Fly systems, rigging systems, whatever you want to call them, just know there’s a very serious show happening in the 60-plus feet of air above the show on stage. One of the wondrous aspects of theatrical life, even from its beginnings, is the delightful mix of labor, craft and personalities required to pull off a... Continue Reading →
When Moses Pendleton, the superstar co-founder of Pilobolus and dance maker extraordinaire, was a wee lad, one of his jobs on the family dairy farm was to feed the veal calves a nutritious milk supplement. The name of the supplement? Momix. Pendleton returned to this physical memory later when he choreographed a solo for the... Continue Reading →
Adults around the world offer inspiration to LGBTQ youth through the It Gets Better Project. In 2010, a series of teen suicides shocked the news cycle, shoving the real-life consequences of tormenting classmates into the national spotlight. Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old violinist and freshman at Rutgers University, leapt to his death from the George Washington... Continue Reading →
Folk and fairy tale scholars estimate there may be 1500 different versions of the Cinderella tale, the earliest originating in Greece and China. In Greece, the story is called Rhodopis, in which an eagle snatched Rhodopis' shoe and transports it to the lap of the king of Egypt. In China, it is the story of... Continue Reading →
Nacho Arimany’s years working with rhythm showed him how natural harmonic patterns heal the human body and mind. At first glance, Nacho Arimany can easily be confused for a European version of holistic healer J.P. Sears in the “Ultra Spiritual” spoofs. But after a few moments into an interview or demonstration, Arimany reveals himself as... Continue Reading →
Florida-born National Water Dance Day connects dancers to the life source Earth is mostly water, a chemical compound that covers about 71% of the surface of our extraordinary, life-rich planet. The infant human body, by comparison, starts at about 75% water (so, very similar), though we drop in wetness as we age. The human fruit,... Continue Reading →
A humorous look at the rise of the standing ovation … guess this is just what we do now. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet directed by Matthew Warchus, Plácido Domingo in a solo concert of arias, the premiere of Neil Simon’s Rumors, the launch of Broadway’s Footloose, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Firebird with *the* Virginia... Continue Reading →
How the Arts Change the Lives of America’s Wounded Warriors On any given day in America, between one and 20 veterans commit suicide. However, arts experiences help military personnel and their families amid the psychological and physical consequences of time at war. This grim statistic from research by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs... Continue Reading →
James Corden stars in the next filmed theater performance from National Theatre Live, One Man, Two Guvnors. We think this is a fine time to mention our favorite bits from his hilarious skit on The Late Late Show. The awkward Britney Spears one. The somehow-they’re-wrestling-on-a-stranger’s-lawn Red Hot Chili Peppers one. The LOL and then cry... Continue Reading →
When The Daily Show senior political correspondent Hasan Minhaj needed a dope illustrator to make pieces for his upcoming show Homecoming King, he called on his buddy Sam Spratt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4DORh3n9uE A Brooklyn-based digital painter—a classic oil technique used on computer tablets—Spratt graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2010 and took to the... Continue Reading →
The story of America’s instrument The meek and pluck-twangy sidekick to guitar and fiddle didn’t get its propers before Deliverance ruined an entire generation on banjo music and canoe trips to rural Georgia. The lone ambassador of a spectacular and truly (colonial) American history, the banjo is considered by folk musicologists to be the only... Continue Reading →
How social media and television talent shows changed performing arts programming Some baby-faced tween covers a Chris Brown tune on YouTube. It goes viral. R&B superstar Usher sees the video. Signs the kid to his label. The kid’s name? Justin Bieber. Beliebe it: so much of our culture rapidly evolved and adapted once folks figured... Continue Reading →
The Straz Center official piano tuner Kevin Patterson on what it takes to keep the ivories in the pink. The average home piano needs a tune up about twice a year, but when your livelihood and music critics are on the line, a good concert piano gets its ivories tickled, twisted, polished and pricked before... Continue Reading →
Need a song-and-dance cabaret act for your next event? Look no further than Ovation!, the Patel Conservatory’s traveling troupe of professionally trained entertainers for hire. For a few years, a delightful idea from the Patel Conservatory’s theater department rolled around in The Straz’s creative hopper: what if ... is it possible ... could we have... Continue Reading →
Performing arts adaptations of one of America’s most grisly and haunting murder stories The facts are simple. On Aug. 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were found dead in their Falls River, Mass., home from multiple hatchet wounds. Police found no sign of a struggle, no convincing murder weapon, no bloody clothes on any possible... Continue Reading →
Mary Shelley, the first science fiction novel and why Victor Frankenstein is not just a deadbeat dad but the worst human ever. It literally was a dark and stormy night. In 1816. Self-appointed (accurately) poetic geniuses Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley lounged in Byron’s Swiss chalet during one of the darkest, rainiest summers on... Continue Reading →
How the stage allows us to get inside another person’s experience “You never know someone until you walk a mile in their shoes,” goes the popular adage about trying to be less judgmental and more compassionate. The key to getting in someone else’s shoes is to imagine what his or her experience must be like,... Continue Reading →
Carole King, one of the greatest American songwriters of the 20th century, started with a piano melody. As the song took shape, she added layers, eventually adding lyrics — first with her then-husband Gerry Goffin and eventually on her own. Tapestry, her seminal 1971 solo album, remained on the Billboard charts for six years, top... Continue Reading →
The Thursday night show during each Broadway run has a special performer, one whose acting and choreography chops never make a sound. As part of its Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) initiative, the Straz Center secures a sign language interpreter for the Thursday night show in the Broadway series, with The Illusionists being the first... Continue Reading →
“The Arts Endowment’s mission was clear – to spread this artistic prosperity throughout the land, from the dense neighborhoods of our largest cities to the vast rural spaces, so that every citizen might enjoy America’s great cultural legacy.” --from National Endowment for the Arts: A History 1965-2008 During the desultory years of the Great Depression,... Continue Reading →