“In a surprisingly entrepreneurial move, American ballet companies have recently begun allowing donors to sponsor individual dancers, for amounts that range from $2,500 to $100,000 a year. Some ballet companies even compile and distribute rosters, which look eerily like shopping lists, specifying their dancers’ ranks and prices.”
Tag: 08.15.04
The Musical Bounty Of Berlin
“Certainly, when it comes to classical music, few cities are so abundantly and audaciously full of life. As an inheritance from its decades of division into East and West, unified Berlin boasts a gloriously impractical number of musical institutions: eight orchestras and three opera companies. Municipal finances are in a shambles, and institutional squabbling abounds, but if you tuned out all the background noise this summer, you could find a thrilling array of options: fiendishly good orchestral concerts, willfully scandalous opera productions, open-air concerts on a beautifully restored square, contemporary chamber music and even music piped underwater into a swimming pool.”
Critic-Proof Theatre
The critics are scathing, and Frank Wildhorn’s musicals have failed to turn a profit on Broadway. (Newsday’s Linda Winer says that Wildhorn writes “dunderheaded musicals for people who find Andrew Lloyd Webber too difficult.”) But “even without making a profit on Broadway, and without critical approbation — but on the strength of his devoted fans — these shows can still earn money in international, regional, stock and amateur productions, as well as through recordings.” So Wildhorn keeps cranking them out.
The Book Critic And 130,000 Books A Year
Is it true that newspapers, while “too dumb to be stylishly snarky, also do a disservice by running reviews that are ‘advertising posing as criticism’?” So what is the role of the modern book reviewer? (in the 130,000-books-a-year universe, it’s not so easy a question to answer…)
Enjoying The Diversity Of Today’s Music
Andrew Druckenbrod sums up a recent online blog on ArtsJournal about the stylistic future of music: “The critics essentially responded the same way: that there really isn’t a dominating musical language — such as tonality, serialism or polyphony — anymore. We are even beyond a postmodern reaction to modernism. Today, anything goes. That’s a good thing, since it allows composers to be unfettered in their creativity and critics to pick based on quality, not camps.”
Will NYCBallet Get To Keep Saratoga Residency?
New York City Ballet sold five percent more tickets this summer during its summer residence in Saratoga. “But are those increased sales and a loss of $600,000 instead of $750,000 enough to maintain the ballet’s annual stay in Saratoga after next year — especially if some of that money could be one-shot contributions from people responding to efforts to ‘save the ballet’?”
Can An Actor Make A Living Even In A Good Theatre Town?
“Seattle is often ranked in the top 10 U.S. cities for quality live theater, offering up everything from Shakespeare dramas to mega-musicals like “Hairspray” for the area’s thousands of theater-savvy patrons. And local actors, agents, arts educators and theater directors often say Seattle is a mecca for budding performers looking to hone their craft. But can they make a living? That’s a challenge few can meet.”
When Book Reviewers Forget That Reviewing Is Their Job
“Book reviewers, being journalists, are ephemeral. Yet literary criticism – what TS Eliot called the proper activity of the civilised mind – makes judgments which, because of their subject as well as their quality, are not diminished with time. Reviewers who develop ideas above their station ought to bring themselves down to earth with examples of a perfection to which they can barely aspire.”
James Wood: Goodbye To Chicago Art Institute
At the end of this month, James Wood leaves as director of the Chicago Art Institute. One thing he wishes he could have done during his time there? Drop the admission charge. “I still have this idea that in the best of worlds it would be awfully nice to have no charge for a museum. It is an important piece of our cash flow so it’s not something under present circumstances that one could do without. But there’s still a certain intimidation factor, and particularly for what I’ve called our local citizens, anything you can do to encourage people to drop in and use the museum on a regular basis is desirable.”
The Sad Saga Of The Acropolis Museum
“Modern Greece may indeed be a last-minute culture, as so many Athenians have claimed in the rocky run-up to the Games. But in the case of the New Acropolis Museum, unlike the rest of the Athens 2004 construction projects, no amount of accelerated effort could get the job done. Today, the New Acropolis Museum remains little more than a series of foundation pilings. And the majority of the contentious sculptures they were to hold, a series of exquisitely sculpted marble friezes that once adorned the Parthenon, remain in the British Museum.”