Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints training method, which she uses as the basis of the Saratoga International Theater Institute, isn’t revolutionary: Bogart herself has said it’s nothing new. As in dance, time is addressed through tempo, duration, and repetition; space is addressed through shape, gesture, spatial relationships, and the topography of the stage. A good production of […]
Tag: Vol. 24 No. 19
Issue of Feb. 16 – 22, 1995
Posted inNews & Politics
The Anti-Cult Candidate/Precious Wax Drippings
The Anti-Cult Candidate A mental patient who’s convinced her family has belonged to a satanic cult for 400 years talks about her case: “As the doctors began to break the barriers of secrecy, revealed was the history of multigenerational satanic worship. Torturous human sacrifice, cannibalism, and brainwashing with sadistic child abuse. Before hospitalization the mother […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chris Whitley
When an artist’s music has thrilled and delighted you, you’ll forgive a few missteps, but Chris Whitley sure makes it difficult. He waits more than three and a half years before releasing a follow-up to his glorious debut, Living With the Law, and when he does (Din of Ecstasy, slated for release next month) it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Eagles
Two myths prevail about the Eagles. The first is that they typified southern California rock ‘n’ roll excess in the 1970s; the second, that their 1994 tour was an overpriced disaster. Both are half wrong. For the first, the Eagles’ decadence was greatly ameliorated by their stunning evocations of it, most notably on their ten-million-plus-selling […]
Posted inArts & Culture
How He Lied to Her Husband and The Brute
Balustrade Theatre Company, at Le Cafe. You’ve got to have a stiff spine to play farce. Rigidly stacked vertebrae encourage a singlemindedness that pushes logic into absurdity. Farce is never crazy. Rather it’s too sane by half. Balustrade’s cast begin their double bill of one-act farces by Shaw and Chekhov with poor posture. The first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Time to Live and a Time to Die
A reflective autobiographical film (1985) about filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien’s youth in the late 40s and early 50s. Largely filmed in the same places in Taiwan where the events originally happened, this unhurried family chronicle carries an emotional force and a historical significance that may not be immediately apparent. Working in long takes and wide-screen, deep […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Evelyn Glennie
A native of Scotland, Evelyn Glennie lost much of her hearing by age 12. Around the same time, with characteristic determination, she decided to take up percussion. Three years later she won a scholarship to attend London’s Royal Academy of Music. By then she’d learned how to compensate for her disability. When performing with other […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
A few years ago I heard of a process where perishable foods such as milk and lettuce were bombarded with radiation to dramatically increase their shelf life. This process also killed off bacteria and vermin. Foreign countries seemed to employ this with positive results. There was talk of using this process in the U.S., with […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Laughing Hyenas
This ten-year-old Ann Arbor quartet’s biggest shortcoming has been its incessant self-ghettoization. While their music is clearly an extension of the proud Detroit rock lineage–MC5, Stooges–their insistence that they’re a modern blues band is just plain dopey. Infighting and drug problems have laced the band’s history, but that’s hardly unique. Their somewhat offensive claims of […]
Posted inMusic
Premature Adulation
Jacky Terrason Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase February 3-5 On the cold first weekend in February, Jacky Terrasson–a hot pianist, with a hot new album, riding a wave of superheated publicity–arrived at the Jazz Showcase for his official Chicago unveiling. He brought with him a valise full of technique, a flair for rhythmically inventive arrangements, and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Come here often? I SAID, COME HERE OFTEN? “In other experiments, anurans (frogs and toads) living near highway noise could not determine the direction of sound sources as well as those living in quieter places,” reports Ronald Larkin in Illinois Natural History Survey Reports (January/February). “The males near highways altered their calling and spaced themselves […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jump Giant Project
This group of young choreographers decided to “jump giant”–to bypass the usual route for independent choreographers of putting on a few individual concerts a year at small venues. Instead they’ve pooled their money and rented the Athenaeum Theatre, an ornate auditorium that seats a few hundred, hoping to attract an audience outside the die-hard dance […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Little Miracles
Joel Meyerowitz on the Street: The First Decade at the Art Institute, through March 19 Two contrasting approaches to street photography can be found in the exhibition of 53 outdoor color photos taken by Joel Meyerowitz in the 1960s and 70s. A related exhibit on the history of street photography in an adjacent Art Institute […]