“This was a year in which the publishing industry kept its literati tendencies in check and infused a Hollywood-style razzle-dazzle into contests and other promotions intended to nudge books into at least a glimmer of the popular culture spotlight. With book sales down from last year, publishers are being forced to abandon their high-brow position above the fray and dive right in with movies, TV and other competing forms of popular culture.”
Tag: 12.21.03
Rijksmuseum Closes For Renovation – Foreign Visitors Mourn
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is closing for renovations for five years. This will have a big impact abroad. “British visitors are crucial to the museum’s finances, which are more perilous since privatisation of the Dutch museum sector eight years ago. Britons and Americans each contribute 25% of its roughly million visitors a year, followed by the Japanese and French – with Dutch visitors trailing a long way down the list.”
Kirov’s Dangerous New Direction
“Questions about the Kirov Ballet’s direction and management — and their effect on the company’s good name — have dogged the troupe for months.” One of the company’s star ballerina’s defected to the Bolshoi in August, and Artistic and General Director Valery Gergiev says that he is planning a major “restructuring” of the Kirov’s leadership team. All the uncertainty is adding to a growing sense of fear and unrest inside the Kirov, which has struggled for years to make the transition from a state-sponsored troupe to a privately funded ballet company competing on the international stage.
‘Storefront Theater’ Fights City Hall
Chicago is teeming with theater groups, and in recent years, a lively subculture of theaters performing in semi-converted grocery stores and abandoned warehouses has sprung up, to the delight of audiences and critics. But many of the performance spaces are not even remotely up to city building codes, and “2003 may be remembered as a year not unlike 1999, a year in which the city cracked down, hard, on small theaters operating without a license… Unless the city streamlines the process by which a small theater can open its doors legally and affordably, 2003 may be remembered as the year the pendulum swung too far – and Chicago theater never quite recovered in full.”
Dancing For Two
Dancers are more or less expected to exhibit a flawless body type at all times, and dancers who do not conform to the classic “look” are frequently nudged out of the spotlight, or out of the profession entirely. So when a star dancer at a major American ballet company chooses to continue performing while pregnant, as Julie Kent of the American Ballet Theater did this fall, it is a big story. Kent says it was an easy decision: “If I had chosen not to dance, I think I would have been wondering why — you’re not injured, you’re not sick, and there’s nothing that different about you except your waistline’s growing.”
A ‘Pocket Of Classical Resistance’ In The Deep South
“The defensive posture of classical music these days has been much argued. But in the face of folding orchestras, diminishing finances, vanishing record sales and retracting audiences, there exist stubborn and imaginative pockets of resistance determined, for example, to put string instruments into the hands and ears of children. The University of South Carolina, now a model for the rest of the country, is doing work here that may at best keep the violin a mainstream instrument and at worst provide it a permanent niche. It will not be allowed to become an antique.”
Kamin: What Happened To Libeskind?
The problem with the new Libeskind/Childs design, says Blair Kamin, is that it’s pretty good. In fact, it’s probably just good enough that no one will seriously object to its being built, thus depriving New Yorkers of a truly great addition to their skyline. “As the banality of the twin towers made clear when they were completed in the early 1970s, there is a critical difference between technical achievement and aesthetic quality.” Chief among Kamin’s complaints about the new design is that master architect Daniel Libeskind’s grand vision seems to have been relegated to the sidelines, and David Childs’ glittery clichès have taken over.
Factory 798 – Turning China Upside Down
Beijing’s Factory 798 is home to an amazing collective of contemporary artists who are remaking modern art in China. “This giant Bauhaus-style collection of workshops somehow manages to confirm the old cultural stereotypes about this nominally communist country, while simultaneously turning them upside down. The setting is a plot of living history.”
Jacksonville Symphony Impasse
The Jacksonville [Florida] Symphony is in a dispute with its musicians. “The symphony says it has a $2.4 million deficit and has proposed shortening the symphony season by two weeks, cutting musicians’ salaries by 10 percent and suspending pension contributions and paid leave. The musicians say they just signed a five-year contract in February and expect the symphony to honor it.”