Fort Worth Dallas Ballet has a new name. Henceforth it shall be called Texas Ballet Theater. “Last month’s merger of the ballet’s two boards – one based in Fort Worth and one in Dallas – prompted the decision. It reflects the new board and the new artistic direction. We did not want to be known as North Texas Ballet, either. It limits yourself. We have grown beyond Fort Worth and Dallas. We are spreading our wings.”
Tag: 05.08.03
In Opposition To Modern Art
The founder of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow has little use for modern art. “I have met plenty of people who have told me that I ought to like modern art. There is some place for ‘ought’ in life, but none at all in art; art is a gift, not a duty. A benighted view of art has a stranglehold on the few who choose what little art we are aloud to see. And the public acquiesce, because what else can they compare it with? It is one of the most pernicious myths of modern art that we have discovered the great art of our age when, in fact, we have hardly begun to look for it.”
Pop Goes The Musical
“After decades of irrelevance and indirection, musical theater has stumbled on a new formula to revitalize itself: mounting shows around the music of beloved pop artists.”
Editor Attacks BBC Arts Coverage
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger blasts the BBC for the state of its arts coverage. He said “the BBC had experienced a ‘terrible failure of nerve’ in its commitment to the arts and he laid the blame on the corporation’s board of governors.”
Why Should Pop Culture Diminish High Art?
Does writing about Britney Spears in the newspaper diminish appreciation of “high” arts? “It is evident that many people working in – and treasuring – the serious arts still feel embattled. It seems to them as if there is a widespread philistinism around: a remorseless drive in favour of the predominant commercially successful mass culture.”
Site Specific In LA
“Here and there around the United States, you may occasionally find the odd modern dance in a derelict hotel, a theater production on a city bus, or a concert on a public park carousel. But in Los Angeles these things happen regularly – if not quite predictably – thanks to a handful of committed practitioners who have built careers around the making of site-specific theater, dance and music.”
States Find Arts Funding Melting Away
States across America are cutting their arts budgets – last week Colorado whacked its budget by 90 percent. A number of states are in danger of not qualifying for money from the National Endowment for the Arts this year…
When Movies Weren’t “Product”
The Golden Age of movies in the 70s, writes David Ansen, differed significantly from today’s movies in an important way. “The great thing about back then, when the likes of Coppola and Scorsese, Altman and Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Mazursky, Polanski, Ashby, Woody Allen and Peckinpah radically altered the American cinematic landscape, was the fact that their movies weren’t merely ‘product.’ They were rule-breaking personal visions that connected with the audience in ways studio movies had rarely attempted before. Instead of mere escapism, the audience wanted relevance.”
Monkey Shakespeare With Lots Of S’s
Could monkeys typing actually produce Shakespeare given enough monkeys and enough time? “Now someone has attempted to put the theory to the test. Admittedly the British academics involved in this unusual project did not have an infinite number of typewriters, nor monkeys, nor time, but they did have six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys, and one computer, and four weeks for them to get creative. The results of this trial at Paignton zoo in Devon were more Mothercare than Macbeth. The macaques – Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan – produced just five pages of text between them, primarily filled with the letter S. There were greater signs of creativity towards the end, with the letters A, J, L and M making fleeting appearances, but they wrote nothing even close to a word of human language.”
Congressman Proposes Rollback Of Patriot Act Snooping On Library Patrons
US Congressman Bernie Sanders introduces a bill to roll back some of the government snooping into libraries allowed under the Patriot Act. “We need law enforcement to track terrorists down before they do their evil deeds. But if we give up some of our most cherished freedoms — the right to read what we want without surveillance; the need for ‘probable cause’ before searches are made — the terrorists win, for their attacks will have struck at the very heart of our constitutional rights. To remedy the excesses of the Patriot Act that threaten our right to read, I have introduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act. The bill, which has the support of Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, will establish once again that libraries and bookstores are no place for fishing expeditions.”