Tag: 04.21.05

European Dance Takes An Elitist Turn

A European festival of new dance shows a distinct experimental bent. “Europe, it would seem, there is a greater willingness to explore the outer reaches of conceptualism and politicization, layered with history and fraught with context. Theorizing aside, the dance was extremely elitist, for all its bows to popular dance (hip-hop) and political immediacy. This followed in the grand tradition of provocative European avant-gardism, influential and obscure. Work like this flourishes in a climate of still-generous public subsidies (at least from an American perspective) and a sympathetic dance intelligentsia, unmindful of such tawdry considerations as potential box-office appeal.”

Poetry “Watchdog Website Shuts Down

“This week the poetry world is atwitter over the closing down of an Internet site that for the last year dedicated itself to exposing what it calls fraud among the small circle of poetry contests that frequently offer publishing contracts as prizes. Alan Cordle, a research librarian who lives in Portland, Ore., has managed the Web site, www.foetry.com, anonymously since its inception a little more a year ago. He called his site the “American poetry watchdog” and aimed to expose the national poetry contests that he said “are often large-scale fraud operations” in which judges select their friends and students as winners.”

British Recording Industry Tallies Illegal Downlod Losses

The British recording industry has lost hundreds of millions to illegal downloading in the past two years. “The British Phonographic Industry said record labels lost £376m last year – up nearly £100m on the £278m they lost the year before – in the music business’s first attempt to quantify the financial cost of illegal downloads. A two-year study by research group TNS showed that music fans would have spent £1.5bn on recorded music between 2002-2004, but because of downloads spent only £858m.”