Emily Hall is happy to see that a “backlash” is building against Richard Florida’s ideas about the “creative class.” “It didn’t take much nudging for people to start to see, among other flaws in his arguments, that he meant to improve social conditions for computer programmers rather than reform the way arts are funded in this country. Florida can claim as loudly as he likes that he never meant to be an arts advocate, but as far as I can tell, he was the keynote speaker at a gazillion ‘save the arts’ conferences all over the country, probably accepting nice little fees every time.”
Blog
Boston Ballet Makes Deal With Wang
Though Boston’s Wang Center sent Boston Ballet packing for Nutcracker season next year (Wang evidently favors Rockettes over Sugar Plums), the theatre has signed a new deal with the dance company for the rest of its season. Under the new agreement, “Boston Ballet will be able to earn more money through sponsorships. And there will be more flexibility in scheduling ballet productions, for both sides.”
Doing A Lot With Nothing Much
Johnathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion don’t do much in a piece of dance, writes Tobi Tobias. But what they do do is compelling. “Here’s what they do: shake their hands wildly in front of their chests, so their fingers look like sparklers; use one hand to count the fingers of the other with a child’s deliberation, as if the answer might be in doubt; stroke their palms along their trousered thighs; palpate the floor with their fingertips; curl their fingers into vivid mudras that yield no explicit meaning; extend their arms in semaphore signals or classical ports de bras. A couple of times they stand up for a few seconds, even go so far as to turn in place, repeating a raucous cry; once they shift the position of their chairs so that one lies in the other’s shadow. Such departures from what they’ve set up as the parameters of the piece have the impact of high drama—violent and haunting.”
Kennedy Center Expansion Wins First Approval
Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center cleared its first regulatory hurdle this week when the Federal Commission of Fine Arts voted to approve the project for a new plaza. “We at last see the promise of the Kennedy Center, that it will be connected to the rest of the city. It is floating now in that tangle of spaghetti roadways. The design will go a long way to not only connecting it to the rest of the city, but you will be able to walk around it without getting run over.”
The A-List Actor And The Video Game
Movie stars are turning up in new video games. “A-list actors have taken notice of games, and it’s not hard to see why. They’re a quick route to digital-age street cred. Appearing in a game gives an actor a sense of being on the cutting edge of technological “convergence” (whatever that is), as well as a vague whiff of indie flava. More important, it keeps a star current among young men. Any canny star—or, more likely, any star with a canny agent—eventually winds up looking enviously at a hot video game like the Grand Theft Auto series, which is objectively cooler than almost anything that’s come out of Hollywood in years.”
Classical Gas
“Ballet is very crotchy. Apart from gymnastics, it is the only job in which a female is allowed to make public use of the structures between her legs as an element of design. This may be one reason that so many girls want to go into ballet: they can use their whole bodies, just like men, and nobody makes rude comments. Indeed, no one comments at all. The Sugar Plum Fairy may turn, in supported arabesque, and show her full lower anatomy to four thousand opera-house patrons, and nobody says a word. Karole Armitage did say a word, or her work did. She took the pelvic action of the ballerina and pushed it further. Those legs were always open. She thereby extended ballet technique and got herself a reputation.”
LA Mayor Says Cultural Department Will Be Saved
Last week Los Angeles officials were suggesting they might abolish the city’s cultural affairs department. But “Mayor James K. Hahn said Wednesday that he would preserve the agency and maintain its popular arts grants and educational programs while finding other ways to streamline it in the face of a municipal budget crisis. Hahn said he aimed to “refocus” the department, including giving it a new mandate to pump up tourism by promoting the city’s cultural attractions.”
The National Theatre’s Boffo Year
London’s National Theatre is having a boffo first year in its first year under artistic director Nicholas Hytner. The theatre is “enjoying the sort of critical and commercial success to which most theaters on the other side of the Atlantic can only aspire.”
Gambling With Bankruptcy
“With personal bankruptcy filings at historic highs, a growing number of grass-roots organizations contend that the phenomenon is fueled, at least in part, by the explosion of legal gambling in the United States over the past quarter of a century.” And here’s data to back up the claim – a study shows that bankruptcy rates are highest where casinos are.
Christa Ludwig At 75
“At 75, mezzo Christa Ludwig has lost nothing of her sharpness. There is little of the diva in her manner. She has presence, of course. You can’t have a career that dominated opera on both sides of the Atlantic for 40 years without that. But, immaculately dressed in a dark-grey trouser suit, the effect is discreet. She once wrote that while she always wanted to be a prima donna, she was “too lazy” for the scandal and circus that went with the role.”