PRAGUE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Established in 1951 with first-chair players from a bigger radio orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra made its name specializing in works by Bohemian composers. It also tackled the Baroque repertoire, for which its modest size (36 musicians) and mellow, lyrical string playing seemed ideally suited. When the cold war ended the PCO […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 16
Issue of Jan. 22 – 28, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
Art People: Jorge Felix’s inner workings
Jorge Felix’s painted constructions resemble body parts. But that observation only goes skin deep. He mixes and matches, combining male and female genitalia. The edges are jagged, and sharp objects protrude, breaking the “skin” to reveal raw “guts” beneath the surface. The work provokes a bit of a shock, especially when you learn that Felix […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fresh Crop
Young Playwrights Festival Pegasus Players By Carol Burbank Most plays by young writers fit easily into our preconceptions of youth, combining cultural stereotypes with the sense of moral urgency we associate with the idealistic young. Yet even playwrights with a sophisticated sense of language and character often favor a sitcom approach, every line ringing with […]
Posted inFilm
Jour de fete
Jour de fete Jacques Tati’s first feature, a euphoric comedy set in a sleepy village, was meant to be the first French feature in color; it was shot in 1947 using two cameras, one color and one black-and-white. But the new Thomson-Color process failed to yield results that could be printed, so in 1949 the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Happy Birthday. From the January 19 issue of Doug Dobmeyer’s “Poverty Issues…Dateline Illinois” (PI…DI): “Chicago held a prayer breakfast on January 15 (King’s actual birthday) at the posh Palmer House. The 1,200 people invited by Mayor Daley came to celebrate the 1998 image of King. Daley imported an exceptional speaker in San Francisco mayor Willie […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Babes With Blades
Babes With Blades After breaking for the holidays, those fightin’ Footsteps females are back in fine, feisty form for the runaway hit Babes With Blades. KO’ing the popular conception of chick fighting as Jello wrestling and hair pulling (though many scenes parody those cliches), this showcase offers silent-movie slapstick, duels for the family honor, trashy […]
Posted inFilm
Kundun
Kundun Recounting the life of the 14th Dalai Lama prior to his departure from Tibet, this highly uncharacteristic feature by Martin Scorsese is his best since The King of Comedy, but you can’t profitably approach it expecting either the violence or the stylistic punchiness of something like GoodFellas. Scripted by Melissa Mathison (in close consultation […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago’s Next Dance Festival
Chicago’s Next Dance Festival Harrison McEldowney knows he’s in a bit of a rut. But what can he do? He’s good at choreographing funny dances–he just can’t help it. Fans of River North Dance Company, where he’s a dancer, are probably familiar with his work from the trio Perfidia, in which a woman switches partners […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Anna Kerenina
ANNA KARENINA, Shattered Globe Theatre. Helen Edmundson’s powerful adaptation of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss inspired Vitalist Theatre’s current flawless staging. And she’s distilled the same emotional essence from Tolstoy’s sprawling epic in 160 minutes that blend dreamlike fluidity with pantomimed movement and expressionistic ensemble work. Giving equal emphasis to the novel’s two […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Day at the Beach
falesch.qxd To the editor: At times I fantasize about owning my own TARDIS. With this time machine I would travel back to early 20th-century Berlin, Vienna, Paris, or maybe even to the New York of the 1920s. I’d seek out those little cafes where surrealism was born and nurtured. I’d try my hand at a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Being a Native American, I was wondering why people and cartoon characters yell “Geronimo!” when they parachute from an airplane. To the best of my knowledge Geronimo never skydived. –Michael, southeast Texas The other day a guy asks me why I love the Internet. Two reasons, sez I. First, you can come up with the […]
Posted inMusic
Ari Brown
ARI BROWN One reason the jazz scene in Chicago is so exciting these days is that musicians frequently get the opportunity to work out new material in extended live engagements. In the last decade groups like the Ritual Trio, 8 Bold Souls, and the Vandermark 5 have used low-pressure weekly gigs to sharpen new originals […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Good Sport
telande.qxd Dear Reader– I am now a Ted Cox sports section fan [January 9]. Any sportswriter who wears a Buffy the Vampire Slayer ball cap to a Blackhawks game, makes comparisons between the work of lively, near perfect Dmitri Nabokov and dead, near pervert Vladimir Nabokov, and sneaks a half-pint of bourbon into the United […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Days of the Week
Friday 1/23 – Thursday 1/29 JANUARY By Cara Jepsen 23 FRIDAY For her novel The Illusionist, Dinitia Smith took her cues from the real-life story of androgynous drifter Teena Brandon, whose 1993 murder was the subject of a New Yorker feature. Smith’s protagonist is Dean Lily, who charms three young women into falling in love […]