Whiffs of nostalgia and currency run through digital RAD Fest
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — In an all-digital format, the 12th edition of the Regional Alternative Dance Festival (RAD Fest) brought tastes of this splendid festival to an at-home audience. The schedule kept to the conventions of years past, with two streamed concerts, a youth performance, a dance film screening, classes and discussions held throughout the weekend. Watching the smattering of dance works…
Dancing with a stranger on Zoom was something I didn’t think I needed until I was doing it: Nichole Canuso’s ‘Being/With’
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — To describe what happened last Tuesday evening feels a little like a betrayal of trust. I was one of two audience members for an episode of Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s Being/With: Home — available through March 14 via limited digital engagements presented by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, Maine). That…
Film review: ‘TFW No GF’ mines quasi-empathy for bored and ignored millennial trolls
TFW No GF was released on Valentine’s Day. As a cruel joke? Or in ironic solidarity with the film’s subjects? Both, I hope. Alex Lee Moyer’s documentary film, premiered at the digital edition of SXSW in 2020, tells the stories of five men. More specifically, they are white, millennial internet trolls identified only by their first names or handles: Sean,…
Big Muddy’s winter mixed-rep a smorgasbord of dance flavors
ST. LOUIS — The show must go on, as they say. Though this mantra has been questioned throughout the past year, as a raging pandemic, political upheaval, social unrest and economic despair have put arts organizations’ very survival to the test. The Big Muddy Dance Company opted to press ahead, making the most of a bad situation by pivoting to…
Big Muddy’s ‘Lemp Legends’ leans into St. Louis folklore—and pandemic dance making
ST. LOUIS—When the Big Muddy Dance Company made Lemp Legends for the Edison Theatre in 2018, I would bet, dollars to donuts, they expected to remount it at some point. What they likely didn’t expect was a re-imagination quite like this. Lemp Legends marks many firsts for Big Muddy. It was their first full-length work and first attempt at narrative…
Rebecca Rego channels Lucia Berlin in new album, ‘Songs for Cleaning Women, Part 1’
CHICAGO—So far, Eighth Blackbird’s attempts at live-streaming a virtual concert series from their production house in Horner Park have not gone well. The series—called Chicago Artists Workshop, or CAW for short (get it? CAW? Like a bird?)—was set to open Oct. 20 with the ensemble’s Grammy Award-winning co-founders Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall accompanying tenor Karim Sulayman in a rangy program…
When life imitates art: George Floyd, RBG and ‘We’re Gonna Die’
CHICAGO—Ten minutes before the scheduled virtual opening of Theatre Y’s “We’re Gonna Die,” I heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. I didn’t want to go, even though all that it required of me was to click a Zoom link and log-in. No shoes, no parking, no awkward lobby mingling. These are the luxuries of digitized theatre, with Theatre Y among…
Moving is important. What if we took the hint, and actually paused?
NORMAL, Ill.—My feed is filled with virtual dance classes and obituaries. As COVID-19 continues to tear through this country and redefine ways of life, indefinitely, I find myself busier than ever. It shouldn’t be this way. I spend the majority of my time watching and writing about dance. Now, there are no shows to write about. Instead, a part-time teaching…
Beyond ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ new film takes a deeper dive on Petipa
Icarus Films—the independent film producer that has created documentaries on Ohad Naharin, Pina Bausch and Trisha Brown—has a new dance film making its way to your laptops and living rooms. Marius Petipa: The French Master of Russian Ballet is currently available for use by academic institutions and libraries, and will be released on home video and streaming platforms May 12….
Illinois Symphony hits all the right notes—and there were a lot of them—in V-Day program
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Love was in the air at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts Friday, which had big pink hearts projected onto the Illinois Symphony’s white bandshell set onstage. Indeed, many couples braved frigid temperatures and icy roads for this Valentine’s Day engagement called Love Notes, with the ISO offering a smattering of compositions from the Romantic period….
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