“The Russian clowns who performed at the Seattle Rep last April were, apparently, impostors. (Copycats, if you will. And you will.) According to a lawsuit filed by the real Yuri and Dmitri Kuklachev, the impostors stole the real Russian clowns’ names, clothes, and hairstyles and toured the country as the Moscow Cats Theater.”
Tag: 07.03.08
How The Met Opera’s Moviecasts Are Changing Opera
“According to a recent survey by Shugoll Research, a pollster, more than 92% of the people who saw one of the Met’s performances in a cinema said they were likely to go to a performance at the Met or another opera house. As almost one in five of those surveyed said that they had not gone to the opera in the past two years, and around 5% said they had never been to the opera at all, the Met can justifiably claim that simulcasts are rejuvenating and expanding the audience for opera.”
Large Dance Fests Rethink And Diversify
“Organisers of similar large-scale dance parties this summer will be nervously watching the skies. Yet there’s also a feeling that dance promoters are facing other, less elemental pressures. Creamfields, due to celebrate its 10th anniversary this August, is hoping to attract over 40,000 visitors with ‘the most diverse line-up ever seen at a UK dance festival’.”
Dance Show Tops Network TV Ratings
Two hours of “So You Think You Can Dance” made Fox the top-rated network on Wednesday night, as 8.7 million viewers tuned in to the dancing competition from 8 to 10, according to Nielsen’s estimates.
Vast Expansion Of Chinese Museums Forces Rethink
“Archaeology pushes its history ever deeper into the past; a racing market economy makes Chinese-ness a mutable identity, under continuous revision. The country and its art institutions seem caught in the tension between self-images: the sovereign civilization apart on one hand, the ambitious scrambler in the global game on the other.”
Koons Versailles Show Irritates Traditionalists
“Delighting contemporary art fans and dismaying some of France’s most august historians, Jeff Koons is flying in this September to exhibit some of his most famous works in the chateau and gardens of the country’s most illustrious national treasure.”
Indiana Teacher Suspended For Letting Students Read Bestseller
“An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months. The effective book ban by the school authorities in Perry Township has outraged teachers and education reformers.”
Lawsuit Against Louis Vuitton, LA’s MoCA About Documentation
“By bringing class-action lawsuits against Louis Vuitton North America and L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a Los Angeles art collector and his attorneys say they are sounding an alarm on behalf of people who shop for art prints that can cost thousands of dollars: Let the buyer be savvy, and let the seller beware. The suits in Los Angeles Superior Court rely on an obscure chapter of the California Civil Code called the Fine Prints Act. Together Louis Vuitton and MOCA potentially are liable for millions of dollars.”
DC-Area Theatre Embarks On Ambitious New-Musical Program
The recipients of the “Next Generation” grants are composers in their 20s and 30s whom Signature identified as songwriters of considerable potential and who already have had their work produced or recorded.
A Transformation Of America’s College Professors
“Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate.”