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Spirit of 92nd Street: The Harkness Dance Center At 75
New mini-documentary recounts the history of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center as it celebrates its 75 years of support of modern dance in America. Major artists who have presented their work, performed and in some cases taught at the center include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Hanya Holm, Jose Limon, Pearl
Lang, Katherine Dunham, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey and Anna Sokolow to name a few.
National Endowment for the Arts Announces New Acting Chairman
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced February 2, 2009, the appointment of Patrice Walker Powell as the agency's acting chairman. In this position, she will provide oversight for agency grantmaking and day-to-day agency operations and supervise administrative activities. She assumed the role on January 29.
"I am honored to serve in this capacity and will depend on the support of my many colleagues to assist me in this endeavor," said Powell. "These are exciting and challenging times, and I look forward to continuing the good work of the NEA."
The Joyce Foundation Honors Artistic Works in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit
The Joyce Foundation is proud to announce the 2009 Joyce Awards winners in the Midwest cities of Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. Since 2003, the Joyce Awards program has been the only award exclusively supporting artists of color in major Midwestern cities. This year’s outstanding arts organizations will each receive grants of $50,000 to support new works in dance, music, theater, and visual arts.
Winner in the dance category:
Ravinia Festival (Chicago) to support “Fondly Do We Hope, Fervently Do We Pray…,” a full-evening dance production commissioned from African-American choreographer Bill T. Jones, inspired by Abraham Lincoln in recognition of the Lincoln bicentennial
Martha Graham Dance Company Holds Web Contest
The Associated Press
January 25, 2009
Newsday.com
If ever you wanted to dance for the Martha Graham Dance Company, now's your chance.
The company is launching a global competition asking anyone who's cyber-savvy to transform the late choreographer's masterpiece, "Clytemnestra," into a brief online video.
The challenge: picking a character from the story and creating a four-minute scene linked to today's life.
Nora Kovach, Ballerina Who Defected From Hungary, Is Dead at 77
by Anna Kisselgoff
January 24, 2009
The New York Times
Nora Kovach, a fiery Hungarian ballerina who caused a sensation in 1953 with Istvan Rabovsky, her ballet partner and first husband, when they became the first highly publicized dance defectors to the West from the Soviet bloc, died last Sunday in Miami. She was 77 and lived in Bal Harbour, Fla., and Manhattan.
She died after a short illness, her husband, Steve Farago, said.
Gage Bush Englund, Ballet Mistress and Dancer, Dies at 77
by Jack Anderson
January 15, 2009
The New York Times
Gage Bush Englund, who was a ballet mistress of ABT II, a former dancer with American Ballet Theater and the Joffrey Ballet and a former ballet mistress of the Joffrey II Dancers, died on Jan. 12 at her home on the upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 77.
The cause was cancer, said John Knapp, her son-in-law.
Arts Leaders Urge Role for Culture in Economic Recovery
by Robin Pogrebin
January 25, 2009
The New York Times
As the Obama administration tackles the challenge of shoring up the economy through infusions of capital and job creation, cultural leaders are urging the president not to forget arts institutions, which are also reeling from the market downturn.
“We wanted to make sure arts were not left out of the recovery,” said Robert L. Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, a national lobbying group. “The artist’s paycheck is every bit as important as the steelworker’s paycheck or the autoworker’s paycheck.”
Kennedy Center: 'Crisis' Counselor
by Jacqueline Trescott
February 4, 2009
The Washington Post
The Kennedy Center is aggressively moving to broaden its role beyond a center for the performing arts by announcing a new program to share its years of management and fundraising experience with struggling arts groups across the country.
The national tentacles of the Kennedy Center have always been far-reaching: It sends two family plays nationwide each year, offers a performing-arts education Web site that gets 4.2 million visitors a year and sponsors eight annual college theater festivals and a national competition in Washington. But the center's latest move, announced yesterday, positions it as a national resource beyond the stage.
"Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative" is a high-tech support service through which arts administrators can talk to the center's personnel about the challenges of shrinking income, budget-conscious audiences and other difficulties in keeping the doors open.
Miami City Ballet Cuts 8 dancers amid Funding Woes
Associated Press
February 3, 2009
Miami Herald
After a triumphant tour that won critical raves in New York, Miami City Ballet is cutting eight dancers because it can't afford to pay them.
Ballet spokeswoman Nicolle Ugarriza says the corps and apprentice dancers' contracts will not be renewed next season. The dancers were notified last week in a letter from the ballet's artistic director and CEO, Edward Villella.
The cuts will reduce the troupe from 53 to 45 dancers.
Orlando Ballet Bends to Stay in Budget
by Diane Hubbard Burns
February 1, 2009
Orlando Sentinel
Financial cutbacks in the arts most often are seen in personnel and facilities. But at Orlando Ballet, cost-cutting also has prompted a change in programming.
Instead of the all- George Balanchine program advertised in the season brochure, next weekend's audiences will see two pieces by the eminent 20th century choreographer and three by the company's late artistic director, Fernando Bujones.
Balanchine fans may be miffed, but Bujones fans should be delighted.
Economic Downturn isn't Playing Well in Theaters
by Reed Johnson
January 28, 2009
The Los Angeles Times
When Gilbert Cates tries to explain the hard times facing the Geffen Playhouse, he turns to an analogy from his long experience as a film director and producer of television shows, including the annual Academy Awards telecast. Whenever studio heads talk about cutting the budget for one of his movie projects, Cates compares it to trimming an airplane.
Sure, you can take a little off the wheel, a little off the engine, a little off the wing, he tells them. "But at the end of the day," Cates asked, "does the thing still fly?"
compiled by Dave Itzkoff
January 27, 2009
The New York Times
The Bolshoi Theater, above, has canceled a ballet tour of Mexico and a new production of the Verdi opera “Otello,” planned for April, citing budget cuts as it faces a fiscal crisis, Agence France-Presse reported. The Moscow theater’s general director, Alexei Iksanov, told the newspaper Novye Izvestia that declining oil prices and the devaluation of the ruble would inevitably lead to cuts in the Bolshoi’s budget. “It would be naïve to believe that culture will be financed as before,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
Recession Forces Arts Organizations to Regroup
by Janet I. Tu
January 25, 2009
Seattle Times
Pacific Northwest Ballet is consolidating some ballet classes and cutting back on advertising.
Seattle Repertory Theatre is requiring its full-time employees to take two weeks of unpaid leave.
Seattle Art Museum has cut back 5 percent of its staff and is facing a $3.8 million annual shortfall if it can't find a new tenant for the space Washington Mutual had been leasing from it.
It should come as no surprise that the dismal economy is buffeting local arts organizations — a situation made worse for some by the December snowstorms.
The Hunt for Little Ballerinas, Big Donors
by Joan Anderman
January 24, 2009
The Boston Globe
The economy is in the tank, arts organizations are struggling to make ends meet, and one Boston institution is weathering the storm with the help of an unlikely weapon: toddlers in pink tutus and middle-aged fitness buffs.
On Feb. 2, the Boston Ballet Center for Dance Education - the largest ballet school in North America - will open its fourth location, at a new YMCA here. The doors haven't opened, and already 175 students have enrolled for classes. That's great news for the school and for Boston Ballet, which receives about 17 percent of its $25 million annual operating budget from school revenues.
Credit Crisis Is Leaving Charities Low on Cash
by Stephanie Strom
January 23, 2009
The New York Times
SCO Family of Services, a nonprofit agency based on Long Island, started the year with a $25 million credit line at its bank, which it planned to use to pay its bills while awaiting government reimbursements and donations.
Now, after its bank has cut its credit line twice and withdrawn a promise to support a critical bond offering, the organization is worried about whether it can pay its employees this month.
Sacramento Ballet Cancels Rest of its Season
by Debbie Arrington
January 22, 2009
The Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento Ballet will cancel its remaining three productions for the 2008-09 season in an attempt to get back on its feet financially.
The cancellation of 12 performances "does not mean that we are closing the curtain on our 54-year history," co-artistic directors Ron Cunningham and Carinne Binda told subscribers in a letter dated Wednesday. "Rather, we believe this is the most responsible action to take so that we might weather the current economic storm."
