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theartsdesk
Two hundred years ago society ladies snipped theirs and gave it the poet Byron. Indigent women cropped theirs and sold it for wigs. But never in the history of human hair has a woman put her tresses to such a unique use. A woman, unnamed, has donated her hair to the violinist David Garrett, and he has used it to string his bow.Garrett doesn’t look like most male violinists. He looks a lot more like most female violinists, having a fairly lengthy rug of his own. But for some reason he has foresworn the chance to take a pair of scissors to his own cascade of highlighted locks. Bows are Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
theartsdesk readers were aghast and appalled when BBC One supremo Danny Cohen cancelled detective series Zen after a paltry three episodes. However, he has made amends of a sort by commissioning a second series of Peter Moffat's legal drama Silk, after series one ended last night.And why not? Its characters and plots proved compelling, and the show's viewing figures over its six-part run have averaged around 5.9 million, when catch-up viewing on services such as BBC iPlayer and Sky Plus are taken into account.
"Maxine Peake has excelled in Silk and we're delighted to be bringing this high- Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser is the now world-famous Almeida Theatre, which loses almost 40 per cent of its current annual subsidy despite its reputation for innovation and discovery. However, the Arcola Theatre, another small innovative theatre, gets a big boost. Companies to lose all their grant from next year include Hammersmith's Riverside Studios and Derby Theatre. Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Arts Council’s rearrangement of the dance world by its handling of its 15 per cent subsidy cut shows no change in its persistence in choosing to prefer bureaucratic structures to talent. The 15 per cent cut has been handed straight over to all the ballet companies, with no evidence of strategic thinking about the implications for numbers of dancers, productions or programming. But it’s in the area of contemporary dance that my first impression is of an urge at HQ to pass the buck of decisions to the regions to handle. Once again the talent, the artists, are much less visible in the pot Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Kinoteka, the adventurous Polish film festival, opened last night with a gala screening at the Curzon Renoir of veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, a film that has provoked some vicious responses. The Observer said it was “deeply silly”, one usually fairly reliable film blogger (Shades of Caruso) was “murderously angry at having my time wasted in such a careless manner. It has no allegorical dimension, no coherent metaphorical throughline, no momentum, no narrative point, no political message, no aesthetic merit… no energy, no wit or dread or suspense or cathartic Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The leaders of Britain’s leading arts establishments, from the Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company and Philharmonia Orchestra to choreographers Akram Khan and Siobhan Davies, have written to the Prime Minister asking him to come clean about his longterm plan for arts subsidies. The letter was released at a crisis meeting this morning at the Young Vic, attended by some 500 arts figures.The signatories, who include Sir Richard Eyre, Michael Boyd (RSC Artistic Director), Tony Hall (ROH chief executive), Alastair Spalding (Sadler’s Wells chief executive), Charles Saumarez-Smith ( Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Family-favourite storyballets dominate Birmingham Royal Ballet's 2011-12 season, as the company looks forward to a stringent year. Beauty and Beast, Hobson's Choice and Far From the Madding Crowd, three of director David Bintley's full-lengthers, and the iconic Peter Wright Nutcracker for Christmas aim to be money-spinners for three mixed programmes, culminating in a Bintley creation next summer on an athletic theme to chime with the 2012 Olympics.Three mixed bills, entitled "Autumn Glory", "Spring Passions" and "Summer Celebrations", field works by classic Royal Ballet choreographers Ninette Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Yesterday’s Budget, as expected, tilted future presumptions for arts funding firmly towards a higher proportion of private philanthropy with a series of measures to encourage wealthy individuals through tax quid pro quos to donate to arts either in financial support or in actual works of art.But with a heavy reduction in Arts Council revenue funding due to be unveiled next week, there is not likely to be much benefit for arts activity and organisations facing an average of 10 per cent annual real terms cuts over the next four years.The Chancellor made the donation of works of art to the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Yes, we’ve always claimed her as one of ours, even though her parents were both American and they moved her back to the States as war loomed. She appeared in her first film, There’s One Born Every Minute, with Universal Pictures, with whom she signed her first contract for $100 a week. It wasn’t renewed. Her production chief famously suggested that: “She can't sing, she can't dance, she can't perform.” Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer snapped her up and by 1942 she had appeared in Lassie Come Home (1943) opposite Roddy McDowall and a canine co-star who stole every scene. But her real elevation came the Read more ...
David Nice
So it's official: the Metropolitan Opera is more "important" than Covent Garden - at least to the rather image-conscious Fabio Luisi, currently rated as one of the possible successors to New York's now-ailing supremo of the last 40 years, James Levine. He's ditching two performances of a musically resplendent Aida at the Royal Opera for Wagner at the Met.A notice on the Royal Opera website advises us that: “Fabio Luisi will no longer conduct the performances on 30 March and 2 April, 2011. This is to enable him to stand in for James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera conducting Das Rheingold. Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Ballet’s sizeable Japanese contingent of dancers, headed by former principal ballerina Miyako Yoshida, are staging a concert performance of ballet at 4pm today in aid of the Japanese Tsunami Appeal. All tickets are £20, to pay in cash on the door at arrival at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House. Yoshida, former Principal, hopes to be joined on stage by Yuhui Choe, Valeri Hristov, Hikaru Kobayashi, Ryoichi Hirano, Kenta Kura, Akane Takada and students from the Royal Academy of Music for the hour-long show.
Ismene Brown
Yehudi Menuhin's influence continues to reach out a hand to young instrumentalists. His Menuhin Violin Competition for young players under 22 is internationally known; last weekend in the Waterloo Chamber of Windsor Castle - a staggeringly picturesque setting - some exceptional violinists, violists and cellists sought the laurels at the Windsor Festival International String Competition, Britain's major professional prize for string players set up in Menuhin's honour three years ago.In the event it was a prodigious student who beat a brilliant young professional to the top prize on Friday. Read more ...