Peter Boal is finishing up his career dancing with New York City Ballet before moving to take over directing Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. What might he bring to PNB? “Boal is a rare commodity—a great dancer who is not a great star. Charisma, an essential element for stardom, is not part of his makeup—though he’s a disarmingly nice fellow on- and offstage. The glory of Boal’s dancing lies in the fact that it is not dependent on expressive personality. Indeed, it’s entirely free from self-advertisement.”
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Culture Wars Make Everyone Look Bad
Christian “outrage” over the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer, The Opera is cynical. But no one comes out of these debates well. “If the religious thrive on a feeling of persecution, so do artists. They have shouted censorship in response to what in some cases is no more than a consumer boycott. (Violence and intimidation are a different matter, of course.) On Millian grounds, no liberal society should forbid behaviour that is offensive to others without causing any actual harm, and to that extent the BBC’s decision to show Jerry Springer must be right. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the controversial elements of the opera are present only to produce a lazy frisson in the audience. In a society as secular as the UK, mocking religious pieties has power only parasitically.”
Dallas Symphony: Looking For A Leader To Love
It’s been 13 months since Andrew Litton said he was stepping down as music director of the Dallas Symphony. Is the orchestra close to naming a new leader? “We look for someone who’s steeped in the European tradition and American music, who’s beautiful and a great fund-raiser and can cure cancer at the same time. Nobody can do all that.”
DePriest Named To Lead Tokyo Orchestra
James DePriest has been named music director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. “DePreist, who for 23 years was music director of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, currently serves as principal artistic advisor of the Phoenix Symphony and is director of conducting and orchestral studies at the Juilliard School. After leaving the music director post at the OSO in 2003, he became the orchestra’s laureate music director.”
Teachout: Carson? A Fast Fade To Black
AJBlogger Terry Teachout is impressed by the nostalgia accompanying news of the death of Johnny Carson. Not impressed by Carson himself, though. Oh, there’ll be the predictable flood of warm tributes. “And after that? A fast fade to black, I expect. American popular culture is cruel and brutal when it comes to the immediate past: it respects only extreme youth, and has no time for the day before yesterday. All of which somehow makes me feel sorry for Johnny Carson. I wonder what he thought of his life’s work? Or how he felt about having lived long enough to disappear into the memory hole?”
Netherlands Has Become Stolen Art Clearing House
So you’re an art thief, and you’ve stolen something valuable somewhere in Europe. Where do you go? The Netherlands, say experts. “Art stolen from northern and eastern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany and Russia) is often taken to the Netherlands. The south of the Netherlands near the border with Belgium is particularly popular with criminals. The artworks are smuggled from the Netherlands to Britain or the US.”
Colorado Ballet Fights To A Draw With Holiday Rockettes
Colorado Ballet, like dance companies in several cities around America, fretted before Christmas when the Rockettes Christmas show came to town. The company, like many, depends on annual Nutcracker revenues to survive. So how’d the Rockette showdown go? “Not surprisingly, the Rockettes drew huge numbers: 155,063 paid attendance for 64 performances. That translates to an impressive 88 percent capacity. More remarkable are the final numbers from Nutcracker. December’s Paramount engagement held its own, compared with the previous, Rockettes-less run. Some 33,600 attended 31 shows (30,100 paid). That total matches numbers from 2003 – 33,400 (29,250 paid).”
Music: Moveable Feast
How will you get your music? The music industry believes the future is portable. At a music industry conference in Cannes, mobility was the word of the day. “The offerings are nearly limitless: music through a wristwatch, hits played on a literally loud shirt or New Age themes on underwater headphones at the gym swimming pool during a hard-driving backstroke.”
Downloading’s Tower Of Babel
Legal downloading of music is becoming increasingly frustrating as players and download stores support different formats designed to protect music from being copied on a mass scale. The problem? Music downloaded in one system won’t play on another. Now there’s an effort to standardize the digital rights management formats in hopes of making it easier for consumers. But will the plan catch on?
The Book Dealer And The Stolen Book
A St. Louis book dealer buys a rare volume for $3,900, then is pleased to see his judgment rewarded when it is valued at $600,000. Just one small hitch: “The book may have been stolen from an unlikely victim — the German government. The state-owned Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart claims a World War II U.S. Army captain took the book and others from a castle and eventually deposited them in his Richmond Heights home.”