ArtsJournal Classic

AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only

DANCE

    IDEAS

    • BBC World Service Will Run Out Of Funding By April If Government Doesn’t Step Up

      Most of the World Service’s £400 million budget comes from the licence fee which funds the entire BBC, though the Foreign Office contributes a sizable amount, £137 million in the last year. BBC director general Tim Davie has just warned that the government must not delay further in deciding on Foreign Office funding. – The Guardian

    • Oregon’s Portland Chamber Orchestra Abruptly Closes Down

      The ensemble, founded in 1946, was believed to be the longest-running chamber orchestra in the US. While it has faced the same post-COVID financial problems that have plagued many performing-arts organizations, the PCO’s biggest difficulty has been recovering from the sudden death in 2023 of popular artistic director Yaacov Bergman. – Willamette Week (Portland)

    • Dallas Opera Chief Ian Derrer Appointed General Director Of Canadian Opera Company

      Derrer — who came to The Dallas Opera in 2018 and then steered the company through COVID, raised $54.5 million and doubled the endowment, and commissioned and staged multiple new works — will take the helm at the COC in Toronto as of July 1. – CultureMap Dallas

    • London’s “Brutalist Monstrosity” Southbank Centre Given Landmark Status

      “The Southbank Centre in London, which includes the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Undercroft skatepark and was once voted ‘Britain’s ugliest building’, has been heritage-listed. Completed along the River Thames in the 1960s, the post-war landmark has now been Grade II-listed by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.” – Dezeen

    • Good Morning

      Today’s AJ highlights a culture moving beyond mere preservation into a phase of pioneering reconfiguration.

      We see this most clearly in the physical and spiritual evolution of major institutions. The English National Opera, under new leadership, is embracing a dual identity in London and Manchester, moving to a city hungry for its first resident opera company (The Guardian). Similarly, San Francisco’s Castro Theater has emerged from a $41 million renovation with motorized risers and a flattened floor, transforming a historic cinema into a flexible performing arts center equipped for the demands of 21st-century stagecraft (San Francisco Chronicle).

      In the dance collaboration Speak, American tap masters join classical Kathak practitioners in a percussive dialogue that thrives on technical brilliance rather than novelty (The New York Times). It is the same search for the “authentic” that has turned Letterboxd into a “cinephilic hive” for heterogeneous tastes, standing in stark contrast to the homogenized marketing machinery of the mainstream (The New York Times Magazine).

      In India, a boom of more than 100 literary festivals is proving that culture thrives when it is treated as a “spectacle” of food, music, and handicraft, drawing hundreds of thousands who might never otherwise enter a bookstore (The Guardian). From fans mastering Broadway choreography on TikTok to a prosecutor winning a major art history prize for his work against trafficking, personal creativity is alive and well. (The New York Times, ARTnews).

      All our stories below.

    ISSUES

    MEDIA

    MUSIC

    • How Has India Managed To Develop Over 100 Literary Festivals?

      “The answer is that festivals in India are only partly about books. They are a ‘spectacle’ offering music, dance, handicraft sales and food. Even the T.rex of them all, the Jaipur literature festival (which attracted 400,000 visitors last month according to its marketing team), would almost certainly attract fewer people without these extras.” – The Guardian

    • The Enormous Power Of Small Book Shops

      How, against all odds, has City Lights managed to remain a vital symbol of literary dissent and free speech? How, after more than seventy years, has City Lights survived economic and industry changes? How, decade after decade, has it managed to respond to the forces that threaten to silence us? – LitHub

    • Indians Don’t Buy Books. So Why Do They Have So Many Literary Festivals?

      If most middle-class homes are devoid of book– if you can sit in an airport departure lounge or train all day and not see anyone reading–then why, come winter, do more than 100 literature festivals bloom every year, even in the smallest and unlikeliest of towns? – The Guardian

    • Spotify Adds Physical Books To Its Service

      The tech platform is launching Page Match, a tool that will allow readers to scan a page of a printed or e-book using their phone and continue listening to the audiobook version where they left off. – The Hollywood Reporter

    • The Books Ecosystem Is Dying

      In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation. Newspapers used to bundle several functions together in a way that made them both useful and profitable. – The Atlantic

    PEOPLE

    • BBC World Service Will Run Out Of Funding By April If Government Doesn’t Step Up

      Most of the World Service’s £400 million budget comes from the licence fee which funds the entire BBC, though the Foreign Office contributes a sizable amount, £137 million in the last year. BBC director general Tim Davie has just warned that the government must not delay further in deciding on Foreign Office funding. – The Guardian

    • Oregon’s Portland Chamber Orchestra Abruptly Closes Down

      The ensemble, founded in 1946, was believed to be the longest-running chamber orchestra in the US. While it has faced the same post-COVID financial problems that have plagued many performing-arts organizations, the PCO’s biggest difficulty has been recovering from the sudden death in 2023 of popular artistic director Yaacov Bergman. – Willamette Week (Portland)

    • Dallas Opera Chief Ian Derrer Appointed General Director Of Canadian Opera Company

      Derrer — who came to The Dallas Opera in 2018 and then steered the company through COVID, raised $54.5 million and doubled the endowment, and commissioned and staged multiple new works — will take the helm at the COC in Toronto as of July 1. – CultureMap Dallas

    • London’s “Brutalist Monstrosity” Southbank Centre Given Landmark Status

      “The Southbank Centre in London, which includes the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Undercroft skatepark and was once voted ‘Britain’s ugliest building’, has been heritage-listed. Completed along the River Thames in the 1960s, the post-war landmark has now been Grade II-listed by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.” – Dezeen

    • Good Morning

      Today’s AJ highlights a culture moving beyond mere preservation into a phase of pioneering reconfiguration.

      We see this most clearly in the physical and spiritual evolution of major institutions. The English National Opera, under new leadership, is embracing a dual identity in London and Manchester, moving to a city hungry for its first resident opera company (The Guardian). Similarly, San Francisco’s Castro Theater has emerged from a $41 million renovation with motorized risers and a flattened floor, transforming a historic cinema into a flexible performing arts center equipped for the demands of 21st-century stagecraft (San Francisco Chronicle).

      In the dance collaboration Speak, American tap masters join classical Kathak practitioners in a percussive dialogue that thrives on technical brilliance rather than novelty (The New York Times). It is the same search for the “authentic” that has turned Letterboxd into a “cinephilic hive” for heterogeneous tastes, standing in stark contrast to the homogenized marketing machinery of the mainstream (The New York Times Magazine).

      In India, a boom of more than 100 literary festivals is proving that culture thrives when it is treated as a “spectacle” of food, music, and handicraft, drawing hundreds of thousands who might never otherwise enter a bookstore (The Guardian). From fans mastering Broadway choreography on TikTok to a prosecutor winning a major art history prize for his work against trafficking, personal creativity is alive and well. (The New York Times, ARTnews).

      All our stories below.

    PEOPLE

    • BBC World Service Will Run Out Of Funding By April If Government Doesn’t Step Up

      Most of the World Service’s £400 million budget comes from the licence fee which funds the entire BBC, though the Foreign Office contributes a sizable amount, £137 million in the last year. BBC director general Tim Davie has just warned that the government must not delay further in deciding on Foreign Office funding. – The Guardian

    • Oregon’s Portland Chamber Orchestra Abruptly Closes Down

      The ensemble, founded in 1946, was believed to be the longest-running chamber orchestra in the US. While it has faced the same post-COVID financial problems that have plagued many performing-arts organizations, the PCO’s biggest difficulty has been recovering from the sudden death in 2023 of popular artistic director Yaacov Bergman. – Willamette Week (Portland)

    • Dallas Opera Chief Ian Derrer Appointed General Director Of Canadian Opera Company

      Derrer — who came to The Dallas Opera in 2018 and then steered the company through COVID, raised $54.5 million and doubled the endowment, and commissioned and staged multiple new works — will take the helm at the COC in Toronto as of July 1. – CultureMap Dallas

    • London’s “Brutalist Monstrosity” Southbank Centre Given Landmark Status

      “The Southbank Centre in London, which includes the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Undercroft skatepark and was once voted ‘Britain’s ugliest building’, has been heritage-listed. Completed along the River Thames in the 1960s, the post-war landmark has now been Grade II-listed by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.” – Dezeen

    • Good Morning

      Today’s AJ highlights a culture moving beyond mere preservation into a phase of pioneering reconfiguration.

      We see this most clearly in the physical and spiritual evolution of major institutions. The English National Opera, under new leadership, is embracing a dual identity in London and Manchester, moving to a city hungry for its first resident opera company (The Guardian). Similarly, San Francisco’s Castro Theater has emerged from a $41 million renovation with motorized risers and a flattened floor, transforming a historic cinema into a flexible performing arts center equipped for the demands of 21st-century stagecraft (San Francisco Chronicle).

      In the dance collaboration Speak, American tap masters join classical Kathak practitioners in a percussive dialogue that thrives on technical brilliance rather than novelty (The New York Times). It is the same search for the “authentic” that has turned Letterboxd into a “cinephilic hive” for heterogeneous tastes, standing in stark contrast to the homogenized marketing machinery of the mainstream (The New York Times Magazine).

      In India, a boom of more than 100 literary festivals is proving that culture thrives when it is treated as a “spectacle” of food, music, and handicraft, drawing hundreds of thousands who might never otherwise enter a bookstore (The Guardian). From fans mastering Broadway choreography on TikTok to a prosecutor winning a major art history prize for his work against trafficking, personal creativity is alive and well. (The New York Times, ARTnews).

      All our stories below.

    THEATRE

      VISUAL

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