The Cuillo Centre for the Arts, at right.WEST PALM BEACH -- Like many a local resident in this downbeat economy, Palm Beach Dramaworks has decided to rent instead of buy.Long in the market for a new theater to replace its current 85-seat digs, the 10-year-old professional theater company in West Palm Beach announced today it will be signing a 20-year lease to move … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 27-29
Punch bowl showing the trade district in Canton, China, about 1780.Art: Earlier this month, China claimed the title of the world’s second-largest economy, overtaking Japan for the No. 2 spot behind the United States. It seems a local achievement for a nation that has long been a much-desired global trading partner, and a new show at the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 20-22
Tilda Swinton as the title character in Orlando.Film: Tilda Swinton broke into the wider consciousness back in 1992 with her star turn as Orlando, the androgynous hero/heroine of Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel of a Tudor-era Zelig who begins as a debonair male court poet in 1588 and ends up in 1928 as a married woman. In Sally … [Read more...]
ArtsBuzz: ‘Spring Awakening’ set for Kravis; Classical South Florida chief mum on WXEL changes
Sarah Stevens and Trey Gerrald in Spring Awakening.(Photo by Joan Marcus)The Kravis Center’s 19th season of theater, film, music, dance and comedy will include a performance in March of Spring Awakening, the Duncan Sheik adaptation of Franz Wedekind’s play that won the Tony for best musical in 2007.In its initial run, the musical starred Lea Michele, the … [Read more...]
Music review: Chamber festival’s closer features effective Dahl and premiere
Ingolf Dahl (1912-1970). In the years just before and after World War II, Southern California became an oasis of sun, refuge and economic opportunity for several of the era’s most important European composers, Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schonberg chief among them. Ingolf Dahl was another one of those composers, and in the fourth and final program of the Palm Beach … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 30-Aug. 5
Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes. Dance: Julie Kent, long a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, takes the title role tonight and through the weekend in Giselle, with the Boca Ballet Theatre at Florida Atlantic University’s University Theatre. Kent, one of the best-known ballerinas of her generation, partners with another ABT standout, Marcelo … [Read more...]
Music review: French-accented chamber program brings vigor to Ibert trio
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962).By Greg StepanichAt its most important, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival is about discovery, in hearing something worthwhile that its musicians have brought out of the libraries or fresh off the stocks for its loyal audience of nearly two decades.In the first installment Friday of its third week of concerts, the musicians returned in … [Read more...]
Music review: Musical piety, vocal purity make for absorbing concert of French Baroque
Louis XIV, king of France and Navarre (1638-1715).By Greg StepanichIn the days when Louis XIV was an actual presence and not merely the name of a favorite rococo interior design fashion, the faithful gathered in churches for communion with the Almighty but also for music, for the sound of a pure, unclouded voice ascending into the severe angles of … [Read more...]
Music review: Beethoven’s ‘Harp’ stands out in second chamber fest concert
Joaquín Turina (1882-1949). By Greg StepanichThe 10th string quartet of Beethoven, depending on which scholarly camp you favor, is either a genial mid-career throwback to the peak of the Haydn classical style or the earliest example of the innovatory, astonishing manner of the late-period quartets.Either way, it’s a remarkable piece of music from a … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 16-20
Blue Boy, by Tammy Marinuzzi.Art: Work in ceramics by a group of artists who all have connections to the University of Florida opens today at West Palm Beach’s Armory Art Center and runs through Aug. 28. The 13 artists, assembled under the rubric Motley Moxie, shared the same working environment or instructors at UF, but have widely varied approaches to … [Read more...]