River North Dance Company River North achieves a remarkable range within its rather narrowly defined niche. Traditionally a jazz-dance company performing short, entertaining works, it nevertheless offers a variety of styles and moods, partly because it taps a variety of choreographers. The troupe’s Dance Chicago ’98 program alone showcases such widely divergent work as Randy […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 52
Issue of Oct. 1 – 7, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
Big People Little People
BIG PEOPLE LITTLE PEOPLE, at Victory Gardens Theater. Early in her one-woman show, Sally Edwards–homemaker and mother of three–tells us she thinks she’s been spending too much time with her “little people.” She’s right. But that isn’t what’s wrong with Big People Little People; in fact, her strongest material has to do with “mommy anomie,” […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Room for an Inn
johnson.qxd Dear folks, Two quotes in the “Land Sharks” article in your Neighborhood News section [September 4] caught my eye. The first was from John Seo: “I want to run it as an affordable hotel. Maybe charge $90 a night. I figure it will be a success because there’s a big need for affordable rooms […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Straight as a Line
Straight as a Line, Goodman Theatre Studio. What’s most impressive about Luis Alfaro’s portrayal of a gay man battling with HIV is the playwright’s subtle touch. Alfaro chooses his words–and his battles–carefully. Eschewing the unfortunate soapbox moralizing that generally accompanies this sort of politically charged topic, he concentrates instead on the young man’s often antagonistic […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: I am a female who developed an extremely close friendship with a man. I knew this man was having an affair with a woman who was not his wife, even though he had a child. I was only interested in this man as a friend, and a friendship quickly flourished. You know what […]
Posted inFilm
Birth of a Nation
Birth of a Nation Jonas Mekas’s 1997 film of the experimental scene takes its name from D.W. Griffith’s landmark feature because, as Mekas puts it, the independent movement is “a nation in itself,” one that offers an alternative to the industry Griffith helped found. The chief luminaries are here, from Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Liz Phair Wears No Clothes
kondorf.qxd [Re: Rock, Etc, September 11] Dear Reader, Poor Liz Phair–all anyone in the press can talk about is the fact that she and her husband made a kid. I understand that women, with a little help, are mostly capable of this even today. It’s nice that she can afford an expensive enough publicist to […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Subterranean’s Blues
For a bar owner, one citizen complaining about noise or street pollution can lead to a nightmare of tickets, conferences, and court dates. After a summer of dealing with the liquor control commission, Robert Gomez feels like he’s been through a trial more alienating than any Kafka could have dreamed up. Gomez is a partner […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
It is the baseball season too good to end. Mark McGwire hits 70 home runs, splintering Roger Maris’s old record of 61. The Cubs’ Sammy Sosa adds 66 of his own, proving McGwire’s total wasn’t a fluke (or maybe just the opposite). Pitching phenom Kerry Wood strikes out 20 in a game and wins 13 […]
Posted inMusic
Rob Blakeslee
ROB BLAKESLEE Trumpeter Rob Blakeslee sometimes seems like the Chet Baker of postfreedom jazz. Though he mixes it up in everything from moody late-60s-style progressive jazz to rigorously avant-garde melees–often alongside Los Angeles free-jazz guru Vinny Golia, in one of the reedman’s several ensembles–he always stays an extra step behind the horn, the same cool […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Fightin’ Words
Headline To the editor: I was troubled to read that in her review of the Bauhaus show [September 4] Monica Kendrick used the phrase “overheated theatrical fagginess” to describe Daniel Ash and Peter Murphy. As one who is often overheated, sometimes theatrical, but always a fag, it’s not so much Kendrick’s wordplay that’s bothersome as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tell me That You Love Me, Junie Moon
TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON, Literally Theatre Chicago, at the Bailiwick Arts Center. Marjorie Kellogg’s 1968 novel is the bittersweet story of three hospitalized misfits–a boy in a wheelchair, a boy dying of a chronic nerve disease, and a girl, Junie Moon, disfigured in a brutal sexual assault–who find strength in one […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
JULIANA HATFIELD 10/2, double door I’ve had it in for Juliana Hatfield since 1993, when a roommate put “My Sister” on infinite repeat for about a week. Hatfield’s awed squeaking about how cool said sibling was for taking her to an early Del Fuegos gig sounded more like the beginning of the end than any […]
Posted inMusic
Bloque
BLOQUE Rock-en-espa–ol bands are frequently noted for their eclectic approach–they tend to toss disparate styles together like Paul Prudhomme with an extra set of hands. The Colombian band Bloque isn’t averse to a few exotic spices, but it’s more coherent and focused than most of its peers. On Bloque, its forthcoming Luaka Bop debut, the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Right About One Thing
smith3.qxd Born-again conservative Mr. Mark Gauvreau Judge was correct about one point in his “Turn to the Right” diatribe [September 25]: “Being a young radical leftist [is] hard work.” Especially when young radical leftists–the extant few–need to contend with people like himself, who were obviously never radical nor leftist in the first place but make […]