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March 31, 2010

The Soft Steps of Diplomacy
by Roslyn Sulcas
March 19, 2010
The New York Times

In a municipal hall in the township of Joza, close to 100 children and teenagers stood looking apprehensively at Ronald K. Brown, the artistic director of the Evidence Dance Company of Brooklyn. As seven of the Evidence dancers gently organized the children into rough lines, another dancer, Joel Sulé Adams, beat out a rhythm on drums while Mr. Brown started to swing his arms in simple circles.

The children, many of whom spoke little English, followed intently, losing their initial shyness as the music took hold. As Mr. Brown slowly built more complex rhythmic sequences, they began to smile and infuse the dance with some of the energy and joy they had shown in their earlier display of traditional Xhosa dance. Afterward they sat on rows of chairs before Mr. Brown and raised their hands eagerly, bombarding him with questions. “How did you all come together?” “How does it feel to be in South Africa?” “What do you call your kind of dance?” “How can we learn more dance like this?”

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American Dance Festival to Award Martha Clarke with 2010 Scripps/ADF Award for Lifetime Achievement
March 25, 2010

The American Dance Festival (ADF) will award distinguished choreographer and director Martha Clarke with the 2010 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the most important lifetime award for choreographers. Established in 1981 by Samuel H. Scripps, the annual award honors choreographers who have dedicated their lives and talent to the creation of modern dance. The $50,000 award will be presented to Ms. Clarke in a special ceremony on Sunday, June 27th at 7:30pm at The Cotton Room at Golden Belt in downtown Durham. Academy and Tony Award-winning screenwriter, and playwright Alfred Uhry will present the award.

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NEA Announces Research on Informal Arts Participation in Rural and Urban Areas
The National Endowment for the Arts announces its most recent publication, Research Note #100, Come as You Are: Informal Arts Participation in Urban and Rural Communities. It is the NEA's first research publication in several years to examine the "informal arts" -- such as playing a musical instrument, attending an art event at a place of worship, or visiting a craft fair.

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USArtists International Announces Second Round Grants
March 24, 2010

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation has announced the second round grantees for the 2009-2010 USArtists International ("USAI") program, the only national initiative solely dedicated to ensuring that the impressive range of expression of the performing arts in the United States is represented abroad. The program works to strengthen the creative and professional development of American dance, music and theater artists by providing grants to support their performances around the world at significant international festivals, and to engagements that represent extraordinary career opportunities.

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NEA's Rocco Landesman Tours Country to Underscore Link Between Arts and Jobs
by Jacqueline Trescott
March 27, 2010
The Washington Post

On Friday morning, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman was not jetting from city to town observing the country's arts machinery, but sitting in the agency's conference room reporting back.

"Last week, I was in California, and I learned that nonprofit arts organizations there have annual revenues of $2.4 billion, which is roughly equivalent to the revenues of California's convenience stores. That is significant," said a smiling Landesman. "But arts workers make more than Slurpees, they make places." The arts, Landesman said, help "change the ethos of a town or community. They enliven it, they activate the public life."

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Jane Sherman, Dancer and Writer, Dies at 101
by Jack Anderson
March 20, 2010
The New York Times

Jane Sherman, a writer who not only chronicled the excitement of early-20th-century American dance but also lived through it as a performer, died on Tuesday at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood, N.J. She was 101.

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Career Transition for Dancers Offers Live Webcast of Career Development Seminar

Career Transition For Dancers is holding a free career development seminar for dancers on Thursday, April 8. Though the seminar will take place in New York City, dancers and administrators nationwide may particpate through a live webcast.

Stepping into hope and change
Thursday, April 8
Actors’ Equity Building
165 W 46 Street, 2nd floor Audition Center, New York City
Live Webcast: http://www.ustream.tv/user/ctfd

All sessions are designed to address the changing economic climate and the current career needs of dancers. The seminar is open to pre-professional, current, and former professional dancers of all genres. You do not have to be a union member or Career Transition For Dancers client to attend.

To RSVP and view the itinerary, click here.

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Arts Presenters and RCLA Announce Leadership Development Institute
The Association of Performing Arts Presenters and the Research Center for Leadership in Action (RCLA) at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University are pleased to announce the Leadership Development Institute (LDI). The overarching goal of the LDI is to develop the leadership, knowledge and capacity required to advance the performing arts presenting field.

Arts Presenters and RCLA have designed the LDI as a pilot program that will launch in June 2010 and end in January 2012. During its pilot phase, the LDI will include:
  • two series of collaborative inquiry sessions,
  • virtual webinars,
  • online resources and
  • one-day action-learning seminars.
A series of collaborative inquiry sessions will be the first offering delivered through the LDI. Please read the Collaborative Inquiry Guidelines to learn more about how to participate. Details about the remaining offerings will be disseminated in Fall 2010.

All interested parties will need to apply to participate in the collaborative inquiry sessions. We welcome your applications for participation in this first program. Applications will be due on Monday, April 19, 2010 and announcements will be made on Friday, May 7, 2010.

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Facebook Co-Founder Launches Non-Profit Platform Called Jumo
mashable.com

Today, Facebook co-founder and My.BarackObama.com alum Chris Hughes announced the soft launch of Jumo, his new philanthropic start-up that works to match do-gooders with appropriate causes.

Currently, the Jumo site is merely an elegantly designed homepage that announces Hughes’s mission to “bring together everyday individuals and organizations to speed the pace of global change. We connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action.”

Hughes told us, however, that the site will later be organized much like a social network — with profiles for individual users that contain a collection of information that they have shared and used, pages for organizations created both by the orgs in question and others, and issue pages that serve as a kind of discussion of the topics at hand.

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Ballet Stars Now Tweet as Well as Flutter
by Gia Kourlas
March 29, 2010
The New York Times

In the rarefied world of ballet, where dancers are expected to speak with their bodies, sometimes it seems that aloofness is something to aspire to. Lately, though, the ribbons are loosening. Courtesy of Twitter, dancers are starting to make themselves heard. It isn’t always dainty.

“Hi, I’m Devin and I’m an MRI-aholic.”

“Once again I took 2 days off this week. My body is wrecked. At the chiropractor now getting fixed.”

“What you didn’t know- fell in my dress reh. Fri, tweaked my foot, and couldn’t finish! Thurs was the first time I did the whole ballet!”

“Don’t let me be fat.”

Tweets — like these by the New York City Ballet dancers Devin Alberda, Ashley Bouder, Kathryn Morgan and Mr. Alberda again — are starting to change the public face of ballet. They may never amass the number of followers of, say, the prolific tweeter Ashton Kutcher, but Twitter is making ballet dancers human. (A simple Google search of a name plus Twitter is generally all that is needed to find them.)

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