“The American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents dancers in the United States, has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the Dance Theatre of Harlem is refusing to recognize the union and will not renegotiate the dancers’ previous contract.”
Tag: 04.17.12
Proto-Faxes – When Radio Really Might Have Killed Newspapers
“The introduction of broadcast radio caused some in the newspaper industry to fear that newspapers would soon become a thing of the past. After all, who would read the news when you could just turn on the radio for real-time updates? Newspapers had even more to fear in 1938 when radio thought it might compete with them in the deadtree business as well.”
What City Is The Musical Tastemaker For America’s Social-Networking Generation? (It’s Not NY Or LA)
“If you want to know what the cool kids will be listening to next month, here are two hints: 1) Head to Atlanta. 2) It’s probably hip hop. That’s according to a recently posted arXiv paper mapping the geographic flow of music on the social-networking music site Last.fm.)” Also at the top: Montreal, Chicago and Toronto.
What’s So “Live” About Live Performance, Anyway?
“Georgia Institute of Technology professor Philip Auslander first floated the idea that live and mediated performances weren’t really all that different in his 1999 book, Liveness. As the performance scholar pointed out, the very idea of “live performance” came about only when recording technologies created Coachella-style confusion by making the two indistinguishable.”
Decision Not To Award Fiction Pulitzer Angers Judges
“The obvious answer is to let the [jury] pick. We’re the people who have gone through the 300 novels. All the board is asked to do is to read three top novels that we’ve given to them…In fact, what’s happened today is a lot of the articles and blog posts have gotten it wrong–they’ve been blaming the three of us!”
San Antonio Opera To File For Bankruptcy
“Facing a federal lawsuit by a local musicians union, San Antonio Opera plans to file for liquidation bankruptcy within 20 days, the opera company’s lawyer said Monday.”
Pulitzer Prize For Drama To Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Water By The Spoonful
The play, which premiered at Hartford Stage Company in October, depicts “a wounded Hispanic soldier returning to his Philadelphia neighborhood after serving in Iraq … as family matters scuttle his grand plans and feed his issues of guilt, anger and dependency.”
Re-Thinking What Makes Art ‘Authentic,’ As A New York Critic Visits Mali
Holland Cotter: “In the West we have a particular definition of authenticity and a mania for it as a standard for art, especially art that we envision as elemental, unmodern, unspoiled. We gauge genuineness in terms of age, rarity, uniqueness, history of use, motives for creation. But in Africa, as often as not, authentic is simply what works, socially and spiritually: for example, the way each Dogon tourist dance keeps a larger dance, and Dogon identity, alive.”
Engineers Argue That Christchurch’s Original Cathedral Can Be Saved
“A prominent group of engineers say it is ‘technically feasible’ to restore the Christ Church Cathedral” – badly damaged in last year’s earthquakes – “and have launched a 100-signature petition to halt the demolition.” City officials had determined that the late-19th-century structure was too badly damaged to be safe, and the local Anglican Diocese says that reconstruction to current codes would be too costly.
Robert Lepage’s Vegas/Cirque Du Soleil Show Vs. His Met Opera Ring Cycle
“There are, on the surface, few similarities between Ka and Wagner’s Ring, besides the brandishing of a large nugget of what appeared to be gold at the start of the Cirque show and a shared fixation on twins. … [Yet] it is nevertheless possible to see how Peter Gelb and others at the Met could have watched Ka and wanted Mr. Lepage to direct the Ring.”