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Posted by Karen
on November 5, 2009, 8:56 am, in reply to "An extraordinary Talent by James Nava"
72.177.61.218
You know, even sifting through a really crummy automatic translation, this is a great article. It really shows how hard Angel is still having to work not only to get more funding for classical dance, but just to maintain the funding he already has.
Being on the outside looking in, as it were, the arts seem to be one of the areas in which Spain is still trying to recover from the Franco era, when freedom of thought and expression was heavily discouraged and censorship was the rule of the day. While the freedoms may have been restored, there still seem to be some lingering problems, like the one Angel ran into during his school years - that ballet is not an appropriate occupation for a Spanish man - and political favoritism and corruption seem to be creeping back in. Not that we have much to brag about on this side of the pond - arts in the schools will be chopped in favor of sports every time.
But we keep working away at it, especially this time of year - Corella Ballet is continuing their tour of schools with their Shakespeare program, and in a few short weeks scores of regional US companies will begin doing school shows of Nutcracker, either going to the schools to do excerpts or busing the kids in for special full length performances.
Angel's program is even more intensive, geared toward getting older students to think about the stories and how they are told through dance theater. It is an extraordinary effort, and a very long term investment. Not all of these kids will go on to careers in the performing arts, but if most of them grow up and come back to the theater as audience members and patrons of the arts, and bring their own kids with them - that's the ultimate payoff. A very long term investment, but one we cannot afford not to make, whatever the state of the economy.
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