Happy October. I do not have much to share with you today on the personal front other than the fact that I’ll be hosting the next McNally Editions book club on October 20. We’re reading The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson. It’s a fun one.
Misty Copeland is announcing something today at 12:30pm related to her forthcoming farewell performance from American Ballet Theatre. Details have been scant, though in an Instagram story on Friday, her foundation said it was “historic” and alluded to some way that the broader public could be a part of her final performance. My mind immediately jumped here: are they going to livestream Misty’s final show?
This would not be without precedent. Consider the fact that the Metropolitan Opera regularly simulcasts select productions to movie theaters around the world (including the one in my small New Jersey hometown). And while ABT’s fall season is in the adjacent David Koch Theater, we do know that the auditorium is equipped with cameras: after all, there are screens installed on each floor of the building that show the performance, so that latecomers can at least see what’s going on onstage before they are allowed inside. They very well could do this. But will they?
Honestly, it’s a toss-up. I certainly had my gripes when I realized how hard it would be to get tickets to see the performance (they went on sale, first, to affiliate members, which meant that there would be fewer, if any, available to the broader public—which meant they were less accessible to those who can’t afford to pay at least $600 annually for a membership). ABT wrote in its email announcing the ticket sale: “There’s a very high likelihood that tickets will sell out quickly on Monday, July 28. Even with early access, availability is not guaranteed. If you are an Affiliate Member or higher and are hoping to attend this performance, please be prepared to act quickly when early access opens.”
The mission of Copeland’s eponymous foundation is to bring “greater diversity, equity, and inclusion to dance by making ballet affordable, accessible, and fun.” This mission shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows her story. Not only did she become the first Black woman to become a principal dancer at the company in 2015, but her road to that achievement was not an easy one. Growing up in poverty, Copeland was introduced to ballet at 13—a late age for a dancer—thanks to her drill team coach, who saw her talent and recommended she take a ballet class at the local Boys & Girls Club. A few years later Copeland secured a scholarship to ABT’s summer intensive and subsequently joined ABT’s studio company. Over the next 15 years, she moved up the ranks.
Copeland is a fairly obvious example of a prodigy, and someone whose life would have looked very different if not for the encouragement of people who saw her potential. This is why accessibility to dance is so important to her. Her influence as a role model—especially in the predominantly white ballet world—should also not go understated. It’s hard to imagine what could be more meaningful and aligned with her message than letting the whole world watch her take to ABT’s stage one last time.
Not that she’s going anywhere. Copeland told the Wall Street Journal this week that she’s be open to returning to Broadway (she was in On the Town in 2015) and that she’d like to work with community-driven artists like Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell, J. Cole, and the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.
So what can we expect from her final performance? She’ll be dancing three pieces: a new commission by Kyle Abraham, starring Copeland and Calvin Royal III (who became ABT’s second-ever Black male principal in 2020), the balcony scene from Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet (also performed with Royal), and Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite, performed with Herman Cornejo. The company and ABT Studio Company will also perform select works. It is a gala, after all.
“I want it to feel like a celebration, and not something that drags on for hours,” she told Pointe. “That was my number-one request. In my first meeting with [artistic director] Susan Jaffe, I said, ‘I don’t want this to be long. I want people to be like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s already over.’”
On the topic of representation in ballet: Some happy news! Ashton Edwards, nonbinary member of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s corps, recently made their debut as “Tall Girl” in George Balanchine’s Rubies. Edwards is such a striking dancer, with expansive lines and an energetic presence (hat tip to @dancemomporsha for her coverage of this debut). I’m really rooting for Edwards to move up as a soloist. I first learned about them thanks to this great New York Times piece from 2022 on gender roles in ballet.
Here is something you might not have expected to hear: TikTok is investing in the next generation of classical music. In partnership with London’s Southbank Centre, the app has launched an accelerator program called Crescendo, Variety reported. The program will support 10 UK-based emerging creators who make content about the genre (so they could be a performer, composer, conductor, or potentially even just a mega-fan.) with mentorship, access to Southbank concerts and rehearsals, and more.
The app said in a press release that posts on the #ClassicalMusic hashtag have increased 60 percent year-over-year. “As a platform, what TikTok is able to do is open up new audiences,” Toyin Mustapha, TikTok’s head of music partnerships for the UK and Ireland, told Variety, “It’s a way for people to be able to relate to something that they might otherwise feel is not relatable to them.”
If it seems like a lot of people and institutions in the arts world are collaborating with Saudi Arabia, it’s because they are. The Saudi Cultural Fund just announced nearly $1 billion in deals to drive the Kingdom’s cultural economy (you may remember the Met Opera’s recent deal). In fact, since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced Vision 2030—the Kingdom’s blueprint for globalizing itself—in 2016, it has invested more than $21 billion in cultural projects. Here I remind you of the country’s record on human rights, including its treatment of women and LGBTQ individuals, crackdowns on free speech, murders of journalists, and practice of modern-day slavery. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is expected to open next year, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2017, both faced allegations of workers rights abuses for their construction.
Investing in the arts, of course, is a strategy for the country to “artwash” or launder its reputation (or at least convince enough institutions and people to overlook both its record and ongoing practices).
It seems to be good enough for some! You may have seen the contentious Riyadh Comedy Festival, but did you know that pianist Lang Lang recently collaborated with the Saudi Music Commission on a piano intensive? Colnaghi, the London-based art gallery, which was founded in 1760, also just announced it will open a space in Riyadh, The Art Newspaper reported. And MoMA’s outgoing director, Glenn Lowry, just said that he will be working as an advisor on the Saudi-backed Islamic Arts Biennale (he is, to be fair, a scholar of Islamic art). But Hyperallergic noted that Lowry has a history of rubbing shoulders with donors who some may find unsavory, and he said in 2023, on the podcast Art World: What If…?!: “It doesn’t matter whether they’re of the progressive left or the reactionary right if they’re supporting the programs and artists we believe in.”
Here’s the big question: where can these institutions get funding that doesn’t strike up an ethical debate?
In France, at least, where government funding for the arts remains shaky, institutions remain dependent on wealthy American donors (who I am sure have also largely procured their money by unsavory means), Le Monde reported. Many, right now, are concerned about the Trump administration eliminating programs which allow Americans to deduct their contributions from their taxes. They are also inevitably tapping the same people everyone else is tapping—like Stephen Schwarzman, who we mentioned last week.
Below the paywall, a few rapid-fire bits and bobs on the art world, plus a major hire by the Philly Orchestra.
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