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      Bob Dylan Center, Featuring Archival Materials, to Open in 2022

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      Following the acquisition of the singer-songwriter’s once-secret archives in 2016, a Tulsa-based foundation will put lyrics, photos and films on display in Oklahoma.Dylanologists, rejoice — the archives are going on display.Starting May 10, 2022 — six years after the secret Bob Dylan Archives were revealed and acquired by the foundation of an Oklahoman billionaire — some 100,000 pieces of ephemera will be available to visit in Tulsa.The opening of the Bob Dylan Center, announced on Wednesday, will include rare and never-before-seen lyric manuscripts, photographs, songs and footage, alongside a new “immersive film experience” and a “recreation of an authentic studio environment,” organizers said. Public admission information will be released later in the year, while a founding membership (limited to 250 people) is available now for $7,500.The three-story center in the Tulsa arts district — designed by the architecture firm Olson Kundig — was founded by the American Song Archives and its backer, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which along with the University of Tulsa acquired Dylan’s archives for between $15 million and $20 million in 2016. (Originally appraised at more than $60 million, the bulk of the materials were donated.)In announcing the acquisition, The New York Times called the troves “deeper and more vast than even most Dylan experts could imagine, promising untold insight into the songwriter’s work.” (And yet, of course: “Amid these mountains of paper, Mr. Dylan, the man, remains an enigma.”)The George Kaiser Family Foundation, named for the oil and banking magnate and Democratic donor, also operates the Woody Guthrie Center down the street. An early hero of Dylan’s, Guthrie was born in Oklahoma, and Dylan, now 79, noted at the time that “it makes a lot of sense, and it’s a great honor” for their archives to be held together, alongside the foundation’s cache of Native American art.George Kaiser said that he obtained the singers’ archives to facilitate both scholarly study and tourism, with hopes of revitalizing Tulsa. (The Guthrie and Dylan centers sit near the city’s Greenwood district, once known as Black Wall Street and the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the 1921 atrocity that has recently been revisited by journalists, historians and popular culture.)As a tease along with its announcement, the Dylan Center also publicized the existence of what it called a “heretofore-unknown recording” of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” captured at an East 3rd Street apartment in 1962. The song, with updated lyrics, was eventually released the following year on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”Separately, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami said this week that it would host an exhibition titled “Retrospectrum,” featuring some 120 drawings, paintings and sculptures by Dylan, building on a collection that originally debuted in Shanghai. The show runs from Nov. 30 through April 17, 2022. More

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      Smithsonian Will Display Star Wars X-Wing Fighter

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      Starting late next year, an X-wing from “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” will go on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.The National Air and Space Museum holds some of the most hallowed objects of the aerial age.Visitors can marvel at the 1903 Wright Flyer that skimmed over Kitty Hawk, N.C., the bright red Lockheed 5B Vega that Amelia Earhart piloted alone across the Atlantic Ocean and the bell-shaped Friendship 7 capsule that made John H. Glenn Jr. the first American to orbit the Earth.Now, the museum said, it will display a spacecraft that has flown only onscreen, in an entirely fictional galaxy where good and evil seem locked in eternal battle.That’s right: An X-wing Starfighter will grace the museum’s newly renovated building on the National Mall sometime late next year, the museum said on Tuesday, which was celebrated by “Star Wars” fans as a holiday because it was May 4 (May the 4th be with you).The Hollywood prop, with a wingspan of 37 feet, appeared in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019 and is on long-term loan from Lucasfilm, the movie’s production company.While air and space purists may grumble about precious exhibition space being turned over to a pretend craft that played no role in advancing actual space travel, the exhibition is not the first time the museum has allied itself with the franchise’s crowd-pleasing power. In the late 1990s, it presented “Star Wars: The Magic of Myth,” a show based on the original “Star Wars” trilogy; that show went on tour across the country.“Despite taking place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, ‘Star Wars’ introduced generations of fans here on Earth to outer space as a setting for adventure and exploration,” Margaret Weitekamp, the museum’s space history chairwoman, said in a statement. “All air and space milestones begin with inspiration, and science fiction so often provides that spark.” She added that “the X-wing displayed amid our other spacecraft celebrates the journey from imagination to achievement.”Designed as the nimble fighter that Luke Skywalker used to destroy the Death Star in the original 1977 “Star Wars” movie, the X-wing was named for the distinctive shape of its “strike foils when in attack position,” the museum said.Artists at Industrial Light & Magic, the special-effects studio founded by George Lucas, the movies’ creator, depicted X-wings and other “Star Wars” spacecraft with miniatures as well as full-size models and cockpits, enhanced with visual effects, the museum said.This particular X-wing will undergo “conservation” — also known as cleanup and prep work — in the Restoration Hangar at the museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., where it will be visible to the public before it goes on display at the museum next year.While this will be the first “Star Wars” prop on long-term display at the museum since the “Magic of Myth” exhibit in 1997, the museum has also displayed a studio model of the starship Enterprise from the original 1960s “Star Trek” series as well a Buzz Lightyear toy, from the animated “Toy Story” films, that was flown to the International Space Station in 2008.A photo released by the museum showed the orange X-wing in a hangar next to a real twin-engine bomber, nicknamed Flak-Bait, that survived more than 200 missions over Europe, more than any other existing American aircraft during World War II.“Look what’s arrived in the shop for a tune up,” the museum said on Twitter. “If you see Poe Dameron around, let him know work on his X-wing is coming along nicely, and it’ll be ready for display soon.” More

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      Jack Bradley, Louis Armstrong Photographer and Devotee, Dies at 87

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      His trove of pictures formed the foundation of a vast personal collection that is now part of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.Jack Bradley at his home on Cape Cod in 2008. For 12 years he was Louis Armstrong’s fan, friend and photographer, as well as a collector of Armstrong memorabilia.Earl Wilson/The New York Times Jack Bradley, an ecstatic fan of Louis Armstrong’s who became his personal photographer, creating an indelible and intimate record of the jazz giant’s last dozen years, died on March 21 in Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. He was 87.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Nancy (Eckel) Bradley, said.Mr. Bradley first attended a concert by Armstrong and his band on Cape Cod in the mid-1950s. “I never heard anything like that,” he said in an interview in 2012 for a documentary about Armstrong, “Mr. Jazz,” directed by Michele Cinque. “My life was never the same.”Using a Brownie, Mr. Bradley snapped his first photo of Armstrong at another performance — the first of thousands he would take, first as a devotee and then as part of his inner circle. He took pictures of Armstrong at his home in Corona, Queens; in quiet moments backstage; at rehearsals and concerts; during recording sessions; and in dressing rooms.Mr. Bradley photographed Armstrong in his backyard in Queens in about 1960. In all, he took an estimated 6,000 photos of Armstrong.Louis Armstrong House Museum, Jack Bradley CollectionArmstrong and Mr. Bradley in Framingham, Mass., in 1967. “What we had in common,” Mr. Bradley said, “was this unending love for the music.”Louis Armstrong House Museum, via Associated Press“With that face and his beautiful smile,” Mr. Bradley was quoted as saying in a family-approved obituary, “how could anyone take a bad shot?”Mr. Bradley did more than take photographs. He became a voracious collector of anything related to Armstrong’s life and career: 16-millimeter films, reel-to-reel tapes of recordings and conversations, 78 r.p.m. discs and LPs, magazines, manuscripts, sheet music, telegrams, fan letters, figurines — even Armstrong’s slippers and suits, and a hotel laundry receipt that included “90 hankies,” which he famously used to wipe away perspiration during performances.“One day Jack went into Louis’s study and Louis was ripping up picture and letters into little tiny pieces,” Ms. Bradley said by phone. “Jack said, ‘No, you can’t do that!’ and Louis said, ‘You have to simplify.’ To Jack it was history and shouldn’t be thrown out.”Mr. Bradley’s refusal to simplify brought him renown as an Armstrong maven and led to a deal in 2005 in which the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation awarded Queens College a $480,000 grant to acquire his collection for the Louis Armstrong House Museum, where Armstrong and his wife, Lucille had lived.Mr. Bradley’s vast collection of Armstrong material, including fan mail, was acquired by the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.Earl Wilson/The New York Times“Our cornerstone is Louis’s stuff,” said Ricky Riccardi, the museum’s director of research collections, referring to the vast trove of material that Armstrong left behind when he died in 1971. “That will always stand on its own. But Jack’s is the perfect complement. Louis was obsessed with documenting his life, and Jack was obsessed with documenting Louis’s life.”The museum’s collections, now housed at Queens College, will be moved to an education center nearing completion across the street from the museum, which has been closed during the Covid-19 pandemic.Mr. Bradley was not a salaried employee of Armstrong but was compensated for each photograph he took by Armstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser. To earn extra money, Mr. Bradley took some commercial photography jobs as well.“I don’t think he ever made more than $10,000 in any year,” his friend Mike Persico said.Dan Morgenstern, the jazz critic and historian, wrote in a Facebook tribute to Mr. Bradley that he had called him “One Shot” because “he would snap just once, in part to save film but also because he trusted his eye and timing.”Mr. Bradley captured Armstrong and the band leader Guy Lombardo during a rehearsal for a performance at Jones Beach on Long Island in the mid-1960s.Jack Bradley Collection, Louis Armstrong House Museum Mr. Bradley once photographed Armstrong naked from behind, in a dressing room. According to Mr. Morgenstern, Armstrong, when he heard the click of Mr. Bradley’s camera, said, “I want one of those!” An enlarged print of the photo hung in Armstrong’s den.John Bradley III was born on Jan 3, 1934, on Cape Cod, in Cotuit. His mother, Kathryn (Beatty) Bradley, had many jobs, including hairdresser. His father left the family when Jack was 10.A love of the sea inspired Mr. Bradley to attend the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, from which he graduated in 1958. He then left for Manhattan, where he immersed himself in jazz clubs and met Jeann Failows, who worked for Mr. Glaser helping to answer Armstrong’s mail. She and Mr. Bradley began dating, and Armstrong, seeing him with her, became convinced that Mr. Bradley was someone he could trust.“What we had in common,” Mr. Bradley told JazzTimes in 2011, using one of Armstrong’s nicknames, “was this unending love for the music. Pops never sought fame for fame’s sake. He just wanted to play his horn. Louis had a message — a message about excellence.“I’ve never met a man who had more genius for music,” he continued. “He could hear something once, and it was locked in his brain forever.”Mr. Bradley was often by my Armstrong’s side from 1959 to 1971, sometimes driving him to engagements and spending hours at Armstrong’s house. In all, the self-taught Mr. Bradley took an estimated 6,000 photos of Armstrong.Armstrong and the clarinetist Joe Muranyi rehearsing in 1967. Mr. Bradley took numerous photos of other jazz musicians as well. Jack Bradley, via Louis Armstrong House MuseumOne sequence of photos, taken in December 1959, shows Armstrong warming up before a concert at Carnegie Hall and jamming with his band before taking the stage, then performing, greeting friends afterward and signing autographs for fans outside the stage door.Mr. Bradley’s focus was not entirely on Armstrong. He photographed many other jazz artists and is said to have taken one of the last pictures of Billie Holiday in performance — at the Phoenix Theater in Greenwich Village in May 1959. (She died that July.)In the 1960s, he was a merchant marine and managed a jazz club, Bourbon Street, in Manhattan for a year. In the 1970s he was a partner in the New York Jazz Museum, in Midtown Manhattan. He also spent time as the road manager for the pianist Erroll Garner and the trumpeter Bobby Hackett.Mr. Bradley returned to live in Cape Cod after the jazz museum closed in 1977. He became a charter boat captain, lectured locally on jazz and hosted a local radio program on which he interviewed jazz musicians. His wife taught high school Spanish.Mr. Bradley, seated, in 2008 with Michael Cogswell, the executive director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Archives. “Louis was obsessed with documenting his life,” the museum’s Ricky Riccardi said, “and Jack was obsessed with documenting Louis’s life.”Earl Wilson/The New York TimesMr. Bradley crammed his massive jazz memorabilia collection — of which the Armstrongiana was only a part — into his modest house on Cape Cod in Harwich.“He had it in closets, the attic, shoe boxes, sea chests, the basement, the attic, everything but in oil drums,” said Mr. Persico, who has helped organize the archive.Mr. Bradley died in a nursing facility in Brewster. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his sisters, Emmy Shanley and Bonnie Jordan, and his brother, Bob.Ms. Bradley said she did not mind that her marriage had been, in effect, shared with Armstrong.“That was OK,” she said. “The third guy was a lot of fun.” More

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      Report: New York City’s Arts and Recreation Employment Down by 66 Percent

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReport: New York City’s Arts and Recreation Employment Down by 66 PercentThe New York State comptroller’s office details the effects of the pandemic’s devastation and says a full recovery would be made only with government assistance.The arts, entertainment and recreation sector had seen the largest drop of all the parts of the city’s economy, the report says.Credit…David S. Allee for The New York TimesFeb. 24, 2021, 1:59 p.m. ETEmployment in New York City’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector plummeted by 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a report released on Wednesday by the New York State Comptroller’s office that detailed the economy’s devastation from the coronavirus and the serious obstacles to recovery.The report from Thomas DiNapoli’s office said that the sector had seen the largest drop of all the parts of the city’s economy. A full comeback, it said, would depend upon significant government assistance.The sector “is a cornerstone of the city’s ability to attract businesses, residents and visitors alike,” the report said. “Yet the sector relies on audiences who gather to take part in shared experiences, and this way of life has been significantly disrupted by the pandemic.”Although nearly all business has been affected by the pandemic, its impact on arts, entertainment and recreation entities has been particularly striking.From 2009 to 2019, employment in the sector — which in this report includes performing arts, spectator sports, gambling, entertainment, recreation, museums, parks and historical sites — grew by 42 percent, faster than the 30 percent rate for total private sector employment.In 2019, according to the report, more than 90,000 people in 6,250 establishments were employed in the arts, entertainment and recreation. Those jobs had an average salary of $79,300 and provided $7.4 billion in total wages. In addition to businesses with employees, the report said, there are a large number of people who were self-employed, including artists and musicians.In February 2020, just before the pandemic shutdown in New York City, nearly 87,000 people were employed in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector there, the report said. Many major institutions announced closures on March 12. A statewide stay-at-home order went into effect on March 22. By April, employment in the sector stood at 34,100 jobs.Budgets at arts and recreation establishments have been “decimated,” the report said, and some organizations and facilities have struggled even as they were able to reopen, saying reduced revenues because of capacity restrictions, as well as diminished ticket sales, have limited income and necessitated budget cuts.Many performing arts venues are still closed. Most Broadway theaters do not expect to reopen until June at the earliest, the report noted, adding that the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet announced they would not be reopening until September.“Arts and recreation face an uphill climb to recover from the damage wrought,” the report said, adding: “The challenges facing the arts and entertainment sector require direct and impactful support from policymakers to maintain the city’s extensive cultural offerings.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Museum Exploring Music’s Black Innovators Arrives in Nashville

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMuseum Exploring Music’s Black Innovators Arrives in NashvilleThe National Museum of African American Music has six interactive sections covering 50 genres of music with a focus on gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.Each of the museum’s galleries focuses on the development of a genre of music with African-American roots.Credit…NMAAM/353 Media GroupFeb. 5, 2021Updated 10:49 a.m. ETIf you want to trace the roots of American popular music, you have to start when Europeans brought enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage. After Emancipation, the sounds of Africa and field hollers and work hymns from the American South dispersed across the country and transformed into new forms: the blues in Mississippi, jazz in New Orleans and later house music in Chicago and hip-hop in the Bronx.Historians, anthologies and exhibitions have traced this path before, but an entire museum hasn’t been devoted to demonstrating and celebrating how Black artists fundamentally shaped American music until now. Last Saturday, the National Museum of African American Music opened in Nashville, with six interactive sections covering 50 genres of music with a focus on gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.The idea for the museum, which has been 22 years and $60 million in the making, originated with Francis Guess, a civil rights advocate and Nashville business leader, who shared it with T.B. Boyd III, then the president and chief executive of the R.H. Boyd Publishing Co. In the beginning, they gathered with local leaders for monthly meetings in their living rooms to raise enthusiasm and seed money.The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce conducted a feasibility study for a museum encompassing African-American culture in 2002; and in 2011, its focus was narrowed to music. With the support of the city and many community members, 56,000 square feet of the Fifth & Broadway complex in downtown Nashville were carved out for the institution. (The museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays in February, and time-slotted tickets are required for a limited number of masked visitors.)Steven Lewis, one of the museum’s curators, said that the galleries aim to show the living tradition of Black music. The more than 1,500 artifacts illustrate the experiences of everyday people, not just the famous ones. (Though the collection does feature items from Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, George Clinton, Whitney Houston and TLC.) They also show the music’s global reach.“Look at the young white British musicians from the 1960s, like the Beatles,” Lewis said in an interview. “They were listening to Muddy Waters and Son House. They found something in that music that drew them. Look at Louis Armstrong’s tours in West Africa — there was something that connected them. The African-American experience as expressed in the music is a compelling distillation of experiences of oppression, struggle and triumph that people around the world can relate to in different ways.”“Nashville needs this museum, because it’s a musical mecca,” said the blues guitarist Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’.Credit…NMAAM/353 Media GroupLewis, a jazz saxophonist and ethnomusicologist, specifically looked at the impact of the Great Migration on the spread of Black music around the world. During this period between 1916 and 1970, more than six million African-Americans left agricultural work in the South for manufacturing jobs in the North and West. With the industrialization of America also came the industrialization of music — in the blues, artists like Muddy Waters went from playing acoustic guitar to the electric.In the section of the museum devoted to this moment, called “Crossroads,” artifacts on display include a lantern from the Illinois Central Railroad, a guitar and handwritten lyrics from B.B. King, a suit and shoes from Bobby “Blue” Bland, and a 78 from Black Swan Records, the first major blues and jazz record label owned by African-Americans.“Crossroads” also strives to tie the genre to the present by collaborating with living musicians like the blues guitarist Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’, a Nashville local who has been involved with the museum since its conception.“Nashville needs this museum, because it’s a musical mecca,” said Moore, who is a national chair for the museum. “The average person just thinks of country music,” he added, noting that the city’s nickname Music City is said to have come from the Black vocal group the Fisk Jubilee Singers impressing Queen Victoria with a performance.One of Moore’s first red Silvertone electric guitars, an instrument that survived the 2010 Nashville flood and Moore sees as a testament to the city’s resilience, is also on display. “Some of the paint came off, and it’s a little damaged, but it’s still playable,” he said. “It’s significant to me because the Silvertone guitar from Sears is a part of my musical history. I got that one when I was 17 and it’s one of the nearest and dearest to me.”In developing “Crossroads” and the other galleries, curators made a point of spotlighting women’s contributions. “Women are the ones that started this genre,” the vocalist Shemekia Copeland said, adding that she fell in love with the blues as a child because of the way the lyrics tap into the power and struggles of Black people. “In the 1920s, it was all about female entertaining and the musicians were in the background. That changed later on when it became more guitar-driven.”Copeland believes that a museum devoted to African-Americans’ vast impact on music is critical. “The music is the people,” she said. “It’s how we’ve always expressed ourselves. If the world ended and somebody found records and they listened, it would tell the story of what happened to us culturally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Royal Academy of Dance: From Music Hall to Ballet Royalty

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFrom the Music Hall to Ballet Royalty: A British TaleThe history of the Royal Academy of Dance, outlined at an exhibition in London, is synonymous with the history of ballet in Britain.The Danish-born ballerina Adeline Genée, who was a founder of the Royal Academy of Dance, in “A Dream of Butterflies and Roses.”Credit…Hugh CecilJan. 6, 2021Updated 2:07 p.m. ET“It is absolute nonsense to say that the English temperament is not suited for dancing,” Edouard Espinosa, a London dance teacher, said in 1916. It was only a lack of skilled teaching, he added, that prevented the emergence of “perfect dancers.” Espinosa was speaking to a reporter from Lady’s Pictorial about a furor that he had caused in the dance world with this idea: Dance instructors, he insisted, should adhere to standards and be examined on their work.Four years later, in 1920, a teaching organization that would become the Royal Academy of Dance (R.A.D.) was founded by Espinosa and several others, including the Danish-born Adeline Genée and the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina. Today, the academy is one of the major ballet training programs in the world, with students in 92 countries following syllabuses and taking its exams governed by the organization. And as the exhibition “On Point: Royal Academy of Dance at 100,” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, shows, its history is synonymous with the history of ballet in Britain.“A lot of British dance’s legacy started with the R.A.D.,” said Darcey Bussell, a former Royal Ballet ballerina who has been the president of the academy since 2012. “It’s important that dance training and teaching are kept entwined with the professional world, and the R.A.D. has done that from the start.”There wasn’t yet a national ballet company in Britain when the Royal Academy was formed. But there was plenty of ballet, said Jane Pritchard, the curator of dance, theater and performance at the Victoria and Albert museum. She curated the exhibition with Eleanor Fitzgerald, the archives and records manager at the Royal Academy of Dance. “The Ballets Russes were there, Pavlova was performing in London, and there were excellent émigré teachers arriving,” Ms. Pritchard said. “So the R.A.D. came into existence at just the right moment, taking the best of the Italian, French and Russian schools and bringing it together to create a British style, which it then sent out into the world again.”The exhibition, which runs through September 2021, had its scheduled May opening delayed by Covid-19 restrictions. It opened on Dec. 2, but was shut down again when Britain reimposed restrictions in mid-December. While we wait for the museum to reopen, here is a tour of some of the exhibition’s photographs, designs and objects, which touch on some of the most important figures in 20th-century ballet history.‘The World’s Greatest Dancer’ (or so said Ziegfeld)Adeline Genée (1878-1970), who spent much of her career in England, reigned for a decade as the prima ballerina at the Empire Theater, where she appeared in variety programs. She was both revered as a classical dancer and hugely popular with the public; Florenz Ziegfeld billed her as “The World’s Greatest Dancer” when she performed in the United States in 1907. Genée became the first president of the Royal Academy of Dance, and her connections to royalty and her popularity with the public made her an excellent figurehead.The 1915 photograph shows Genée in her own short ballet, “A Dream of Butterflies and Roses,” in a costume by Wilhelm, the resident designer at the Empire Theater and an important figure on the theatrical scene. “It’s a really good example of the kind of costume and the kind of ballets that were being shown at the time,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. “Ballet was still part of music-hall entertainment.”A popular entertainmentAt the Coliseum in July 1922.Credit…via Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonThis 1922 poster of weekly variety-show offerings at the London Coliseum suggests how ballet was seen around the time that the Royal Academy of Dance was founded. “It was part of a bigger general picture, and this shows it visually,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Sybil Thorndike was a great British actress and would have given a short performance of a play or monologue; Grock was a very famous clown. Most of the Coliseum bills had some sort of dance element, but it wasn’t always ballet.”Karsavina: An independent artistClaud Lovat Fraser’s drawing of Jumping Joan’s costume for Tamara Karsavina in “Nursery Rhymes” at the Coliseum 1921.Credit…Rachel Cameron Collection/Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonJumping Joan was one of three characters danced by Tamara Karsavina in “Nursery Rhymes,” which she choreographed, to music by Schubert, for an evening at the Coliseum Theater in London in 1921. Unusually for ballet at the time in London, it was a stand-alone show rather than part of a variety program. Karsavina and her company performed it twice a day for two weeks.“People associate Karsavina with the Ballets Russes, but she also had her own group of dancers, which performed regularly at the Coliseum,” Ms. Pritchard said. “She was really an independent artist in a way we think is very modern, working with a major company but also having an independent existence.”She also tried to promote British artists; the costume design was by Claud Lovat Fraser, a brilliant theater designer who died in his early 30s. “I think Lovat Fraser is the British equivalent of Bakst,” Ms. Pritchard said. “His drawings are so animated and precise, and he uses color wonderfully to create a sense of character.”Good for athletes, tooBallet exercises for athletes.Credit…Ali Wright, Dance GazetteIn 1954, the Whip and Carrot Club, an association of high jumpers, approached the Royal Academy of Dance with an unusual request. Its members had read that in both Russia and America, athletes had benefited from taking ballet classes, and they asked the Academy to formulate lessons that would improve their elevation.The outcome was a course that ran for several years, with classes for high jumpers and hurdlers and, later, “steeplechasers, discus and javelin-throwers,” according to a Pathé film clip, on show in the exhibition. In 1955, a booklet was produced, showing 13 exercises designed to help jumping, drawn by the cartoonist Cyril Kenneth Bird, known professionally as Fougasse and famous for government propaganda posters (“Careless talk costs lives”) produced during World War II.“I love the photograph of Margot Fonteyn looking on in her fur coat!” Ms. Pritchard said.From generation to generationTamara Karsavina, left, coaching Margot Fonteyn in “The Firebird,” in 1954.Credit…Douglas ElstonKarsavina, vice president of the Royal Academy of Dance until 1955, developed a teachers’ training course syllabus as well as other sections of the advanced exams. As a dancer, she created the title role in Mikhail Fokine’s “The Firebird,” with music by Stravinsky, when the Ballets Russes first performed the ballet at the Paris Opera in 1910. Here she is shown coaching Margot Fonteyn, when the Royal Ballet first staged the ballet, in 1954, the year that Fonteyn took over from Genée as president of the Royal Academy of Dance.“Karsavina had firsthand knowledge of what the choreographer and composer wanted, and is passing it on,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. (“I never was one to count,” Karsavina says in a film clip about learning “The Firebird”; “Stravinsky was very kind.”) “There is a wonderful sense of handing things from one generation to the next.”Fonteyn and NureyevFonteyn with Rudolf Nureyev at rehearsals for the Royal Academy of Dance Gala in 1963.Credit…Royal Academy of Dance/ArenaPAL, via GBL WilsonThis relaxed moment from a 1963 rehearsal shows the ease and rapport between Fonteyn and the youthful Rudolf Nureyev, who had defected from Russia two years earlier. They were rehearsing for the annual Royal Academy of Dance gala, which Fonteyn established to raise funds for the organization. Her fame enabled her to bring together international guests, British dancers and even contemporary dance choreographers like Paul Taylor.“The gala was also an opportunity for Fonteyn and Nureyev to try things that they perhaps wouldn’t have danced with the Royal Ballet,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Here, they were in rehearsal for ‘La Sylphide,’ because Nureyev was passionate about the Bournonville choreography. They really look like two dancers who are happy with one another.”‘Diminutive, dapper and precise’Stanislas Idzikowski teaching in 1952.Credit…Central Office of InformationStanislas Idzikowski, known as Idzi to his students, was a Polish dancer who had moved to London in his teens and danced with Anna Pavlova’s company before joining the Ballets Russes, where he inherited many of Vaslav Nijinsky’s roles. A close friend of Karsavina, he later became a much-loved teacher and worked closely with the Royal Academy of Dance. Always formally clad in a three-piece suit with a stiff collared shirt and elegant shoes, he was, Fonteyn wrote in her autobiography, “diminutive, dapper and precise.”In this 1952 photograph, he is teaching fifth-year girls who were probably hoping to go on to professional careers. Idzikowski was also involved with the Royal Academy of Dance’s Production Club, started in 1932 to allow students over 14 to work with choreographers; Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann were among the early volunteers, and later a young John Cranko created his first work there.Party polkaStudents demonstrate a dance for Margot Fonteyn and others in 1972.Credit…Felix FonteynThis 1972 photograph of young girls about to begin a sequence called the “party polka” was taken by Fonteyn’s brother, Felix, who also filmed the demonstration being given by a group of primary school students for Fonteyn and other teachers. The footage, which had been stored in the Royal Academy of Dance’s archives in canisters marked “Children’s Syllabus,” was only recently discovered by Ms. Fitzgerald.The film offers a rare glimpse of Fonteyn in her offstage role at the Royal Academy of Dance, Ms. Fitzgerald said, and it reflects an important change that the ballerina made during her presidency. “People really think about Fonteyn as a dancer, but she was very involved with teaching and syllabus development,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. Earlier syllabuses, she explained, had included mime, drama and history, but when a panel, including Fonteyn, revised the program in 1968, they did away with much of this.“They wanted to streamline everything and make it more enjoyable for the children, and just focus on the movement,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. “The party polka is a good example of that, with a great sense for the children of whirling around the room, and really dancing.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      5 Things to Do This New Year’s Weekend

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This New Year’s WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETDanceMaking the Old NewKenneth Shirley of Indigenous Enterprise in a scene from a short film that is streaming on the Joyce Theater’s website until Sunday.Credit…Danny UpshawSince September, the Joyce Theater has been offering a free virtual fall season that is as good as some of its best in-person ones. The secret has been surprise and an avoidance of the usual suspects. If that is a little less true of the latest batch of videos — available through Sunday at joyce.org/joycestream — the variety still provides plenty of spice.The connecting theme might be “tradition reimagined.” Indigenous Enterprise captures the beauty of Native American dances in urban settings. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo revives parts of the 19th-century ballet “Paquita” with an all-male cast. Streb Extreme Action does daredevil stunts with huge machines; it’s like a carnival side show performed by cool astronauts.Vanessa Sanchez and the group La Mezcla, from San Francisco, mix modern tap and zapateado to celebrate the women of the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s. And Rennie Harris Puremovement shows once again how hip-hop can convey both can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it flash and hard-to-watch grief.BRIAN SEIBERTKidsBon Voyage to BoredomA scene from “Journey Around My Bedroom,” an interactive production that will livestream on Zoom through Jan. 10.Credit…New Ohio TheaterA room can be a refuge, but without an easy exit, it can also feel like a jail. For the Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, it was both: While under house arrest in 1790, he wrote “Voyage Around My Room,” a tribute to the creativity his imprisonment unleashed.Now de Maistre’s work has inspired New Ohio Theater for Young Minds’ first virtual presentation, “Journey Around My Bedroom.” Written by Dianne Nora and directed by Jaclyn Biskup, with songs by Hyeyoung Kim, this whimsical 35-minute play emulates Victorian toy theater, in which puppeteers manipulated cutouts on a tiny stage. (Myra G Reavis did the inventive design, assisted by Ana Maria Aburto.) Traveling in a failing dirigible, de Maistre visits Xavi, a contemporary girl who discovers that her own room offers hidden adventure.The production, which livestreams on Zoom Fridays to Sundays through Jan. 10, includes audience participation and a post-show discussion. Children can also follow the journey, though less interactively, in an on-demand video Jan. 11-Feb. 11. Tickets to gain access to these performances are pay-what-you-wish and available at newohiotheatre.org.LAUREL GRAEBERArtTime to Ponder Time ItselfClodion’s “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock” will be the topic of discussion on Friday during the Frick Collection’s “Cocktails With a Curator.”Credit…Claude Michel and JeanBaptiste Lepaute; via Frick Collection; Michael BodycombWhen the Frick Collection introduced its virtual series, “Cocktails With a Curator,” its deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp chief curator, Xavier F. Salomon, described the program as a way to show how the museum’s pieces are “relevant to issues we’re facing today.” That’s especially true for the artwork featured in the next episode: “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock,” by the 18th-century sculptor Clodion with the clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Lepaute. Looking back on 2020, the passage of time has never felt so complicated.There’s also nothing simple about “The Dance of Time.” The three terra-cotta nymphs holding up a globe-encased clock are either witnessing the passage of time or represent it themselves. To find out more, make a metropolitan (or the mocktail alternative, a ginger ale hot toddy; both recipes are on the Frick’s website), and tune in to the museum’s YouTube channel on Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern time to hear Salomon discuss the timelessness of this unique timepiece.MELISSA SMITHPop & RockSummerStage Is Just a Screen AwaySoccer Mommy and her band performed for SummerStage Anywhere in November. The show is available to watch on YouTube.Credit…via City Parks FoundationWhile its recently renovated stage in Central Park sat idle this past season, SummerStage — the nonprofit organization that typically floods the five boroughs with live outdoor music — sprouted roots in virtual space. Its season of free online programming, SummerStage Anywhere, is now complete, but is archived on their YouTube channel for latecomers to enjoy.Offerings are wide-ranging, crossing disciplines, genres and generations. Soccer Mommy, an indie-rock darling, performed her first and, so far, only full-band show in support of her latest album, “Color Theory.” ASAP Ferg joined Fab 5 Freddy, one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, for a conversation about creativity in the face of racial injustice. Gloria Gaynor and her band revisited hits from her disco heyday (including, of course, “I Will Survive,” a song that has special resonance these days). For those of us yearning for a time when we can once again spread our blankets and take in the sounds at Rumsey Playfield, this series provides a nice stopgap.OLIVIA HORNClassical MusicCatch Up With ‘Density 2036’Claire Chase recently released four full-length CDs for her ongoing “Density 2036” project.Credit…Karen ChesterPreviously, listeners curious about “Density 2036” — the ambitious, 23-year commissioning project that the flutist Claire Chase started in 2013 — have needed to stake out her concerts. (While Chase recorded her interpretations of a couple of the earliest works at the beginning of the project, studio renditions seemed to have taken a back seat to live dates in recent years.)Now four new full-length CDs, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey Records, allow a global audience to catch up with the first half-decade of Chase’s initiative. (They’re also available digitally on Bandcamp.) Highlights abound in each set, thanks to a range of composers that includes Marcos Balter, George Lewis and Pauline Oliveros. And one particularly striking stretch on “Part IV” features a version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Bertha’s Lair” (with the composer heard on percussion alongside Chase). That fancifully vigorous piece is directly followed by a distinct yet similarly percussive work: “Five Empty Chambers” by Vijay Iyer.SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Film Academy Museum Delays Its Opening Again

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFilm Academy Museum Delays Its Opening AgainThe Academy Museum of Motion Pictures pushed back its opening to Sept. 30, 2021, from April 30, citing the difficulty of forecasting when public life may begin to normalize.The museum recently installed a 1,208-pound model of the shark featured in “Jaws” above an escalator.Credit…Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressDec. 18, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is starting to feel a little cursed. Since the project was announced in 2012 — with an opening expected in 2017 — setbacks have included sparring architects, the discovery of mastodon fossils by excavation crews, a budget that ballooned by roughly 90 percent, the ouster of its founding director and now, for the second time, the coronavirus pandemic.On Friday, the museum pushed back its opening to Sept. 30, 2021, from April 30, citing the virus and difficulty forecasting when public life may begin to normalize. The pandemic already scuppered a planned opening this week. “With the current surge of Covid-19, it would be irresponsible to maintain an April opening,” Bill Kramer, the museum’s director and president, said by phone. “It’s not because we aren’t ready. Work has been moving forward. We’re completely on track.”Ted Sarandos, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees and Netflix’s co-chief executive, added in a statement: “It’s just a matter of patience, for all of us, as we look ahead to opening our doors on Sept. 30.” A private gala was set for Sept. 25.How did the museum select those dates? This month, for instance, Warner Bros. said it would still be too difficult to release movies normally by next December because of the pandemic.Mr. Kramer said summer was not an ideal time to inaugurate a cultural institution (too many people scattered here and there). An early September opening would collide with the Telluride and Toronto film festivals.Had the $482 million museum stuck to its April plan, a marketing campaign would have started next month. Hiring was also set to begin for gallery guards and ticket takers.For all of its stops and starts, the museum has gotten its act together under Mr. Kramer, who was hired last year. (He previously served as vice president of development for the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) In recent months, the museum has hired the film scholar and Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart as its chief artistic and programming officer; repaired relationships with Hollywood collectors; attained LEED eco-friendly certification; and reached its pre-opening fund-raising goal of $388 million. Despite difficult working conditions because of the coronavirus, crews have installed exhibits, including a 25-foot-long, 45-year-old fiberglass model of the mechanical shark that Steven Spielberg used to film “Jaws.”Mr. Kramer called the shark, nicknamed Bruce, “shockingly cool.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More