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Ballroom Dancing Gets New Fans

Ballroom dance studios across the US are reporting a surge of interest as a new film about kids dancing and the TV series “Dancing with the Stars” attract audiences. “Two generations have missed ballroom dancing; they haven’t partner-danced. There’s a resurgence now because people see it and want to know how to look like that. When you do non-partner dancing, you’re both doing your own thing. Now people want to do the same thing.”

The Museuming Of America

“Cultural buildings in the United States are being supersized, with newly enlarged museums opening this year in cities including Minneapolis, Indianapolis, and Davenport, Iowa.” Why? It’s competitive out there. “Jazzing up older edifices is one way institutions can stay competitive at a time when millions of tourists are flocking to museums of every kind. Recent estimates of visits to US museums – including zoos and historical sites – range from 640 million to 865 million annually.”

Paul Klee On A Mountain

A new museum devoted to the work of Paul Klee and designed by Renzo Piano, opens in Bern, Switzerland. “Along with presenting the world’s largest collection of Klee works, however, the new center also promises what it calls a “Klee experience,” including concerts by a newly formed Paul Klee Ensemble, and theater productions with décor evocative of Klee’s work. Children are invited to their own museum, Creaviva, while every summer a dozen or so young international artists will join academics, curators and critics at a 10-day seminar here.”

Miami PAC On target

Looks like the roubled Miami Performing Arts Center is finally on budget and on schedule. “To be clear, it has been known since last July that the center is 20 months late and $67.7 million over the budget set when construction began in 2001. But at least it is adhering to its new schedule of opening in October 2006 and its new budget of $412 million. The center, with its 2,400-seat Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House, 2,200-seat Carnival Concert Hall and 200-seat Studio Theater, is more than 70 percent complete.”

Why Shakespeare In A Park?

Shakespeare is everywhere in the summer. Outside in the parks of America. “How did a nation come to expect free Shakespeare? And why must we watch it in the park? This peculiar mandate can be traced to Joseph Papp, the mercurial producer who founded a Shakespeare workshop in New York’s Lower East Side in 1954.”

11-Country Raids On Digital Pirates

Raids were carried out wednesday in 11 countries, as agents targeted suspected digital pirates. “Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as investigators around the world, took part in 90 searches that resulted in the arrests of four people. The U.S. Justice Department ‘is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain – a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of illegal digital content now available online’.”

Charge: New mexican Stamps Are Racist

“The Mexican government has issued a series of stamps depicting a dark-skinned Jim Crow-era cartoon character with greatly exaggerated eyes and lips, infuriating black and Hispanic civil rights leaders for the second time in weeks. Mexican postal officials said the five-stamp series features Memin Pinguin, a character from a comic book created in the 1940s, because he is beloved in Mexico. A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy described the depiction as a cultural image that has no meaning and is not intended to offend.”

Should Musicians get Early Retirement?

If the retirement goes up in Britain, there will be an awful lot of unhappy musicians. “Just imagine a 70-year-old footballer! Nobody expects sportsmen to go on and on. But that’s what we have to do night after night, to international standards, having our work picked over in the press, while we struggle against tendonitis. We’re athletes, too, but there’s no way our careers can be cut short unless we get injured.”