“We voted to accept devastating changes to our existing contract,” stated a press release issued by the musicians. “Had we rejected these cuts — including 50% of our weekly salary for the fall season and deep but graduated cuts for the ensuing two years — we would immediately have been without any income or the guarantee of health coverage.” – San Francisco Examiner
Blog
Online Theatre Has Become Very Creative. But Can A Model To Support It Evolve?
The best of them have come in the shape of theatrical activism, especially amid the Black Lives Matter movement, made cheaply and with a speed that a live theatrical production could never match. These have included a YouTube series about racism experienced by British East Asians as a result of Covid-19, the Bush theatre’s The Protest after the killing of George Floyd, and Roy Williams’s 846, all of which combined the arts, politics and activism. There has also been the Almeida’s Shifting Tides series, which focused on climate activism in audio plays made by their young actors. – The Guardian
How Local Museum Audiences Are Different From The Tourists
“The local audience is really the central audience. It’s an audience that has grown up with the institution and comes to you again and again. They have a much closer connection because they enjoy and notice constant changes within the institution. Their level of expectation is higher,” than, for example, a tourist who comes once every few years. – Artnet
The First Drive-In Book Festival
“The book lovers of Appledore, a picturesque fishing village on the north Devon coast, are a resourceful, determined lot. When their library faced closure 14 years ago, they helped save it by launching a literary festival, which grew and developed year by year into one of the most popular cultural events in the south-west of England. And when the 2020 Appledore book festival was threatened with cancellation because of the COVID crisis, they came up with the bold idea of holding a coronavirus-secure drive-in event, believed to be the first in the UK.” – The Guardian
Holidays are canceled?
Many of us in the arts are cynical about holiday productions. But these performances are meaningful in the lives of our audiences and I think should be respected as such. I’ve been thinking abut what is lost when audiences miss out on holiday shows this year. – Hannah Grannemann
David/Valda Over the Years
The screen announces “The Philadelphia Matter 1972/2020,” and glimpsed behind it is the large, alarmed face of its creator: choreographer David Gordon. The piece (no surprise) is propelled, guided, and shaped by words. Postmodern poetry — written and uttered by Gordon and/or his wife, Valda Setterfield — repeats and enlarges upon itself. – Deborah Jowitt
How To Understand Beliefs In Fake News? How About The Physics Of Phase Transitions
Those holding odd beliefs are not typically less intelligent. An answer may be found in the way modern communication media have restructured society, leading to the process of opinion-formation no longer chiefly taking place at the individual, but at the collective level, largely unmoored from concerns of factuality and appropriateness. This is best understood by studying the physics of phase transitions. – 3 Quarks Daily
How Music Schools Have Adapted Teaching To Deal With COVID
Heather O’Donovan: “Unlike six months ago, however, they’re prepared to face the challenges. I spoke with leadership at conservatories across the country to get a sense of how they’ve adapted to these unprecedented times. What they shared with me was a deeply heartening show of ingenuity, creativity, and resilience.” – WQXR (New York City)
TV Cord-Cutting Has Accelerated During The Pandemic
“Consumers are choosing to cut the cord because of high prices, especially compared with streaming alternatives. The loss of live sports in H1 2020 contributed to further declines. While sports have returned, people will not return to their old cable or satellite plans.” – TechCrunch
Why Do Mixed-Genre Dance Companies Always Do Their Daily Classes In Ballet?
“That disconnect grows wider every year as contemporary choreographers look beyond ballet — if not beyond white Western forms entirely — in search of new inspiration and foundational techniques. Yet dancers at almost all of the world’s leading mixed-rep ensembles take ballet classes before rehearsals and shows. Most companies rarely depart from ballet more than twice a week and some never offer alternative classes.” This has, in fact, been a subject of debate since Diaghilev’s day. – Dance Magazine