Edward Rothstein chimes in again on make believe with this follow up article on the American Museum of Natural History’s “Mythic Creatures” exhibit. Here, he gives similar leniency to those who want to believe in mermaids, unicorns and cyploses as he did in yesterday’s piece on the Creation Museum to those who want to believe [...]
Holy Crap
If you grew up Christian, this NYT article might remind you of everything you ran away from as soon as you left home for college to become a gay, meth-addicted baby killer. But now it’s all collected in one place, juuust in case you get nostalgic for the denial of scientific inquiry. The piece walks [...]
Time(s) To Dance
Modern dance’s losing streak at The Times continues: Claudia La Rocco lampoons Momix reMIX, with the inevitable Spiderman 3 reference. Then she give us the cold hard facts from Dance/NYC‘s 2006 census of dancemakers. [No link yet to the actual report]. Gia Kourlas (where the hell have you been?) dulls down Lar Lubovich’s “Othello” at [...]
Dumas VS Toni Braxton
It’s nice to imagine that the prime reason composer Louis Karchin chose Dumas’ Romulus as the subject for his first opera because of the sheer quality the novel inspired. It would have been nicer if, in his review of American Opera Projects‘ recent production the opera at the Guggenheim, critic Steve Smith would have looked [...]
Review: Björk, Flirting with natural disaster
Review: Björk, Volta It had to happen sooner or later. Mrs. Matthew Barney has produced an album I don’t entirely wish to lick to death. I guess maybe there are a couple of tracks on Selmasongs I skip through, but, for the most part, her non-film related albums have all been solid, complete, amazing examples [...]
Review: Liz Sargent Installations, “Revealing”
Review: Liz Sargent Installations, Revealing Windows and mirrors. One allows us to see actual things. The other to see images of actual things. The invoking of both of these principles in Liz Sargent’s Revealing (which had its premiere at Danspace last week) is no superficial affect. It suspends the performance, and audience, in a world [...]
More Fat = More Flavor
I found this article by Paul Ben-Itzak on danceinsider.com. It’s clear that fashions change with the tide, and we’re certainly going through one of the more dangerous eras of taste when it comes to body-image (See this Gawker post about an appalling–and quite recent–piece from the Times Style section). I find it complicating to correlate [...]
Dancer Got Back
Claudia La Rocco writes this hot editoral in The Times regarding body representation in modern dance. It’s especially timely considering Alastair Macaulay’s off-hand lashing of Doug Varone’s dancers last week. Keep it real, kids.
Look, Mommy! Gay male bonding!
Critics have to make grand gestures. It’s a way of intoning authority. It is also a rhetorical necessity in order to justify the subject, meaning: The critic attempts to substantiate why what they choose to write about is important. This usually surfaces as an effort to distinguish the subject—be it an artist or an artist’s [...]
Alastair MaCaulay cries at ballet, not feeling so fresh at BAM
Here, NY Times newbie, Alastair Macaulay, describes the most earnest of earnest activities–public weeping–at the NYC ballet. But then read as he boos at the apparent earnestness of Doug Varone’s “Dense Terrain,” calling it not so fresh and pretentious. Umm…weren’t you just crying at the ballet?!! [For an alternative, check out OUR original review of [...]
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