Bree Davies: “When I saw the conference workshop Innovations in Artist Housing: Inspiration from South America to address the ‘Soho Effect’, I was stoked. … [But] the panel on artist housing did not include a single artist, let alone an artist impacted by — or blamed for — the ‘SoHo Effect.’ Instead, the panel physically resembled many urban planning panels I’ve had to painfully sit through — upper middle class white people who want to talk about housing, mostly in terms of real estate values and sexy urban design. They did not want to talk about the realities just outside the windows of the room I began to feel trapped in.” (For the main web page of the 2019 GIA conference, click here. For the full GIA 2019 conference blog, click here.) – Grantmakers in the Arts
Ballet West chose to perform a classic 1925 ballet, then faced another decision: Do racist elements stay or go?
“[Millicent Hodson’s] reconstructions include the legendary George Balanchine’s 1925 Le Chant du Rossignol, the tale of a Chinese emperor who favors the notes of a mechanical bird over the song of a nightingale. Ballet West chose Le Chant, along with two other early works Balanchine created for the Ballet Russe, to open its 2019-20 season this month. That meant it faced another decision: Should dancers portraying Chinese characters perform movements from the original that reflect racist stereotypes — such as shuffling their feet and bobbing their heads?” – The Salt Lake Tribune
Nevada Public Radio Nearly Collapsed Last Month
The Las Vegas-based network made news in September when it announced “severe cash flow issues,” laid off its staff in Reno, and saw its CEO resign. Now the new interim chief says “We were very close to having to shut the doors” and that the board didn’t know there was financial trouble until August. Forensic accountants are investigating. – Current
Meet The Newest Head Writer At ‘Jeopardy!’
Way back in the ’90s, Michele Loud applied to be a researcher for the show just a few weeks after she flunked the test to be a contestant; a year later, out of the blue, they called her in. Twenty-six years on, she’s now one of two staffers running the writers’ room. Here she explains how categories get chosen and clues get written as well as the extra jobs each staffer has during taping. – Vulture
San Francisco To Make Its Busiest Street Car-Free
“It can’t be overlooked that San Francisco has some heavyweight car-free peers. Once, pedestrianized urban cores were largely the domain of enlightened mid-sized cities in northern Europe. But now Paris and Barcelona have expanded the concept, and Toronto is mulling a car blockade for multiple downtown corridors. London charges a pricy fee for vehicles entering its busy streets, and New York City will follow with its own congestion pricing scheme in 2021.” – CityLab
Economists Make The Case For Studying Humanities
As humanities majors slump to the lowest level in decades, calls are coming from surprising places for a revival. Some prominent economists are making the case for why it still makes a lot of sense to major (or at least take classes) in humanities alongside more technical fields. – Washington Post
Glass Blowing Generates Significant Amounts Of Greenhouse Gasses. What To Do?
While the glass art industry blows oxygen and life into intricate glass chandeliers, vases, bowls and complex sculptures, it also consumes hefty amounts of natural gas and propane while filling the air literally with tons of carbon dioxide. Other issues, like heavy metal pollution and low levels of recycling, add to the industry’s sustainability concerns. – Crosscut
Freelance Journalists In California Freak Out That New Uber Law Would Apply To Them
If a freelance journalist writes for a magazine, newspaper or other entity whose central mission is to disseminate the news, the law says, that journalist is capped at writing 35 “submissions” per year per “putative employer.” At a time when paid freelance stories can be written for a low end of $25 and high end of $1 per word, some meet that cap in a month just to make end’s meet. – The Hollywood Reporter
Viet Thanh Nguyen Talks About Writing, Social Movements, And The American Dream
Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, says that he decided not to worry about what the audience thought, or more specifically thought of Asian Americans. “I had to stop caring. Because even as conditions of narrative scarcity were true, which they are, I don’t think a writer can allow herself or himself to be shaped by those conditions. … For example, the anxiety that because there are so few stories about us, we have to write our stories to make our own community look good, whatever that community is.” – The Millions
Theatre’s Front Of House Workers Can Too Easily Get Trapped In Service Roles
The hours are good, the patrons can be terrible, the dreams live … for a while. “A lot of actors, directors and writers work front of house, with most of us spending our days auditioning, writing and on other creative endeavours. FOH is a stepping stone and it fits in with the hours, so we can go from the side of the stage selling ice creams or Aperol Spritzes to on stage performing. But many of us are struggling. We feel stuck.” – The Stage (UK)
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Needs More Than A Plan To Stay Afloat
A consultant tells the BSO that it needs a “vision” in order to deal with the debt and the uncertain future. The consultant said that “the BSO should be building a blueprint for the next seven to 10 years. In Detroit, where the orchestra had ‘zero liquidity’ and went through a months-long strike nearly a decade ago, articulating a long-term plan encouraged donors to commit new funds, he said.” – Baltimore Business Journal
A 90-Foot Tall Mural Of A Ballet Dancer Is Possibly A Tool To Inspire Others
In Columbus, Ohio, ballerina Rachael Parini was the inspiration for a 90-foot billboard that advertises the BalletMet company, but it means more than that to her – it means that young dancers of color might be inspired to try, and stick with, ballet. – 10TV (Ohio)
The Short, Dreamy Film That Goes In Search Of David Hockney’s House
The narration begins, “You were too young to lose your mum, and we were too young to organize a funeral. So because we were in Yorkshire, with nowhere else we wanted to be and nothing else we wanted to be doing, we decided to go and look for David Hockney.” – Aeon
Russell Thomas is much more than a black tenor. Now, he’s tackling ‘Otello’ and the field’s stereotypes.
“‘I am not an Otello,’ Thomas says … [Yet] suddenly, it seems that Otello is all anybody wants to hear from him. … The problem [is] that there are very few tenors, white or black, who are able to sing the role. Thomas, now, is one of them, and the opera world is eager to seize on him, not only as an Otello but also as a representative of the diversity that the field claims to be desperately seeking.” – The Washington Post
Fans Protest WNYC Cancellation Of “New Sounds”
For music fans, the news last Thursday that WNYC will end New Sounds, a show hosted by John Schaefer since its debut in 1982, has provoked a deep sense of mourning and nostalgia for both the show and the city’s eroding arts and culture scene. Over four decades, the eclectic music program had come to be seen as a proud local institution that reflected New York City’s sophistication and idiosyncratic personality. – Gothamist
Architecture Critic And Historian Charles Jencks, 80
Mr. Jencks was an architectural historian who, with a landmark book, put himself at the forefront of the debate over what architecture should do. – The New York Times
The “Slow Fire” That’s Destroying Our Books
It’s called a “slow fire,” this continuous acidification and subsequent embrittlement of paper that was created with the seeds of its own ruin in its very fibers. In a 1987 documentary on the subject, the deputy Librarian of Congress William Welsh takes an embrittled, acid-burned book and begins tearing pages out by the handful, crumbling them into shards with an ease reminiscent of stepping on a dried-up insect carcass. – Literary Hub
More Theatres Are Experimenting With Different Performance Times
The conventional wisdom on curtain times has long been broken, and it’s proving beneficial to producers and audience. More show-by-show tinkering can only continue to evolve theatregoing practice, which is essential in an era when most entertainment can be scheduled on demand. – The Stage
Are We Seeing A New Theatre Construction Boom In America?
Some see other current trends—the conversion of old structures, the blurring of boundaries between disciplines, the increasing move of visual artists into performance, the popular interest in all things digital – will be reflected in future theatre design. “We are still in the supposed old ways of thinking. But yeah—change is on its way.” – American Theatre
How Do You Reconstruct A 140-Year-Old Ballet? Carefully
“It’s controversial in Russia to reconstruct ballets — original Russian ballets — but on the notation that was removed from Russia. In recent years, “La Bayadère” has raised questions over cultural stereotypes and insensitive depictions of India. – Los Angeles Times
Goose Gone Wild: A New Video Game Lets You Be An Angry Waterfowl Running Amok
Untitled Goose Game “sees you play as a single-minded goose making her terrible way through a village. Your palette of interactions is limited yet sufficient: you can grasp at objects, flap your wings, or honk. Through this trinity, you terrorize the villagers, partly in pursuit of a goal that is revealed only in the game’s final moments, and partly just for the sheer hell of it.” Simon Parkin makes the case that this game is just the thing for a time of moral crisis. – The New Yorker
American Theatre’s New Hot Topic: Recovery And Sobriety
“With overdoses at troubling heights and recovery no longer a sotto-voce secret, a new wave of plays dealing with the realities of rehab and the challenges of sobriety have started to emerge, often created by playwrights who have dealt with such problems themselves. And part of their mission, the writers say, is to destigmatize these struggles.” – The New York Times
Dallas Placed 149th Among U.S. Cities On The Arts Vibrancy Index. Here’s How One Organization Is Trying To Change That
“The Arts Community Alliance (TACA) … has been raising money for the arts in Dallas since 1967. Today it doles that money out in the form of more than 60 general operating, artist residency and new works grants each year. … But in addition to providing monetary support, a big part of TACA’s role in Dallas is what [TACA’s executive director] calls arts leadership. It more or less means helping carve a path forward for the local arts community as a whole.” – SMU Data Arts
Oldest Known ‘Last Supper’ Painted By A Woman On Public View After 450 Years
Plautilla Nelli’s 23-by-6½-foot depiction of Jesus and his disciples was painted for her sisters at a convent in Florence in 1568. When that convent was shuttered by Napoleon’s forces in 1808, the canvas was moved to a nearby monastery, where it was hanging in a (very) humble refectory when it was discovered by an art historian in the early 1990s. And it’s actually thanks to Napoleon that the painting is now on view in a museum. – Atlas Obscura
Alicia Alonso, Cuba’s (Very) Long-Reigning Doyenne Of Ballet, Dead At 98
“Alonso received recognition throughout the world for her flawless technique and her ability to become one with the characters she danced, even after she became nearly blind. After a career in New York, she and her then-husband Fernando Alonso established the Cuban National Ballet and the Cuban National Ballet School, both of which grew into major international dance powerhouses and beloved institutions in their home country.” She remained director of the company until her death, serving for 71 years, and named a successor only this past January. – Pointe Magazine