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- Gary Peterson to Become Executive Director of Southern Theater
- Bringing 'Nutcracker' alive for blind people
- Turn Your Cell Phone On! continues with George Balanchine's The Nutcracker
- Baryshnikov Center to Unveil New Theater
- Recipients of United States Artists grants can get creative with spending them
- A Margaret Jenkins Dance Company Announces Grant Recipients for Regional and National Programs for Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME)
- Georgina Parkinson, Star at Royal Ballet, Dies at 71
- Employers Should Expect Increased Enforcement Following Appointment of New OSHA Head
- Send Us Your Tired, Your Poor, But Only if They're 'Culturally Unique'
- Why do people dance?
- A 'Nutcracker' Lover Explains Himself
- Notice the Feet in That Body of Work
- Web audience grows for arts groups
- The arts see encouraging news in NEA survey
- The First Big Grant
- The Effect of the Global Economic Recession on Canada's Creative Economy in 2009
Gary Peterson to Become Executive Director of Southern Theater
The Southern Theater Board of Directors is pleased to introduce Gary Peterson as the theater’s new Executive Director.
“Gary comes to us most highly regarded and recommended by many in the artistic, philanthropic and non-profit leadership communities,” said Southern Theater Board Chair Susan Lach. “The candidate pool was exceptional, but in the end the Board agreed that Gary brings just the right combination of experience, skill and vision to this position. We know that his values and talents align extraordinarily well with the Southern’s mission and will best serve its many artists and arts partners.”
Peterson holds a Bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota and is a long-time Twin Cities arts veteran with a strong, extensive background in non-profit management, fundraising, community service and arts administration.
read the full press release
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Bringing 'Nutcracker' alive for blind people
Bravo to Pennsylvania Ballet, Art-Reach, and Amaryllis on a fantastic collaboration!
by Howard Shapiro
December 17, 2009
philly.com
By the last day of 2009, the Pennsylvania Ballet will have danced its annual holiday confection, The Nutcracker, 24 times - but one performance will be like no other.
In fact, as far as anyone knows, the show at 4 p.m. Sunday will be unlike any dance performance in Philadelphia.
In a dressing room off a hallway to one side of the stage, a woman named Ermyn King will watch a TV monitor beaming the show live from the stage. She'll wear a headset-microphone and will straightforwardly describe the dancing - how many performers are onstage, what they're wearing, what they're doing, how they're interacting - as well as the scenery, the storyline, even the lighting.
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Turn Your Cell Phone On! continues with George Balanchine's The Nutcracker
John McInerney
Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance
www.philaculture.org
Turn Your Cell Phone On!, an innovative new audience texting campaign, to be featured during select Pennsylvania Ballet performances of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.
As part of the PNC Arts Alive grant program, Phillyfunguide and the Pennsylvania Ballet will feature Turn Your Cell Phone On! live polling during performances December 26-31 at the Academy of Music.
read the full article
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Baryshnikov Center to Unveil New Theater
by Robin Pogrebin; compiled by Julie Bloom
December 20, 2009
The New York Times
The Baryshnikov Arts Center will open its new Jerome Robbins Theater on Feb. 16 with a tribute to Robbins, featuring performances by Mikhail Baryshnikov, below right, Wendy Sutter, Garrison Keillor and members of New York City Ballet. The center, at 450 West 37th Street, Manhattan, will also announce its spring season, which begins Jan. 14.
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Recipients of United States Artists grants can get creative with spending them
by Suzanne Muchnic
December 11, 2009
The Los Angeles Times
Winners of United States Artists grants usually pump the money directly into their work. But no strings are attached to the $50,000 awards, so some artists use part of their newfound wealth to travel, pay off mortgages, buy life insurance, get new glasses or have their teeth fixed. Others become philanthropists, pitching in on colleagues' projects.
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Margaret Jenkins Dance Company Announces Grant Recipients for Regional and National Programs for Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME)
The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company (MJDC) today announced the 2010 recipients of the Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME) grants in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, as well as the grant recipients of the pilot program, CHIME Across Borders.
CHIME in Southern California received major support from The James Irvine Foundation to return to Los Angeles County for three years after completing a successful pilot in 2008, with funding to support a mentorship relationship for three pairs of Southern California dance artists. The MJDC received major funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support both CHIME in Southern California and CHIME in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as funding for the pilot year of CHIME Across Borders, an exchange among national choreographers.
The grantees for the sixth year of CHIME in the San Francisco Bay Area are (in alphabetical order with the mentors listed first): Christian Burns, independent dance artist and Co-Founder of The Foundry, and RAWdance Co-Founders Ryan T. Smith and Wendy Rein; choreographer and dance educator Cathleen McCarthy and Raissa Simpson, Artistic Director of Push Dance Company; and Charya Burt, choreographer, teacher and founder of Charya Burt Cambodian Dance, and choreographer and dancer Tara Catherine Pandeya. Reduced program support from regional philanthropic organizations necessitated the reduction of the number of CHIME grants awarded in the San Francisco Bay Area from five to three pairs in 2010.
The grantees for year one of CHIME in Southern California are: Lynn Dally, Artistic Director/Choreographer, Jazz Tap Ensemble and Adjunct Professor at UCLA, and Bharata Natyam dancer and choreographer Mythili Prakash; Doran George, artist, dancer, writer, and curator, and Julie Tolentino, time-based installation artist and choreographer; and choreographer and educator Victoria Marks and Mira Kingsley, choreographer/performer and educator.
read more about CHIME
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Georgina Parkinson, Star at Royal Ballet, Dies at 71
by Anna Kisselgoff
December 18, 2009
The New York Times
Georgina Parkinson, a ballet mistress and coach at American Ballet Theater whose compelling stage presence and brooding mystery had made her a bright young star of Britain’s Royal Ballet in the 1960s, died on Friday in Manhattan. She was 71.
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Employers Should Expect Increased Enforcement Following Appointment of New OSHA Head
One Minute Memo from www.seyfarth.com
As David Michaels takes over as the new Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health what should employers expect? The new head of OSHA has a long history in the safety and health field that is instructive. He has a Master of Public Health and has been working as a research professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and Safety. Consequently, he has technical expertise regarding health issues that include exposure to airborne chemicals and contaminants such as asbestos, lead, and volatile organic compounds.
read the full article
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Send Us Your Tired, Your Poor, But Only if They're 'Culturally Unique'
by Miriam Jordan
December 11, 2009
The Wall Street Journal
When Jordan Peimer booked an Argentine band that fuses Jewish Klezmer music with tango, he thought he had the perfect act to headline his "Fiesta Hanukkah" concert.
"It is hard to imagine any band more fitting than Orquesta Kef," says Mr. Peimer, the program's director at the Skirball Cultural Center here. The event was designed to attract a Jewish audience and the city's burgeoning Hispanic community.
That was before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services weighed in with some cultural commentary of its own. The band couldn't travel to the U.S., the agency ruled, because it didn't satisfy a "culturally unique" requirement for a performer visa called P-3.
read the full article
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Why do people dance?
by Lucy Tobin
December 15, 2009
The Guardian
The office party is in full swing, you've knocked back a few glasses of bubbly and edged on to the sticky dancefloor where Fred from accounts is looking strangely attractive as he struts out some wild moves. Nearby, Ian from IT is boogieing like nobody's watching. What makes them so confident while your feet are shyly shifting from side to side? According to Dr Peter Lovatt, principal lecturer in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, it's to do with age, gender and genetic makeup.
Lovatt – who is known around campus as Dr Dance – has just completed a major piece of research into dance, analysing 13,700 people's responses to an online video of him, a former professional dancer, strutting his stuff. Lovatt demonstrated various dance movements, then asked respondents to rate them. He also asked people to imagine they were dancing at a wedding or disco, and say how good they were compared with the average dancer.
A 'Nutcracker' Lover Explains Himself
by Alistair McCaulay
December 16, 2009
The New York Times
As 2009 ends, it’s worth remembering that it has been the centenary of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes’s turning ballet into the genre that was a prime vehicle for modernism. Meanwhile it’s hard to forget that we are deep into the annual “Nutcracker” season, in which tutus, snowflakes, sweets, the Sugarplum Fairy, magic and a child’s vision of transformation all come together. Few American cities are “Nutcracker”-free zones at this time of year; among those in New York, City Ballet’s production by George Balanchine runs now for two and a half more weeks, and that’s just the best known. Are modernism and “The Nutcracker” irreconcilable?
Notice the Feet in That Body of Work
by Alastair MaCaulay
December 9, 2009
The New York Times
WHAT constitutes dance? We’ve known for at least a century that dance can happen with the dancer sitting, reclining or kneeling. In the first three decades of the 20th century Isadora Duncan turned such movements into legend. In recent decades dance has only become harder to distinguish from other forms of physical activity.
Here, however, I honor the importance of feet and footwork in dancing. Every part of the body — arms, fingers, thighs, eyes, waist, pelvis, neck — can make an irresistible contribution to this art. But the effect of the foot is disproportionate. Make a complex rhythm with your hands (like drumming), and in visual terms it’s just a local phenomenon. Make even a simple a rhythm with your feet — slow, slow, quick, quick, slow — and your whole body is engaged.
Web audience grows for arts groups
by Jacqueline Trescott
December 10, 2009
The Washington Post
Americans are increasingly choosing the Internet and other new media to enjoy the arts, a new national survey has found.
While many adults still like the intimacy of live theater, particularly musical theater, over the past year an estimated 47 million of them chose to watch or listen to music, theater or dance performances online at least once a week. The results of the National Endowment for the Arts survey of arts habits, which are scheduled for release Thursday, show that while many arts disciplines remain popular, the mode of delivery is rapidly changing.
The arts see encouraging news in NEA survey
by Mike Boehm
December 19, 2009
The Los Angeles Times
The dwindling of the American arts audience was the headline-making crux of a report that the National Endowment for the Arts issued last week. But because the focus was on what's happening in theaters, concert halls and museums, a silver lining -- of sorts -- was overlooked: As poorly as the arts are faring during this era of unprecedented, technology-driven possibilities for home entertainment, movies and sports are losing their box-office grip on grown-ups even more rapidly.
The First Big Grant
by Michael Kaiser
December 14, 2009
Huffington Post
One of the exciting moments in the life of a young, small or mid-sized arts organization is when it receives its first, large foundation grant. This grant, a recognition of the good work already being performed, typically allows the organization to expand its programming. New staff may be hired, new space may be rented, and sometimes even a building is purchased. But in virtually every case, the infrastructure of the organization is expanded.
The Effect of the Global Economic Recession on Canada's Creative Economy in 2009
Arts Research Monitor - December 2009 ( Volume: 8 Issue No: 7 )
Publisher: Cultural Human Resources Council
Unlike other reports that rely on a new survey of cultural groups, the report includes an estimate of the overall revenues and net value-added of the cultural sector, largely based on Statistics Canada’s discipline-based reports and the Conference Board’s macroeconomic models of the Canadian economy.
Total cultural sector revenues were estimated to be $72.2 billion in 2008, while net value-added was estimated at $46.8 billion. (The report notes that “value-added or net output is the difference between total revenue and the sum of expenses on parts, materials and services used in the production process. Summing the value-added output across all industries yields the gross domestic product (GDP) for Canada.”)
