“From 2005 to 2014, Dance Manchester held a biennial festival, Urban Moves International Dance Festival, that presented professional dance performances outdoors and in unusual spaces … However, funding changes over the past six years have disrupted that vision and trajectory and … the subsequent loss of [Arts Council England] funding announced in 2017, though devastating at first, has liberated us to pursue our own path. The future may remain insecure, but it allows excitement to build as we return to our vision to develop home-grown artists and audiences through a dance for placemaking approach.”
Category: AUDIENCE
Arts Council England Releases New Audience-Insights Tool
Nicholas Serota: “This is not about limiting risk or stopping organisations from putting on work that may be difficult and may tackle questions in unfamiliar ways. Rather, we want to understand what the impact of the work is. The best and most pioneering work often polarises opinion, and a positive response to risky work could strengthen an organisation, helping the leaders to shape the artistic direction confidently.”
Movie Theatres Roll Out New Subscription Plans
AMC Theaters, the largest multiplex chain in the United States, rolled out its own MoviePass-style service on Tuesday. For $20 a month, subscribers to AMC Stubs A-List can see up to three movies a week. Also last week, the Alamo Drafthouse chain said it would begin testing a service called Season Pass that would offer unlimited movies for one monthly price.
Why Working Classes Don’t Go To Theatre
“If my family want entertainment, they are more likely to spend their money on a motorised ride-on esky scooter than a subscription to Sydney Theatre Company. My school friends only ever come to the theatre to see me. Other times, they feel alienated and unsafe in arts institutions, if they can ever afford to go. Some of them say theatre is for people more educated, but mostly they just think it’s boring. I want to tell them that they’d love it if they went. That it’s their stories on stage, their culture. But most of the time, I’d be lying. Its middle-class stories about middle-class problems. This would bore them.”
It Used To Be ‘The Quentin Tarantino Of Opera Houses’ – What Happened To English National Opera?
“ENO is now a shell of the great and pioneering company it was when Peter Jonas was general director in the 1980s. Under Jonas, director of productions David Pountney and music director Mark Elder, ENO developed enormous self-confidence, great visual elan and an in-your-face aesthetic that combined high camp with raw violence.” Now the company lurches from crisis to crisis, runs fewer performances of duller productions, and rents out its house for half the year. Stephen Moss has a few suggestions for making ENO great again – including getting rid of its ‘white elephant’ of a theatre.
The First Feminist Comedy Club Is Now Open On Sunset Boulevard
“On Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard, a street bursting with comedy clubs and live acts, lies a small theater devoted to a new kind of entertainment: inclusive comedy. The Ruby is a self-described comedy theater and school ‘openly founded on the ideals of intersectional feminism.'” But is it funny? Rina Raphael pays a visit.
Should Theatre Come With Trigger Warnings? Cue The Debate
The debate about if and when to use them has the theatre community deeply divided. These new type of audience advisories warn of specific plot points that may provoke psychological trauma in some audience members. But some theatre professionals worry these warnings strip theatre of its power to provoke an emotional reaction and are a form of self-censorship.
Beyonce And Jay Z’s Video In The Louvre – Does It Change The Way We Look At Museums?
The music video is a true feast for the eyes as beautiful people take over a beautiful place in ways we’ve never seen — because people of color rarely have the opportunity to claim such spaces, a fact that adds to the extraordinariness of the couple’s feat. However, while the Carters’ accomplishment underscores the egregious lack of representation and audiences of people of color in art spaces, it also perpetuates the damaging notion that art is a luxury.
We’ve Reached Peak Screen. So Tech Companies Are Wondering What’s Next
Tech has now captured pretty much all visual capacity. Americans spend three to four hours a day looking at their phones, and about 11 hours a day looking at screens of any kind. So tech giants are building the beginning of something new: a less insistently visual tech world, a digital landscape that relies on voice assistants, headphones, watches and other wearables to take some pressure off our eyes.
When A Show Called ‘Narcissus Garden’ Is Great For Selfies, What Does That Mean?
Yayoi Kusama’s newest exhibit brings attention to Hurricane Sandy-damaged Rockaway Beach, but also attracts the very people it’s (perhaps) making fun of.