CMU School of Drama


Monday, March 28, 2011

Pittsburgh's arts groups travel the globe for ideas

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Reputation and recommendations aren't enough. Recordings aren't sufficient, either. For the people responsible for bring the best in performing arts to Pittsburgh, there's no substitute for the live experience.
That's why Pittsburgh's artistic leaders spend one to three months a year on the road looking for new talent to delight audiences at home.
'There's a visceral connection in a live performance that is simply impossible to achieve in any recorded medium,' Paul Organisak, executive director of Pittsburgh Dance Council and vice president for programming for Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, says. 'We're working in the live arts. It has to be experienced live. We're not presenting recorded dance.'

3 comments:

kservice said...

Pittsburgh is in such a strangely geographical location and I am glad that the local arts organizations feel that it is important to bring international artists to local audiences. Having grown up in an isolated place, the idea of travelling to another city for an experience like an opera devalues your home city ever so slightly.

David P said...

I agree with Kevin. While I haven't been in Pittsburgh for very long, I've found the artistic scene here to be unique to the city and its own culture, but at the same time closed off to more diverse forms of art. I feel like bringing international and national art movements back here could lead to inspiring new work here in Pittsburgh. This seems like a great step in bringing new work to a city which is already rich with culture, but just needs a new boost.

Danielle F said...

I like hearing these stories about the people that we don't ever see or hear about but who are really the ones responsible for bringing entertainment and culture to this town. I'm amazed to hear that they spend as much as a quarter of the year on the road in search of the next big thing to bring to Pittsburgh. It must be one hell of a job--traveling the world seeing performances and talking to artists and managers and agents. It must also be stressful too, to be spending company money to find something to bring home that will make them more money. Neat.