Announcements:

T-shirt Contest:
Want a chance to go to your favorite 2009 camp for free?
Check out our t-shirt design contest for details! Grand Prize is a scholarship to a 2009 program and round trip transportation. Don't miss out on this opportunity, get your design submitted today!

Summer Camps 2009...An Investment in Your Future
US Performing Arts-An investment in your future!

The focus in the media for several years has been on the "millenials" difficult path to college. Statistics of staggering numbers of applicants and a downturn in the economy leading to university cutbacks has led to forecasts that are at best confusing and at worst deterring. The statistics become even more daunting for performing arts and media students. Today a student needs to understand the process and to position themselves carefully and wisely for their application to college. To that end, attending a US Performing Arts workshop is an investment in your future.

It is important to find the school with the program that "fits" you and to hone your craft so that it is competitive with other students applying. US Performing Arts affords you that opportunity. It gives you the chance to visit colleges and work with their faculty. You will get to know them and they will get to know you. You can talk about your goals and your future and hear about their departments while you discover their teaching style and when you experience our network of excellent programs you have a great comparison yardstick. This is just one of the things that makes our summer programs different than all others.

Another important thing that makes US Performing Arts different from other summer programs is clearly in our faculty and our mission,...

Read More...

The Belching Green Ogre Has a Song in His Heart
By BEN BRANTLEY, NY Times

'Tis love, the fairy tales tell us, that turns dross into gold and clods into gods. So it seems appropriate that about halfway through the leaden fairy-tale-theme costume party called "Shrek the Musical", which opened Sunday night at the Broadway Theater, it's a love scene that gives us a startling glimpse of true happiness.

That vision arrives when the hitherto adversarial hero and heroine of this latest screen-to-stage musical, adapted from the popular 2001 animated film and the children's book by William Steig, recognize they just might have something in common. Never mind that this something appears to be a shared affinity for breaking wind and belching really loudly.
Read More...

Brooklyn Museum's Costume Treasures Going to the Met
By CAROL VOGEL, NY Times

After three years of negotiations, the financially strained Brooklyn Museum has arranged to transfer its rich collection of American and European costumes and accessories to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so that it can be properly cared for and exhibited.

Although widely considered one of the best in the world, the Brooklyn costume collection has been out of public view for more than a decade. Under an agreement between the two museums that is to take effect in January, the Met will integrate the collection into its own Costume Institute. Still, it will formally retain a separate identity of sorts: it will be known as the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"Clearly this was a hard decision to make, since it is a highly important part of our history," said Arnold L. Lehman, the Brooklyn Museum's director. But he said the cost of maintaining the costume collection, much less showing it, had been a major concern for him since he was hired as director in 1997.
Read More...