Tag: 04.24.00

WHO’S THE BOSS?

A Canadian judge’s ruling requiring the National Ballet of Canada to reinstate a dancer has Canadian artistic directors bewildered and outraged. It’s about control of art, and what does a judge know about running a dance company? Can you imagine if pro sports coaches couldn’t trade their players? – Toronto Globe and Mail

BRANCH OFFICE

The legendary Bolshoi Ballet has opened its first school outside Russia – in Brazil. “The mayor’s office paid for the ballet to set up the school and also funds scholarships given to a majority of the school’s 165 or so students, who range in age from 7 to 14. Most of the students’ families cannot afford the equivalent of $170 in monthly fees. But five days a week, three hours a day, they glide and stretch and twirl in the sun-swept practice rooms, take assiduous notes on the history of ballet and learn about the 233-year-old Bolshoi’s legendary dancers, many of whose pictures decorate the school’s gleaming walls.” – Newsweek

KILLER (N)AP

Napster, the music-share program is considered by the music industry the greatest threat its ever faced. “In recent weeks, piracy using his Napster software program has reached such an unprecedented scale that many industry analysts believe that it marks the beginning of the end of paying for recorded music. To virtually every American under the age of 25, Napster is rapidly becoming synonymous with a bottomless free supply of music from their favourite bands.” – The Age (Melbourne)

SO MUCH FOR THE ‘BRAVE LONER’ PLOY

David Irving lost his libel lawsuit in London claiming that the Holocaust never happened. The judge found against Irving, calling him, in effect, a propagandist for Adolf Hitler. But, “we ought to condemn – better, dismiss – him not because of his convictions, but because of the way in which he states his evidence.” – Newsweek

DIARY SCANDALE

Marc-Edouard Nabe has become a sensation in France with the publication of “his ‘Intimate Journal,’ a ponderous diary, which to date runs to 3,915 pages and relates the day-to-day minutiae of his life and of those around him. While previous volumes passed largely unnoticed, the fourth and latest, entitled Kamikaze, has turned the author into a cult figure in Paris, much to the horror of the friends and family whose secrets he has betrayed.” – The Times (UK)

SENSATIONALIZED

  • Conservative New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has a reputation for a conservative’s sensibility when it comes to art. Not so his wife, actress Donna Hanover, who is about to star in “The Vagina Monologues,” a play that uses “humor and drama to explore such subjects as sexual fantasies, orgasms, pelvic exams and rape.” – MSNBC

MONUMENTAL CONCERN

“Throughout the centuries, the grand, open-air museum that is Italy has been an easy target for thieves. The peninsula is littered not only with Roman ruins but also Etruscan, Phoenician and Greek artifacts – not to mention the vestiges of countless pre-Roman peoples and even prehistoric settlements. Today, the plundering of Italy’s archaeological treasures has become a highly lucrative business involving a sophisticated network of tombaroli, ravagers of archaeological sites; expert fences in Italy, Switzerland and England; and knowing buyers in the United States, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.” – Washington Post

MAD FOR MONET

London’s Royal Academy decided to stay open all night during its recent Monet show. It worked. The museum has become one of the top ten tourist attractions in Britain. “The exhibition, which cost £1.8 million to stage and four years to assemble, boosted the number of visitors to the gallery to 1.39 million last year, up from 912,714 in 1998. Nearly 8,600 people attended the show each day despite the queues and the high entrance charge of £9.” – The Independent (UK)