An important hurdle has been cleared in the city of Frankfurt’s efforts to bring a new, private ballet company to the city. The public company directed by William Forsythe, which has performed in Frankfurt for years, “will be shut down by the end of the 2003/2004 season because of budgetary constraints. To continue to bring Forsythe premieres to Frankfurt, the renowned choreographer wants to found a private ballet company which would perform its productions in both Frankfurt and Dresden.” City politics have proved quite an obstacle to the plan, but last week, Frankfurt’s mayor, and the head of the city’s cultural bureau declared themselves on board.
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Rewarding Midwest Diversity
“The Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based philanthropy with nearly $750 million in assets, on Monday night [awarded] grants of $50,000 each to four Midwest cultural groups for the commissioning of works by artists of color.” Recipients of this year’s awards are Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The awards are slated to continue for at least two years, at which time the foundation will reevaluate the program.
It’s Not Just Culture, It’s A Smart Investment
“Armed with new custom-created research claiming Chicago-area theaters are worth a whopping $347 million in total economic activity to their home metropolis, the League of Chicago Theatres is on a newly energized mission to convince local corporate leaders that Chicago theater deserves to be taken more seriously by business interests… The study, to be released on Monday, argues that Chicago’s live theater industry has doubled its direct and indirect economic impact in just seven years — from $164 million in 1996 to $347 million in 2002.”
Now That’s a Mayor Who Supports The Arts
The under-construction Dallas Center for the Performing Arts gets a very public boost this week, with a donation of $1 million from the family of late Dallas mayor Annette Strauss. “Supporters of the $275 million performing arts center hope to raise $257 million in private funds for its design and completion, with the rest coming from city bond money. The center’s opening is targeted for 2009. The Strauss family contribution brings the amount of private donations to $140 million.”
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Mimic ‘Em
Taking on Ticketmaster is not generally considered a sound business plan. The ticket-selling behemoth seems to be everywhere, and artists, venues, and rival companies which have tried to break free have typically been stymied or flattened. “But even with annual revenues around $700 million US, Ticketmaster only controls less than seven per cent of the global ticketing industry, a sector that is growing at 7.5 per cent a year,” and two Calgary-based entrepreneurs are making a real stab at grabbing a share of the remaining 93%. “Since its September 2000 launch RepeatSeat has grown quickly. Last year it handled $7 million in transactions, up from $5,000 the year before.”
Is CD Armageddon Nigh?
The final sign that CDs had supplanted cassettes, record albums, and 8-tracks as the dominant recording media may have come when services began popping up, offering to convert your old vinyl collection to disc for a fee. So what does it say about CDs that there are now companies eager to convert your thousands of shiny discs into MP3 files?
From Bad To Worse
“According to Dance/USA, a Washington, D.C.-based national service organization, 60% of the large dance companies it surveyed finished 2002 with their budgets in the red — the most in at least a dozen years. Anecdotal evidence, the group said, suggests that 2003 wasn’t any better, and that 2004 looks grim too.” Dance has always been a tough sell to general audiences, and the hit that many troupes took in annual donations during the recession hasn’t abated with the current predictions of economic recovery. As more and more companies are forced to the precipice of insolvency, the dance world is realizing just how small its pool of supporters really is.
Who Can Own A Kiss?
When the Tate Modern’s new exhibition of Brancusi sculptures opens this week in London, it will be one major work short of what the museum had planned. “It will have Constantin Brancusi’s The Kiss (1908) and The Kiss (1916). But it will be without its most starry exhibit, The Kiss (1907-1908) because its Romanian owners see a risk that someone in Britain might claim ownership of it.” The Tate says that it doesn’t know of any potential UK claimants, and the statue has been exhibited abroad before, but Romanian officials say that they were concerned that they would not have been able to protect the statue in the event of an ownership claim.
Don’t Label Us!
“Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a provocative new musicians’ alliance that would cut against the industry grain by letting artists sell their music online instead of only through record labels.” The point is to encourage musicians to break free of traditional recording agreements enforced by profit-driven corporations and tradition-bound unions, and to see for themselves wich aspects of new technology are useful, and which are not.
The Day The Music Died
The Bottom Line, the legendary New York venue which showcased acts from Joan Baez to The Police, officially shut down last week after losing a financial battle with its landlord, New York University. “For a music lover the place always seemed too good to last. The Bottom Line was a grand anomaly among clubs: a place where the music came first. In the end, it seemed, its owners weren’t greedy enough.”