San Francisco Ballet gets ready to open its season. “There’s a deceptively languid look to this daily class, a ritual that summons the dancers from bed five or six mornings a week. But in these easy, almost meditative early moves rests the essence of a company. Chaos and order, dissolution and harmony. It will come, this Balanchine marvel, but not without the invigorating grind of more rehearsal.”
Blog
La Scala-on-the-Schuylkill
Philadelphia’s venerable Academy of Music is reopening after the Philadelphia Orchestra moved out and a major renovation was completed. The hall looks great. And some theatre producers are enthusiastic about getting into the building. But with the touring show business down, is there enough business to justify the Academy’s operation?
All Movement As Dance – Cunningham Company At 50
“It has been 50 years since Cunningham founded his company, 61 years since he presented that first concert of his own solo dances. ‘I’ve remained just as fascinated with movement as when I began. I see something moving, somebody do something, and I wonder, ‘How could one do that (in a dance)?'”
Juilliard At 100
Juilliard is the top arts school in America. A new documentary looks at the school as it turns 100. “What is perhaps most interesting about the documentary is the unflinching way it confronts the darker side of this famous place. Not that it isn’t ultimately celebratory, and rightly so. One comes away almost awed by the devotion and intensity with which the teachers, and the self-motivated students themselves, go about the business of making the best better, a process that goes on every day in the fortress-like building on the corner of Broadway and 65th Street. One has to wonder if an atmosphere like this, despite all the superb teachers and students and alumni, doesn’t breed a kind of hard-edged competitiveness that fails to serve all music or dance or theater equally well.”
Warhol Foundation Sends A Message – Now More Than Ever
While many foundations are cutting back arts grants, the Warhol Foundation has increased the amount it is giving away this year by 20 percent. “It isn’t that the foundation is such a smart investor, although putting lots of money into bonds has helped. And it isn’t just that the foundation continues to profit from sales of Warhol’s work. “We wanted to send a message. Even in bad times, a lot of people have a lot of money. Sometimes they can do more, spending some of that money in bad times than in more plentiful times.”
Going Off-Formula – The Norah Jones Case
The huge success of Norah Jones in a format that isn’t the standard pop formula has the recording industry rethinking… “In an era full of great voices, from Mariah Carey to Whitney Houston, that have been plugged into formats that make them more manufactured than memorable, her success is leading record executives, always on the lookout for the next big thing, to search for singers again, not just voices with hit formulas.”
Utica Symphony May Close Because of Deficit
“The Utica Symphony Orchestra, upstate New York’s oldest continuing orchestra, may be forced to shut down if it does not get at least $112,000 by mid-February.”
Motown Turns Up To Dispute Author
Gerald Posner goes to Detroit to talk about his new book chronicling the history of Motown and gets an earful from the audience. “Only in Detroit could you write a book and have all the main characters show up at your book lecture.” Mostly they were critical.
A $600,000 Tree Stump?
John Davis saw a giant rootball unearthed in a tornado 27 years ago and decided to dig out the roots and make a sculpture out of it. After 2 1/2 years he was finished revealing the 14 foor-by 16 foot, 3000-pound piece. Then he listed it on Ebay for $2.7 million and got no offers. Now he wants $600,000, but the artworld doesn’t seem interested. “From the photograph, it looks like an incredible object. A question that I’m asked a lot is, ‘What is it really worth?’ And there are different qualifications for intrinsic artistic value and what the art market will bear. … On the art market, it’s worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.”
Movie Critics Vs. Movie Audiences
“Are movie critics out of touch with the public? Is that necessarily bad? And if so, should average moviegoers or Oscar voters pay any attention to this deluge of critical voting, rehashing and listmaking? Looking over the lists of movies anointed by the critics so far, compared with 2002’s top grossing box-office hits, you can understand why some observers – especially movie studio and marketing executives and their cronies – become exasperated.”