“The Cirque du Soleil is reassuring coaches and athletes that it will not be poaching Olympians in the prime of their career, as acrobatic talent scouts head to Athens next week to scope out the scene. But despite Cirque’s best efforts, some coaches still resent its presence… Cirque recruiters routinely attend gymnastic championships, as well as dance and theatre festivals. Cirque has been sending scouts to the Olympic Games since 1996. Coaches are also scouted, and he knows of three top Canadian coaches who are working for Cirque.”
Blog
Independence Pays Off
A year ago, Detroit’s Meadow Brook Theatre severed its ties with Oakland University after the university tried to shut it down, determined to make it as an independent company. Not many observers gave the perennially money-losing troupe much of a chance. But “under its new management, [Meadow Brook] stopped losing money… [and] the organization finished in the black for the first time in seven years.”
Thoreau the Survivor
“Survivor” was not the first reality TV series. And it wasn’t “The Real World,” either. No, the first individual to conceive of the idea of performing ridiculous stunts in public in order to prove a point (or just amuse the neighbors) was Henry David Thoreau, says Julia Keller. But in all seriousness, the importance of Thoreau’s little stunt – abandoning city life to live like a hermit in the middle of nowhere – has been twisted and misconstrued over the years since “Walden” was written. And just as in most reality shows, Thoreau wasn’t above a slight varnishing of the truth if the editing process could help out the narrative flow.
Tired Of Playing Second Fiddle
The Boston Theatre Conference, going on in the Hub this week, is partly a chance for the theater crowd to reassure each other that their medium is still relevant. But more importantly, it’s the first time that so many in the local scene have gathered to assess their position in Boston. “Noting that theater has often been the “stepchild” in the Boston arts scene, taking a back seat to such renowned institutions as the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the Museum of Fine Arts, [one moderator] asked the six panelists from a range of local companies to look at Boston’s current position in the theater world and to talk about how it might develop.”
Looking For The Next Generation of Writers
Australia’s theater scene is thriving in many cities, but at least one veteran of the industry says that the country is lagging far behind in the art of creating new plays. What would help is some sort of national program to encourage and instruct young playwrights…
TiVo The Mighty, TiVo The Vulnerable
Television was changed forever when TiVo arrived on the scene. In fact, it’s not going too far to suggest that the digital recorder/on-demand video machine is a bona fide cultural touchstone. But even as TiVo, the concept, continues to captivate the world, TiVo, the company, is floundering in the face of increased competition from other, more flexible, companies.
Marketing The Hip-Hop Culture
“Many former and current hip-hop producers and performers… have turned their attention away from the Top 40 and toward Madison Avenue. While hip-hop performers have been running marketing divisions as part of their business, [hip-hop capitalists] are building successful full-service agencies with a roster of clients that they run apart from their other businesses.”
The Mysterious Disappearing (Reappearing) Demographic
About a year ago, the people who track TV ratings and the people who pay attention to them sounded the alarm: 18-34-year-old men, the most desirable advertising demographic, had stopped watching television! Millions of ’em! “Commentary abounded that a significant cultural shift had taken place and that a generation of men was steadily quitting television-viewing, forsaking both network and cable programs in favor of video games, DVD’s and the Internet.” Now, the young men are inexplicably back watching the tube. Were the Nielsen ratings wrong? Not according to Nielsen. But several critics of the system say otherwise.
Missing The Point: The Architect As Superstar
Frank Gehry’s addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario is doomed to be a disappointment, says Christopher Hume, because Toronto has always refused to view Gehry as an architect when it can view him as a home-grown celebrity instead. “Not that Gehry’s famous for being famous anywhere outside of Toronto. In some cities, he’s famous for his buildings. Indeed, in some cities, his buildings are more famous than their creator. It’s enough to make you feel sorry for the man. Sure, he’s a celebrity, but he’s also an architect, a great architect even. Even if it turns out brilliantly, the AGO addition was always too limited to give Gehry, the architect, the scope to do something major, something spectacular.”
Adding To The Discussion
Gottfried Helnwein is an artist whose work – “giant color portraits of stillborn babies, paintings that merge Nazi-archive photographs with pictures Helnwein has taken, enigmatic portrayals of apparently wounded or menaced children” – tends to provoke strong reactions, and in recent years, several individuals have expressed their displeasure with some of his images by defacing them. Helnwein confesses to being initially startled by the vandalism, but these days, he has decided that the viewer has as much to contribute to the larger discussion as the artist, and if people are moved to destroy what he has created, he can at least salute their passion.