Category Dance
Shen Wei Dance Arts (or, How modern dance can get out of your comfort zone on a Friday night)
Picture this: You walk into an all-white room that has been heated to approximately 87 degrees Fahrenheit. On the floor are three rows of square white mats with things on them. Things like lucite blocks, giant rubber bands, naked people, puddles of paint, piles of hair. You walk amongst those mats feeling hot and a […]
Best dance concert of the season
Monica Bill Barnes & Company performed last night at the Kennedy Center. It was, hands down, the most fun I’ve had at a dance performance all year. The choreography was fresh and full of humor and contagious enthusiasm. The dancers exuded personality and, by the end of the show, I wanted to be best friends with all of them. It helped, […]
Chicago – The Joffrey does Othello
The Chicago cultural scene has more than just fantastic architecture. It’s also got one of the leading American ballet companies, the Joffrey Ballet, and we were thrilled to discover that our trip fell during their run of Othello. We got to the theatre early and settled into our seats . . . moi, Amanda […]
Leaps and turns (or, Why we go to the ballet)
There’s nothing like ballet for revealing the astonishing beauty of disciplined athleticism. Take, for example, the ABT’s performance of Le Corsaire tonight at the Kennedy Center. In Act II, our eponymous pirate hero hides out in his grotto with his slave and his captured Greek girl, both of whom (thanks to the inevitable logic of ballet) proceed to dance […]
Hard at work (it’s a good thing no one can see what I’m actually typing)
By some magical shift in the stars, all of the projects I’m working on have managed to go into a lull at the same time. The lull will end tomorrow, and I’m sure the rest of the week will be perfectly busy, but for now it’s a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I’m at work, and I’m BORED. So […]
Spring break weekend
What do Cancun and DC have in common? Spring breakers. Cancun gets the party-wild college kids; DC gets the school groups. They arrive in giant charter buses and troop through the city in matching t-shirts while learning about Our Nation’s Capitol. Oh, to be a student with regular buit-in vacations! Normally spring just rolls right by me — […]
Patron of the arts
The Alvin Ailey concerts are always one of the highlights of the modern dance season at the Kennedy Center. They come every year, and every year I go and I love them. (Here’s what I wrote about their performance last year.) I saw them perform at the Kennedy Center on Thursday and, as always, the athleticism and beauty of […]
All the happy things
I hope everyone had as good a weekend as I did. Here are the highlights: I. There’s nothing like blowing off work on a Saturday afternoon to eat some tasty barbecue with good friends. My original plan had been to spend the bulk of the day working, trying to get a head start on the […]
Denver – Productive and leisurely
It’s a good thing I went to church last Sunday and heard the Christmas message then — because that sure didn’t happen today. Instead, I slept until 10am (nine hours of sleep! in a row!) and spent the rest of the day being moderately productive and 100% on holiday — in both senses of the word: I relished the […]
Tonight: Modern dance and surprise packing
So. Lar Lubovitch. His dance company performed at the Kennedy Center tonight, and I saw it. This was my first time seeing his work, and I really liked it. The choreography was beautiful and fun, fairly intense. Not quite transcendant in the way that Mark Morris was, but still a wonderful artistic treat. With our season’s […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 