Dance/USA’s most recent Annual Financial Survey (2017), shows that Nutcracker/holiday revenue now represents an average of 48 percent of the surveyed dance companies’ overall season revenues and a median of 55 percent. As a percentage of total revenues, it represents an average and median of 15 percent. – Dance/USA
Blog
What’s It Like To Direct A Historic Black Theatre Company In The 21st Century?
Just after Jamil Jude was announced as the incoming artistic director of the True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, he talks with Sarah Bellamy, who is the artistic director of St. Paul’s historic Penumbra Theatre. Jude: “When speaking about the work or having the work evaluated, do you feel like you need people in certain cultural contexts in order to better understand it? I feel like whenever I’m talking about True Colors, there’s an immediate lane some people want to put the work into.” – HowlRound
Bestselling British Author Says He Wants To ‘Safeguard’ Libraries
Even as hundreds of libraries have closed and thousands of professional library staff been laid off, there are still libraries in Britain left to safeguard. And comedian turned bestselling children’s author David Walliams wants to save them. – The Guardian (UK)
Inside The Obsessive, Weird Fandom Of A Murder Podcast
The podcast “My Favorite Murder” started two years ago, and “unleashed the Murderino fandom community onto the internet. Facebook is the space where the murder-minded come out to play; take any hobby, profession or pop culture touchstone and add ‘erino’ to find the niche, murder-minded community you never knew you needed. There are Teacherinos and Bakerinos, Weight Watcherinos and Brooklyn 99erinos. I typed ‘Pooperino’ into my Facebook search bar just to see if it would yield a result. It did.” – HuffPost
If The World Is On Fire, Is It OK To Talk About Books?
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers, has some questions – and some answers. “No one I know is unaware that this is a particularly weird time to make art, rather than to spend every moment calling your senators. But art has always had to exist alongside history.” – Electric Literature
Uh, CNBC? It’s 2018 And Maybe Your Game Show Model Posse Needs To Go
Sooooo, CNBC brought back the game show Deal or No Deal?, and along with it, “26 female models in matching high heels and short, skintight dresses.” Game shows might just need a bit of a rethink. – The New York Times
Is A Culture’s Music A Human Right?
When refugees flee, or when groups migrate en masse, they (at least try to) take their music with them. But the modern world isn’t kind to public performances of music. Some musicians say that “music, song and dance are vital areas of empowerment, they are part of the foundation of personhood, and should be included among internationally recognised human rights.” – Le Monde
Making Art, And Aesthetically Pleasing Satellites, Out Of Government Surveillance
MacArthur Fellow Trevor Paglen’s work shows the gaps “between what we can see and what is actively being hidden from us. Often by governments or military forces. And that edge is where we as citizens can try to investigate what governments want to hide from us.” – NPR
When Israel’s Holocaust Museum Plays Host To Autocrats
Hungary’s right-wing nationalist prime minister and the president of the Philippines, who compared himself to Hitler and meant it as a compliment to both Hitler and himself, and other right-wing autocratic leaders have visited Yad Vashem in the past six months. Some staff members are highly distressed, but none of them is allowed to speak publicly about the issue. – The New York Times
It Wasn’t Easy For Barry Jenkins To Bring James Baldwin To The Big Screen
The director of Best Picture-winner Moonlight has loved Baldwin’s work for decades – and his new movie, If Beale Street Could Talk, is the first Hollywood big-screen production of Baldwin’s fiction. How did he do it? Persistence and delicacy (and winning an Oscar or two). – The Atlantic