Two major ballet dancers will be starring with the Boca Ballet Theatre this month in the company’s production of The Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s 1890 classic drawn from Charles Perrault’s Mother Goose tales. Dancing the lead role of Aurora will be Bridgett Zehr, a Sarasota-born, Harid-trained dancer who has been a principal dancer with the National Ballet of … [Read more...]
‘Three Hearts’: Star-cross’d lovers, in a triangle
A Parisian tax inspector misses his train home, finds himself stranded in a French province, meets a young lady for a memorable night, agrees to rendezvous with her in a week’s time, misses their date but somehow, through the magic of the movies, winds up marrying the sister he never knew she had. That’s the 30-second pitch of Three Hearts, the engaging if implausible romantic … [Read more...]
Rising violinist Chen, conductor Măcelaru team with Danish orchestra
The check-this-out mentality of social media might at first blush seem antithetical to the very idea of classical concertgoing, but that’s not the way Ray Chen sees it. The young Australian violinist finds his most congenial digital home in the realm of Facebook, but he’s also a master of Twitter and micro-video on Instagram. All of it a means to a worthy end: Getting … [Read more...]
Uggams kept star power burning for ‘Mame’
Playing flamboyant Mame Dennis in the musical version of Patrick Dennis’s comic tribute to his bohemian auntie is not exactly opening a new window for Leslie Uggams. After all, she has a history of being associated with the songs of composer-lyricist Jerry Herman. She appeared on Broadway in the retrospective revue, Jerry’s Girls and played Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, … [Read more...]
‘Five Star Life’: On the border of freedom and loneliness
Irene, the career woman at the center of A Five Star Life, spends most of her days in laps of luxury around the world. As an inspector of five-star resorts, we see Irene (Margherita Buy) jetting to Paris and Gstaad and Berlin and Morocco and China, traveling incognito and, like a spy, inventing professions when fellow guests inquire about her job. The actual answer to that … [Read more...]
Jazz world remembers pianist Higgins
Drummer Art Blakey (1919-1990) took many a young, future jazz star on the road for seasoning with his group The Jazz Messengers between the 1950s and the 1980s. The list included Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Keith Jarrett, Jackie McLean, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Joanne Brackeen, Benny Golson, Chuck Mangione and Cedar Walton. It might have also included … [Read more...]
‘Trucker’ star Monaghan found role refreshing
Eye candy with a comic flair. That sums up most of the roles that 33-year-old, Winthrop, Iowa-born Michelle Monaghan has played (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Mission Impossible: 3, Eagle Eye) in her decade-long career. But Hollywood is going to look at her differently once Trucker, in which she play tough-talking, hard-drinking, stubborn big rig driver Diane Ford, gets seen. She … [Read more...]