Tag: 12.10.00

CHRISTMAS IN LANCASTER COUNTY

There are Christmas pageants and then there are Christmas pageants. “Three camels cross a 300-foot panoramic stage, five white horses prance down the aisles, and three actor-angels swing four stories above 2,069 gape-mouthed audience members simultaneously. Lasers, clouds, fog, more angels, and the release of 16 white pigeons. Mary’s mother, stunned by her daughter’s predicament, launching into the song ‘I’d Be God’s Grandma’…” – Philadelphia Inquirer

DUTCH OPERA CANCELED

“An opera about a strong-minded wife of the prophet Muhammad has been canceled in the Netherlands after the Moroccan cast and composer were pressured into withdrawing by Muslim clerics. The intimidation of the cast has caused a stir in Dutch cultural circles because it is seen as reminiscent of the censorship and the threats against Salman Rushdie and other Muslim writers who have touched on subjects involving the Koran.” – New York Times

WHAT DEFINES A CLASSIC?

“Occasionally we act as though artistic worth were constant across the ages – hence the phrase ‘timeless classic’ – but it isn’t so. The past, as novelist L.P. Hartley remarked, is another country, and the future another one still. Why assume that audiences in all those countries value the same things? And why assume that the things valued by future listeners are more profound and more important than those that appeal to a composer’s contemporaries?” – San Francisco Chronicle

TEFLON TENORS

“After two years of touring America, the Irish Tenors have their treble act off pat, all flirty good humour with the girls, thigh-slapping crack with the lads and soft-focus nostalgia for the audience. But behind the conviviality is a steely sense of purpose that has made them one of the biggest concert draws in America. They joke as they are interviewed, but the trio’s belief in their product is unbreakable, with awkward questions bouncing off their jocular presence. They are the Teflon tenors.” – Sunday Times (UK)

RENEWING DANCE?

“How many choreographers today are thinking about telling new tales, new tragedies, in dance? Almost all new ballets today are supine rewrites of past classics or great tomes of literature painted onto the stage with a leaden thud. The mystery is that there’s so little genuine inspiration by our own world. We hear every day of events whose imagery and emotional resonance seize us, and novelists rush to their keyboards and artists to their scalpels and camcorders, as Janacek rushed to his desk. But ballet? Nothing.” – The Telegraph (London)

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE

Before Washington Ballet’s recent visit, It had been 40 years since an American dance company had performed in Cuba. “I knew the kind of development we’ve seen in the United States, melding contemporary ideas and modern dance and ballet techniques, hasn’t existed in Cuba. I think the repertoire we brought expressed a lot of elements of our own lives and maybe will contribute to how they’ll view or make dance in the future.” – New York Times

ROBBINS REVEALED

“At Jerome Robbins’ death in 1998 at 79, he had all the awards that movies, theater and dance could offer, with an unequaled record of ballets and Broadway shows. Yet he carried with him a shame that would not go away. In 1953, he named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, earning the enmity of many of his fellow artists who were blacklisted for their membership, however brief or desultory, in the Communist Party.” – Chicago Tribune

CENSORSHIP TO LEARN FROM

In Singapore artists announce a new website on which they will post work censored by the government. Surprisingly, the government does not object: “The archive hopes to ‘compile case studies, so we know what were the reasons for the censorship, and to learn from it. We hope that it will promote understanding and meaningful dialogue on artistic freedom and responsibility.” – The Straits Times (Singapore) 12/10/00