Tag: 06.23.20

The Crisis Of Supporting The Arts

The current crisis is also a policy crisis. It illuminates the need to support artists more fulsomely and creatively throughout the various stages of their careers. Central to this is imagining ways to limit the precarity of the gig economy which, perhaps surprisingly, characterizes the careers of even the highest echelon of performers, classical or otherwise. – The Conversation

When Hollywood Discovered Cyberspace (The Year Was 1995)

Johnny Mnemonic. The Net. Hackers. Strange Days. “It’s hard to know what’s most dated about these mid-’90s curios: the primitive-looking effects, the funky fashions or the clunky technology depicted on screen. But now, 25 years later, they’ve proved prescient in their concerns about surveillance, corporate power and the corruption of what seemed to be an excitingly democratic new age.” – CNET

Is The Line Between Concert And Commercial Dance Finally Fading?

“With more crossover than ever, the line between the two once-distinct career paths feels increasingly blurred. Broadway shows now feature every style from hip hop to ballet to the work of contemporary choreographers like Sonya Tayeh and Camille A. Brown. In Los Angeles, still considered the hub of the commercial world, concert dancers seem in higher demand. … But why is this happening now, and what does it mean for the dance world as a whole?” – Dance Magazine

Kennedy Center Cancels Through The Rest Of 2020

“For a number of weeks, we have been talking about what would it take to be able to bring people back, how seating in the theaters could be with social distancing and thinking about the performers onstage. But it became increasingly apparent, for the safety of our artists and audience and our staff, it was going to be impossible to do that in the near term.” – Washington Post

The Challenge Of Fundraising For Opera In The Time Of COVID

As one development exec for a major company puts it, “During a crisis, it’s not really the time to go out and ask for those five-year campaign pledges. It’s the time to say, ‘how are you’ and ‘how can we as an arts organization be of support during this time?’ ‘Is there anything you need from us?’ ‘What are your ideas and thoughts?’ And among the people we’re close to, that we’re asking those questions of, those who are able to do something are stepping up, in some ways unasked, to support us in meaningful ways.'” Observes another, “People who love opera really love it. You can raise a lot of money from people who love opera because it’s a secular religion.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

Movie Production Is A Global Affair, And Restarting It As The Pandemic Rages On Is A Tricky Matter

“A game of ‘international chess’ is how Maxime Cottray describes the current state of the global production business. ‘Right now, everyone’s moving their pieces around the board, trying to find a place to shoot — Australia, Iceland, wherever,’ says Cottray, a production executive with genre film specialists XYZ Films. ‘And you have to be ready, if COVID strikes, to be able to move fast to find somewhere else.'” – The Hollywood Reporter

Meet The ‘Dean Of African-American Composers’, Adolphus Hailstork

“I survived the gun-to-the-head modernism, back when I was a student — you know if you weren’t crunching elbows on the keys and counting up to 12 all the time, you weren’t being much of a composer. I decided I didn’t want to go that way. I came up as [an Episcopalian cathedral] singer and singers don’t often sing in 12-tone technique and things like that. I’ve used it, but it wasn’t a natural fit and so I’ve spent most of my career trying to be honest with myself. I call it ‘authenticism’ — that’s my ‘ism.'” – San Francisco Classical Voice

Nine Black Artists And Cultural Leaders On Seeing And Being Seen

“Whether it’s the artist Tschabalala Self discussing the fraught experience of seeing her paintings be sold, like her ancestors, at auction or the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael R. Jackson searching for his characters’ interiority, their perspectives distill what it means (and what it has meant) to be black in America.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

Why Did One Of Chicago’s Best For-Profit Theaters Have To Close?

When things shut down in March, Mercury Theater proprietor L. Walter Stearns — one of the few commercial theater producers in the city to own the real estate they operate on — thought he’d be out of business for a month or so. Now he says he can’t see any near-term end to the danger COVID poses to performers, staff and patrons — so the only way he can avoid foreclosure on the mortgage is to shutter the company and sell the buildings. – Chicago Tribune