Recently by Sasha Anawalt

Whenever someone dies, this happens to me and maybe to you, too: a flipbook -- image after quick image of that person caught like it was yesterday -- projects on my mind's screen. Things I saw with my eyes and things that were told.

So, it is with Jerry. Gerald Arpino, to you. Mr. A -- I could never believe he wanted to be called that by his dancers. It showed his insecurity and betrayed a jealous admiration for Mr. B., at least in my view. Arpino -- as I called him most often, because that's what writers and critics do -- had to fight for every inch of respectability he could get. Few should have to go through that torture, not when they have given and given and given, as Arpino did, to his art.

The rapid-fire flip book of my motion-picture memories, upon learning of Arpino's death a few hours ago (bearing in mind that these are irrational, but telling, and that I don't have a copy of my book The Joffrey Ballet to fact-check myself with, because I'm not in my office) includes these three:  

• Flip Picture #1: Margo Sappington's story about how, when the girls in the Joffrey Ballet of the late 60s, came to him to complain about something or other, and he, basically admonishing them to toughen up and get it together, said in his Staten Island twang: "I've seens yourzs girlsz lock-ahs, and youze girlsz is pigs!" 

Arpino was, to some degree, always a dancer in the Joffrey Ballet -- he was one of them. He would pop his head into the girls dressing room, note their messy lockers and draw conclusions. The two sisters of his I met on Staten Island where he grew up were close, close, close to him and they, like him, grabbed life with both fists. The Arpino family, Italian and blue collar and devoted to God and the American dream, shaped the Joffrey Ballet almost as much as anything Robert Joffrey brought to the company's vision.

• Flip Picture #2: Arpino standing on top of his bureau, pulled to the center of his hotel room in Moscow where he could easily speak into the bare lightbulb on the ceiling. "Mr. Khrushchev, Mr. Khrushchev," he said to the bulb.(This was 1962, the company was on tour, communism...post the Cuban missle crisis ...before Kennedy's assasination). "There's just a piddly bit of soap in our room and the towels! We have one scratchy towel between us. In America, our hotels have fluffy, soft towels and plenty of them. And our soap, well, we get more than one bar in America, Mr. Khrushchev" 

The next day, room service showed up with piles of towels and soap -- enough for every dancer in the company. Arpino handed them out to the dancers, who issued more requests for different and increasingly lavish items. Each night Arpino spoke to the bulb, until Joffrey called a company meeting and said he was receiving complaints from the hotel manager. Joffrey swore his dancers could never be impolite and demanding, then asked the miscreant -- if there was such a person (because he honestly did not know) -- to stop.  

Did Arpino step forward? Probably not. Point is Arpino and Joffrey didn't tell each other everything. They often see-sawed; when one was serious, the other played the scamp. Good cop, bad cop. The visionary, the do-er. The front of the house, the back. Arpino's reputation was as the do-er, the back of the house/in-house tireless choreographer, and deservedly so -- but he was integral to Joffrey's vision and directorship. Joffrey's equal in many regards. They both lived for the company. They were survivors -- and Arpino knew how to survive sometimes by dint of pranks that kept the troupe young, loose, outrageous and...clean.

• Flip Picture #3: Putting his hand on my shoulder and thanking me for standing by him in print when he was attacked after Joffrey's death in 1988 by people on his board, at the Music Center and by some on his staff who essentially did not have confidence in him to direct and lead the company after Joffrey's death -- even though he had been there from the beginning.

Arpino thanked me many times, which was big of him. It really was, because I know my 1996 book about the company offended and troubled him. It told truths that he didn't like and maybe he didn't read it (as he said he did not), but friends had told him enough for him to know that the history that he and Joffrey worked hard to control was not what was in its pages. But Arpino also could detect real love and he knew a good human being when he saw one. Of all his many talents, his primary strength was to make others not only look good -- their best -- but feel good. He did this with his ballets. With his dancers. With his audiences. With me.

His generosity and willingness to put others before him knew no peer in the Joffrey Ballet. He brought joy. His spontaneity made for a lot of fun. "I've seens yourzs girlsz lock-ahs, and youze girlsz is pigs!" -- the occasions are many in which I have used this and, even out of context, it brings a laugh, recognition and epiphany. Try it and think of Jerry. 

The pressure is on to design a viable new business model for print journalism. At USC Annenberg School for Communication, I spend the better part of my day worrying about how students are going to get jobs, earn a living and make a difference in their chosen field: arts journalism.

Freaks me out to contemplate. But yesterday, I found, if not God, then a social entrepreneur who offered insights and possibilities. 

Adlai Wertman joined USC's Marshall School of Business this fall as a professor. Having  spent 19 years as an investment banker on Wall Street, he knows his money angles. In a conversion of what might be faith and responsibility, he spent the past seven on Skid Row in Los Angeles as President and CEO for Chrysalis, an organization that trains and employs the homeless. Chrysalis identifies and concentrates on the 1000 of Skid Row's least-likely-to-be-employed. Wertman knows from goodness.

Considering that the street and a cardboard condo seem a real possibility for some in journalism, I paid attention to Wertman at Annenberg's director's forum. He drew a strong distinction between a mission-driven business and a business.(Arts journalists are mission-driven, I reasoned, let's follow that route. I had earlier this semester taken my students to spend the day and night on Skid Row.Call it the Steve Lopez effect -- though this field trip has been an integral part of my Annenberg work for seven years, which is to say it's governed by authenticity and not airy fancy.) 

He said, "The money is always going to win. The money is chasing digital media and the money doesn't care about anything but the bottom line."  (True. We know that. So, we arts journalists may not "win." Now, lead me to our Mission.)

Wertman quoted economist Milton Freidman who said, "Business and mission don't belong together," adding, "I'm not sure I disagree with him because I'm not sure I trust business with anything else." (Okay, so if you are mission-driven, as the new arts journalism business in my imagination most organically would be, then you are really, really best off not even trying get a return on investment for whomever is fool enough to sink money in your mission.)

Wertman called these so-called fools, "Venture Philanthropists." Sweet. Has a ring to it. Part of his revolution or subterfuge is to steal the language of business. Social worker = social entrepreneur.  Executive director = CEO. Non-profit organization = an enterprise. He views the present as a time of unprecedented integration, seeing in it opportunity for social change. But, how to play into the old business model without "playing into its definition of success?"

This leads him to qustion the word "profit"?

The non-profit model in journalism, Wertman suggested, is closely aligned with organizations such as Human Rights Watch, which, at present, supports a consortium of more-than-decent staffed journalists who are breaking stories and focusing attention on human rights --  and they are not paid advocacy arms for HRW. The journalists write the truth about what they see and learn about human rights across the world. Just because they help HRW achieve its mission does not mean the journalists lose their integrity. A firewall exists. Their stories are also often published on Huffington Post.

Profit in Wertman's world is measured by making a difference to people one bowl of soup at a time. (Or one story, which in the case of Lopez at the LA Times, radicalized city policy on homelessness, not all for the better, but at least attention is now being paid.) 

"If people don't know about a subject, they won't care about it," Wertman argued, therefore it is in the interests of non-profits to get the word out about their mission and allow trained journalists to seek the truth without influence.

(What arts organizations are out there, I wondered, that care enough about good writing on the arts to staff journalists? Moreover, is it possible for a consortium of arts journalists to seize the opportunity in this border-blurring, bubble-popping digital world to frame a mission that is in alignment with a non-profit arts organization or foundation?)  

If the mission is to provide informed arts stories and reviews that helps an arts organization or foundation achieve its mission, then it could be a win-win.

Here's the deal: I never met an arts journalist who was in it for the money; most are in it for the art. Success is not measured by making bucket-loads, but by making a living and a difference -- one story at a time. We are, to this degree, more like the artists we cover. Wertman is training students to think differently about folks like us. We'd better be ready, stop fretting, moping, freaking out and get active (I thought to myself). Opportunities abound.

Any joiners out there? Venture philanthropists? Arts journalist missionaries? Ideas? 

Cultural rights. The idea of cultural rights, the history of cultural rights, the concept of cultural rights expressed in our Cultural Bill of Rights (WHO KNEW WE HAD ONE?) -- Bill Ivey in his new book, arts, inc., argues that cultural rights are "the key to bringing public interest back into America's creative life."

They have emerged as a subset of human rights, he says. "No business or arts leader in the early twentieth century harbored the slightest notion of "cultural rights," Ivey writes (oh phew, so I am not alone, though a little out of date), which is why..."it shouldn't be all that surprising that public policy in the United States has never caught up with the reality of our arts scene."

(And in the next sentence, Ivey lands the whopper): "Cultural rights are the key to bringing the public interest back into America's creative life."

If they are "key," (which Ivey builds a convincing case they are), then this book ought to be mandatory reading for anyone who cares about the arts.

Gripping reading -- dense with succinct ideas on arts and culture -- arts, inc. describes our country's turbulent ambiguities, our confusion and apparent need to distinguish art that is popular yet brings societal benefit from art that is just plain entertaining from art that is (quote) high brow. Ivey argues that by dividing these-- mostly through inattention -- we let the industry and corporate folks enter in and feast, skewing the arts away from public interest.

The cover is bright, slap-in-the-face, wake-up-call orange. Can't miss. Don't miss. arts, inc.

I can't take credit for the phrase, but I am wondering if there are readers out there who could add to the idea of Slow Journalism. Here's how it came to me...

Naka Nathaniel of the New York Times spoke to the Specialized Journalism students at USC Annenberg School for Communication about two weeks ago. His video reporting on dangerous, wartorn places -- a refugee camp in Rwanda, the slave trade in Cambodia, a wedding in a bomb shelter in Israel and genocide in Darfur, for example-- are usually accompanied by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nick Kristof's heart of darkness texts and narration and they hold their place as art.

Nathaniel's framing is void of sentiment, pity or looky-loo giddiness. There's no shred of journalistic competitiveness -- "We got the story and you didn't, CNN. Take that." Rather, as if Nathaniel and Kristoff were the arm of Human Rights Watch, their gutsy scrupulousness pervades. What could be an ignoble intrusion into the lives of desperate people on hospital beds and in other dispiriting situations they render transcendent. Poverty is more important for us to see than for us to see them seeing it. Make sense?

Hard not to respect Nathaniel and Kristof's advocacy and work. 

Then Nathaniel, sort of off the cuff, threw out to the USC students that what he was doing was part of the Slow Journalism Movement and that instead of being motivated to "feed the beast" and break news, he was more interested in his audience. "Why do a hundred photographers try to get the same shot of Michael Phelps? Why not stop competing with each other and share resources? One or two photographers will do the trick? Send the rest out for other stories," he argued.

Peculiarly, a couple of days later crackerjack blogger and one of my favorite journalists, Mr. Jalopy of Hooptyrides, said that what he was doing was not unrelated to the Slow Food Movement. He, the author of the Maker's Bill of Rights, is a major player in the DIY movement. Mark Frauenfelder, his friend and boing-boing journalism colleague, he said, was deep into tending his garden and practicing Slow Food habits, while also editing the succesful niche magazine, MAKE. Frauenfelder might be the living proof that Slow Food and Slow Journalism are cohabitating genially in real time.

Simultaneously...Slow Food USA is an organization in Brooklyn that's going gangbusters, spawned in part by the ideology of Alice Waters. Waters influenced opera and theater director Peter Sellars, who wove the political, philosophical and gastronomic pleasures of Slow Food into his New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna in late 2006. 

So, what's up? Have you jumped on the SloJo SloFo bandwagon? Maybe jumped is too active, let's say...sauntered over and sat down, setting your competitive ego aside to absorb, notice and deeply care about what's around you. To heck with deadlines or breaking the news -- these are things of the past. Distinguished journalists and artists have better things to do.

When the Poynter Institute's Romenesko runs a news item about critics, well, it jumps out at you. Many have probably already seen this, but just in case you have not, it's worth poynting out:

Ramiro Burr, an esteemed music critic and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, resigned Tuesday in the face of an ethics investigation. A former intern of his -- Douglas Shannon, who had worked with Burr at a music PR firm -- alleges that he ghost-wrote more than 100 stories and columns for Burr since 2001. 

  "I may have been a little overzealous, or overreached in trying to be the best reporter/syndicated columnist I could be," award-winning Burr said in his statement of resignation. "I sincerely apologize for breaking any rules."

Burr's Latin Notes blog and the 20 years he's spent focusing journalism attention on Latin music have brought attention and understanding and appreciation to that genre. Interestingly, and you should read the full story, Shannon and his lawyers appear to be only seeking to get credit, retroactive credit. And, Shannon made this curious remark:

 "I'm [also] disappointed that the Express-News didn't notice the changes in the work he was turning in between 2001 and 2003. Unfortunately, Burr's ethics violations were not isolated slip-ups but were repeated, frequent, and continued over a significant period of time. I hope readers and researchers will continue to peruse and benefit from Mr. Burr's work, especially his pieces from the 1980s and 1990s."

So, the ghost writer appears to be hurt that the Express-News editors did not detect a difference between what Burr wrote and what Shannon wrote. Hmmmmm...aren't good ghost writers supposed to blend in, be invisible? That's why they are ghosts?

There's nothing like looking over the past few entries on ARTicles (Rockwell, Christgau, McLennan, Munro) to kindle a warm, comfortable feeling about the state of professional journalism. But when you think about it, in American journalism, this period is the first major professional state of crisis we have experienced. Critics haven't been around that long in the scheme of things. Some of the titans are still alive.

Robert Brustein (left) responded to the news about Alan Rich's surprise empty severance package after three-score plus of writing music criticism by drawing my attention to this YouTube taping by Philoctetes of a recent conversation moderated by Roger Copeland with Stanley Kauffmann, Eric Bentley and himself.

Set aside an hour to watch "The Critic as Thinker," because this grouping may never happen again and within it is much gold. Wisdom does equal gold. (When our elders speak of "theater" try substituting the words "arts journalism" and see if you don't realize that revolution and outrage are as organic and necessary to journalism as they are to the arts. Bentley raises the spectre of "theater is dead" -- well, they say, it is continually dying and complaining about it is healthy for us, for theater. Fighting death, observing the changes, reporting on destructive causes, criticizing the corruption -- that's our job. Point is: fierce complaints and outcry are the precursors to real change. This is a good sign. That we are mad, upset, feeling as hopeless and indignant as we are -- bravi!)  

If we don't know how to get ourselves out of this mess, it is partially because we don't have any road map; no history to teach us lessons. We are in the first stages of growth -- out of childhood and into adolescence with a wrenching, horrific jolt that goes by the name of Internet. Only the National Arts Journalism Program, to my knowledge and those who ought to know, took upon itself in its esteemed "Reporting the Arts" publications of 1999 and 2004 the task of surveying, researching, quantifying and qualifying what arts journalism is as a professional field. Otherwise we are somewhat in the dark, feeling our way.

In the time it would take to prepare similar studies and publish them, it may be too late.

For now, I'd say about 40 journalists, educators, artists, arts administrators, even clergy and regular citizens responded to the blog post ("Stand up for each other") that precedes this one with good ideas, concrete solutions, business models to pursue, leaders to follow and with generous, healthy outrage.

We are, as arts-centric reporters, definitely at risk. But people I never knew -- had it not been for the Internet and ARTicles -- are working on prompt, viable solutions. It's not too late. Yet.  

This morning we learned that Christopher Page, theater critic and editor at the East Valley Tribune in Phoenix, Arizona, died. His was a suicide.

Three weeks earlier he had been laid off from his job, which in January of this year had come with a promotion, placing him in charge of online features. Chris was one of the brightest, sharpest, kindest and most outrageous critics to participate as a Fellow in the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater its first year, 2005.

Then he was 23. We called him "our NEA baby." It helped that his overall impression was round. His eyelashes were long. You wanted to hug him on sight. Chris had this effect on all of us. By "us" I mean the 24 other Fellows (who had bonded instantaneously, sustained by wicked senses of humor that live to this day on an active Listserv where sardonic musicals, often inspired by Chris, are jointly created on a fairly regular basis) his writing instructor, Barbara Isenberg, our program coordinator, Rachel Uslan, and myself, director.

Chris is the first and, to date, the last Fellow on any program I have ever run in seven years who missed the bus. He missed the bus. And just like "Home Alone," we didn't realize it until we had arrived at A Noise Within theater in beautiful, downtown Glendale -- and had sat down. I think the uncustomary silence, or the sheer lack of Chris's ebullient presence, alerted us immediately: We had left him behind. Chris was missing!

I jumped into my minivan and performed a rescue. Chris was mortified, and so funny about it. From there on in, and for the rest of eternity, we had a Buddy System for the bus. Chris Page and Chris Blank, his fellow Fellow, called themselves "Blank Page." Apt for critics, and a testament to Page's wit and willingness to accept full blame, when he needn't have. "Our NEA baby" was our responsibility.

Who knows why people kill themselves. There is a readiness here to connect his fatal action with having been laid off. But we can't invent a reality like that. Yet, Chris's death is an additional heavy burden on our arts journalism souls. The worry mounts, and it's tempting to make him emblematic.

Here I am about to launch a new Master's program in arts journalism at USC Annenberg School for Communication. This same day that I learned Chris died, I heard from another teacher at the NEA Institute. She's one of the lucky ones. A full-time theater critic in the Pacific Northwest. But, she's sitting in an arts newsroom that has 12 desks, eight of which are completely empty, unused, and with no expectation of ever being used again. Her colleagues were laid off or took the buyout. Ghost town -- maybe she is not so lucky.

Alan Rich, 83 years old, who has given his life to writing about music was let go by the L.A. Weekly and a week or so ago was told that "No, he would not receive severance pay," as he had been promised. Without a contract, he hasn't a leg to stand on.

But this is a human being. A life. A life dedicated fully and solidly to writing with surest integrity for us.

Today, I heard from a journalist questioning the intelligence of starting an MA program for arts journalists, when there are "no jobs."  Her tone was hurt, pained, frantic, and it gave me pause -- as if I haven't paused enough to question the future myself.

What right does optimism have to exist? My eye is on the artists and the arts. Will they stop? Is art going to stop being made? Will we be able to stop being interested in the arts? Stop loving and obsessing over them not just for artistic reasons, but for moral ones? Can we help writing about them?

I take my cue from the artists. Writing chooses you, you do not choose it. Dancers move. We must move. Actors act. We must take action. Artists paint. We paint with words. Architects build. Let's build arts journalism programs together where there were none.

I see in this time the opportunity to redefine and shape journalism for the better for the arts and culture. Can I guarantee a salary and health benefits and a job as we know jobs to have been? No. But I honestly believe that we can do better than we have done.

One by one by one. And a place to begin is to call for humane action when writers who have given their lives, literally or figuratively, must be let go. Supply a net, counseling, severance, comfort, whatever it takes, but we must not accept the lack of respect.

Speak out. Ask publishers and editors-in-chief to lower the blade, if they must, with awareness that for some critics their work is their lives.

Sometimes you don't know what's wrong with something until you see what's right.

I feel so depleted trying to defend dance, when really the nature of the beast is that it is dance, which means it has to be felt in order to be done. Even if you subscribe to Balanchine's credo, "Don't feel just do," I would still maintain that the people dancing must have an interior life that illuminates the movement if only for the satisfaction of themselves. Merce Cunningham's dancers report the same -- that as disconnected as movement might seem from narrative or explicit purpose, in fact, there is connection, intellectual and physical, aesthetic and organic. A connection that each dancer creates. That's what sustains the choreography's beauty: the individual.

"A Chorus Line" is precisely about this connection: individual life and its important relationship to the group, the chorus line, the choreographer's idea of "One." 

Last night Broadway's touring production of "A Chorus Line" came to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Nikki Snelson (Cassie) -- what she does on that stage had me thinking, because she is so good. Why is she good? She pushes and interprets just a little beyond what is given to her to do, BUT it's her own world she is in. She not once - not once, I tell you -- made me look at the outside of her body and say, "Oh, what technique. I bet she put in hours on that bod, that line, that mirror reflection." I don't want to be trite here. This is serious business, because dance is, in so many respects, going down the tubes. But, honestly, I did not expect to find such authentic personality through movement at "A Chorus Line."

 Of course, that is what this show is about. Therefore, kudos to director Bob Avian on this production and to the casting agents whom practically every single cast member thanks profusely: Jay Binder and Nicole Vallins. This is a musical about casting and they were letter perfect.

Michael Bennett got it about dancers and musical theater dancers, in particular. The story of Paul -- even if it is not told by the original cast member in this production -- is timeless and painful. He's the boy whose only recourse is to perform as a woman and whose father says, "Just take care of my son," when he leaves for a touring show and that's the first time that Paul has ever heard his father call him "son" -- oh, the pain and the pain and the pain again. Was there a dry eye in the house? Think not. Kevin Santos, who played Paul, was as credible as the original has to have been in my imagination.

Speaking of originals...In the audience last night was the original Maggie (Kay Cole). She lives and works in L.A. and last winter taught my NEA Insititute in Theater and Musical Theatre fellows and blew their collective minds by having them dance and having them recognize what is individual about each of their bodies and selves as expressed in dance (try doing that in a class. It's a tall order and she did it without any prompting. Call it Michael Bennett training in the flesh). But Kay was in the audience last night and seeing "A Chorus Line" with her in the row behind me added something. An extra set of eyes and heart. Her replacement Maggie ( Hollie Howard) was to my mind sensational. She sustained the final notes of "At the Ballet." She had a gorgeous voice and she was willing to be innocent and surprising and non-egotistical. Hard to do in a show like this. 

 But I would argue that "A Chrous Line" puts the ego where the ego is supposed to be. It is about service to the art.

When asked at the end by Zach (Michael Gruber, who also was in the original company and whose line as a dancer sets the bar, by which I mean the line if you traced "a line" around his body at all given times), "What would you do if you couldn't do dance?," the answers and temperature of the them is so exactly like journalists are feeling right now. The dancers respond with how Broadway is dying and how they'll dance until they can't dance no more. Ultimately they wind up singing ""What I did for Love" and I thought to myself, this is just like us. This is arts journalism.

Newspapers are dying. Broadway is dying. Did you honestly get into this business of writing dance criticism or any form of arts journalism for the money?? Did you? Why are you doing it? What are you willing to sacrifice? Could we put up a show about us "A Hedline" and have it be any different than "A Chorus Line"?  All vying and training and for a part in the newsroom. "A Byline"?

Now I ask, has Broadway died? How does information and training  get passed down? Will standards honestly lower as the Internet intercepts us? Should we give up writing? Can we?

I think we are drawn to write about the arts because we love them. Times are different. Not necessarily bad. But they are changing and they are different. When I see Nikki Snelson move with all the fortitude of Patricia McBride and the character of Violette Verdy and the amplitude of Mikhail Baryshnikov, using her energy points, I know dance is not dead. And just as I know that, I also know journalism, arts journalism, is not dead either.

You've probably seen this already, but for those who haven't, it's balm for the arts, artists, educators and journalists.

Senator Barack Obama, who earlier this year accepted Americans for the Arts' challenge to adopt a bold arts policy -- and, btw, was joined in this enterprise only by Mike Huckabee -- speaks in this YouTube clip of the value of arts education. Lucky is the person who will head the National Endowment for the Arts under Obama should things fall in his favor in November. He not only designed one arts policy, but TWO. He went a step further and convened an arts policy committee chaired by George Stevens (on which Steve Lavine, president of CalArts, also served) and it delivered.

But first watch:

Town Hall meeting April 2, 2008. (Thanks to Danielle Brazell of Arts for LA, who helped with this report.) 

This brings new meaning to ballerina wannabes. Apparently, these are the rage in Japan. Ouch!  Is that what Moira Shearer would say?