Category: issues

“The years following the collapse of the Soviet Union were not kind to the estimable Moscow theatre, particularly its opera wing. Short of funds and lacking the kind of dynamic leadership Valery Gergiev brought to the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the Bolshoi often seemed to be going through the motions.” But in the past few years the Bolshoi has undergone a dramatic transformation…

A new theme park opens in Florida. The park enlists visitors in role-playing – players assume the identities of firefighters or cops or… and play out a scenario. “The $40 million entertainment complex is billed as the first indoor role-playing theme park in the United States for kids and the beginning of a national rollout for the concept. It’s modeled after a similar park in Mexico.”

The Edinburgh Festival is huge. Enormous. Gigantic. So it’s a big success right? Maybe not, writes David Benedict. “We’re talking art, not merchandise, so why are we so hung up on size? Shouldn’t we be vaunting quality over quantity? Not at Edinburgh. Less is no longer more. This is the festival most easily mistaken for a marathon, and every year some schmuck attempts to beat the record for the number of events crammed into 24 hours.”

The New York State Legislature is considering setting up a new funding source for the arts. “The state Assembly has approved a bill establishing an arts fund that would receive money when individuals mark a personal income tax return check-off. The funds would go to the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), which funds arts programs statewide.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed an increase in his state’s arts budget. “Last year, state funding of the California Arts Council, a state agency that gives grants to local groups, fell from $17.5 million to $1 million. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line item veto power to take out what would have been a $1 million increase in arts funding by the Legislature, leaving the allocation at just over $1 million. The cuts have made the California Arts Council last in the United States in per capita funding.”

The city of Cleveland does not have a large, annual, tourist-attracting arts festival. It would like to have one. And plans are well underway for the launch of the “Festival of Arts and Technology”. And all it will take to start it up is $1 million from the Cuyahoga County general fund. But that’s not chump change in a metro area of Cleveland’s size, and the county authorities are taking a close look at the plans before signing on.

“The Cirque du Soleil is reassuring coaches and athletes that it will not be poaching Olympians in the prime of their career, as acrobatic talent scouts head to Athens next week to scope out the scene. But despite Cirque’s best efforts, some coaches still resent its presence… Cirque recruiters routinely attend gymnastic championships, as well as dance and theatre festivals. Cirque has been sending scouts to the Olympic Games since 1996. Coaches are also scouted, and he knows of three top Canadian coaches who are working for Cirque.”

“Many former and current hip-hop producers and performers… have turned their attention away from the Top 40 and toward Madison Avenue. While hip-hop performers have been running marketing divisions as part of their business, [hip-hop capitalists] are building successful full-service agencies with a roster of clients that they run apart from their other businesses.”

The state of California, which houses more than 10% of the population of the U.S., has a State Arts Council with a budget of only $1 million, the lowest per capita level of arts funding (by far) in the nation. And last week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto to remove an additional million dollars of arts funding approved by the state legislature. The cuts have left California arts leaders in despair, with one civic leader saying that the disappointment “was not about that million dollars, it was about what it represented.”