Archive for the ‘We Love Arts’ Category
This Week in Music: Play it Loud: The Antlers/Cotton Jones @ IOTA
Love can’t buy a full room, no matter what the prophets of new media might say. Even when the gushing adoration gets issued from the fast-typing manicured fingers of a name-checking rock critic, it’s not enough to ensure that there will actually be warm-drinking bodies filling the club when the band finally walks out — at least not at Iota.
More »We Love Arts: The Seagull on 16th Street
Most people don’t associate Chekhov with comedy. We think Russia in all caps, passion with a punch, alcoholics, suicides, depressives. And yes, there’s a lot of that. Except it can all be pretty hysterical stuff, as Theater J’s adaptation of “The Seagull” proves. It’s a thin line between tragedy and comedy, and Chekhov certainly meant us [...]
More »A Historic Rage
No matter what Craig Finn may tell you about a unified scene, The Hold Steady comes at you in fragments.
Blame it on the sometimes sloppy, jangly old-school rock and roll riffs — unashamedly lifted straight from your dad’s collection of vinyl — the drunken sing-speak proclamations of Finn, or just the confusion over just what you’re watching; America’s biggest bar band throws the craziest fist-pumping house party in town.
Granted, it’d be a strange place thing to witness from the rafters, a seat, or just a spot on the balcony — boredom and misplaced analysis falls easy— but when you’re packed into the rolling, bouncing first rows of the 9:30 Club on a sloshing Sunday night, there’s no scene that I’d rather fall into.
More »We Love Arts: Fever/Dream
Battle of the sexes, generational conflict, and class warfare all tied up in a screwball comedy that re-imagines Calderon’s classic “Life is a Dream” - this is Woolly Mammoth’s world premiere of Sheila Callaghan’s “Fever/Dream.” It’s a frolic, but with bite.
There’s something for everyone to relate to here. The generations are neatly drawn - Boomers [...]
International Booty-Shaking
‘Embassy of India Dance Performers’ (Dhoonya Dance)
courtesy of ‘Mr. T in DC’
So, on a lark, I signed up for a Bollywood dance class. I figured I’d get to listen to some music I’m not familiar with, work out on a predictable schedule, and have a little fun. I even signed up for my dance studio’s [...]
We Love Arts: Men Fake Foreplay
Maybe it was the Women’s Studies major joke in which Dugan’s father asks his former girlfriend, “Women’s Studies? You go to school for four years just to learn how to cook?” (I took a Women’s Studies course or two at Vassar) or it could have been the “militant feminist lesbian chiropractor” joke, “She cracks my [...]
More »We Love Arts: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Blending both breathtaking physical control and hypnotic emotional projection, Synetic Theater is the bright star of the Washington arts scene. Seriously, if anyone ever yaps on and on to you about DC having nothing to offer in the way of brilliant theater, get them to the current production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and dare [...]
More »We Love Arts: Design for Living
Robert Sella as Leo, Gretchen Egolf as Gilda and Tom Story as Otto in Noel Coward’s Design for Living, directed by Michael Kahn. Photo by Scott Suchman.
I postponed this review (sometimes being “new media” is convenient) because I wanted to make a 100% confident statement about the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Design for Living: you [...]
We Love Arts: “Legacy of Light”
It makes perfect sense that a theater company whose current renovations will include a new space to be christened “the Cradle” would commission a play about motherhood in all its forms. Karen Zacarias’s “Legacy of Light,” at Arena Stage in Crystal City now through June 14, is a wide embrace of these themes - the [...]
More »We Love Arts: Saffron Dance
“Shimmy” courtesy of Saffron Dance
This past Sunday when I arrived for my Oriental bellydance class at Saffron Dance in Clarendon, the studio was a frenzied hive of activity. Costumes fluttering, dancers rehearsing in every available space, everyone giving their all in that wonderful energy that takes over the week before performances. Every glimpse I catch [...]
More »Art Spiegelman: Comics From Mickey Mouse to Manga
On a large screen behind legendary comic artist Art Spiegelman is an image of a page from the dictionary. A fat red loop lassoes the definition of “comic strip.” “comic strip. A narrative series of cartoons.” The comic strip, Spiegelman explains is an inherently narrative form and their story-telling capability puts them at the heart [...]
More »We Love Arts: Antebellum
Jessica Frances Dukes as Edna and Jenna Sokolowski,shot by Stan Barouh
I pondered letting this one pass without comment; one of the virtues of writing for a blog rather than a Paper of Record is that I’m not obligated to weigh in. In the end, though, I decided I’d weigh in, however briefly. In [...]
We Love Arts: Cherry Blast
I think we can all agree that one of the reasons “we love DC” is the arrival of spring each year when our city is transformed from a bleak, gray land of zombies into a cheery land of fresh-faced partiers. The harsh winter weather is behind us, the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom, girls [...]
More »Hexagon 2009: What So Proudly We Bailed
Political satire. Comedy. Music. Charity. Hexagon has been putting on satirical musical theater performances in DC since 1955, and every year, a different local charity benefits from the proceeds of ticket sales. Due to my spaciness in getting this posted, tickets are now nearly sold out, but there are still seats available for several shows! [...]
More »We Love Arts: The Greatest Show On Earth
‘Fly’
courtesy of ‘Thomas Hawk’
So I think March is cursed. These past two weeks have been some of the toughest I’ve had in recent history, both personally and professionally, and so when I was offered a night at the circus? YES PLEASE. Let’s escape, I’m ready for trapezes and clowns to distract me from my own [...]
We Love Arts: Denyce Graves Lends Her Voice to Help Ellington School
‘The Kennedy Center‘
Courtesy of public.resource.org
Denyce Graves, a native of Washington, DC returned here last month for a recital to support her alma mater, DC’s Duke Ellington School for the Arts. The Kennedy Center was crowded for the recital, which featured a nice mixture of classical, jazz, gospel, and contemporary selections as well as the talents [...]
We Love Arts: Ion
courtesy of shakespearetheatreco
Yes, there are puppets. More on that later.
I chose the above picture out of STC’s flickr stream to give you some idea about some of the unusual choices that director Ethan McSweeny takes in adapting this Euripides play. The caption for the above photo is Patricia Santomasso in rehearsal for the Shakespeare Theatre [...]
