The ballerina danced with the Houston Ballet for years (and now is a program manager in its education department). “I’ll never forget seeing my first Sugar Plum Fairy. Standing there, I’m looking through a stairway that’s part of a set for the party scene. I remember looking through the rungs of that stairway into the light at the Sugar Plum Fairy and wanting to be her. So, I got to retire as the Sugar Plum Fairy. There’s a picture of a Mother Ginger Child looking through the rungs of the stairway as I’m the Sugar Plum Fairy. I was just like, that was me 40 years ago.” – Texas Highways
Boston Lyric Opera’s New Conversation Series Tries To Reckon With A Legacy Of Racism
Series host Celeste Headlee says, “The idea has been to create discussions that are not just listening sessions, not just another forum in which people talk and bare their souls, and well-meaning executives nod their heads and then change nothing. We want discussions centered around finding practical, actionable solutions, and an environment in which people can voice hard truths without others feeling defensive.” – Boston Globe
A Brief History Of The Ballpoint Pen (It’s Older Than You Think)
“Its evolution is, in many ways, an example of a game-changing design waiting until outside factors – in this case the rise of plastics and mass-production infrastructure, and a brilliant marketeer – allowed it to achieve its full potential.” – BBC
What Exactly Is “Theory” In The Humanities (And Why Should We Care?)
The Theory Wars, that is the administrative argument over which various strains of 20th-century continental European thought should play in the research and teaching of the humanities, has never exactly gone away, even while departments shutter and university work is farmed out to poorly-paid contingent faculty. – The Millions
Daniel Menaker, Author And Editor, Dead At 79
“[He wrote] a half-dozen acerbic and poignant books and became a senior editor at the New Yorker and Random House. Along the way, he helped champion and shepherd works by authors such as Billy Collins, Alice Munro and George Saunders.” – The Washington Post
Prognosis For Cable TV Is Even Worse Than You Think
“It’s all over for cable. Even Nielsen is saying that 25% of television viewing time is now streaming. Samsung is saying that if you’re a smart TV owner, over 50% of viewing time is streaming. That’s a problem for the cable networks. They have to follow the audience.” – Protocol
What The Drawings Show About New LACMA Building
Although LACMA claims “the new building totals 347,500 square feet,” the plans show its true size as 261,000 square feet. The total square footage of the new building is 32% less than the buildings it replaces—a loss of 123,000 square feet. “This analysis demonstrates that Los Angeles County taxpayers, who are footing a hefty portion of the bill for the $750-million project, are being robbed of their museum and collections,” says architecture critic Joseph Giovannini, co-chair of The Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA. – CityWatch LA
How Professional Ballet Dancers Plan For Retirement
It involves a lot of money saving, a lot of private lessons, and now a lot of Zooming. – CNBC
Want Better Theatre? Fund Writers
Maybe that seems obvious: Playwrights can make better work if they’re not suffering or working four other jobs to grasp for financial stability. But also, it has what the British call a knock-on effect: “If you give money to a playwright, they will give it to other artists.” – HowlRound
Repainting Colorado
Or at least repainting murals on an Arkansas River levee that spent six years in various stages of repair. “Muralists have to rope up for safety to work on the steeply sloped concrete. But that isn’t slowing any of them down.” – Colorado Public Radio
The Dream Of Private Theatre Support Lives
Outdoor theatre was a risky bet in 2020, but in the Berkshires, it more than paid off. The artistic director of the Barrington Stage Company on the conversation that changed this winter’s planning: “My development director almost passed out.” – The New York Times
Bay Area Theatre Is Devastated
“This is hitting our sector in a way it’s not hitting any other sector and no one has a plan for it. We are all frantically treading water just to stay afloat… “We have unemployment that is about three times the national average. Because of how the arts work and people having to physically be together, it’s one of the sectors that will be closed the longest and have the longest road to recovery.” – San Francisco Chronicle
How Women Have Made Progress In American Orchestras
Musicians in American orchestras are now generally balanced between the sexes, largely because blind auditions — during which candidates play behind screens — were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s. But stereotypes surrounding which instruments women should play remain. Most harpists are women; brass sections are dominated by men. – Dallas Morning News
Should Rimbaud And Verlaine Be Re-Interred In The Panthéon? (A Very French Contretemps)
Adam Gopnik: “Obsessing as so many are on the small niceties of American politics — i.e., the final confrontation between the forces of light and darkness on which all of humanity’s future depends — let us spare a moment’s thought for a couple of obscure French poets and their fate.” – The New Yorker
Galleries Experiment With Art On Subscription
Even before the silent spring of 2020, a growing number of sellers beyond the art world had already converted to the wisdom of subscription e-commerce. After all, why force your business to secure an endless string of one-off transactions with an ever-shifting consumer base in an uncertain market if you can lock in recurring revenue with a core group of faithfully committed clients? – Artnet
Online Theater Gets More Interactive
“Several months into the pandemic, performers, designers and writers are using technology … with more ingenuity. They’re skillfully adapting some of the devices honed in live performance over the years — namely, techniques to break the fourth wall and lure spectators into the show. And in the process, theater is reclaiming for these trying times its rightful status as the most intimate of art forms.” – The Washington Post
The Art Of The Horror-Movie Scream
“Bloodcurdling from an A-lister is uncommon: Often, the screams we hear in movies and TV are created by doubles and voice actors, in Burbank studios, with specialists standing by to ghoul them up. It’s physically taxing and emotionally draining. And bizarro as a job.” (includes sound clips) – The New York Times
Book Industry Starts Taking Real Steps To Become More Diverse
“Publishing houses across the industry are making senior-level hires and structural changes to try to make their companies, and the books they acquire, more diverse — racially, ethnically and even geographically. While critics, including authors and publishing insiders, have accused publishers of paying lip service to these issues, the companies are increasingly making lasting changes to the way they do business, and in some cases they are already being driven by newly hired executives of color.” – The New York Times
As COVID Carries On, How Should Live Performance Inch Back? And How Should Arts Journalists Cover It?
“As some Bay Area artists and producers take tentative steps toward reopening, The Chronicle Datebook team is wrestling with new ethical questions: Is it responsible for an in-person event to take place? How do we cover that news in responsible ways? Senior Arts and Entertainment Editor Mariecar Mendoza got to discussing this with theater critic Lily Janiak, classical music critic Joshua Kosman and pop music critic Aidin Vaziri, exploring how they approach their jobs in the coronavirus era.” – San Francisco Chronicle
How L.A. Dance Project Made Its Drive-In Dance Performances Work
It took quite a lot of planning and (re-)thinking about everything from pricing and number of people per car to turning the parking lot into a performance space to setting up quarantine pods of dancers and choreographers. – Los Angeles Times
Please Declare Us Essential Services, Plead France’s Bookstores As Lockdown Returns
“French authors, booksellers and publishers are imploring the French government to allow bookshops to stay open because reading is ‘essential’, as the country enters a national four-week lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.” – The Guardian
The Cultural Cost Of Four Years Of Trump
Michelle Goldberg: “When I think back, from my obviously privileged position, on the texture of daily life during the past four years, all the attention sucked up by this black hole of a president has been its own sort of loss. Every moment spent thinking about Trump is a moment that could have been spent contemplating, creating or appreciating something else. Trump is a narcissistic philistine, and he bent American culture toward him.” – The New York Times
How To Rebuild A Healthier, Fairer Theater Ecosystem? Bring Back Repertory Companies
Jim Warren, founding artistic director of the American Shakespeare Center, writes that the “revolutionary changes” he recommends — companies of 15 to 20 resident actors, performing shows in rotating repertory and handling administrative jobs as well as performing, and working 40-hour weeks with full benefits — “are a jumping-off point for righting a history of wrongs.” – American Theatre
Diane di Prima, R.I.P.
What I like is her poetry’s simplicity. I like its rich feeling, which is straightforward and strong and not at all sentimental. Her poems age well. I’d be surprised if her poetry didn’t last longer than the poetry of many of the Beats. – Jan Herman
Music Exec Is Buying Up Distressed Music Venues Across The Country To “Save” Them
Marc Geiger, the former global music chief of the giant talent agency WME, has quietly amassed a war chest to fortify empty clubs during the pandemic and help them grow once they reopen. One of the most charismatic figures behind the scenes of the music industry — a motormouth futurist who helped create Lollapalooza and was an early proponent of how the internet could help musicians — Geiger portrays his latest venture as a kind of personal crusade. – The New York Times