In 1977, Boris Eifman organized the Leningrad New Ballet company, later called the St. Petersburg State Academic Theatre of Ballet. In the midst of state-run theaters, this was something to behold. The troupe was the only one in Russia that nurtured modern choreography — something beyond tutus and pointe shoes. It has evolved into Eifman Ballet, still state funded, but with plenty of outside investors as well. Eifman, a creator of more than 40 ballets is the only living Russian choreographer with a creative resume on a par with the most up-and-coming Western choreographers.”
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Waiting To Hear On The Future Of Scottish Art
A big official government report on the future of Scottish arts is due out soon. But speculation and rumor are running wild ove what the report’s recommendations will be. “In a last round of consultations with arts bodies, some details have begun to leak out. There is mounting speculation in the arts world over not just what the report contains, but how it will be received.”
King Tut On Marketing Steroids
The four-city tour of King Tut in the US that begins next week in Los Angeles is a marketing extravaganza. “Little about Tut II is like anything the museum world is used to, let alone the museum world of 1976-1979 when Tut virtually invented the blockbuster museum exhibit. For Tut II, museums are merely the venues, not the prime organizers, in large part because no museum could afford to insure the exhibit for its official value of $650 million. Also, Egypt has become a savvy negotiator determined to squeeze as many dollars out of Tut as possible.”
Legal Threat Against “Springer”
A Christian group says it will take legal action against a planned production of Springer, The Opera, if it plays in Birmingham. “If you wanted to be deliberately offensive and provocative to Christians, you couldn’t do much better than put Jerry Springer: The Opera on at the Birmingham Hippodrome.”
Basically Bournonville
The Danish Ballet mounts a Bournonville Festival. “As dead geniuses go—especially those whose work, being in dance, is essentially ephemeral—August Bournonville (1805-1879) has done pretty well. The legacies of George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Martha Graham—all a century younger than the Danish choreographer—are eroding at an alarmingly faster rate than his, despite the fact that modern times have delivered the preservation tools of sophisticated dance notation (Bournonville used a crude—if singularly effective—personal one), film, and videotape.”
Broadway’s Tony Bump, Ratings Slump
Broadway shows winning Tonys Sunday night got a nice bump at the box office Monday. But “according to preliminary numbers, the celebrities did almost nothing to increase the flat overnight national ratings, showing only a slight increase of about 160,000 viewers. In years past, a number of factors have been blamed for the low ratings, including competition from the N.B.A. playoffs and new episodes of hot HBO shows like “The Sopranos” or “Six Feet Under.” This year, however, the show had no such competition, but still drew only 6.6 million viewers, up 2 percent from last year’s audience of about 6.5 million viewers.”
Broadway Highlights (Tonys Aside)
Sure the Tonys have been handed out. Howard Kissel picks his personal Broadway season highlights. “With the perennial laments about the death of serious theater, it seems worth noting that there were enough candidates to fill the Tony Best Play Revival category but only three shows to fill the comparable musicals category.”
Space Station Looking For Art
Managers of the International Space Station are commissioning art for the station. “People associate the space station almost exclusively with scientific work,” said Nicola Triscott, director of the science-art agency The Arts Catalyst, which has been commissioned by the European Space Agency to make a six-month study of practical proposals for art in space. “But the agency believes very strongly that the cultural world should have a say in the future of space exploration.”
A Formula For The Perfect Sitcom
Researchers have come up with a formula to write the perfect sitcom. “There are long-standing golden rules for sitcom, but our findings bring them down to this single equation. Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognisability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V) and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).”
Serra’s New Masterpiece
Michael Kimmelman writes that Richard Serra’s new installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao is “one of the great works of the past half-century, the culmination of a remarkable fruition in Mr. Serra’s career. It rejuvenates and pushes abstraction to a fresh level. And it is deeply humane, not least because it counts on individual perception, individual discovery.”