“If Michael Barrett and I were to create our own musical Mount Rushmore, we would have to start with sixty-foot sculptures of Leonard Bernstein and William Bolcom,” writes Steven Blier in his program note to A Bernstein/Bolcom Celebration, a New York Festival of Song program that takes place this week on Tuesday and Thursday at […]

Martha Rosler’s concise show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Great Power, encapsulates the weird state of our country, facing extremes of peace and war, prosperity and poverty. The most powerful element confronts the visitor straight away: a Dance Dance Revolution machine sits across from the gallery’s entrance, which is accessed by a 25¢ turnstile. Take your […]

Many New Yorkers are just getting out of bed on a weekday at 8 a.m., but yesterday morning I encountered a crowdful of them cheerfully waiting in line at Lincoln Center. The occasion? Eight o’clock was the appointed hour for tickets to today’s New York Philharmonic free 9:45 a.m. dress rehearsal—first-come, first served, one ticket […]

Radiohole breaks with traditional forms of theater, so it seems fair that a written treatment reflect this. ANGER/NATION is at The Kitchen through Sep 27 (SPOILER ALERT: contains plot and production details). ANGER = Kenneth, filmmaker, delves into the occult and subconscious, rich with symbols. NATION = Carry A., a 19th-century “temperance crusader” who wielded […]

Yesterday evening I saw Reid Farrington’s The Passion Project at P.S. 122 in the East Village. On his website, Farrington describes it as “an archival film experiment,” and it comes across like an installation with a live component: The audience stands and is free to move around performer Shelley Kay, who herself moves within a […]

My father didn’t like opera. When his favorite classical-music radio station aired an opera recording, he would almost invariably turn the dial to his second-favorite classical station. (That’s back when there were multiple dedicated classical-music stations in the New York metro area.) But he adored Pavarotti. He even went so far as to buy an […]

Ten years ago, it might’ve been a stretch to imagine that Bill T. Jones would be the driving force behind a potential Broadway hit, even if it had been Fela!, about the life and music of political activist and musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Jones was of course a major figure in the dance world, but his […]

I’m not entirely sure why the performing arts take such a long summer break in New York. If you’re a sports fan, there’s something for each season, and summer is very busy for rock and pop tours. But if you like theater, dance, opera (and even the visual arts, as museums don’t open big shows), […]

Since January, Christian Lander has been skewering a certain subsection of the population in his wildly popular blog, “Stuff White People Like.”  A few days ago, he posted Stuff White People Like #108, “Appearing to Enjoy Classical Music,” which naturally enough got my attention. He essentially writes that white people to go classical music concerts […]

There’s something special about seeing shows in the round, as opposed to facing performers the way you would in a regular theater or at the opera. The arrangement seems to add a 3-D effect, as if providing extra depth to our sense of vision. Suddenly we’re not mere spectators anymore, but potential participants. This is […]