Day: November 28, 2017

Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch looked flushed as he stood at the edge of the Hobby Center’s Sarofim Hall stage during a break in the company’s annual Jubilee of Dance performance.

The Houston Chronicle reports his military-style jacket seemed apt for the warrior’s role he has played in recent months, trying to keep his 59 dancers sharp and happy in their glittering costumes as he shuffles their performances in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

The audience had just seen a video describing how the ballet rebounded from damage to its $45 million studio building but lost its stage venue — the Wortham Theater Center — for what will likely be the entire season, forcing a season-long home town tour. And Welch wanted to convey the gargantuan effort it takes to produce world-class dancing, even as some of his weary staff members continue going home every night to flood-gutted messes.

Tears welled in his eyes.

“It’s still a very raw thing for all of us,” Welch said.

Leaders of Houston’s powerhouse performing arts companies have been more emotional than usual this fall. Worn to a nub from the scramble of relocating, rethinking and rescheduling shows because Houston’s Theater District was so severely damaged, they also need to convince Houstonians that their work is more meaningful and necessary than ever.

On the cusp of the all-important holiday entertainment season, a time when audiences typically flock to their productions, they are constantly comparing notes and watching their numbers. Never before have so many of the city’s cultural jewels looked so precarious at once.

The ballet, symphony, opera and Alley Theater each expect setbacks of millions of dollars as a result of the storm. Insurance will offset some of the losses, but ticket sales for the rest of the season remain a huge and critical unknown. Directors worry that people’s priorities have changed.

“The entire momentum of the city has been disrupted,” said Perryn Leech, Houston Grand Opera’s managing director. “Even if 10 percent of people don’t come back to the theater, when they get out of the habit of going out, that’s a challenge.”

Bobby Tudor, chairman of the Houston Symphony’s board of trustees and former chairman of the Board of the Society for the Performing Arts, said the storm’s effects underscore the fragility of the city’s arts organizations.

“The vast majority of them live from hand to mouth,” Tudor said during a panel discussion at a recent luncheon about the importance of Houston’s arts economy.

Arts organizations of all kinds across Houston’s 10-country region amount to a $1.1 billion industry that employs more than 25,000 people, but most of those companies operate dangerously close to the margins.

“At some point, you worry about making payroll — whether you’re a small contemporary dance company, a presenting organization or a big, multimillion dollar organization,” Tudor said. “Too often in the arts, we spend every single penny-plus of what we can raise in contributed income and philanthropy, and we have no cushion when bad things happen. And this was a bad thing.”

The Alley stands to lose an estimated $18 million — about the equivalent of an entire year’s operating budget. Managing director Dean Gladden said he hopes to recoup most of it through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (the Alley owns its building, which was insured) and fundraising.

On the plus side, tickets are selling well for “A Christmas Carol,” which marked the theater company’s return to its home. Its smaller, basement-level Neuhaus stage, which was flooded to the ceiling, is still under reconstruction but slated to reopen in late January.

The Houston Symphony, which closed for seven weeks and canceled 17 events at Jones Hall, could lose an estimated $3 million this season and up to $6 million during the coming three years, although it is back on track now with performances in Jones Hall. The company hopes to recover some lost revenue with a concert added to its season: A score performance and screening of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” a follow-up to last summer’s wildly successful “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” concert.

                   And returning theater and symphony audiences will be able to park nearby. The Theater District Garage, which took on 270 million gallons of floodwater, was expected to be operating again by late November.

But the Sugar Plum Fairy won’t be joining the downtown party this year.

Houston Ballet has had to move Welch’s massive new production of “The Nutcracker” to Sugar Land’s Smart Financial Center and downtown’s Hobby Center for 28 performances — 10 less than it usually presents at the Wortham. As a result, executive director Jim Nelson has lowered his team’s “Nutcracker” sales goal by $1.25 million this year, to $4 million.

On top of that hit, relocating the massive production — twice — will cost the company several hundred thousand dollars. The ballet has a deeper cushion than some of the other organizations, with an endowment that’s currently worth more than $76 million — the third largest among American ballet companies — although Nelson doesn’t want to rob it.

Deep-pocketed patrons have helped. Lynn Wyatt, for example, bought a traveling dance floor for Houston Ballet after the storm because the Hobby Center, where the ballet has staged several performances, wasn’t equipped with one.

“It’s tough,” Nelson said. “Costs are higher, and revenues are compromised. We will get through it, but now more than ever, we need community support.”

Leech said the opera has adjusted its ticket sale targets, too — and still not met them.

HGO spent more than $500,000 to create the makeshift Resilience Theater inside an exhibit hall of the George R. Brown Convention Center, where it has performed “La Traviata” and “Julius Caesar” and will premiere “The House Without a Christmas Tree” on Nov. 30. The acoustics aren’t great, and the orchestra has to sit behind the stage, but at least shows are going on, and artists are excelling in spite of the conditions.

Houston First, which operates the city-owned convention center, Wortham and Jones Hall, has shifted 27 clients to other spaces to accommodate the opera, also supplying some of the lighting and stage equipment, which it extracted from the empty Wortham.

Houston First president and CEO Dawn Ullrich expects the ballet will be performing at the convention center next year, too. Nelson said there were still details to iron out before he announces the remainder of his organization’s season, but the schedule will likely offer different ballets than originally planned, and on different dates.

The ballet has loss of revenue insurance, but the opera does not. Leech expects HGO’s setback could be as high as $15 million, well over half of its normal annual budget.

“I consider us to be part of the hurricane relief ask,” Leech said. “This is definitely a conversation with the people who have supported us: Do you want HGO to take a backward step? We as a city need to have the arts as part of the recovery plan. The arts are more important now than ever.”

Everyone expects it will take the companies three years to fully recover.

Amanda Dinitz, the symphony’s interim executive director and CEO, believes all arts organizations need to anticipate a shift in how people are spending discretionary income and prioritizing their donations now. But she remains optimistic about recovery from the storm.

“We’re confident that this community has a strong interest in not maintaining but continuing to build the quality of the arts,” she said.

The funding environment is challenging for arts organizations everywhere, even without storm issues.

Randy Cohen, vice president of research and policy at the nonprofit advocacy group Americans for the Arts, which produced the economic research, said he’s confident Houston’s theater community can turn lemons into lemonade. In other cities, forced relocations have helped entrenched groups in the long term.

“The arts are all about hope, aspiration and connectedness,” Cohen said. “Sometimes the urgency to do things differently can engage an audience in a community in a whole different way.”

Arts organizations across the country have stepped up to help, too. The Alley has received monetary donations from other theater companies. Major ballet companies in other cities have opened their costume and set coffers to their Houston colleagues.

The ballet’s annual Margaret Alkek Williams Jubilee of Dance (named for its underwriter) had to be staged earlier than normal. Welch instituted the annual showcase of rigorous dancing and season highlights more than a decade ago to give performers and serious ballet fans a break from the “Nutcracker” marathon that typically begins the day after Thanksgiving. This year, “The Nutcracker” opens fairly far into the holiday period, on Dec. 10, in Sugar Land.

Welch lamented, along with the loss of the Wortham, a heartbreaking undoing of ballet history. The 15 feet of floodwater that filled the theater’s basement for several weeks destroyed costumes for 50 one-act ballets. That is a huge chunk of the company’s repertory, including seminal works by George Balanchine, Christopher Bruce, Mark Morris and other leading choreographers.

But Welch is adamant that the ballet will continue to present great art, a sentiment his cohorts at the theater, opera and symphony echo as they plead with Houstonians to buy tickets. Audiences are what they need most right now.

“When this storm hit us, we dusted ourselves off and picked ourselves up and came here to perform beautiful art for you,” Welch said. “We would like to say thank you for being patient with us, and for being here with us tonight. “The curtain behind him parted to reveal a stage full of people in costume and not — dancers, backstage artists, teachers, ticket sellers, accountants. “We are Houston Ballet,” Welch said, “and we are Houston strong.”

The audience stood and cheered.

 
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Russian election influence, the ever-widening sexual harassment scandal, mass shootings and the opioid epidemic helped elevate the word “complicit” as Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2017.

Look-ups of the word increased nearly 300 percent over last year as “complicit” hit just about every hot button from politics to natural disasters, lexicographer Jane Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s formal announcement of the site’s pick.

“This year a conversation that keeps on surfacing is what exactly it means to be complicit,” she said. “Complicit has sprung up in conversations about those who speak out against powerful figures in institutions, and those who stay silent.”

The first of three major spikes for the word struck March 12. That was the day after “Saturday Night Live” aired a sketch starring Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump in a glittery gold dress peddling a fragrance called “Complicit” because: “She’s beautiful, she’s powerful, she’s complicit.”

The bump was followed by another April 5, also related to Ivanka, Solomon said. It was the day after she appeared on “CBS This Morning” and told Gayle King, among other things: “I don’t know what it means to be complicit.”

It was unclear at the time whether Ivanka was deflecting or whether the summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business — with a degree in economics — didn’t really know.

Another major spike occurred Oct. 24, the day Arizona Republican Jeff Flake announced from the Senate floor that he would not seek re-election, harshly criticizing President Donald Trump and urging other members of the party not to stand silently with the president.

“I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit,” Flake said.

Solomon noted that neither she nor Dictionary.com can know what sends people to dictionaries or dictionary sites to look up “complicit” or any other word. She and other lexicographers who study look-up behavior believe it’s likely a combination of people who may not know a definition, are digging deeper or are seeking inspiration or emotional reinforcement of some sort.

As for “complicit,” she said several other major events contributed to interest in the word. They include the rise of the opioid epidemic and how it came to pass, along with the spread of sexual harassment and assault allegations against an ever-growing list of powerful men, including film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The scandal that started in Hollywood and quickly spread across industries has led to a mountain of questions over who knew what, who might have contributed and what it means to stay silent.

While Solomon shared percentage increases for “complicit,” the company would not disclose the number of look-ups, calling that data proprietary.

The site chooses its word of the year by heading straight for data first, scouring look-ups by day, month and year to date and how they correspond to noteworthy events, Solomon said. This year, a lot of high-volume trends unsurprisingly corresponded to politics. But the site also looks at lower-volume trends to see what other words resonated. Among them:

INTERSEX: It trended on Dictionary.com in January thanks to model Hanne Gaby Odiele speaking up about being intersex to break taboos. As a noun it means “an individual having reproductive organs or external sexual characteristics of both male and female.” Dictionary.com traces its origins back to 1915, as the back formation of “intersexual.”

 
SHRINKAGE: While the word has been around since 1790, a specific definition tied to a famous 1994 episode of “Seinfeld” led to a word look-up revival in February. That’s when a house in The Hamptons where the episode was filmed went on the market. For the record: The Jason Alexander character George Costanza emerges with “shrinkage” from a pool and said “shrinkage” is noted by Jerry’s girlfriend.

 
TARNATION: It had a good ride on Dictionary.com in the first few months of the year due to a round of social media fun with the “What in tarnation” meme that had animals and various objects wearing cowboy hats.

 
HOROLOGIST: As in master clockmaker, like the one featured in the podcast “S-Town,” the highly anticipated “This American Life” follow-up to the popular “Serial” podcast. All seven episodes of murder intrigue were released at once in March. Horologist, used in the radio story, trended around that time.

 
TOTALITY: There were look-up spikes in August. Thank you, solar eclipse and your narrow band of totality, meaning the strip of land where the sun was completely obscured by the moon.
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Late night talk show host Seth Meyers will host the 2018 Golden Globe movie and television awards ceremony in January, organizers said on Monday.

It will be the first Golden Globes hosting gig for Myers, 43, whose “Late Night with Seth Meyers” airs on NBC.

The Golden Globes ceremony, an informal and boozy dinner attended by hundreds of A-list stars, is one of the biggest in the Hollywood awards season that culminates with the Oscars in March.

The 2018 ceremony will take place on Jan. 7 in Beverly Hills and will be broadcast live on NBC, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes on the awards, said in a statement.

Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, said in a statement that Meyers “will be taking a closer look at this year’s best movies and television with his unique brand of wit, intelligence, and mischievous humor.”

Meyers began his television career on satirical sketch show “Saturday Night Live” in 2001 and was a cast member for 13 seasons, serving as head writer for nine seasons.

As Golden Globes host, he follows in the footsteps of Jimmy Fallon, British comedian Ricky Gervais, and comedy duo Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
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