“All five have been making dance against heavy headwinds for as long as half a century. Each has received honors and accolades, and is still flying high. Yet none is as well known outside dance circles as, say, Judith Jamison or Debbie Allen.”
Tag: 10.27.10
The End Of Britain’s Public Universities
“It used to be a central pillar of the British higher education system that all institutions offered a similar range of degrees at the same price (if not with the same prestige). When education becomes a private investment not a public good the principle of universal provision necessarily falls by the way.”
Canadian Opera Company Packs House, Posts Surplus
“The Canadian Opera Company continued to pack houses in its 2009-10 season, earning $13.4 million at the box office, a 6.2 per cent increase.”
TV Auctioneer Sentenced To Five Years For Selling $20 Million In Forged Art
“James Mobley, 63, on-air auctioneer for the Fine Art Treasures Gallery, admitted conspiracy to defraud in a Los Angeles court. The show ran twice a week on satellite channels from 2002 to 2006.”
Cape Town Opera Will Tour Israel Over Tutu’s Objections
“South Africa’s Cape Town Opera has turned down an appeal from Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to call off a tour of Israel.”
TV Show “The Good Wife” Cluelessly Slams Steppenwolf Theatre
“Even if one allows that the attempt was satirical–and Steppenwolf certainly leaves itself open to satire–this was still a numbingly clueless attempt at humor. To say that Steppenwolf was unrecognizable doesn’t even begin to capture the absurdity of the scene.”
Director Calls Melbourne Arts Centre ‘Obscene Cluster of Pimples’
Michael Kantor, artistic director of Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre (and a nephew of Rupert Murdoch), has described Australia’s answer to Lincoln Center as “that badly designed and ugly shrine to mediocrity … [that] ghettoises rather than centralises artistic endeavour … [and ought] to sink into the ground and be swallowed back into the swamp it always was.”
A Moulin Rouge Dancer Tells All
“In those big Paris cabaret shows you perform two shows a night, six nights a week, in 9cm heels with backpacks that weigh up to 13kg, with massive head pieces and feathers that must be wired so that they sit and move correctly. And you have to make it all look floaty and effortless.”
Franco Zeffirelli at 87, Telling All Yet Again
“In his blue eyes and chipmunk cheeks, in the flamboyant theatricality of his gestures, there is still the ghost of the pretty cherub this Methuselah once was.” But he can still talk up a storm: sniping at people and cities, dissing his mentors, namedropping Maria Callas and Berlusconi. And he’s still working: “It is the only thing I have. I don’t have love.”