Dance: One of the nice things about today’s technology is that so many arts groups are using film to present insider looks at the worlds they inhabit, often with major stars giving people a glimpse into their lives. So it is with Sara Mearns, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet who is renowned for her work as Odette/Odile in the great Tchaikovsky ballet Swan Lake. … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 18-20
Theater: The second shoe of Palm Beach Dramaworks’ summer concert series drops this weekend with The Most Happy Fella, Frank Loesser’s quasi-operative romantic musical about a middle-aged Italian vineyard owner who falls for a San Francisco waitress. Loesser authorized the two-keyboard arrangements that the concert will employ, for a score that includes such arias as “My Heart … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks, July 12-13
Theater: What does a theater company do when it loses its prime asset? To find out, head to Jupiter’s Carlin Park this weekend and next to see a Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival production of Much Ado About Nothing, dedicated to its co-founder, longtime artistic director and leading man, Kevin Crawford, who died suddenly at the end of 2013. Crawford had edited the text in … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 4-7
Theater: This is the final weekend for the 19th annual Summer Shorts Festival by City Theatre, at the company’s home in the Carnival Studio Theater of Miami’s Arsht Center. Whittled down to a more manageable 10 plays of 10-15 minutes duration each, that does not leave much room for error. Still, it wouldn’t be Summer Shorts if the production did not include a few … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 27-29
Art: Kyoko Hazama is a contemporary Japanese artist who specializes in creating sculptures from washi paper, and she brings to her delicate art a wonderful sense of whimsy. From a Quiet Place, an exhibit of her tiny sculptures at the Morikami Museum running through Aug. 31, features many small scenes involving a winsome-looking Japanese girl in the company of extraordinary … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 20-22
Art: Community centers are not usually associated with striking art, but a chance encounter with vibrant colors at the Sugar Sand Park Community Center challenges that notion. Currently adorning the center’s walls are imaginative works featuring organic shapes and intriguing textures that bring to life what Farida Morris calls her happiest moments. Every color and composition … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 13-15
Film: Bicycling with Molière is a French film about two actors with large egos — if that is not redundant — rivals who are envious of each other to a fault. Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a television star who plays a brain surgeon on a popular French series, while the other has quit the business and moved to a small, remote village. Unsatisfied with his success, the TV actor … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 6-8
Film: Filmed in exquisite, though bleak black-and-white by Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski, Ida is a curious hybrid of Holocaust tale, road trip movie and odd couple drama. The title teenage character is a nun-in-training who is ordered to meet her only living relative, a distant aunt named Wanda, before she can take her vows. So Ida treks to meet Wanda and from her … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 30-June 1
Theater: Broadway plays rarely tour anymore, so even last year’s Tony Award winner, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, became available to regional theaters like GableStage to produce and give their own spin to. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov hovers over the lives of three contemporary siblings — the offspring of lit professors with a penchant for … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 16-18
Theater: The Wick Theatre has been anything but consistent in its debut season, but when it is good, it is very, very good. That describes its final show on the season, the Tony Award-winning Fats Waller revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. It helps considerably that director-choreographer Ron Hutchins gathered a company of seasoned veterans of the show, then stuck closely to the original … [Read more...]