Susan Marshall is one of America’s best choreographers. But she can’t pay the rent to produce her work. So she asks for money and works leaner. “The plea for funds essential to her company’s projected 20th-anniversary season at Dance Theater Workshop next spring tells prospective supporters exactly what their contribution will buy, while it reveals the high cost of making dances: $100 pays for a single day’s use of a studio; $1,000 puts a half-dozen dancers into the studio for a day; $10,000 commissions a new (short) dance. Poetic richness coupled with economic poverty – this is the state of dance in America. ‘I look at it as a challenge to be embraced.’ The financial straits, which clearly dictate working ‘smaller, tighter, faster,’ as Ms. Marshall puts it, support her present artistic impulses.”
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The Met: Feeding An Opera Addiction
The Metropolitan Opera has put its archives online, and you can now search the records of every production ever performed at the Met. “For countless opera buffs, the database, which includes entries on all performances since the Met’s opening in 1883, has already become more than a repository of information,” it’s an addiction…
Calatrava’s Chicago Spire – Evolution Of The Tall Building
“Last Wednesday’s unveiling of the dazzling, but still-evolving 115-story hotel and condo tower marked a major milestone in an ongoing revolution: The skyscraper and the tall office building no longer are synonymous. For more than a century, they were. But as Calatrava’s design reveals, life and cities have changed and the skyscraper is free to adapt to those changes in stunning new ways. Though far from faultless, it is one of the freshest and most captivating skyscraper designs Chicago has seen in decades, fully taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the fact that it would be a place to live rather than work.”
New Life For The Music Video
“The video and MTV have gone their separate ways. Even MTV2, the little-sister channel once devoted solely to videos, has begun a switch to original programming. But rather than shrivel away, videos have taken on an exciting if uncertain life of their own, far away from the mother ship that launched them. They thrive at online music sites, they’re sold in record stores, they connect strangers across the Internet. And just this month, speculation was rampant that they might soon be coming to iPods, the hand-held devices that are obsessing an increasingly large segment of the population. For a music industry that has gone through lurching crises in the past few years, as well as for viewers and fans, the proliferation of videos on all kinds of new screens may be one of the quietest changes, but also one of the most profound.”
Levine’s Tanglewood – All About The Students
James Levine said he wouldn’t be making big changes in his first summer leading Tanglewood. But he did. “No music director since Tanglewood founder Serge Koussevitzky has spent more time with the students.”
Do Used Books Help New Books?
Does a strong online used-book market lessen the sales demand for new books? A new study says not: “When used books are substituted for new ones, the seller faces competition from the secondhand market, reducing the price it can set for new books. But there’s another effect: the presence of a market for used books makes consumers more willing to buy new books, because they can easily dispose of them later.”
Baltimore – Whose Orchestra Is It?
The Baltimore Symphony fiasco in hiring a music director is mostly about power. “In the end, this month’s crisis over a new music director begs a tough, fundamental question: Whose orchestra is it, anyway? The board and administration apparently believe they own it, lock, stock and Beethoven. And they’re not about to let any pesky musicians tell them otherwise.”
Bilbao Scores Again With Serra
Richard Serra’s new installation for Guggenheim Bilbao “is the 65-year-old American’s most ambitious project to date and one of the most extravagant single-artist sculptural installations in modern history. The Basque government agency that partnered with the Guggenheim to create the museum has again put its faith in the vision of Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, providing E15 million for the material and fabrication of seven new works. The ambitious project is intended to revitalise the eight-year-old museum that transformed the post-industrial port into a cultural destination through an act of museum-as-development now referred to as ‘the Bilbao effect’.”
Is Calatrava’s Chicago Spire A Pyramid Scheme?
“For those of us who have long advocated that forward-looking, inventive architecture and planning form the basis for good development, that they provide enhanced value and longevity, the selection of a design genius like Calatrava for an iconic project such as Fordham Spire should represent the fulfillment of a cherished ideal. Instead, it signals that developers now believe that today’s best-known architects not only sell condos, they sell financing. Developers are beginning to wave their architects around like letters of credit to get bankers on board, or like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to tame community boards and critics. Such newfound zeal for design can and should be a good thing, and we should applaud it. Unless it’s a pyramid scheme – and this slender, twisting triangle is a physical expression of such.”
9/11 Report Publisher Donates Some Profits
Last year’s 9/11 Commission report was an unexpected bestseller. Now the report’s publisher is donating some of the profits to anti-terror causes. “When we undertook the report’s publication. we did so in a spirit of public service, fully aware that we would shoulder a financial commitment unprecedented for this firm and were unlikely to recover all our expenses. Donations amounted to about 10 percent of the company’s gross proceeds from sales of the book to wholesalers and bookstores.”