Uneasy Truce At Mpls Dance Venue

Minneapolis’s Southern Theater, one of the Twin Cities’ premiere dance venues, has been embroiled in infighting and recrimination since the board decided to fire its founding artistic director last summer. “For now, it appears the artists and the board have put most of their differences aside to keep the 2008-09 season alive. But getting to this point was a difficult and occasionally ugly process.”

No Tolerance For The Weird and Foolish

Inga Saffron weighs in on the controversial redesign of New York’s 2 Columbus Circle, and finds the whole thing disconcerting. “It’s a conscientious if unspectacular effort. Yet it’s impossible to forget that this decorous little tower was once something flamboyant, fun, and maybe even a little foolish… Its demise reminds us how little our society tolerates the weird, even in a metropolis like New York.”

Artists Cast A Critical Eye On The New AGO

“For months, a chorus of voices has enthused about Friday’s Art Gallery of Ontario reopening… Curiously silent have been the artists who, as one might naively imagine, are what an art gallery is all about. There’s a deep-seated reason for this: Artists everywhere have a love-hate relationship with museums and major galleries. They’d rather stay quiet than blow a chance to see their work become part of a collection.”

Remembering A Critic For The Ages

“A single John Leonard sentence is, more often than not, an unmatchable catalog of learning, wit, enthusiasm and combativeness, and by the time Mr. Leonard died on Wednesday, those sentences surely numbered in the millions. No other critic could range so giddily over so much material… without ever losing his ethical bearings, his sense of humor or the thread of his argument.”

An Autumnal Blowout Of Book Prizes

Canada’s Writers’ Trust literary award is switching its annual announcement date from spring to fall, to better place it among the country’s more prestigious lit prizes. “Despite the risk of competing for the same precious literary oxygen already shared by the Giller and the GGs, as the Governor General’s Awards are known in the book industry… [the switch] amplifies the existing perception of the fall as the make-or-break season in the publishing year.”

Fringe Benefits

Violin lessons are certainly not for everyone – the endless hours of practice, the humiliation of sitting in the very back of a youth orchestra, unsure what everyone else is doing. But for an adult 20 years removed from the experience, suddenly carrying around a violin for a day can lead to an unexpected outpouring of good will. “It is code for a different sort of person – artistic, freethinking, single. A wearer of Goth tops, not a person with lice shampoo in her handbag.”

Muti Walks Out On The Queen of England

Conductor Riccardo Muti has apparently pulled out of a lavish birthday celebration for the Prince of Wales after members of the royal family, including the Queen, attempted to change Muti’s planned program for the evening. Muti was to lead the Philharmonia Orchestra in a program that the royals thought “inappropriate” and “overlong.” As a result, Muti “absolutely refuses to have anything to do with the party now.”

Gergiev’s Ossetian Adventure

During the conflict between Russia and Georgia a few months back, conductor Valery Gergiev, a native of the breakaway region at the heart of the conflict, was outspoken in his support of Russia, even as public sentiment in the West generally went Georgia’s way. And Gergiev isn’t backing down now. “He says he is vindicated by accounts by independent monitors… suggesting that Georgia was not acting defensively and had launched an indiscriminate attack.”