It’s hard to know where to place a story like this. Is it Theatre? Visual Art? Just an Idea? Well, whatever the category, it involves London’s Covent Garden, a French theatre company, Jules Verne, several 40-foot puppets, and a giant wooden elephant. Oh, and according to one London critic, the extravaganza “is to street art what a glacier is to ice cubes.”
Tag: 05.06.06
Documenting A Revolution Of Thought
It lasted for only a year in the late 1920s, and only 15 issues were ever printed, but Georges Bataille’s controversial and provocative magazine, Documents stands as one of the most influential publications of the 20th century. “Conceived as a ‘war machine against received ideas’, Documents drew in several dissident surrealists such as Leiris, Joan Miró, Robert Desnos and André Masson. As, in his own words, surrealism’s ‘old enemy from within’, Bataille was uncompromising in his disdain for art as a panacea and a substitute for human experience, his problem remaining ‘the place that surrealism gave to poetry and painting: it placed the work before being’.”
It Was A Very Good Year
A chance meeting between an up-and-coming young Canadian choreographer and some Broadway bigwigs appears to have sparked quite an impressive collaboration, and possibly launched a new star into the forefront of the dance galaxy. In the space of only a few months, Aszure Barton has gone from a residency at the Baryshnikov Center in lower Manhattan to directing the choreography for a new Broadway production of Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, and creating a new solo dance for Mikhail Baryshnikov himself.
Cleveland Ballet Series Canceled
Cleveland’s Playhouse Square has announced that it will no longer present the series of touring ballet companies it began showcasing in 2002, citing a “lack of audience growth, declining philanthropic support and the high cost of presenting world-class ballet… The series was started in 2002 to fill a void following the demise of Cleveland San Jose Ballet. It featured American Ballet Theatre, the Kirov Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Joffrey Ballet and other leading international companies.”
Fogel’s Future Plans
As chairman of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Henry Fogel has been on a seemingly endless national tour in recent years, talking to anyone who will listen about the future of orchestras and the changes the industry needs to embrace to thrive in the modern world. First on Fogel’s list: orchestras need to create deep ties within their communities, a strategy that has worked well for other arts groups.
Jurowski To Head London Phil
The London Philharmonic has named 34-year-old Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski as its next principal conductor, succeeding Kurt Masur. Jurowski has been the LPO’s principal guest conductor since 2003, and his star has been rising fast on the international scene. “His contract is for an initial five years. He will give a minimum of 25 concerts per year, as well as touring and working with the orchestra in Glyndebourne – spending a total of seven or eight months of the year in Britain.”
New Hires At Ballet Pacifica
“Former San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Evelyn Cisneros-Legate has been named academy director of Irvine-based Ballet Pacifica. She will take over as head of the company’s school from husband and wife John Gardner and Amanda McKerrow when their contracts expire at the end of July… Also, Ballet Pacifica interim managing director Melody Wolfgram has been named executive director, effective immediately.”
Ramona And The Movie Deal
Anyone who was ever a child has probably read at least one Beverly Cleary book, and most of us have read far more than that. “Although Cleary’s 39 books have not achieved the quick sales numbers of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (120 million copies) or Lemony Snicket’s books (50 million), they’ve never gone out of print. And since 1950, when Cleary’s first children’s novel, Henry Huggins, was published, she has sold more than 90 million copies.” Now, at age 90, she has finally agreed to allow her popular “Ramona” series to be made into a movie, but is zealously guarding the character against the rampant commercialization she so detests.
Spotlighting “Art Extraordinary”
A unique art gallery devoted to so-called “outsider art” opens this week in Scotland. The gallery’s founder, a former art therapist, says that she intends to showcase what she calls Art Extraordinary: “‘visionary imagery inspired directly from the unconscious’. Many of those who produce it suffer from mental illness, but by no means all. Some are simply recluses, making art in private with no intention of showing it to anyone else.” The gallery will be the first of its kind in the UK.
Death Becomes Him
“No American novelist knows his craft better than Philip Roth. But in the past decade, as he turned out a series of masterworks and became, at 70, a bestseller all over again, Roth apprenticed at a literary form that was new to him: the eulogy.” Four close friends died in quick succession, leaving Roth meditating on his own mortality. The pain became the backdrop for his latest novel, which focuses on the death of its title character, Everyman.