Aisle View: Don't Speak! Don't Sing!
Wouldn't it be surefire to take Woody Allen's 1994 Bullets over Broadway -- that Roaring Twenties comedy delight about an idealistic young dramatist whose play is subverted when he gets mixed up with a...
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Skillful Mix of High Art and Low Clowning Helped Make Aladdin the Surprise...
It was June of 1913 that Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. moved his legendary Follies over from the Moulin Rouge to the New Amsterdam Theatre. And for the next 14 years, this NYC landmark was not only home to the...
View ArticleSounds From Space -- Music for Yuri's Night 2014!
Wow, where did the past year go? It's once again time to dust off your space helmets and dancing shoes and get ready to celebrate the anniversary of the first human space flight! 53 years ago, on April...
View Article'Bullets Over Broadway': Allen and Stroman Hit the Bull's-Eye
If you liked the movie, you're going to love the musical. Woody Allen and Susan Stroman have transformed Bullets Over Broadway into a hit show (pun intended) that opens with a bang and ends with a bang...
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Ask the Art Professor: Should I Drop Out of Art School?
I have a background in art, as growing up I benefited from practice, private instruction and a pretty decent art program in grade school and high school. Going into college, I am much further along...
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Pygmalionization
In "The Secret Auden," (The New York Review of Books, 3/20/140 Ed Mendelson quotes the following passage from a lecture Auden gave on Shakespeare's sonnets, "Art may spill over from creating a world...
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Dancing in Paradise: An Encounter with Howard Finster
For the past few months, Lauri Stallings, an innovative choreographer in Atlanta, has been having deep conversations with Rev. Howard Finster, the folk artist and evangelical preacher who died in 2001....
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Benjamin King at Longhouse Projects
Benjamin King's paintings, now on view at Longhouse Projects resist easy categorization, slipping fluidly back and forth between material-based abstraction and Mother Earth inspired landscape. Matter...
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Talking Boats and Brooklyn With Street Artist, Swoon
by Helen Anne Travis In 2009, Brooklyn street artist, Swoon and two dozen or so friends crashed the Venice Biennale contemporary art show in hulking rafts made from New York City garbage. Called the...
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Stage Door: The Heir Apparent, La Zapatera Prodigiosa
Classic French farce is on display at CSC, thanks to a madcap adaptation by David Ives. The Heir Apparent is a fast-paced, entertaining tale about a sickly miser whose nephew is desperate for him to...
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Ramin Bahrami Scores With Bach and Scarlatti in Beverly Hills 90210
Ramin Bahrami. Photo by Melina Mulas Ramin Bahrami made his U.S.A. debut Wednesday night in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills...
View ArticleThey Don't Make Music like They Used to (and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves...
I have a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, and they listen to whatever music I listen to, and they like it, most of the time. But I live in fear. We're not the only influences in the kids' lives,...
View ArticleHow a Film Could Get You 25 Years in Jail!
Twenty years ago this April close to one million Rwandans were slaughtered by machetes, hand grenades and bullets in the swiftest and, perhaps, most savage genocide in modern history. Ten years ago, I...
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Let's Get Ready to Rumble!
The ancient Chinese philosopher and military strategist, Sun Tzu, is noted for his thoughts on combat. In his famous work, The Art of War, he offers surprising opinions about how to respect, annoy, and...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Athol Fugard's "Shadow...," Richard Maxwell's "Isolde"
Although Athol Fugard turns 82 in June and his protagonist in The Shadow of the Hummingbird--having its world premiere at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre--is already 84, the two-year difference in ages...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Athol Fugard's Shadow..., Richard Maxwell's Isolde
Although Athol Fugard turns 82 in June and his protagonist in The Shadow of the Hummingbird -- having its world premiere at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre -- is already 84, the two-year difference in...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Audra McDonald Dazzles as Billie Holiday
The most exquisite singing being done on a New York City stage right now is Audra McDonald delivering "God Bless the Child" at Circle in the Square. It's stunning, it's heartbreaking. If there's...
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Sugarcoating the Art of Real Estate
A few days ago, I received a mass e-mail invitation from Creative Time for their annual spring gala, which will take place at the long defunct Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn and honor artist Kara...
View Article40,000 Years of Singing
"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home." -- Aboriginal Elder quoted in...
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Real Life Into Art: As Time Goes By
The death of Bob Larbey last week received little if any attention on English television; it was overwhelmed by such trivial stories as the downfall of yet another sleazy politician, and the first...
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