In Grand Rapids Ballet’s season opener, “Contemporary Visions”, “contemporary” refers to the once revolutionary style of dance that offers storytelling through a blend of classical ballet, jazz, lyrical, and modern dance; as well as breath and emotionality with freedom of movement and musicality; but it also speaks to this particular revolutionary cultural moment.
“Trifles”, Susan Glaspell’s 1916 one-act play regarded as a classic piece of first-wave feminist literature, is based on a true story of how two women protected a battered wife who murdered her husband by hiding evidence that otherwise went undetected by police.
In 2023, arts organizations are largely back on their feet and offering incredible seasons of art, conversations, fun and community involvement.
The original 1974 musical Working is very much of its time. Based on celebrated Chicago radio journalist Studs Terkel’s oral history, it told the individual stories, in their own words, of working class Americans.
The "Funny Girl" Broadway tour, currently in production at DeVos Hall in Grand Rapids, has changed it all.
“Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties” is so provocative we can’t put in print the play’s full title.
SpongeBob: It was a cartoon. I knew that much. But that was about all I knew before taking my seat in Grand Rapids Civic’s lovely Easter egg of a theater.
Nine hundred twenty-eight presenting artists, $200,000 in grants, 153 venues in and around Grand Rapids and an impressive $400,000 in prizes—even after a decade since its inception, ArtPrize continues to see new changes and edits each year.
Emily Luyk is an adventurer. After growing up in Byron Center, she moved to San Francisco at 19, spending two years there before moving to Grand Rapids.
Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan. This season, there’s absolutely no shortage of concerts, symphonies, plays, musicals, ballet, visual arts and beyond.
Every now and then in theatre, you come across a performance so delightful, so inspired, the material from which it springs hardly matters.
The fun-loving resort entertainer/playboy Tully, the central character in “Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville” declares within the first few minutes of the show, now in production at The Barn Theatre, that “romance is better enjoyed on the surface—like the ocean.”
There is a moment in Saugatuck Center for the Arts’ production of the multiple Grammy- and Tony-Award winning “Jersey Boys” in which an image of the Four Seasons on a black and white television is projected above the band as they perform their hit “Sherry” on stage—in technicolor of the variety one can only experience in person—and the crowd goes wild.
“Singing is living to me,” declares Desiree Montes as a deeply inebriated Billie Holiday in one of her final performances in a South Philly club. This is the proclamation we must keep in mind throughout this phenomenal yet bleak performance of Hope Repertory Theatre’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” because otherwise it could merely be an exercise in trauma voyeurism.
