State of the Arts

Via Arts and Letters Daily is this article about how political correctness is undermining the quality of ballet in Britian. (As an interesting sidenote, the article is the result of an interview with a gentleman participating in a roundtable for Battle of Ideas at the end of October.)

Dance instructor turned critic Jeffrey Taylor attributes the decline to taboos about touching dance students and subjecting them to rigorous training regimines the teachers themselves experienced.

“Taylor is horrified. ‘Touching is essential! The classical ballet technique is one of the most unnatural physical regimes ever invented by man…Children cannot be coaxed into these positions by words alone: they have to be shown. There is no way a child can understand how you straighten out your lumbar region, how you tuck your hips underneath you.�”

“Another of Taylor’s laments is the non-judgemental current creeping into ballet. Just as touching is now banned, so too are the physically punishing regimes that were once the mainstay of ballet training. ‘Today it’s almost official: you never tell a child what to do unless they are willing to do it.’ This just doesn’t work. There comes a point [in ballet] when you have got to do as you are told, whether you understand or approve.”

I haven’t heard of too many similar cases in the US, but then I am not in the dance world. One thing I do know is that the concerns about inappropriate touching, while protecting the teacher, can tend to confuse the students.

One of the dance teachers on campus is careful to ask if she can touch a student before making contact to correct a posture. It turns out that some of the students find this creepy. A rank your professor website had a few comments about the professor’s sexual hang-ups based specifically on the fact she poses the question.

I am interested to find out how prevalent this is in the US. I think I will drop a note to Doug Fox over at Great Dance and see if he would be willing to address this either in a response or on his blog.

I am also going to ask some acting teachers I know if this sort of thing has become a bigger concern of late. There isn’t as much touching necessary when teaching acting as with dance. I wonder though if David Mamet’s works are banned from the scene list for fear of offending other students.

Been busy, busy, busy these last couple weeks but I wanted to do a quick entry on something I came across in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

According to a recent study by the federal agency, Corporation for National and Community Service, the post 9/11 world has seen an increase in volunteerism. If your organization needs volunteers and hasn’t made a wide appeal lately, it might be a good environment in which to do so.

The bad news in the study is that people are less trusting of donation appeals than they were before September 2001. It’s not clear from the story if this perception colors how people see arts organizations. Since the article specifically mentions a Red Cross scandal and points to friction of the use of money for human service causes, the negative view may fall predominantly upon that sector.

The situation that can be more clearly identified as a problem for arts fundraising is that so many more chartiable causes exist now than did before. Not only are there now appeals for the families of people killed on 9/11, but also for those dispossessed by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunamis. Charities are trying to do much more to help specific groups these days and are even trying to start programs to proactively prevent disasters and attacks from occuring again.

As I have mentioned in other entries, it is always a little difficult for arts organizations to make a case for funding when the choice is between them and succour for the suffering. Cathartic experiences have been a cornerstone of the arts since the Greeks so should be funded alongside the aid and relief programs.

I had a woman come take a tour of our backstage in the last month or so who runs a theatre in the New Orleans area. She has taken a big hit funding wise but is running her season as best she can because people keep calling and saying they don’t care what the show is about as long as it is funny. Her place is just as important to the rebuilding of people’s spirits as any other funded restoration that is occuring in her region.

I don’t know that there are many people who read this blog that don’t read Artful Manager, but just in case there are, I want to point you at his entry today. The Hennenius Group post he quotes is worth reading and seriously considering. (I don’t know how the heck I missed it.)

What Anthony Radich has to say is sure to be controversial. It seems counterintutive that a guy running an organization “dedicated to the creative advancement and preservation of the arts” would be suggesting the dissolution of arts organizations. In fact, if he were an elected politican, I’m sure there would already be television and print ads out there blaring that Anthony Radich wants to close your arts centers and we oughta chuck him out in November.

I don’t know what it says about arts folks (other than that they don’t read Barry’s blog) that two weeks after it was posted that there hasn’t been any real grumbling about Radich’s proposal to “euthanize nonprofit arts organizations”.

But that is the subject of another entry.

I’ve never made a secret of my belief that not all arts organizations have a right to exist and expect funding. I am against the “Field of Dreams” mentality. I have frequently felt more organizations should merge their resources and efforts. But I certainly recognize the dearth of organizations as well as evinced by my recent perplexion (is that a word?) at the lack of local professional arts organizations.

Contradictory, sure. But by some definitions, the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time is a sign of enlightenment.

But that too is subject for another entry 😉

One section of what Radich said put me in mind of an entry I did two years ago. Quoth Radich:

Let’s pull some of the nonprofit arts programming off the arts-production line and free up funding and talent for reallocation to stronger efforts–especially to new efforts tilted toward engaging the public. Let’s return to the concept of offering seed money for organizations that, over a period of years, need to attract enough of an audience and develop enough of a stable financial base to survive and not structure them to live eternally on the dole. Let’s find a way to extinguish those very large groups that are out of audience-building momentum and running on inertia. Instead of locking arts funders into a cycle of limited choices, let’s free up some venture capital for new arts efforts that share the arts in new ways with the public

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As I said, this whole argument reminded me of an entry I did on an Independent Sector proposal to change non-profit funding to a more focussed model. The proposal they make runs a little counter to Radich’s since he talks about getting organizations off the dole and the IS proposal essentially encourages foundations to deepen their commitment to support specific organizations. Radich also talks about funders having too few choices, but the IS document as well as the additional sources I cite in that entry seem to indicate funders have too shallow an investment in too many places.

Overall though the two are similar in suggesting offering comprehensive seed money to organizations to help them get off the ground. Both also use language that places funders in the position of venture captialists investing in the promotion of their agenda in return for rock solid accountability.

I wonder if some of the problems Radich sees with organizations being weak and played out might have its origin in the funding method encouraging people to stretch their resources in too many different directions until they aren’t viable any more.

Since Andrew Taylor posted Radich’s proposal, (and the Independent Sector one two years ago), I think I shall go over to his blog and ask him.

I was happy to see an interview last week with the new Honolulu Symphony executive director, Tom Gulick and hear an interview with new symphony board chair Curtis Lee last week where both men acknowledged that the situation with the sale of balcony seats has been ill-advised. (Discussed in earlier entry)

They also acknowledged that the musicians need to be paid better and utilized more efficiently. (We got our fingers crossed for you guys

There is still no mention of Tom Gulick as the new ED on the Symphony website though. He isn’t even included on the administrative staff list. I am somewhat bemused at this situation since the Symphony Musicians have linked to every bit of news about Tom Gulick on their website. It would probably serve the musicians better in salary negotiations if the public didn’t know so much about Gulick. The less people know about him, the less sympathetic public opinion will be for him if negotiations go sour and the issue begins to play out in the press.

Of course, it is more in their interest if things go well and the concert hall fills with optimistic people who donate lots of money. So they are disseminating the good news and contributing to the general optimism.

The one thing Gulick said in his interview that I took some slight exception to was that “New York is the only cultural and artistic destination in the country.” I’d say that Boston, Philly, Washington DC and Chicago can hold their own with NY when it comes to attracting artists and cultural tourists. Not to mention that some people might want to visit Minneapolis and check out the new Guthrie Theater. And in the summer, people are happy to make cross country treks to places like Ashland, OR and Cedar City, UT for the Shakespeare Festivals or Charleston, SC for the Spoleto Festival. There are some who might say Nashville is the true center of American culture.

New York might be near the top of the list of very important locales in the artistic and cultural scene, but it ain’t the only one! As a guy who grew up in NY and proudly identifies the state as his origin, even I have to admit the country has a lot of important cultural and artistic destinations.