The Louisville Orchestra warns it might not be able to make next week’s payroll. The orchestra is carrying an $800,000 debt. Orchestra musicians say they’ll play a series of concerts next week during the Kentucky Derby celebrations in hopes of raising money so they can be paid later.
Blog
Shakespeare In The Towns
Thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, “the Shakespeare in American Communities project, which is to be officially unveiled today (the 439th anniversary of Shakespeare’s presumed birthday) will bring professional-quality performances of some of his fundamental works, accompanied by educational programs, to some 100 small and midsize American cities in all 50 states.”
Florida Arts Supporters Protest Funding Cuts
Staffers from arts organizations and their supporters from all over Florida, left their offices Tuesday to go to the state legislature and appeal against proposed arts funding cuts. “At a time when thousands of Floridians face losing vital medical treatment to budget cuts, arts officials know they face an uphill battle. But a major part of their argument for legislators is that the arts are vital to propping up the state’s sagging economy. The arts are tourism, the arts are economic development. Every dollar that the state invests in the arts generates $41. It’s an investment, not a handout.”
Now The TV Programs Are The Ads
“No longer content to merely buy time when remote controls and digital video recorders like TiVo make ad-skipping its own participation sport, sponsors are weaseling into programs in a manner that hearkens back to the men of Texaco introducing Milton Berle.”
Why British Ballet Training Is So Bad
Former Bolshoi and Royal Ballet star Irek Mukhamedov is staging a ballet for the London Choildren’s Ballet. But he’s apalled at the dance training British students get. “There are still too many second-rate teachers out there who might have a passion for ballet but who are simply not equipped to give children the training that underpins real classical technique: “They haven’t been taught the correct exercises. Sometimes they really don’t know what I’m talking about. Worse still, they can’t think for themselves.”
Art Of Movement
“Exploring the human body in time-based media, artists from many fields have created works of dance and technology, among them visual artists Kiel, Nam June Paik, Dan Graham, Myron Kruger, Gary Hill, Bill Viola, and Camille Utterback; architects such as Diller + Scofidio; and the Wooster Group theater collective. At the symposium, researchers converged at a choreographic intersection—an obsession with the body in space and time. Several artists described how dance has become their creative fuse, driving interactive explorations.”
Dancing To Final Cut Pro
Can technology help dance? A lab in New York – Dance Theatre Workshop – is working with choreographers to digure out what technology can offer top the creation of movement. “With video and the computer, I don’t have to interrupt the dancers’ creative flow. I can do the editing work on my own. . . . Of course, once the dance is [back] in the dancers’ bodies, it takes on new shapes, phrasings, and floor patterns.”
Against All Odds – Saving Music Education
“Last month all music teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District were handed pink slips, an action that gives the district the right not to renew their contracts next fall. The decisions are in the hands of school site committees, one for each school, made up of the principal, staff, parents. The view of individuals knowledgeable in the matter is that, faced with stringent budget limitations, many, perhaps most of those committees will cut music entirely at their schools. One music teacher began doing something about it long before the current budget crisis…”
Dia Beacon – A Major New Showplace For Art
The Dia Foundation is opening a new home in the Hudson Valley town of Beacon, about an hour north of New York City. “The Dia:Beacon is on 31 acres along the Hudson and is a five-minute walk from a Metro North train station. Its 240,000 square feet of exhibition space is more than four times the exhibition space of the Whitney Museum of American Art and not quite twice the size of the Tate Modern in London.”
Guards Needed For Iraq’s Museum
Is Baghdad’s National Museum secured? “Expressing frustration that Iraq’s National Museum, archives and library in Baghdad were not secured against looters and organized art thieves, the director of Berlin’s Near East museum collection, Beata Salje, said Iraqi guards could be hired for as little as $3 a day. ‘Immediate help is necessary,’ Salje said at a news conference with other German experts. ‘It is important that the money is given as quickly as possible to our Iraqi colleagues so they can organize this’.”