AJ Four Ways:
Full View (by category) | Text Only (by date) | Text (by category) | headlines only
Dance
Sarasota Ballet Will Support Its Dancers Through The Original End Of The Season
The ballet says that, “We also recognized that while many of our dancers have made their homes here in Sarasota, and others would be able to easily return to their home states/countries, many of the Company were not going to be so lucky. With our dancers from countries like Italy, who are unable to return to their families, we have assured them that we will help in whatever ways we can.” They expect to lose around $800,000. – Ballet News
For Commercial Dancers In Los Angeles, All Revenue Streams Are Gone
There’s no touring, no practicing for Coachella, no videos filming. There’s nothing. “As the entertainment business comes to a halt, commercial dancers and choreographers — the performers who animate film, TV and music videos — said the experience has been surreal and stressful.” – Los Angeles
A Ballet School In A Rio Favela
Tuany Nascimento grew up in Complexo do Alemão, a poor and often dangerous group of hillside slums in Rio de Janeiro. She studied dance with hopes of becoming a professional ballerina, a dream she gave up in order to help support her family with a day job. But she kept dancing when she could, and enough neighborhood girls became curious that she started her own school, called Na Ponta dos Pes (meaning on pointe). (video) – Al Jazeera
New York City Ballet Cancels All Spring Performances But Will Pay Through End Of Season
“The employees who are to be paid and receive benefits through the dark season include the dancers, musicians, stagehands, costume designers, security personnel, ushers and administrators. … For now, their payment schedule is the same as it would have been without the pandemic: They will be paid until the end of the spring season, and then will face a short layoff.” – The New York Times
How I Became A Dance Critic
“So am I a dancer? The short answer is no. And people find this answer surprising. Many expect a dance writer to dance, despite not having the same expectations of other fields. For instance, most food critics are not chefs, and most film critics are not actors or directors.” – Broad Street Review
Ideas
Arts Critics Reflect On Their Lives Before Social Isolation
The Observer‘s theatre critic, for instance: “‘I am a big believer in walking as writing (or vice versa),’ she says. ‘If I get stuck, I charge around the square and often find a sentence slips into place. I work out what I think more easily on the hoof – going to or from the theatre, or emptying the rubbish – than when stooped over my desk.'” – The Observer (UK)
Shifting Ground: Are You Ready For A New Discourse For A New World?
“These are not the end times, I mean, but nor are they business as usual, and we would do well to understand that not only is there room for a middle path between these, but indeed there is an absolute necessity that we begin our voyage down that path. To the squealing chiliasts and self-absorbed presentists, indulging themselves with phrases like “the end of the world,” I say: “Did it never dawn on you that all of human history has just been one partial apocalypse after another?” And to the business-as-usual mandarins I say: “Thank you for your service in the glorious battles of the past.” – The Point
Our Home-Isolation Comes With A Sober Realization: This, Actually, Is Who We Are
The necessary response to the pandemic has, after all, intensified huge swaths of the population’s pre-pandemic situations. The economically and medically fragile are at new risk; the cloistered and privileged have only thickened the walls of their bubble. Single people feel extremely single. People in relationships are now super-duper in relationships. The home has become not a refuge from the world’s arena but rather the arena itself. It’s thus tempting to think of the crisis as a personal reckoning: This is the life you’ve been making all along. Now live it. – The Atlantic
A Theory Of Multiple Disasters At Once?
If an earthquake now hits India or Iran, like in 2001 and 2003, respectively, killing over 20,000 people in each country—or if we witness a repeat of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in the US or 2011’s tsunami in Japan—will the world respond? Would the world wish to respond? Currently, health systems and social services are stretched to their breaking points. – Nautilus
Why Rebuild When We Could Remake? (Green)
They are asking for a $2 trillion commitment for programs that will create living-wage jobs, amped-up public health and housing sectors, and a pivot away from a fossil-fuels-based energy frame. Under their plan, the stimulus would automatically renew every year at 4 percent of GDP, or $850 billion annually, as well as give the public more of a voice in whether — and how — large-scale corporations would get bailouts.For now, the coalition recognizes that the focus should be on stopping the spread of coronavirus and mitigating all related health risks. – CityLab
Issues
Zoom Isn’t Sending As Much Of Your Personal Data To Facebook Anymore
Since many of us are having to use Zoom for work and choosing to use it for seeing family and friends, that’s a good change. And we’ll take good news right now, honestly. – Vice
The University Of Michigan Finally Fires Opera Singer David Daniels Over Sexual Misconduct
Daniels, once a leading countertenor and now facing a separate criminal charge for sexual assault in Texas, “was deemed not eligible for severance pay. According to the university, Daniels is the first tenured faculty member to be dismissed since it adopted its current bylaws in 1959.” – NPR
Nightlife Is The Soul Of A City. Now It’s Gone And We Need To Protect It
The rise of night mayors after 2012 followed the recognition by many cities that they largely ignored what many called their nighttime economies. Those who worked in the nighttime entertainment sector had long argued that their contributions to employment and city tax coffers went unrecognized. – The Conversation
Of Arts CEOs Who Are Giving Up Their Salaries
“There’s a symbolism and communications problem if you’re starting to inflict loss and suffering on your staff. If Peter Gelb or Deborah Rutter start to, and need to, lay off lots of people and calling the people they have contracts with and saying they going to invoke force majeure . . . it doesn’t look great or feel great if they’re not making a sacrifice themselves.” – Washington Post
Next Step In Social Distancing And The Arts: Live Performance For One Audience Member At A Time
In a project called “One on One”, the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, known as one of the most innovative in Russia, will let 850 people (as many as the auditorium could hold) register for a lottery for each ballet, concert, or opera; one winner will get to buy a ticket at the regular price and attend. Says director Marat Gatsalov, “We’d been told that we can’t let viewers into the theatre hall. But that doesn’t mean we can’t let just one viewer in.” – The Guardian
Media
Jennifer Schantz Is New Director Of The NY Public Library’s Performing Arts Collection
Schantz, 51, currently the executive vice president and chief operating officer at the New-York Historical Society, will take up the position in May. She succeeds Jacqueline Davis, who has led the library for two decades. The performing arts library, located in Lincoln Center, is one of the New York Public Library’s four research divisions, with a collection of some 8 million items that extend far beyond books to include manuscripts, photographs, scores, ephemera, sheet music, stage designs, costume designs, video and film. – The New York Times
Vital Film Hub Shuts Down With Layoffs At Film At Lincoln Center
Film at Lincoln Center announced massive internal upheaval on Friday. A longtime hub of film culture in New York City with an influential reach around the country, the organization furloughed or laid off approximately 50% of the full-time staff as well as all of the part-time staff. – Los Angeles Times
Can Community Radio Survive With Its Unique Sound Intact?
Sure, they’re still as quirky and gap-filling as ever, except for one rather large problem. WFMU Jersey City’s station manager: “This is the situation that so many broadcasters dream of! … You have a global, captive audience, and everyone can share and commiserate their experiences. But it’s not safe to go to the station!”- The New York Times
In Europe, Cinema Production Has Been Thrown Into Utter Crisis
Even before COVID-19 shut down production completely, three historic companies were in trouble – deep in debt to creditors, troubled by streaming, etc. Then seven feature films in Paris alone stopped dead, one leaving a street recreated in WWII-era styles. Some relief: “The National Cinema Center (CNC) plans to relieve the short-term cash flow of 1,200 arthouse cinemas and distributors. It also suspended payment of the ticket tax (TSA) in March and authorized the advance use of the support fund.” – Le Monde
The Producers Of Dystopian Fiction Are Thinking Again
But it’s a complex consideration: “‘You do feel guilty about putting these anxieties in people’s minds,’ said Bruce Miller, the creator and showrunner of Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. ‘There’s no way not to feel like you somehow wished things into being.'” – The New York Times
Music
Musician Sues Pension Fund For Risky Investments And Wins $28 Million Settlement
Thursday’s settlement deal in a case brought by a onetime Philadelphia area saxophonist against a $2 billion musicians’ pension fund shows that the trustees who ratify advisers’ and outside managers’ investment picks can be held responsible for their mistakes. – Philadelphia Inquirer
Why We Should Bail Out Classical Music
Matthew Walther: “If it is worth bailing out restaurants and bars and other places where people congregate together for merriment and diversion, we must not neglect those institutions in which men and women come together for something that satisfies all the deepest longings of our species.” – The Week
A Choir Practice That Turned Deadly
Sixty singers showed up in early March for a 2.5-hour choir practice. Now, three weeks later, “45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.” – Los Angeles Times
The Pop And Classical Music Critics Traded Jobs For A Day
The classical music critic got to watch a rapper marched offstage after verbally assaulting a host and throwing a drink at the crowd. She said, “I was surprised he had his shirt off and trousers down so quickly. It takes a bit longer for a symphony orchestra.” – The Observer (UK)
The National Symphony Orchestra Lays Off All 96 Musicians With A One-Week Notice
Despite a $25 million stimulus package for the Kennedy Center, the musicians of the NSO were told late Friday night that their April 3 paycheck would be their last, and their health care would end at the end of May if concerts have not resumed. Unsurprisingly, given that their collective bargaining agreement requires six weeks of pay before layoffs for economic hardship, “the union has filed a grievance challenging what it believes is an illegal action.” – The Washington Post
People
Composer And Conductor Krzysztof Penderecki Has Died At 86
Penderecki, composer of the scores for The Exorcist, The Shining, and Wild at Heart, also wrote operas and choral works, and won multiple Grammys. “Penderecki’s stated aim as an avant-gardist in the early 1960s was to ‘liberate sound beyond all tradition,’ and his emotionally charged experimental 1960 work ‘Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima’, for 52 strings, brought him to international attention and acclaim when he was only 26.” – The Guardian (UK)
Mark Blum, Actor Of Stage And Screen, Has Died At 69
Blum, a consummate theatre professional who played many roles on stage and screen, including Union Bob on Amazon Prime’s Mozart in the Jungle, has died of complications from the coronavirus. – The New York Times
Lucia Bosé, Star Of Films By Buñuel And Antonioni, Has Died At 89
Bosé won the Miss Italy beauty pageant in 1947, which eventually led to her acting career. She worked with Italian neorealists, Jean Cocteau, Juan Antonio Bardem, Federico Fellini and many other directors. – The New York Times
Jeremy Marre, Whose Documentaries Introduced Britons and Americans To World Music, Dead At 76
“With a minimal camera and sound crew, Mr. Marre visited Jamaican dance halls, Brazilian favelas, Appalachian churches, Egyptian temples, South African workers’ hostels and Bollywood soundstages to film music and musicians on home turf that was often gritty and unglamorous.” – The New York Times
Conservative NY Times Columnist Remembers His Freewheeling, Sexually Confident, Multiply Married Modernist Painter Grandmother (Who Had Diego Rivera For A Lover)
Bret Stephens pays tribute to Annette Nancarrow (the composer Conlon was the third of her four husbands), a genteel, well-to-do Manhattan Jewish girl who ran off to Mexico City, became besties with Anaïs Nin, painted a mural alongside José Clemente Orozco, watched Diego and Frida fight, and judged Leon Trotsky’s clothes. – The New York Times
Theatre
The Best Sketch Comedian Online Now
Sure, everything’s online now, but some comedians have been doing the work for a much longer time than the last two weeks. They didn’t need to adjust “because they were already there, particularly those in the growing genre of ‘front-facing camera comedy’: short character sketches played directly to the camera. Owing a debt to the hectic editing of Tim and Eric and the influence of the defunct six-second-or-less platform Vine, these videos have gone viral for years, but with comedians and audiences stuck at home, they have replaced the special as the dominant comedy form of the Covid-19 crisis.” – The New York Times
Cal Shakes Cancels Its 2020 Season
AD Eric Ting: “This may seem like an extraordinary decision, but taking into account the incredible uncertainty of this moment, the cost of producing a season at the Bruns, of which ticket sales only account for a third, the current and long-term disruption in fundraising, … we feel this is our best course of action.” No word on whether the four plays will be rescheduled in future seasons. – American Theatre
Original Cast Recordings To Get You Through The Pandemic
Why now? “As an adult, I’ve try to keep my performing past under wraps. Being a theater nerd was never cool to begin with, but … polite society seems to find something sad about being nostalgic for the activities you loved in adolescence. But now that we’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, shame is no longer a concern of mine.” – Slate
Theatres Pivoted To Digital As Fast As They Could Before Shutdowns, So What Will Come Of All That Streaming?
Could some of this be the future of online theatre? “In response to this crisis, Actors Equity Association created a new, temporary streaming agreement available for select producers to record these performances, sell tickets through the theatre’s website, then stream the production online for one-time viewing by ticket buyers. In essence, the idea is to make the patron experience as close to a true theatrical experience as possible.” – American Theatre
All The World’s Living Rooms Can Be Stages, With The Right Plays
Ben Brantley: “Remember that plays — even those lofty classics that show up on college reading lists — are meant to be spoken and heard. And saying their lines aloud, no matter how clumsily, helps you hear the music and cadences in them. This is true not only of Shakespeare, but also of linguistically rich latter-day writers like August Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Edward Albee, [and] Suzan-Lori Parks.” – The New York Times
Visual
Thieves Steal Van Gogh From Museum Closed Because Of Virus
The Singer Laren museum, just outside the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam, said van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring” was stolen in an overnight raid. The painting — created in 1884 by the Dutch master, according to Reuters — was on loan from another Dutch institution, the Groninger Museum in the city of Groningen. – CNN
Memes Belong In Museums
Think about the doge meme, for instance. “This meme is iconic, woah heritage, such icon.” (But for real: Memes show the power of photography and creativity, and the top memes deserve to be archived.) – BBC
Who Gets The Credit – And Money – For An Artist’s Quick Rise?
A lesson in not making desperate promises, perhaps: “When Derek Fordjour was a little-known art student at Hunter College, before Michael Ovitz and Beyoncé began collecting his work, before his paintings came to sell for more than $100,000, the fledgling artist struck a deal with a New York gallery. He agreed, according to a lawsuit now being pursued in New York Supreme Court, to produce 20 works for $20,000.” Now the gallery says he owes 7 paintings – or $1.45 million. – The New York Times
How Can Visual Artists Survive?
Museums are silent, and the Tate Modern’s 20th anniversary celebration has gone mute. But the small galleries and artists of Britain are in much more dire circumstances. Says one close observer, “We might lose the really interesting emergent art, the stuff of the future, if we are not careful.” – The Observer (UK)
Is This A Craft Renaissance?
People in Britain – perhaps spurred on by Brexit fears, or perhaps it’s just a cyclical thing, this “return to traditional craft” – are learning everything from vase painting to making spinning wheels and clay pipes. – The Observer (UK)
Words
As The UK Public Saw What Was Coming, Book Buying Soared
Even as government officials seemed a bit cavalier about it all – talking about herd immunity, for instance – people sensed that a shutdown was coming. “Sales of fiction rose by a third, while children’s education went up 234% to the third highest level on record. Puzzle books, handicrafts and true crime also saw sharp rises.” – BBC
When Your Book About Getting Through Hard Times Comes Out In The Middle Of A Pandemic
Carmen Esposito’s Save Yourself was meant to be released on a book tour that saw the comedian and podcaster performing in cities across the country. But then, COVID-19. In the book, she writes, “Humans are scared out of our minds and want to be saved. We want to know why we are here, what we are supposed to do, and how to protect ourselves.” – NPR
Apparently, Everyone Wants To Read Camus Right Now
That’s right, Camus’ The Plague is leading a wave of “pestilence fiction.” Get this: “The British publisher of The Plague, Penguin Classics, says it is struggling to keep up with orders. ‘We’ve gone from shipping quantities in the low hundreds every month to the mid-thousands.'” – The Guardian (UK)
Online Buyers For Powell’s Are So Hungry For Books That Company Recalls 100 Laid-Off Workers
Some of the still laid-off Powell’s staff are unhappy with the way the company has handled the store closures and layoffs, but for others, the present is a little rosier. CEO Emily Powell wrote on Friday in a memo on the website, “Thanks to your orders on Powells.com, we now have over 100 folks working at Powell’s again – all full time with benefits.” – The Oregonian
What Happens To This Spring’s Most Anticipated Books?
Remember last fall and winter? Well, there were plans: “Months ago, in what now feels like another era, publishers planning their 2020 schedules hoped to avoid releasing books in the fall, typically the industry’s biggest season. Editors and writers worried that new releases would be lost in the deluge of political news leading up to the presidential election, so publishers jammed some of their biggest titles into the spring.” – The New York Times