There’s a ballroom dance boom across America after football star Emmitt Smith’s “Dancing with the Stars” win last fall. “Dance instructors across the country say Smith’s victory in November has redefined the boundaries of coolness and inspired legions of reluctant men who otherwise considered dancing beneath their dignity.”
Tag: 01.21.07
Broadway’s Racy New Hit
“Spring Awakening” has become the surprise hit musical of the season while being hailed as tastefully erotic. “Adapted from German playwright Frank Wedekind’s then-scandalous 1891 play, ‘Spring Awakening’ looks at the angst of high school students and their sexual awakening in repressed 19th-century Germany.”
Raid Roils Hip-hop Industry
A “police raid of the Aphilliates Music Group office in Atlanta that resulted in the arrest of DJ Drama and the confiscation of 81,000 mixtape CDs has ignited a firestorm in the hip-hop music industry.”
Merger Hasn’t Solved Opera’s Problems In Cleveland
“The news last week that Leon Major will step down as artistic director of Opera Cleveland after the 2007 inaugural season sends what might be construed as distress signals. The new company, which merges Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland, has yet to raise a single curtain – its debut production is Richard Strauss’ Salome in April – and already we’re witness to a series of backstage minidramas. Are we really surprised?”
A Crash Course In Reality For Net Stars
“As the rambunctious entertainers of the Internet make their plays for the showbiz big leagues, these overnight superstars are enjoying the standard introduction to Hollywood. Which means not just glad-handing agents and Kafkaesque ‘lunch meetings’ but also the bitter falling-out with your partners from the ‘hood, complete with morning-after mudslinging.” Case in point: the meteoric rise and disastrous fall of the video blog, Rocketboom.
Chicago’s New Leading Theatre?
“At a time when young audiences demonstrably are rejecting stolid, text-based theater for more eclectic performance styles, the maturation of the [House Theatre of Chicago] has excellent timing. This is the theater company that could — should — be a new leading public face of Chicago’s off-Loop. This is the House’s moment. “
Major Art Dealer Felled By Heart Attack
“Robert Noortman, a gregarious, risk-taking dealer who was a major force in the market for old master and French Impressionist paintings, died on Sunday at his castle in the Belgian countryside, just over the border from his base in Maastricht, the Netherlands. He was 60.”
Why Won’t Americans Watch Foreign Films?
This is a golden age of global filmmaking, according to nearly any critical standard. But American moviegoers don’t appear to have any interest. “The movies are out there, more numerous and various than ever before, but the audience — and therefore the box-office returns, and the willingness of distributors to risk even relatively small sums on North American distribution rights — seems to be dwindling and scattering.”
Playing The Waiting Game In Philly
With Christoph Eschenbach preparing to depart the Philadelphia Orchestra in mid-2008, speculation is rife over who the orchestra will pick to replace him. “No name is likely to garner more speculation next season than Vladimir Jurowski,” but the most likely scenario is that the orchestra won’t have a new leader in place when its current one leaves.
Dialing For Dollars (But Who Takes Home The Cash?)
“Telephone pleas for donations can draw big bucks for charities, but even bigger ones for the companies making the calls. Private telemarketing companies calling on behalf of more than 450 nonprofits in New York collected $190 million in 2005 — the best year since 1999. But as much as 90 cents of every dollar donated never reaches the nonprofit and is kept by the telemarketing companies.”