White Oak Dance Project Chicagoans, treat yourselves. Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project hasn’t performed here since 1994, and there just isn’t another modern-dance repertory group with such distinguished dancers and high-class choreography. Consider Neil Greenberg’s Tchaikovsky Dance, an octet with three diverse strands: chamber music cut into bits, punctuating a piece performed mostly in […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 35
Issue of Jun. 4 – 10, 1998
Posted inMusic
Kraftwork
KRAFTWERK I don’t know why Kraftwerk has decided to tour the U.S. in 1998, 12 years after releasing its last original album, Electric Cafe, but it’s a safe bet easy cash has something to do with it. Generally I think this sort of nostalgia exploitation is tacky; however, if anyone’s earned the right to do […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Why does a nuclear explosion form a mushroom-shaped cloud? If you would tell me why frantic and furious fusion and fission have a fondness for the fungus form, I would certainly appreciate it. –Paul Smith, Tampa, Florida Shame on you, Paul. You know I cringe at F-words. You don’t need an atom bomb to make […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Shocking Truth
An academic’s account of Billy Tipton’s secret life tries to take the high road, but it can’t avoid the nitty-gritty–which is why it’s such a great read.
Posted inFilm
Kurt & Courtney
Kurt & Courtney Two freaky conspiracy theories rear their heads in Nick Broomfield’s gripping investigative narrative, which tries to get to the bottom of the relationship between Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love. Examining Cobain’s life up to his apparent suicide in 1994, Broomfield paints a horrifying picture of how devastating fame can […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Days of the Week
Friday 6/5 – Thursday 6/11 JUNE By Cara Jepsen 5 FRIDAY There might not be much “on the edge” in Wicker Park anymore besides design schemes. But if you do happen to be in the market for some pricey furniture or artwork, this weekend’s third annual walking tour of shops and showcases for designer decor, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Music Notes: beauty behind barbed wire
Rhoda Levine first learned about The Emperor of Atlantis, an opera written in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt, in the summer of 1973 while on a directing gig in France. A friend put her in touch with a young British choral conductor named Kerry Woodward, who had recently been given a manuscript of the […]
Posted inMusic
William Ferris Chorale
WILLIAM FERRIS CHORALE Local composer and church musician William Ferris carries a currently unfashionable torch for English anthems and French organ music–his stylistic sympathies lie with John McCabe, William Mathias, and Charles-Marie Widor, to name a few of the more or less neglected fellow tonalists he and his 40-voice choir have championed over and over […]
Posted inArts & Culture
1998 Chicago Blues festival
Friday JUNE FRONT PORCH STAGE 1:00 PM Blues in the Schools Jugband Music Featuring Billy Branch Without a doubt the hottest harpist in town, Branch has the chops to indulge in showy barrages of clustered notes but prefers to let tradition and taste dictate his sets. Given his busy schedule as leader of the popular […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Missing the Bus
Paul Vallas’s dubious cost-cutting scheme runs into a wall of opposition.
Posted inArts & Culture
Watch This Space
Ron Gordon at Prospectus, through June 20 Helen Levitt and Roger Mayne: Vintage Street Photographs at Stephen Daiter, through June 13 By Fred Camper Many of Ron Gordon’s 89 Chicago images at Prospectus are well within existing traditions of documentary photography, revealing an interesting face or building we haven’t seen before, perhaps, but offering no […]
Posted inFilm
Through the Olive Trees
Through the Olive Trees The social status of filmmaking among ordinary people, central to Abbas Kiarostami’s wonderful Close-up and Life and Nothing More, is equally pertinent in this entertaining and sometimes beautiful film. Through the Olive Trees (1994) concludes a trilogy begun with Where Is My Friend’s House?, which focused on the adventures of a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In April Cafe Ke’ilu (“Cafe Make Believe”) opened in a trendy section of Tel Aviv with all the trappings of a restaurant except food and drink. Manager Nir Caspi calls the experience “conceptual dining” and says people come to be seen and to socialize. The menu, designed by chef and owner Phillipe Kaufman, […]