Susan Jaffe was announced as the new artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre last April, near COVID’s first peak in the U.S., and she started July 1. Since then, she’s gotten her dancers back into the studio with safety protocols, presented live-streamed productions, and had the company purchase a mobile stage for outdoor performances. Here’s a Q&A on how she did it. – Dance Magazine
3,000-Year-Old Bronze Bull Unearthed By Rainstorms At Site Of Ancient Olympic Games
An archaeologist working at Olympia noticed what turned out to be one of the horns of the bull figurine sticking up out of the mud following a heavy downpour. The bronze is estimated to date from about 900 to 700 BC; because it has burn marks, scientists believe it was part of an offering to Zeus, to whom there was a temple at the site. – Smithsonian Magazine
Under Pressure, Chair Promises That Hong Kong’s Big New Contemporary Art Museum Will Obey China’s National Security Law
The chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, the Lincoln Center-like complex under construction on the harbor, publicly pledged that curators at the District’s flagship museum, M+, will see to it that all exhibitions comply with the law, which prohibits “acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers.” The statement comes after a week of attacks from pro-Beijing newspapers and politicians on the museum, which does not open until later this year. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
UK Vinyl Record Sales Hit Highest Level Since 1980s
UK record labels enjoyed a 30% boost in income from the sale of vinyl records last year to £86.5m, the highest total since 1989, as fans unable to attend live music because of pandemic restrictions spent their spare cash on building up their record collections. The number of vinyl records sold, led by classics such as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours alongside new releases from Harry Styles and Kylie Minogue, also hit a three-decade high of 4.8m last year. – The Guardian
Warner To Start Theatrical Release Of Its Movies Again
But the window between theatre debut and release to streaming will be shortened. The shortened theatrical window matches recent changes from other studios instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating effects on the film business. – The Verge
COVID Shutdown Has Wiped Out Entry-Level Hollywood
“While the pandemic overturned the lives of workers industrywide, those just beginning to establish their careers in an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into were disproportionately impacted. The production shutdowns in L.A. and New York eradicated on-set gigs that PAs and extras rely upon, while furloughs and layoffs at agencies decimated entry-level office jobs.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Advertisers: If We Can’t Put Commercials On Netflix And Amazon Prime, We’ll Just Have To Make Our Own Movies
“With more people home and glued to their streaming services, many of which don’t allow advertising, companies are finding they need to be creative about the ways they get in front of audiences no longer seeing 30-second commercials. More are turning to traditional Hollywood production companies like Imagine to partner on feature films like The Day Sports Stood Still, which is infused with Nike’s ethos but carries none of the traditional branding audiences are used to seeing.” – The New York Times
How Our Stories Frame Our Issues
“Why should storytelling matter so much? Because it conditions us to respond to society. Artists teach us what to take notice of and what to turn away from, whom to empathize with and whom to tune out. Plato thought this power too consequential to be entrusted to poets, whom he would ban from his ideal republic, leaving the politics of representation in the hands of philosopher kings. Today, this authority is vested in studio executives.” – Los Angeles Times
Actors’ Equity Faces Rebellion Of Its Own Members Over COVID Restrictions
“Quietly simmering frustrations erupted publicly last week, when more than 2,500 union members signed a letter, circulated by a Broadway performer and signed by Tony winners and Tony nominees, plaintively asking, ‘When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?'” – The New York Times
Paris Review Names New Editor (The Second Emily In A Row)
The magazine, co-founded and long run by the late George Plimpton, “has a new editor, only the sixth since being founded in 1953, but its third since 2017. Emily Stokes, currently a senior editor at The New Yorker, succeeds Emily Nemens, who announced earlier this month that she was leaving to work on a new book.” – AP
Mills College Will Shut Itself Down
The 169-year-old liberal arts college in Oakland, which has left an extraordinary legacy in American arts (especially contemporary classical music), is one of the few all-female undergraduate schools left in the U.S. But the pandemic has only intensified longstanding declines in Mills’s enrollment and financial health, and administrators say that the school will accept no more new students, stop issuing degrees after 2023, and turn itself into an institute. Alumnae are organizing to fight the decision. – San Francisco Chronicle
Soprano Christine Goerke Named Associate Artistic Director Of Michigan Opera Theatre
“The move brings a singer at the peak of her international career to Detroit. She will perform locally at least once a season, take the lead in casting MOT productions and complement [artistic director Yuval] Sharon’s experimental streak with a sensibility forged within the core of the operatic tradition.” – Detroit Free Press
Actor George Segal, 87
“[His] long career began in serious drama but who became one of America’s most reliable and familiar comic actors, first in the movies and later on television. … Sandy-haired, conventionally if imperfectly handsome, with a grin that could be charming or smug and a brow that could knit with sincerity or a lack of it, Mr. Segal walked a line between leading man and supporting actor.” – The New York Times
After National Backlash, Australian Festival Cancels Artwork That Was A Very Bad Idea
“On Tuesday afternoon organisers of the [Dark Mofo] festival, which is run by the Museum of Old and New Art [in Tasmania], announced that the work by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra – in which he planned to immerse a Union Jack flag into the donated blood of Indigenous people, as a statement ‘against colonialism’ – would no longer go ahead.” – The Guardian
Imagination Is A Superpower
Aristotle called this imaginative power phantasia. We might mistakenly think that phantasia is just for artists and entertainers, a rare and special talent, but it’s actually a cognitive faculty that functions in all human beings. The actor might guide us, but it’s our own imagination that enables us to immerse fully into the story. If we activate our power of phantasia, we voluntarily summon up the real emotions we see on stage: fear, anxiety, rage, love and more. – Aeon
Germany In Talks To Return Benin Bronzes To Nigeria
As the issue of repatriating art and artifacts looted by European colonizers came to the fore over the past few years, Berlin came under pressure not to include its holdings of Benin bronzes in the new Humboldt Forum. Now high-level officials are negotiating the return of the bronzes — taken by British soldiers who destroyed the Benin royal family’s palace in 1897 — for the new Edo Museum of West African Art, now being designed by architect David Adjaye in Benin City. – Artnet