By Tara Mitton Catao Of all the full-length classical ballets, it is Don Quixote that continually delights audiences, and Miami City Ballet’s production was selected to be a crowd-pleaser as well as a natural fit for the largely Hispanic company. The popular ballet has all the ingredients that make it easy for audiences to enjoy. The lavish costumes and sets by Santo Loquasto, … [Read more...]
Whit Stillman: Chronicler of the urban haute bourgeoisie
There are people like you and me in Whit Stillman’s movies, but they’re outnumbered by a different class of folks: Worlds of big money and elitism and cocktails and intellectual pedantry, where terms like “titled aristocracy” drift in and out of conversations. These days, we call these people the One Percenters, and their offspring the sufferers of “affluenza;” in the ’90s, … [Read more...]
Organizers happy about 2014 Boca Fest outcome
By Dale King Festival of the Arts Boca 2014 has been relegated to the history books. But organizers are happy with the memories. The festival’s website is filled with comments about the 10-day event that marked its eighth annual incarnation this year, taking place in Boca Raton’s Mizner Park Amphitheater and at the Cultural Arts Center. Perhaps the most striking website … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 21-23
Theater: Yes, I know you have seen The King and I before, but director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge has performed her alchemy again, refreshing the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic musical with stunning new visuals, including the second act ballet as a Thai shadow puppet extravaganza, and a terrific cast of largely Asian performers. As stunning as the design work is … [Read more...]
‘50 Years’ a standout at Ririe-Woodbury’s Duncan show
By Tara Mitton Catao On Friday night, the Duncan Theatre hosted the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, a Utah-based repertory dance troupe that continues to bear the name of the University of Utah professors who founded it over 50 years ago. However, the program didn’t have the variety that a mixed repertory program usually encompasses. Growing from a local company to an … [Read more...]
Sundays: Ghost ship
By Myles Ludwig I have to tread lightly here. I do not want to add to the anguish. Or the hysteria. But I feel as though I have been assaulted by TV news this week, CNN in particular. On the one hand, the geopolitical issue of Crimea has been positioned as a scary game of brinkmanship reminiscent of the post-WWII confrontation between the U.S. and Russia in Berlin which led … [Read more...]
Scrupulously beautiful Beethoven, intriguing Beamish from Elias Quartet
Sometimes the difference between a splendid performance of something and one that’s merely good comes down to an exercise of fundamentals. In the case of Britain’s Elias String Quartet, which played the Society of the Four Arts on Sunday afternoon, its exceptional performances had a lot to do with dynamic range. Seldom have I heard a performance with the kind of soft dynamics … [Read more...]
Sundays: Vlad the Impaler
By Myles Ludwig Vlad the Impaler has struck once again. This time, however, instead of lining the roads of his rule with the corpses of his enemies, he’s impaled the foreign policy of America and that of our European friends – and possibly even himself – on the horns of a dilemma. What should be done about the Russian bear hug of Crimea? What can be done, without tiptoeing up … [Read more...]
The View From Home 58: Feminist defiance, a cult horror puzzler, and an Apatow wannabe
Tess: One of the most sumptuously photographed films of Roman Polanski’s career, 1979’s Tess (Criterion, $34.99 Blu-ray + DVD) opens its Victorian-era narrative by conjuring none other than John Ford, as soaring music colors a majestic CinemaScope landscape. This is a film whose images burst at its own golden seams, and its use of wide-open spaces remains arguably unparalleled … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 7-9
Theater: Off-Broadway pioneer Israel Horovitz sets many of his plays in his adopted hometown of Gloucester, Mass., which is where the triangular tug-of-war, Fighting Over Beverley, takes place. But the story is more about cultural differences between England and the United States, as well as later-life love and liberation, than it is about the texture of the New England fishing … [Read more...]