“A new study shows that the website’s explosive growth is tailing off and also suggests the community-created encyclopaedia has become less welcoming to new contributors.”
Tag: 08.04.09
Indiana Troupe Sues Just-Departed Artistic Director And Ballet Mistress
Evansville Dance Theatre has filed a legal action against its former artistic director and ballet mistress for violating a non-compete clause in a contract. Keith Martin and B.J. Martin resigned from the company on June 8, claiming “artistic interference from the organization’s board of directors,” and opened a dance studio in the city.
A Critic’s Yelp: New York In Summer Has Too Much Theater!
Alexis Soloski: “[T]he [NY] International Fringe Festival begins on 14 August, and I’ve been planning my schedule for the opening weekend. In two and a half days I’ll see more than a dozen shows, and, if this year is anything like the last 10, I’ll also have to deal with too little sleep, too much pizza, freezing air conditioning, boiling sun, torrential rain and several of the worst plays I will see all year.”
Will Publishers Start Enforcing Deadlines To Save $$$?
“[A]s book sales fall and publishing houses look for ways to cut costs, many literary agents are growing increasingly worried that publishers looking to trim their lists will start holding authors to deadlines and using lateness as an occasion to renegotiate advances and, in some cases, terminate contracts altogether.”
Arts TV At A Crossroads
“While big broadcasters mutter about public service remit and top-slicing the licence fee, the tiniest galleries and dance companies are producing videos of their own. … Channel Five may have ditched its last arts programme in 2008 (Tim Marlow On . . . ), but does this matter when orchestras, theatres, even newspaper arts desks now make their own web TV? Are we witnessing the end of an era, or the birth of a new one?”
Britney Spears, Slowed Down And Turned Into Opera
Composer Jacob Cooper’s opera, “Timberbrit” — “as in Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears” — is “a tragic tale that imagines Spears’ last concert, in the final hours of her life. … Cooper began work on the opera by experimenting with a technique called time-stretching. Using digital audio software, he slowed down Spears’ songs — and suddenly the light pop tunes seemed hauntingly tragic.”
Bard Balances Wagner Fest With Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer
This year’s Bard Music Festival “will turn its attention to Richard Wagner, whose towering music dramas are among the most influential and popular works in the operatic literature” — but who, as festival co-artistic director Leon Botstein notes, “was arguably … the most persuasive and evil figure of the Western cultural pantheon.” So Bard is also presenting “major rarities by the two composers whom Wagner singled out for his most vicious shafts of anti-Semitism.”
LA City Council Approves $30 Million Loan To Lure Cirque
“The acrobats of Cirque du Soleil and a developer won a victory today when the L.A. City Council unanimously approved a $30-million loan to help finance upgrades that will allow the Kodak Theatre to host the troupe for 368 performances a year. … The federal government must still approve the loan.”
Acropolis Museum Abandons Censorship Of Costa-Gavras
Oscar-winning filmmaker Costa-Gavras last week asked the Acropolis Museum “to withdraw his credit from an animated short that the museum” had edited “after the Greek Orthodox Church objected to what it saw as a depiction of Christian priests destroying parts of the ancient temple. But on Tuesday, the Acropolis Museum said it had reversed its decision to cut the film after days of picketing and the threat of a lawsuit.”
Edinburgh Festivals Catch The iPhone Wave
“The Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Festivals Edinburgh have launched a new iPhone application to help visitors navigate their way around the events. The Edinburgh Festivals Guide … carries full listings for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, International Festival, Jazz and Blues Festival, Art Festival, Book Festival, Mela and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. It will enable visitors to browse shows, check ticket offers, read reviews and plot their routes around the city.”