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May 26, 2010

U.S. calls Cincinnati Ballet dancer's visa into question
by Jackie Demaline
May 18, 2010
Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati Ballet is in the middle of a backstage drama.

Company member Liang Fu, a citizen of the People's Republic of China and a rising star in the company, is waiting to have his work visa renewed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

The ballet first received word of issues with a renewal of Fu's work visa in April, and as of now, it cannot be sure he'll be able to dance in the 2010-11 season, which starts at the end of September.

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Boise steps up arts support with $25,000 award to Trey McIntyre Project
by Dana Oland
May 19, 2010
Idaho Statesman

Mayor Dave Bieter has long promoted the arts as an economic driver, but there historically has been little financial support from the city for arts groups.

To help remedy that, the mayor's office and the departments of Arts and History and Economic Development have created a one-time boost for some of the city's major arts groups.

These awards are part of a long-term goal, says Terri Schorzman, executive director of the Department of Arts and History.

"It is of our intention to increase the general fund for arts in Boise," she said. "The fund is small, and we can't grow it yet because of the economy, but this is moving us toward that intention."

The city used $105,000 of the money it received from Union Pacific Railroad for the lease of railroad tracks in Southeast Boise to create the grants.

Bieter chose Trey McIntyre Project for the $25,000 Cultural Ambassador award and presented it on Tuesday.

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Gail Kalver Appointed New Executive Director of River North Dance Company
May 20, 2010

During a 20th anniversary celebratory event held May 19, River North Chicago Dance Company announced Gail Kalver as its new executive director. While serving in an interim capacity over the past year, the venerable arts administrator led the company to one of its most financially and artistically successful seasons to date. Kalver is taking the helm at a pivotal time as the company embarks on an ambitious season marked by its first engagement at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, a new annual residency at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, major touring initiatives and a significant 20th anniversary fundraising campaign.

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Ballet Austin Recognized Among Best Places to Work
May 21, 2010

Ballet Austin was recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work in Central Texas” at the Austin Business Journal’s annual luncheon at the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center. The arts organization was awarded the 9th place honor (out of 25) in the medium sized business category.

Each year, the Austin Business Journal asks area workers—by confidential survey—if they are engaged at work, if they feel a part of a team atmosphere, if their employers provide an environment that enables them to do what they do best and enjoy their careers, among other things. Ballet Austin employees enjoy such benefits as free dance and movement classes, a baby/dog-friendly environment, tickets to performances, executive coaching and team-building workshops, and the post-Nutcracker week of December 23 – January 2 off with pay. Close to 100% of Ballet Austin’s 50 employees participated in the survey.

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City Ballet Stars Talk En Pointe
by Pia Catton
May 17, 2010
The Wall Street Journal

The New York City Ballet is convening what could certainly be called an all-star panel: On Monday, principal dancers Yvonne Borree, Albert Evans, Darci Kistler and Philip Neal will take the stage—not to dance, but to talk about their long NYCB careers, which are coming to a close this season.

As is customary when dancers retire, each will be given a farewell performance. But those can wait until June. Monday's discussion holds its own significance: This group of dancers represents a fading connection to American ballet's most important figures. Ms. Kistler, who joined the company in 1980, was the last dancer to be selected and mentored by company founder George Balanchine. Messrs. Neal and Evans are among the last male dancers still onstage to have partnered with Balanchine-trained performers. And Ms. Borree's mother, Susan Borree, danced with Jerome Robbins's Ballets: USA and New York City Ballet.

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An Exciting New Online Resource for the Performing Arts
Dance/USA is proud to announce a unique new resource for the performing arts at www.performingartsconvention.org. The new website, created by the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC), the consortium of national performing arts service organizations of which Dance/USA is a member, offers a continually updated compendium of useful information, links, articles, research, how-to guides, and other tools addressing Advocacy, Artists, Education, Diversity and Technology for all the performing arts. Performing artists, arts administrators, and arts advocates of all kinds will find the sight an invaluable resource.

The site is the result of a long collaboration among the national dance, music, opera and theater communities. In 2008, thousands of engaged members of the performing arts community -- including many of you -- came together in Denver at the National Performing Arts Convention and, through a participatory town hall process, identified the five priority areas -- Advocacy, Artists, Education, Diversity and Technology -- as the key areas to work on together to build a better future for the performing arts.

Five task forces were formed to identify key actions to move each priority forward. It quickly became clear that a centralized resource for the performing arts was long overdue. NPAC created www.performingartsconvention.org to meet that need.

Each priority area is curated by a leader in the field. The inaugural curators are:
Advocacy: Denise Montgomery
Artists: Chi-wang Yang
Diversity: Diana Hossack
Education: Richard Kessler
Technology: Brian McCormick.
For their bios, see the “About NPAC” section of the website, www.performingartsconvention.com/about/

Five task forces were formed to identify key actions to move each priority forward. It quickly became clear that a centralized resource for the performing arts was long overdue. NPAC created the site at www.performingartsconvention.org to meet that need.

The site is a work in progress -- as it should always be. The content is regularly updated, and how the site is used along with your feedback (welcomed through the home page and through each posting) will help shape the direction of the site over time. Check it out -- you’ll find recommended articles, popular articles and recent postings in all five priority areas, and you can use the search function to look any performing arts topic -- there’s plenty there and more to come!

It will also provide a platform for new ways of connecting as a performing arts field. Virtual NPAC, a lively, interactive web-based gathering begins on the website on June 7. Virtual NPAC will bring together highlights from the annual conferences and constituencies of the NPAC partner organizations to share and learn from each other like never before.

This platform is an exciting resource in our ongoing efforts to take action together to build a better future for the performing arts!

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At NEA, a daring idea to help artists rises again
by John Wenzel
May 23, 2010
The Denver Post

The tale is a cautionary one, told many times by both artists and politicians — and always with a tinge of regret.

The National Endowment for the Arts, never far from controversy since its creation in 1965, was consumed by a tornado of charged rhetoric in the late 1980s and early '90s as conservative leaders attacked the controversial work of artists it funded.

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The Diplomacy of Dance
by Paul Emerson, Op-Ed Contributor
May 21, 2010
The International Herald Tribune

In mid-April my dance company, CityDance Ensemble, opened the Fifth Annual Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival here in the West Bank.

At the end of the performance, 15 dancers stood side by side for their bows before a standing-room only audience in the Palace of Culture. Eight were Americans. Seven were Palestinians. Strangers to one another a week earlier they had performed together in a dance created specially for that evening.

After the bows, a Palestinian official said to me, “you have just done more for Palestinian-American relations than you can possibly imagine.” In the audience were senior government officials, business leaders and no small number of people for whom America’s role in the region evokes a preternatural level of frustration.

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So, You Think It’s African Dance?
by Alastair Macauley
May 18, 2010
The New York Times

Every year the Brooklyn Academy of Music holds its DanceAfrica festival. Other cities have their own versions, and they serve a purpose in modern America — honoring traditions that were for centuries ignored and repressed — that a DanceEurope festival would not. But on such occasions it’s too easy to refer to “African dance” as if it were a single genre.

What is African dance? “I certainly don’t know,” Judith Jamison, the departing artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, exclaimed in a recent interview: “Africa is a con-ti-nent!”

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A Lasting Legacy of Recession
by Michael Kaiser
May 17, 2010
The Huffington Post

One of the legacies of the lengthy recession we appear to be leaving behind us is that arts leaders are exhausted.

I have spoken with thousands of arts managers over the past six months and it is astonishing how many are considering leaving their positions in the relatively near future.

Very few of them are departing for wonderful new opportunities with other arts organizations. The vast majority are planning to leave their jobs with no new position on the horizon.

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Everyone Else Outsources, So Why Can't The Arts?
Elizabeth Blair
May 23, 2010
NPR.org

In Columbus, Ohio, a number of arts groups are doing what American businesses started doing a long time ago: outsourcing. The recession hit nonprofits hard, and now these organizations have no choice but to become more efficient. So they're handing over the "back office" to the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, or CAPA. CAPA handles their finances, marketing, ticketing and fundraising — basically all the stuff that artists don't really like to do anyway.

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