The battle looming on Broadway between the musicians’ union and producers is being cast as a fight over whether there will be live music in orchestra pits. On the other hand – union rules requiring a minimum number of musicians to be employed at theatres even when not all the musicians are required for a show, are unreasonable almost by any standard. Meanwhile – today’s theatre orchestras are so highly miked that it’s often difficult to tell whether the music is live or not. Where’s the artistic value in any of this?
Tag: 02.02.03
Where’s The Imaginative Dance Needed For LA?
With the LA Philharmonic moving out of the The Music Center of Los Angeles, dance fans are hoping to see more dance brought to town. Very little dance has been seen there for years. To that end, the Music Center has taken a baby step, bring three companies to town. “The companies are certainly worthy; for the Music Center, however, this seems a discouragingly safe and unimaginative way to begin. What’s really called for is a wake-up call to the vast, hibernating dance audience. This selection does nothing to define the place that the Music Center wants to stake out for itself as a dance presenter.”
Developing Dance Outside The Big Apple
In the American dance world, New York is the center of the universe. Every choreographer and dance company feels the need to be seen there. But a panel of choreographers meeting in Cleveland stressed the importance of making careers outside of New York. “The regional voice makes a difference. There’s a different kind of complexion to dance in Seattle, Austin [Texas], Cleveland…”
A Little Movie Theatre Competition – That’s What’s Needed
How do movie theatres get the movies they want to show? A Montreal theatre entrepreneur charges that “Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon, the largest theatre chains in the country, use their size to pressure distributors to decide who gets the films.” He also says the two companies have split up the Canadian market so as not to seriously compete with one another, and that if competition was opened up to smaller players, ticket prices would fall and the range of movies shown would increase.
Running Numbers – Hollywood Box Office Doesn’t Add Up
“It’s commonly assumed, both inside and outside of Hollywood, that if a movie doesn’t hit No. 1 at North American ticket wickets in its first weekend, then it’s at best a disappointment and at worst an outright flop. The Monday morning quarterbacking of box-office stats has become so common, even people who don’t go to movies can quote you the numbers for various films, like stockbrokers discussing share prices. Yet box-office figures are so inherently flawed, and so wilfully distorted, as to be almost meaningless.”
History Of Dance In Two Weeks
The Kennedy Center is embarking on another big project – this time in dance. “Dancegoers will get a side-by-side sampling of some of the most influential choreography in ballet history, as well as a couple of seldom-seen nuggets with a high curiosity factor.” American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet Kirov Ballet, Miami City Ballet and dancers from the English National Ballet and Royal Ballet will all appear in programs over a two week period in March.
Books – It Is After All, A Business
Should we be surprised when a major publisher ousts a popular literary editor when sales goals aren’t met? “In the fat times of the late ’90s and into 2000-2001, publishers signed up the biggest author names for mega-millions in much the same way major-league baseball owners paid superstars in amounts equating to Monopoly money. The tough economy caught up to major-league baseball, and it’s apparently hit the book business, too.”
New Look Classics
Last year Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” sold 2 million copies, big business for a book that has been around for a long time. The classics are big business for publishers, and classic editions of those books are getting facelifts. “The classics ain’t what they used to be – in some cases, they’re New and Improved. All this ‘re-branding’ activity, all this new ink and paper, is going on in a corner of the bookstore that is widely seen as deservedly stuck somewhere behind the coffee bins. Who, after all, gets excited about a new edition of Herodotus?”
The End Of Dinner Theatre?
Classical dinner has vanished in cities like Chicago. It thrived in the 70s and 80s when minor Hollywood and Broadway stars looking for work would take to the dinner theatre circuit. Then the attraction was more the star than the play. “Now, a different story: Marginal TV stars can score a USA Original teleplay, or a one-shot movie on the Lifetime channel. ‘There’s plenty of work for all of ’em. That’s why the star system doesn’t exist’.”
Feminist Art – Three Decades Later
“How does feminist art of the 1970s hold up? Does it seem historically significant or merely transiently faddish?” Feminist artists’ “demands for parity, for an end to being patronized, and for acknowledgment that art should accommodate a distinctly female consciousness made headlines at the time.”