Mexico: IV Performing Arts Encounter

Mexico: IV Performing Arts Encounter will take place in Mexico City, March 11th to March 15th 2009. During this encounter, there will be 52 showcases, talks and conferences, and there will be meeting points between artists and presenters. Mexico: IV Performing Arts Encounter will reunite artists and Mexican groups of dancing, theatre, music and interdisciplinary works, as well as promoters, presenters, producers and festival directors from all around the world. Its main goal is to create a guide to the Mexican contemporary scenery, to bring together the professionals and the performing artists, to allow the exchange of ideas and to promote the performing arts on a global level, through strategies based on tours, circuits, residences and common projects."

Where's the Arts Bailout?

Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has written an article for the 'Washington Post' about the current U.S. government bailouts of the financial markets, and asks where the ones are for the arts. He comments on what many of us in the arts community already knew, that “in the past few months, dozens of opera companies, theater companies, dance organizations, museums and symphonies have either closed or suffered major cash crises.” Kaiser suggests that “we need an emergency grant for arts organizations in America, and we need legislation that allows unusual access to endowments. Washington must encourage foundations to increase their spending rates during this crisis, and we need immediate tax breaks for corporate giving.” Read the full article here.

Performing Arts Training International Conference

October 24-27, 2008: Bovec, Slovenia

The conference is open to professional performers, performing arts educators and teachers from all over the world interested in the research of topical questions and processes in contemporary performing arts education and training. At the moment the Conference is accepting presentation proposals.

PRESENTATION FORMATS:
• workshop/master class
• work in progress
• performance fragment
• reading/lecture
• any other way of demonstration to the presenter's discretion

Submissions Guidelines and Registration: Click here.
Accommodations and Venue: Click here. (Bovec mountain resort)
Conference Info: Click here.

If you are unable to attend the conference there is opportunity to send your promotional materials: booklets or flyers about your company, announcements of workshops, courses, performances and other events. All materials will be displayed at the main information stand and will be available to the delegates during the entire period of the conference.

The Heath Ledger Theatre?

The arts community of Perth, Australia is up in arms about the announcement by Premier Alan Carpenter that he will name the new performing arts center in Northbridge after Hollywood film actor Heath Ledger.

Many have attacked the decision because of the Perth-born actor’s personal life and lack of theatre work as reasons why the center should get a different name.

West Australian Academy of Performing Arts program director Andrew Lewis criticized the move, saying the WA government had engaged in a cynical marketing exercise. "People in the industry don't feel that they were consulted," he said. But he stressed that this did not detract from the fact that Ledger was a great actor.

"I certainly would love to honour Heath because I think he was an extraordinary man and a great talent, one of the best exports that we have ever had," Mr Lewis said. "And he is well known, which will hopefully bring people to the theatre."

US Performing Artists' Tax Break Legislation

New York Senator Chuck Schumer and California Senator Dianne Feinstein announced plans Thursday to introduce legislation that would make it easier for more actors and performing artists to deduct business expenses from their taxes.

Under the new legislation, artists earning less than $30,000 a year would be able to write off performance-related expenses such as head shots, audition tapes, and transportation to and from auditions.

The legislation would update the current tax law concerning actors, which was passed in 1986, and allows those making less than $16,000 annually to deduct business expenses. The updated legislation would also allow performing artists to claim business expenses as adjustments to income, rather than having to write these expenses off as itemized deductions.

Mr. Schumer said more than 36,000 New York actors would now qualify for the tax break. "This tax code is so outdated, it's more appropriate for court jesters from the Middle Ages than for today's performing artists," said Sen. Schumer.

Raft

Be sure to visit the new site, RAFT– a temporary platform for contemporary questions. Formed out of an alliance between IETM, idanca.net and Oscura magazine. It will offer “an open and democratic space for people to think about performing arts today”.

As the founders explain, they chose the name because “the idea of the space is to be, as the name itself conveys, a temporary platform made of pieces tied together.We needed a name. We kept thinking about fluidity in contemporary definitions and borders, about this ocean of information around us and between us, not unlike the ocean that divide all the writers of this project into continents. Then we had this idea of this initiative as a small temporary and basic platform made of some ideas/questions/people tied (softly) together and floating around for anyone to navigate.”

Belarus Free Theatre

This is the first and second article in a three part series written for IETM by the Belarus Free Theatre. It serves as an introduction to the contemporary performing arts scene in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

[On a personal note, I am happy to know Natalia Kolyada and Nikolai Khalezin, and had the unique pleasure of, after three years over the internet, finally meeting them in person while they were here in NYC for the 'Under the Radar Festival'. The Internationalists are honored to consider them, and for them to consider us, theatrical associates. - DH]