Kathleen O'Connell

1 hour ago, YouOverThere said:

IMHO, this issue puts arts companies in a difficult position. Most cannot afford to antagonize even a small portion of their regular audiences, and the non-vaxers can be pretty intolerant.

On the flip side, there's antagonizing the portion of their audience that IS vaccinated and is reluctant to attend a public event in an enclosed space that doesn't require vaccination because a) they're concerned about picking up a break-through infection and either becoming ill themselves or passing a Covid variant on to someone in their household who's immune-compromised; or b) annoyed at the safety measures that have to be put in place to accommodate the un-vaccinated, such as NO INTERMISSIONS, no bio breaks, no mingling with friends in the lobby, standing outside the theater in inclement weather because the venue can't risk patrons mingling in the lobby prior to the show, etc etc etc.

ETA: An example of where the potential for push-back against a good public-health measure was overblown: when NYC decided to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. There was a huge hue-and-cry from certain sectors of the hospitality industry and the usual suspects in the pundocracy, declaring that this would absolutely, positively be the end of the city's bars and restaurants. Spoiler alert: it wasn't, and drinking in bars and eating in restaurants remained as popular as ever, was more enjoyable for the vast majority of patrons who weren't smokers, and much much safer for the industry's labor force.

13 hours ago, On Pointe said:

I must say,  Pazcoguin's allegation about Ramasar touching her inappropriately doesn't sound credible.  Once maybe,  but every day for years?  She should have kicked him in the balls the first time,  or at least have filed a complaint with management and refused to be in his vicinity.

Leaving the veracity of her claim aside, in the real world of a male-run, tradition-bound, hierarchical organization eager to coddle its stars, neither option would likely have gotten Pazcoguin anywhere. I can imagine any range of bad outcomes for Pazcoguin and none for her harasser; she was on the wrong side of any number of power imbalances in that situation. 

For a chilling depiction of how a credible allegation of abuse and exploitation can be turned back against the person reporting it by an HR department operating under the thumb of a powerful male executive, I recommend Kitty Green's excellent 2019 film, The Assistant. (If you haven't seen the film and don't mind a little spoiling, you can watch one of the central, telling scenes from the film on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=972P9XLWyoE. Jane, a young production assistant for a powerful film executive is party to a very young, very inexperienced woman being set up for sexual exploitation on the pretext of being given a job at the firm. The executive's habit of sexual predation is an open secret; part of Jane's job is literally cleaning up after his exploits and facilitating them in other ways, including installing the new hire in a high-end hotel. She decides to report the situation to HR. It does not go well.)

14 minutes ago, Jack Reed said:

the first item, Pite’s Body and Soul, originally announced as  available through July 15, has already been taken down a day or two early. 

Body and Soul is still available for viewing here on the Jacob's Pillow website—I just paid my $15 fee and logged into the stream. 

I believe that the little note on the bottom of the page that reads "Event Dates: Oh no! You missed this one! Check our calendar for future events" refers to the live performance, not the stream.

ETA: Go to this page to see all of the online offerings. Quite a few of them are free.

On 7/12/2021 at 2:19 PM, JuliaJ said:

On the NYCB website, in the fall season, Ratmansky's Namouna has been swapped with Concerto DSCH. It's on the program with Robbins' Opus 19/the Dreamer, and nothing else. That's a total of around 40 minutes of dancing for the evening... they have to be adding something else to the program, right? 

Namouna is just shy of a hour long. If there's no intermission, it would be audience abuse to put more than one other ballet on the program.

ETA: Hmmm ... maybe I misread the original post. Has Namouna been taken off the program and replaced with Doncerto DSCH? If so, that is indeed a short program.

3 hours ago, California said:

If they are worried about long lines and crowds in the restrooms, I wonder what they have planned for before and after the actual performance. We are used to seeing signs on the floor for distancing and attendants at the door to regulate access. But, of course, that could also be done at a genuine intermission.

Seriously, how are they planning for the rush to the restrooms when the performance is over? 

11 hours ago, pherank said:

One of the things I've learned in recent years is just how much of a hold the various unions and rights holders have over the ballet companies. Nothing gets done without long negotiations and legal wrangling.

To be clear, I'm all in favor of unions and collective bargaining in the performing arts. Everyone has a right to fair compensation and a safe and respectful workplace. I think artists and stagehands have a right to negotiate how they will be compensated for work that's made available via means other than live performance.

Rights holders are a more complicated issue. Creators should be compensated for their work, but existing copyright regimes sometime operate to facilitate behavior that can stymie the public interest. 

5 hours ago, sandik said:

So far I've seen a lot of promotion for Marquee TV

Much of the content on Marquee TV is also available on DVD or was previously available via theater livestreams / broadcast TV, although it appears to be acquiring some content from performing arts companies / venues that isn't streamable elsewhere, e.g.,  from the Washington Ballet, Glyndebourne (the concert series but not the operas, apparently), and Arlington's Signature Theater. Marquee TV also offers "ticketed," i.e., pay-per-view events. There's nothing wrong with a service that streams content also available to consumers on DVD (hello, Netflix!) but it's not (again, yet) a platform that relies on acquired original or exclusive content. By "original" I don't mean new dance works or operas, but rather performances that are only available via its service—e.g., a major ballet company's "digital season." From what I've been able to glean scanning its catalogue, its competitor Medici TV takes a similar "from DVD / broadcast / livestream to on demand" approach, with some exclusive streaming content, e.g., performances from Switzerland's Verbier Festival.

So, I can imagine a service that commissions a digital season from a performing arts company for an attractive flat fee; or underwrites a major new production; or fosters collaborations between, say, a filmmaker or a visual artist with a dance company with the right to stream what it commissioned exclusively either in perpetuity or for some predefined period of time. The performing arts company might secure some ancillary rights—e.g., the right to make some of the content available to donors, to release it on DVD at some future date, or to make it available to schools or public libraries. Frankly, if I were a publicly-minded foundation or consortium of foundations and publicly-funded arts agencies, I'd be thinking of ways to support the performing arts' digital future that frees companies and venues of the financial and administrative burden of operating their own bespoke digital distribution platforms or from locking their content up behind a for-profit platform's paywall.

Something closer to a shared platform is EU-sponsored OperaVision, which streams recent performances by smaller European opera houses for free over a three-to-six month period. There are exceptions, but most of its content isn't available elsewhere. Some of it does eventually end up on DVD or on another streaming platform. 

Another model is Seattle's own OntheBoards.TV, which has leveraged presentations from its own theater (plus similar venues in Portland, Austin, and New York) to get works from an array of contemporary artists up on a paid platform. On the Boards is non-profit, so it receives some funding from both foundations and government sources.

25 minutes ago, sandik said:

I'm just hoping that after all the experiments that different organizations have been running, they take that information and really use it.

I also hope that the broader universe of private foundations and government arts organizations take an active role in fostering the further exploration of digital arts programming. There will need to be funding for everything—negotiating with rights holders; buying equipment and hiring people to use it; securing and scaling a distribution platform; marketing and audience development; developing supplementary educational materials for classroom use; commissioning works for camera, etc etc etc.

On 12/4/2020 at 11:18 AM, California said:

NYCB has shown a huge amount of stuff and asked for donations each time, but why haven't they pursued the digital subscription mix that we see at SFB and PNB? M

8 hours ago, sandik said:

And while I don't know details, I know that many rights holders (individual artists, trusts and foundations) have been very generous with their materials -- the desire to keep dance in front of its audience has loosened some of their control.

sandik points to one possible reason: it could be that the various rights holders and unions involved were willing to authorize making the videos available during the pandemic as a means of keeping the company and its repertory visible to the public and as a means of prompting donations, but weren't ready to negotiate a full-fledged paid digital subscription or pay-per-view offering. 

Or, the Board might have decided to pull out its collective checkbook and underwrite free digital programming as a public service during the pandemic. 

Or, the City of New York, which does provide substantial support to NYCB via the Department of Cultural Affairs' Cultural Institutions Group, might have encouraged free digital programming as a public service during the pandemic.

NYCB did send out a survey probing its audience on its willingness to pay for digital performances, and it could be that the results didn't surface much of an appetite for paid digital offerings.

It could be all or some or none of the above - just spitballing ...

Not sure if these belong in a thread on free streaming during Covid-19, but they're something to watch until the theaters open back up.

The English National Ballet has begun posting some #SlowTV videos to its YouTube Channel. 

The first is a 31 minute video on pointe shoe preparation: "Watch Amber Hunt, Artist of English National Ballet, go through the task and ritual of preparing her pointe shoes for rehearsals and performances."

The second is a 40 minute video on making a tutu: "Watch Federica Romano, Costumier at English National Ballet, make a 10-layer pancake tutu base. Filmed over the course of 3 days, the 40-min Slow TV film shows all the intricate work that goes into making a tutu."

ETA: I will confess to scrubbing through both videos, stopping here and there to focus in on particular points of interest. 

Not just generous, but no strings attached. She trusts the recipients to use the funds however they think best. 

18 hours ago, pherank said:

IG's idea of a keyword is a little different from mine.

If IG made money from search, it would give us Google's search tools and then some. 

2 minutes ago, pherank said:

For the average reader, there's got to be an easier way to filter content on social media, and that really needs to be provided by the platforms themselves.

Agreed! It's now possible to search Instagram using keywords (not just hashtags), but its keyword search functionality is extremely limited. It doesn't appear to be possible to limit your keyword search a specific account, for instance, or to apply any kind of meaningful filters. Plus, IG won't let you search on a just any old keyword: keyword searches are limited to "general interest topics and keywords that are within Instagram’s community guidelines." If you've got a niche keyword, you're likely out of luck. And, since it's IG, search coughs up photos and videos, not comments.

6 hours ago, pherank said:

We don't have any way to filter the Macaulay posts and their text content based on some particular keyword or phrase (to 'disappear' everything that isn't tagged "Clissold Park" for instance)

Given that Instagram content is an absolute goldmine for influencers or anyone with something to sell or something to research, there's a healthy marketplace of third-party services that will scrape IG content from the account or accounts of your choosing and dump the results into a spreadsheet or json file for you, where they can be searched and filtered how you like. There are even Chrome extensions that will scrape publicly available IG data for you. (Some of these tools are pretty sketchy, so beware ...)

If you know your way around python, javascript, or PHP, you can choose from among the dozens and dozens of open-source IG scraping tools posted to GitHub. 

7 hours ago, pherank said:

I don't have much faith that Facebook/Instagram is going to take good care of the content anyway. At least with a personal website, it's entirely possible to backup the content and save it to a hard drive or burn it to a DVD. Not so with Instagram or Twitter postings.

In the wake of the EU's GDPR privacy law, Instagram now makes it possible to download everything you've posted to a zip file and either save it or transfer it to another service. 

17 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Sure, especially in light of the fact that the Gold and Silver Waltz was not choreographed on an Amazonian ballerina.

For the record, here's the original 1977 principal cast for Vienna Waltzes:

Tale from the Vienna Woods - Karin von Aroldingen & Sean Lavery
Voices of Spring - Patricia McBride & Helgi Tomasson
Explosion Polka  -  Sara Leland & Bart Cook
Gold and Silver Waltz - Kay Mazzo & Peter Martins
Der Rosenkavalier  -  Suzanne Farrell & Jorge Donn (the role was created on Jean-Pierre Bonnefous, but he was injured for the premiere, so Donn substituted as a guest artist.)

Karin von Aroldingen took over the Gold and Silver Waltz role after Kay Mazzo retired. Helene Alexopoulos, Maria Calegari, Rebecca Krohn, Lourdes Lopez, Lauren Lovette, Teresa Reichlen, and Jenifer Ringer have also been cast in the role. I can't discern a real thread connecting them except that they all looked grown up and glamorous in the costume. No one has ever looked as good in those red pants as Martins. 

5 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

But the music was really disappointing, not just because of the thin recorded sound, but also because there was quite a lot of flat playing, particularly in the Lehar.

Well, yes, there's that. The opening of the Léhar section (the main theme in particular) is ... undistinguished. 

3 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I've been thrilled that NYCB has been posting archival recordings, but in this case the tinny sound and single camera really blunted the ballet's impact. 

Hmmm. Different strokes / Different folks. I actually breathed a sigh of relief regarding camera work! For Vienna Waltzes in particular, I appreciated being able to see most of the stage most of the time, with the occasional zoom when it mattered, and a bit of tracking for the entrances. (I think one or two of the latter might have been flubbed, but I'll have to check ...) There was plenty of air around the dancers, even on this ballet's very busy stage. 

As for the sound? Well, nothing sounds its best on my computer's speakers, but I might have noticed it more if I watched it on my TV.

ETA: "Flubbed" refers to the camera tracking, not the dancers' entrances.

2 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

and you're reminding me that the Blake Project is something I paid for, and missed the streaming window. Never saw it.

This is why I would pony up for an all-arts streaming service with a deep, deep catalogue of performances that stay up for at least a six-month to one-year window. The roster of companies and performers needs to reach further than the usual suspects; the performances on offer need to be more than what's already available on DVD. Services like Medici and Marquee tend to feature (Euro-centric) material that's already available on physical media. What I'm talking about is a service that might offer, say, four San Francisco Ballet performances captured live during the current season. For "San Francisco Ballet" fill in any company or venue that you like: the Paul Taylor Dance Company on tour, The Joyce, The Park Avenue Armory, Seattle's On the Boards (which does have its own TV service), or some random little company you never heard of but are now a fan of because you stumbled across it while surfing the catalogue.  

I'm really not interested in paying $25 a pop for a digital presentation with a limited viewing window: video just can't match the visceral thrill of seeing something live in the theater (that's why people still show up at ballparks to sit in the bleachers even though they'd get a closer view of the action on TV) nor does ephemerality add to the experience of watching something on a small screen the way it does when you're watching something live and in person and you know its happening NOW and won't happen again.

ETA: if it's a big enough consortium with some public / foundation support the licensing and union issues could be negotiated in a way that's fair to all concerned.

12 hours ago, California said:

I do think they all need to do this. Ordinarily, Friends would be invited to open rehearsals, etc. a huge perk for some of us.

It's surely been a challenging year for arts fundraising. There's the difficulty of cultivating and maintaining an audience when the theater is shuttered, compounded by the difficulty of maintaining a donor base when you can't hold public events like galas or can't offer opportunities to get close to the organization (and other donors) like open rehearsals or lecture / demos and the like. 

I wonder if companies will keep the digital perks once the pandemic is behind us? 

9 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

PS, there's a film available to donors of Karin von Aroldingen coaching Who Cares? and Suite #3.

Donors to NYCB? 

Huh. I really like Peck's Rotunda. The only work on the Fall 2021 schedule that I could live without is Western Symphony. For the first time in a long time there isn't a program on the schedule that I'd dismiss as a clunker to be avoided at all costs, and I'll try to see Namouna more than once. I'm going to guess that Monumentum / Movements may be my last chance to see Ask la Cour and that Opus 19 / The Dreamer may be my last chance to see Lauren Lovette on a regular program since both dancers are retiring during the Fall 2021 season. Since I like both of those ballets and both of those dancers in those ballets, I'll show up if they're cast and I can get a ticket.

1 hour ago, canbelto said:

I'm okay with large indoors gatherings requiring a mask, vaccination, or a combo of both. I wouldnt enjoy an event unless I felt safe.

A neighbor and I were half-joking yesterday about how much we've enjoyed our cold and flu free year and how we might just keep on wearing masks and obsessively washing our hands long after Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted. 😉

And honestly, I have no objection to wearing a mask indoors (or in close quarters outdoors) until 1) it's been determined that the current vaccines provide protection against the new Covid-19 variants, or, more to the point, limit their spread and 2) most of us have been vaccinated.

Speaking as someone who has had to present a Carte Jaune along with my passport at more than one international border, I expect that the international community will wrestle proof of Covid-19 vaccination to the ground at some point. Some countries (Nigeria is one) have already developed digital versions of the Yellow Card to circumvent forgeries and I expect more will follow.

21 hours ago, Helene said:

The only way to have a true vaccine passport is if it were government-issued, straight from the people who issued the vaccine

When I applied for my New York State Excelsior Vaccine Pass I had to provide the information that's on my CDC vaccination record (name, birthdate, vaccine type, the date of final the dose, and where I received it) plus my zip code. This information was the confirmed against the NYS vaccine database. Had I received my vaccine from an entity that doesn't fall under the regulatory authority of New York State—e.g. a federal agency, an entity from another U.S. state or jurisdiction, or a first nation—and that doesn't report into the NYS system I wouldn't have been able to get the NYS pass. My husband received his vaccine at his New Jersey workplace and  thus can't get the NYS pass. NJ doesn't offer one yet, so he's out of luck.

Note that you have to present a valid photo ID along with the Excelsior Pass QR code when you use it: you can't just wave a printout of the QR code at the door for admittance.

20 hours ago, Helene said:

I would have loved the Liebeslieder, but I found the lighting difficult.

Pointing the camera right at that big wall of windows was ... a bold choice. I'm going to hazard a guess that the Liebeslieder excerpt was shot entirely with natural light. (I'm also curious about whether Coppola opted for film or digital, and, if the latter, if the post-production color grading was done to emulate a classic film stock. She loves film. But I digress.) 

You can thank Mark Stanley for the darking for the Peck piece.