begging for performance space. A Chorus Line, which ran on Broadway for 15 years, is slated to open in fall 2006, but it hasn’t even been able to get signed as a backup booking. In addition to the booking jam, “there is also the question of just how well A Chorus Line has held up over the years and whether audiences will flock to see a revival of a show that hasn’t been gone all that long (it closed in 1990).”
TIFF’s Global Outreach
Film buffs are, by nature, always looking for the next hot thing in moviegoing, but sometimes, even the devotees need a push to begin looking seriously at unfamiliar work. So goes the thinking behind the Toronto International Film Festival’s “Planet Africa” project, which has recently been retired after ten years of specifically promoting African films at the fest. The idea is not to create a one-time celebration of underappreciated cultures, but to bring those cultures permanently onto the North American radar screen by making them a valued part of the festival.
Denver Prepares To Inaugurate Its New Gem
“To celebrate what designers believe is a world-class opera house, a run-of-the-mill classical concert just would not do. Something very special was called for, and that’s what Opera Colorado plans to deliver Saturday evening with the first performance in the $92 million Ellie Caulkins Opera House… The opening of a new opera house anywhere is noteworthy, because the construction of such buildings is so rare. Some companies have to perform in less-than-ideal venues designed for multiple functions or adapted from other uses. For this 2,268-seat facility, Boulder acoustician Bob Mahoney and Semple Brown Design created a lyre-shaped theater that they believe can compete with any of the world’s top opera houses in terms of sound, comfort and technical sophistication.”
Chicago Reading Project Goes Retro
Chicago’s citywide group-read project, known as “One Book, One Chicago”, is four years old, and this fall, the city’s mayor has decided that it’s time for Chicagoans to expand their literary horizons across the Atlantic. The new selection is Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and several academic and theatrical institutions around the city will be hosting events, lectures, and performances based on the book. As usual, Chicago booksellers and libraries were tipped off about the selection ahead of time, so as to be sure that plenty of copies will be available.
ABC To Add Spanish To Primetime
This fall, ABC will become the first American network to make its primetime schedule available in Spanish, as part of an effort to draw in the country’s ever-expanding Hispanic population. The network will use a combination of voice-dubbing and closed captioning to translate its entire lineup of entertainment programs. Hispanics, the fastest-growing minority population in the U.S., make up 1/7 of the overall population, and studies have shown that a high percentage watch mainly Spanish-language channels, eschewing the programming offered by the larger broadcast networks.
Reality TV Finally Gets Around To Dance
“This is how far dance has sunk in the American public’s estimation: By the time reality television executives got around to adding a dance competition to the mix of talent show-inspired programming, the market was already saturated with hopeful singers, models, starlets and fashion designers.” But shouldn’t the dance world take TV’s sudden interest in the art as a compliment? Um, no, says Gia Kourlas, not so long as the overarching point of the dance programs popping up in primetime is to laugh at incompetent celebrities who thought serious dance looked easy. “Dancing isn’t just about unearthing some inner, mysterious passion: dancing is hard. It serves as a magnifying glass, and no amount of slick talk or charm can hide the truth about your personality.”
130 Years Of Maturing America’s Artists
The Art Students’ League of New York turns 130 this year, and its history is chock full of legendary artists and impressive anecdotes. More importantly, the school has amassed an extensive collection of works by its former students, and many of the pieces are on display this fall at the school’s West Side headquarters. “And it won’t be partying alone. As an anniversary salute, more than a dozen Manhattan art galleries have organized smaller shows, some already on view, devoted to artists associated with the institution.”
Volunteer Radio Effort Scuttled By Relief Officials
One of the more frequent complaints from survivors of Hurricane Katrina has been the government’s utter failure to coordinate and distribute the information they need in order to begin rebuilding their lives. So when a group of well-meaning Houston residents decided to set up a low-power FM radio station aimed at the refugee-choked AstroDome and dedicated to repeating crucial information 24 hours a day, public officials at all levels were excited. But it didn’t take long for the tangled bureaucracy governing relief efforts to first delay, and then completely shut down the volunteers’ efforts, for reasons passing understanding.
At Least She’s Not Sucking Up To The Judges
One of the novelists shortlisted for the Booker Prize obviously isn’t running for Miss Congeniality. Zadie Smith, whose latest book, On Beauty, made the shortlist, has described England, where she lives (and where the Booker is based) as being filled with “stupidity” and “vulgarity.” London, in particular, is “a disgusting place,” according to Smith. On the other hand, Smith doesn’t cut herself or her colleagues any slack, either: in the same interview, she described novel-writing as “quite stupid work.”