What we know of as the South is as much an attitude as it is anything else. It’s a way of looking at the world, it’s a way of responding to other people and it’s a way of eating. Two very different dining experiences highlighted the continuity of the southern diet in very different ways. …
The Success of Opposites – Waffle House and Dasha Barbours Southern Bistro Read More »
If you’ve been around long enough to remember the shock of 9/11, you recall; and may still recoil at, how much things changed in its aftermath. Heightened security might have made us feel more safe boarding an airplane, but the precautions implemented after that fateful day also served to erode our sense of who we …
Irrepressible and Matchless – The Chicago Jazz Festival Read More »
When Douglas Turner Ward wrote his pioneering one act play, Day of Absence, in 1965; he had a very clear intent. He wanted to write a play exclusively for a black audience. An audience that did not then exist. He was also working with a highly specific set of objectives. Expectedly, he wanted to write …
Dance excellence is something you can always expect with the Ailey company, or, to use its formal name, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. But opening night of its four day stay at the Auditorium this month zoomed past even the highest of expectations as soon as the curtain rose. As an arts medium that …
We don’t choose our passions. In many ways, they choose us. The call to dance may be considered enigmatic; but it’s certainly powerful. As one writer noted, once a person’s been introduced to dance, the likelihood that they’ll go all in is virtually guaranteed. Some are brought to dance early and quickly become infatuated. Some …
Time and a change of perspective can allow you to appreciate things you once abhorred. That maxim can be true of many things. Music, art, food. People. It was true of Boys in the Band. When Mart Crowley’s 1968 bombshell of a play rolled out on celluloid in 1970, it rightfully caused the world to …
Some productions rejuvenate your appreciation for theater by stripping it down and letting you focus on its two essential parts, the story and the characters. Double Vision, a wild and smart musical now playing at the Edge on Broadway, is the kind of wacky joy ride that generate lots of grins, and an occasional groan, …
Double Vision Adds Richness to What a Musical Can Be Read More »
Sometimes dance is better understood when you try to see it through the eyes of someone who designs it. In an interview several years ago, Christopher Wheeldon Obe, the choreographer for Commedia, the first dance opening The Joffrey Ballet’s winter season at the Auditorium this past Wednesday, talked about the beauty of having you own …
Joffrey Enters its Winter Season Fresh and Strong Read More »
Freedom is one of non-representational art’s most captivating attributes. Free of geographical borders, free of national divides and often not dependent on the specifics of an individual’s origins, it doesn’t depict a place, a person or a thing. As expressions generated purely of the mind, it can represent an idea or a memory. It can …
Culturally, the distance between 1951 and 2020 is vast. It’s the distance between a new born entering a world transformed from what it was nearly seventy years ago and her grandparents or great-grandparents who’ve watched a Cold War dissolve and the overwhelming digitization of the planet. A span of time that could easily induce nostalgia. …