Tag: 05.28.06

Rocky Business – The Movie Statue And The Museum

The clunky statue of Rocky from the Sylvester Stallone movie franchise is coming back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Critic Edward Sozanski thinks that’s just fine. “Copenhagen has its little mermaid and New York has its library lions. So why can’t the citizens of Philadelphia and their paying guests have their Rocky? As Michael Corleone observed, it’s strictly business. The only thing wrong with Rocky Reborn is the intended placement.”

Pacific Northwest Ballet Revives Under Boal Regime

Peter Boal has completed his first season running Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. “Boal has brought youthful energy to the company, as well as a dance bag full of new-to-PNB works, many chosen from choreographers for whom Boal himself danced. Among the dancers, new faces are emerging from the corps de ballet as future stars, while the veterans are dancing with renewed vigor. And that energy isn’t just up on the stage: People are talking about PNB, in a way that they haven’t for a long time.”

Remembering Spalding Gray In His Own Words

It’s been more than two years since Spalding Gray killed himself (likely by jumping off the Staten Island ferry). Now he’s being remembered in readings of his work. “It feels like the first time we’re opening the book again and going, ‘It’s O.K. to talk about Spalding.’ It was such a harsh end. But all those beautiful, graceful moments that he recognized in his work, they still stand. They don’t get negated by that last moment.”

Classical Music Blues? Yeah, Right!

“Moaning about the state of classical music has itself become an industry. But as pervasive as the conventional wisdom is, much of it is based on sketchy data incorrectly interpreted. Were things better in the old days? Has American culture given up on classical music? The numbers tell a very different story: for all the hand-wringing, there is immensely more classical music on offer now, both in concerts and on recordings than there was in what nostalgists think of as the golden era of classics in America.”

California To Arts Ed Boost?

California still ranks last in per capita arts funding. But the proposed new state budget includes some good news for arts education. “A spokeswoman for the California Arts Council said the overall state budget revision proposes an increase of $66 million in the Proposition 98 general fund to expand the arts and music block grants to a total of $166 million.”

Oakland Opera’s “X” Files

Oakland Opera Theatre exists as a vehicle for modern opera. Since it took on the Oakland Opera name in 1999 (the former Oakland Opera having shut down a few years earlier), the company’s offerings have ranged from Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s “Four Saints in Three Acts” to a disco-era staging of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” to a circus fantasia of Glass’ “La Belle et la Bête.” Seeing what inventive stagings the small company concocts with limited resources is half the fun…”