Says Nick Asbury, one of the company members who gave the house a test run last week, “I came offstage and the first thing I said to Michael Boyd [the artistic director] was ‘it works’. I came in booming. I found I had to drop it down. You can, finally, be subtle.”
Tag: 11.23.10
The Key Element in a Story Ballet
“The designer of a fairytale ballet is far, far more important than the choreographer. It’s those visions that lodge themselves in children’s heads, in adults’ memories, embedded with the music. And at no time more potently than Christmas when it’s time for The Nutcracker and Cinderella.” A Q&A with the designers of two new versions of these ballets.
The Nutcrackers Alastair Macaulay Won’t Get to See
There’s “one by the Tucson Regional Ballet (not to be confused with the Ballet Tucson) that features ‘a battle between coyotes and the U.S. Cavalry, a journey over the glistening, falling snow of Mt. Lemmon to a Desert Dream of Chili Peppers, Mama Piñata and the waltzing Desert Poppies.’ … Maybe another year’s stop in Boston could include both An Urban Nutcracker (Ballet Rox) and also The Slutcracker.”
‘Why Thanksgiving Is Really Just an Excuse to Be a Scientist’
Adam Frank: “Science, when practiced with an authentic intention, is a way of honoring the cosmos we find ourselves inhabiting. … Taking notice of the world as it is and of itself, for even just a single moment, is a fundamental act of being human and therefore being a scientist and therefore being grateful.”
Producers Forbidden to Use Adrien Brody’s Image to Promote Movie He Stars In
“A federal judge has blocked the makers of a thriller film starring Adrien Brody from using the Oscar-winning actor’s likeness until he is fully paid for his role.” The ruling “block[s] the makers of Giallo from continuing to distribute, market or sell Giallo in the United States.”
Pathbreaking South African Theatre Company Locked Out of Home Base
The Isango Portobello troupe, co-founded by director Mark Donford-May and soprano Pauline Malefane, achieved international fame with its reinterpretations of Bizet’s Carmen, Mozart’s Magic Flute, and The Mysteries (Yiimimangaliso). Company members “arrived at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town yesterday to find the doors locked against them.”
Chelsea Museum Gets One More Year in Foreclosed-On Building
“[A] bankruptcy court [has] paved the way for a $19.35 million sale of the museum’s building to a New York developer. The sale would allow the museum to continue operating at its West 22nd street site, rent-free, until the end of 2011.”
Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival: ‘Marketing Device or Access to Our Inner Souls?’
“Over the last several weeks, Lincoln Center has presented the White Light Festival, billed as an exploration of the spiritual in music. … How valid is that goal? Is it possible to make works spiritual just by calling them that? Has this festival achieved the otherworldly aims expressed in its marketing?” A discussion among the classical music writers at The New York Times.
A Temporary Head for Headless Virginia Opera
Robin Thompson, who was the artistic administrator and, later, producing artistic director at New York City Opera until that company’s near-death experience two years ago, will serve as artistic advisor to Virginia Opera while its board searches for a successor to longtime artistic director Peter Mark, whose contract was terminated last week.
Alan Bennett, British Playwriting’s Sunny-Tempered Eeyore
The author of The History Boys and The Habit of Art “is all these things, cheerily miserable, miserably cheerful, dictatorially diffident, a mousey egomaniac, and he’s damned if he’s going to explain his contradictions to anybody.”