In Oscar Wilde’s triumphant Victorian novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," the character Basil Hallward offers the critique that “(w)e live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.” It was, no doubt, a jab at his critics, who couldn’t help but see his own story emerging in many of his literary works. Wilde also offered that “(t)he true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.”
After finally seeing Into the Woods — it’s been on my bucket list for a while now — it both met and exceeded my expectations. The play honors the classic fairy tale stories like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, but also gives each character a more modern take on their traditional outfit, speech and general personality.
For one night only, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts is taking art “off the wall and into the space.”
Director Todd Avery particularly enjoys the “dark side” of Into the Woods, the hugely successful musical penned by James Lapine and composed by the iconic Stephen Sondheim.
When Vadim Gluzman was a young music student, he didn’t like playing the violin. Instead of practicing for hours on end, he wanted to play ice hockey with his friends.
Ultra-realistic sculptures. Picasso prints. Vintage motorcycles. Local 1950s racing photos. And masterpieces from the Edward Curtis: The North American Indian collection.
Local artisans are breathing new life into the art of glassblowing, and their efforts will be on display at this year’s Battle of the Glass Blowers.
Had he not won a Gold Medal at the Stulberg International String Competition in 1979, Anthony Ross isn’t sure where his career would have gone.
The play “Mama’s Girls” by Marilynn Barnes Anselmi opens with two siblings in fraught play with Barbie dolls. Though symbols for conventional gender norms, the dolls’ are smooth between their legs, a revelation to Sammy, the emerging trans girl who both catalyzes and suffers from her family’s toxic dynamic.
Anyone who says ballet-based modern dance doesn’t go with hip hop has been proven entirely wrong by Wellspring Cori Terry & Dancers’ Spring Concert of Dance, Seeing/Seen, a collaborative performance that breaks down both real and perceived boundaries from start to finish and beyond.
For 127 years, Carnegie Hall has showcased phenomenal soloists, orchestras and ensembles. An estimated 50,000 performances have taken place in the iconic New York City concert hall. Its walls are embedded with stirring musical history, from Tchaikovsky conducting one of his own works on the night the building opened, to the first assembly of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra in 2009. Nina Simone, Bob Dylan and Beyonce have all performed on its stage.
The inhuman experiences of the 20,000 children orphaned and traumatized by civil war that began in the late 1980s known as the Lost Boys of Sudan have been documented by journalists, documentarians and novelists, among others; yet their incredibly harrowing journeys and often triumphant stories deserve greater attention.
Disney’s The Lion King, billed as the world’s number one musical, is credited with having launched the new Broadway, the one that’s emerged over the past 20 years from a tourist- and family-friendly Times Square, cleaned up of grit, and some may argue, heart.
In the original iteration of “The Queen of Bingo,” known as “the play you play along with” by Jeanne Michels and Phyllis Murphy, its central characters, two middle-aged, bingo-obsessed sisters, were played by men in drag. This is but one way the audience played along, as intermission also included a bingo game for which the winner received a 10-pound turkey.