trog

"Arts Troubleshooter is a two-part series following the work of world renowned arts expert Michael Lynch at two unique arts organisations whose futures are under threat. This is the first programme in the series and follows Michael's work with Northern Ballet: the first major English ballet company to be based outside London. The company has just moved into a new state-of-the-art home, but when they receive an unprecedented cut to their government grant in March 2011, they can no longer afford to keep all of their dancers. Michael's determined to help Northern Ballet save the jobs of the dancers who've devoted their careers to the company." Program details It runs against Eurovsision, so it's a recorder job, or catch it on iplayer. Is a repeat? I ask as it mentions a 2011 date in the blurb.

Dancing to a fashionable tune "ACCLAIMED Australian fashion designer Akira Isogawa is weaving his magic into the Australian Ballet's Romeo & Juliet." Adelaide Advertiser Great looking costumes, but it doesn't look very R&J more Scheherazade.

I'm not reading anything at the mo, but over the last year I've read the three books Gypsy Rose Lee wrote ("Gypsy: Memoirs of America's Most Celebrated Stripper", "The G-String Murders" and "Mother Finds A Body") and "Gypsy And Me" by Erik Lee Preminger (her son). I would very much like to read "Early Havoc" and "More Havoc" by June Havoc (Gypsy's sister), but they sell for £70+ each (if you can find them) and are way beyond my price range. I only seem to find time to read in the winter.

Sausage fingers strike again!

The average age of a woman starting ballet is between eight and eleven, of a man, often in his teens. Later is not unheard of; Melissa Hayden began at 15, Misty Copeland from ABT at 14, Adam Cooper at 16 and Igor Youskevitch at 22. I was 35 when I started but it was only for fun. I've danced in the ballet school's end of year show and I'm quite happy to leave it at that. If at say 8 years of age, I knew just how much I enjoy dancing, I might have gone into ballet professionally. Who knows!

Jugging, unicycling, tightwire walking, pumping iron and listening to my LP & 7" collection.

Today is Darcey Bussell's birthday!

Source Geeks are Sexy.net/

Bottom dances on pointe and it is supposed to represent his hooves. Men on pointe also feature in Mark Morris's "Hard Nut", (based on Nutcracker), and some versions of Cinderella and of Fille Mal Gard'ee. The Trocks and other several other male companies all dance on pointe. If you see the Trocks Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) on pointe it's amazing. Olga is about 6' in bare feet and has legs that go on forever, even more so on pointe.

Here's some ideas Uses for dead pointe shoes. Potpourri or a vase seems interesting! I've also seen them mounted in bronze and gold leaf. I have an autographed pair framed on my wall, but these were worn by a well known dancer I liked. My own dead pointes are sitting in the box with my dead flats. Yes that's right! I'm a bloke and I've been known to dance on pointe.

Arts Council England cuts losers: One year on BBC News The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs to disband BBC News

Try searching using http://www.tineye.com - The photobucket link returns no results, but if you use the upload search (assuming that you have a scan of the piccy), you might get a result.

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan to premiere in Australia - Adelaide Advertiser

I think combining News and Whats Happening is a great idea, for exactly the reason John gave. In my opinion, sub-forums are too complicated.

There were a lot of empty seats at last nights double bill in the Hippodrome. I'd say the circle was a little over 1/2 full. It was a bit better at Hobsons Choice last week, but there were still loads of empty places. The recession is biting hard.

Three interesting links from the BBC website today : Companies reduce arts donations National youth dance company in arts education review Understanding the brain on dance A lovely picture of Madeline Parker, a dancer with the Ballet Russes who died in 1936 The Advertiser

My technical experience in supporting a forum is there if you want to use it. I even have some semi-reliable home internet access again. Funding is going to be a tricky issue, but I guess that you know that.

Did anybody watch this program last night on C4? I enjoyed it very much. "Just 2% of the UK's lorry drivers are female. But woman are a growing force on the roads. MotherTruckers reveals the lifestyles of an unusual band of ladies rising to the challenge of being truck drivers, while fighting to keep a stable family environment, as mothers, daughters, wives and girlfriends." It's available on 4oD if anyone is interested http://www.channel4....hertruckers/4od Why might balletco-er's be interested? Well one of the drivers is a former ballet dancer and she would like to get back into dance. The footage of her on pointe around the truck was contrived but still engaging.

Let it be known that Trog is willing to continue in his behind the scenes roll as system administrator (aka technical support). Hopefully the committee are considering more than just a forum for the future. If ballet.co is to continue as just a forum, there are lots of hosted options available, with costs ranging from free to paid. This board is currently on a paid hosted forum service. As I see it, the problem here is that if a hosted forum service is used, and the decision is made in the future to include more than just a forum, the site will have to move to a hosted web site. Migrating the forum postings might be difficult, if not impossible, thus the forum will need to remain with the forum host, and a link placed on the new site, which is messy. I believe that the committee should commit to a hosted box even if just a forum is used. I would recommend a LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySql, Perl/PHP) and be sure to insist on root shell access. If these is a problem with the site, shell access enables interrogation of the log files, which gives a huge clue as to what is wrong and how to go about fixing it. I would not recommend a WAMP platform (Windows, Apache, MySql, PHP), as the Windows log files tell you nothing useful if there is a problem. Avoid a Microsoft platform (Windows server, IIS, Microsoft Sql, .NET/VBS) at all costs! These boxes are a pain to support; experience has shown that almost nothing can be fixed when it goes wrong and a reinstall is the only option. Sadly we cannot continue with the old DCForum software for the forum. Although it has served us well in the past, the recent attacks against the site have (IMO) rendered this to be not an option. There are a huge number of forums that use phpBB, and I believe this to be robust.