“The Opera parted with two tons of garments, from ankle armor to silk skirts to black-painted cowboy hats. It took several months to price all the items; some went for as little as $1, while others went for as much as $200. The goal was to raise enough money to buy a new dye vat for the costume shop. Staff members said the private sale for subscribers and donors on Friday had already raised about $10,000, enough money to replace the vat.”
Tag: 10.23.05
Master Of The Ballet
“A ballet master is the face of how the information gets transferred or initially introduced. It is the person who instills the confidence in dancers to go that extra mile. They’re at the front line of any artistic direction. In other words, the ballet masters are as responsible for the beauty onstage as the dancers themselves.”
New York City’s Arts Mayor
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not a connoisseur of the arts. But his administration has been the most supportive administration of the arts in a very long time. “Under Mr. Bloomberg, public art has flourished in every corner of the city – from ‘Element E,’ a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture in the center of the former Tweed Courthouse, to a classic limestone statue in the Bronx, to ‘The Gates,’ set up by Christo and Jeanne-Claude last winter in Central Park, a project for which he personally lobbied for almost a decade. The city’s art commission, once knee-capped by the Giuliani administration as an elitist irritant, has been empowered at the highest level, with a voice in every significant public-works project in the city.”
Shirley Horn, 71
The jazz singer, who “died Thursday night at 71 after a long illness, could swing a tune with the best of them, and often surprised fans when she did, but that approach simply didn’t fit her temperament. Instead, Horn did ballads and cool, understated ruminations better than anyone except her first champion, mentor and lifelong friend, trumpeter Miles Davis.”
The Slowest Singer In Jazz
Shirley Horn was “a unique singer, with one of the slowest deliveries in jazz and a very unusual way of phrasing, putting stress on certain words and letting others slip away. She cherished her repertory, making audiences feel that she was cutting through to the stark truths of songs like ‘Here’s to Life’ and ‘You Won’t Forget Me.’ She wanted things just so.”
A Dance Company’s Gilded Cage
A Sam Walton heir puts up tens of millions to start a dance company. The dancers get decent salaries, a new studio and a full season in which to work. So why is the company’s morale low?
Louisiana Musicians Turn Down NY Gig Replacing Strikers
Musicians of the Louisiana Philharmonic were excited at prospects of a 10-week gig playing at radio City Music Hall in New York for $1,600 a week. Since the musicians are out of work, it seems like a dream opportunity. But then the players discovered they would be replacing striking colleagues…
UK: Let’s Keep Our Writers’ Papers At Home
There’s a new campaign in the UK to try to stop the papers of important writers from being bought up by American institutions. “The campaign comes amid fears that the papers of Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, may go abroad. All three are understood to have been approached recently by agents acting for institutions in America. In recent years British authors whose papers have been sold abroad include the novelists Peter Ackroyd, Julian Barnes and Malcolm Bradbury and the playwrights David Hare and Tom Stoppard.”
Shanghai Makes A Big Play For The Visuals
“The forces of growth that have filled Shanghai’s sky with construction cranes — China’s national bird, in current parlance — have sparked a profusion of nonprofit exhibition spaces and commercial galleries devoted to avant-garde art. Against the odds, these showcases have popped up in a central park, a historic pedestrian street, a suburban shopping mall, abandoned banks and a derelict industrial complex. Beijing remains the undisputed cultural capital of China, but Shanghai is fashioning a role for itself as a distinctive place to see new art made in China and elsewhere.”
Graves’ New Children’s Theatre Fails To Soar
Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre is one of the best in the country. And it has a new home, as designed by the eminent Michael Graves. “The spaces added in the $27 million expansion – a flexible 275-seat theater, a welcoming rotunda, an impressive education center and greatly enlarged backstage facilities – will advance the theater’s enlarged mission and ensure its cultural legacy. But its workmanlike exterior does not advance Twin Cities architecture.”