This past week, the two most potent cultural events I’ve seen involve both space travel and music—Wooster Group’s La Didone, and SciFi Network’s Battlestar Galactica. Coincidence? La Didone intertwines tellings of Francesco Cavalli’s opera and Mario Bava’s film, Terrore nello spazio (Planet of the Vampires, 1965). Wooster Group regulars, including Kate Valk, Ari Fliakos, and [...]

There’s something about Ivy Baldwin’s work that’s transporting. It could be the movement, which shifts between childlike play and virtuosity. It might be the attention to detail in every element, from lighting to set to sound, including a settling overture. It might be the five engaging performers, including Baldwin. In all likelihood, it’s everything assembled [...]

Sometimes reality can be stranger than fiction—not just any old fiction, but, according to artist Michael Rakowitz, science fiction. That’s the takeaway, at least, from his show currently on view at Lombard-Freid Projects in Chelsea. In it, Rakowitz explores the scarcely believable but utterly true connections between sci-fi—particularly the movie Star Wars—and Saddam Hussein. Although [...]

These days, when you hear news reports about the daunting challenges facing the arts and culture world, it’s typically problems of the financial sort being discussed. For the Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, who plays Middle Eastern music with his Kinan Azmeh Quartet tonight at St. Peter’s Church, it’s just one of many challenges he faces. [...]

New York audiences are most familiar with West Side Story from choreographer Jerome Robbins’ same-titled suite for New York City Ballet, from the 1961 film directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, and the essential story from myriad renditions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But it is on Broadway now after nearly 30 years (!), and [...]

“You want me to play WHERE?” That was Stew’s first reaction when he got the call inviting him to do a concert a the newly reopened Alice Tully Hall. As the singer-songwriter told the audience at his March 6 concert there—with collaborator Heidi Rodewald, a band of 17 instruments, plus singers de’Adre Aziza, Eisa Davis, [...]

Art fair fever grips the city this weekend. In addition to the smaller Pulse, Scope, and Bridge fairs, there is the mega Armory Show, which has added modern art to its contemporary focus, with more than 250 exhibitors. The Armory is located on two piers this year, with 94 (at 53rd St. on the Hudson) [...]

Paul Taylor Dance Company is performing 19 works in nearly three weeks at City Center, through March 15. This is both a gift and a curse. The sheer breadth of his work is dazzling, and it is brought into stunning clarity by his amazing company of 16. The downside is choosing which programs to see. [...]

It’s plain to see what Martin Kippenberger (1953 – 1997) did, judging from MOMA’s fairly comprehensive overview of this German artist. The question is, what didn’t he do? At various stages of his sadly brief life, he had the ambition to be an actor, writer, musician, and artist. He met each with varying success, but [...]

Danielle de Niese is back in her hometown of New York this month for her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall on February 27. This comes directly on the heels of a run of performances at the Met as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice opposite Stephanie Blythe’s Orfeo, for which Blythe and de [...]