Artists have a special sensitivity to life. Their minds are like eyes that see the world a little differently than most of us. With their imagination and through their chosen form of expression, they feed their visions back to us in music, painting, theater, dance and verse. Whatever their format, they are telling stories about …
When you listen to two people talking, and their words reveal an intimacy that goes beyond the bond of a family member or friend, who they are becomes irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether they’re old or young, rich or not rich, the same sex or of opposite sexes, the words don’t change. They’re the kind …
You can’t talk to anybody these days who isn’t looking for something to feel good about. Lots of us are homing in on Christmas as that jolt of joy that’ll ease the weight of this oppressive and thriving pandemic. We won’t even mention the stifling political angst that’s griped the country for months. But there’ve …
There are all kinds of exaggerations and this is one of them, Clark St. between Grand and Hubbard looks like a land mass under siege. Closed off by wooden barriers, with a long line of cars hugging the left lane curb from Dearborn along Grand glowing in each others alert lights; it takes a minute …
You don’t ordinarily think of dancers as inspiring but Netflix’s new five- part series Move will make you reconsider. The show travels the world and introduces you to people who are not only masters at what they do but also qualify as visionaries in the way they approach dance. Charles “Lil Buck” Riley and Jon …
According to Collaboractions, a Chicago theatrical cooperative intent on making art for and by everyday people, “theater permeates all aspects of life”. You can nudge that thought just a little harder and say life is theater. Following their mission of inclusion, broad access and social action, the group’s works embrace voices that rarely receive the …
“People are selfish.” Malangatana Ngwenya used that phrase repeatedly in a film, Homeland, about his life and work a few years before he died in 2011. Commonly known simply as Malangatana, he rose to prominence and received international notoriety in the 60s and 70s for the force and power of his paintings that refused to …
Malangatana’s Artistic Messages Startling and Wonderful Read More »
It can be maddening to realize how much you don’t know. It can also be just as liberating to have knowledge gaps you weren’t even aware of filled in wonderful ways. Those are only two of the impressions that’ll linger in your mind after catching The Neo-Futurists latest entertainment sparkler, 45 Plays for America’s First …
Bravo to The Neo-Futurists and Their Great Reveal Read More »
In Goodman’s Theater’s traveling performance of Fannie Lou Hamer, Speak On It!, E. Faye Butler blows in like a hurricane when she takes the stage as Hamer, the late civil rights icon. Back in the sixties, Lyndon Johnson attempted to obscure the impact and purity of Hamer’s simple truths and unshakable convictions by dismissing her …
Here in the states, the Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF) rates as one of America’s oldest and most loved music events around. Held on 20 acres of the Monterey County Fairgrounds, up to 500 jazz artists perform over the festival’s long late September weekend. For musicians, Monterey is a place, very much like Carnegie Hall, that …