Category — Critic’s Corner

Works of art such as this one by Giulio Romano, don’t make me think of that time after the dark ages, don’t make me think of knights or blossoming science.  It makes me think about beauty.  It makes me think about how beauty has changed with the passing years, how it’s different for each person, each continent each era. Especially with the female image. [Read more →]

I’m always excited for dance performances.  They inspire me, send shivers down my spine and keep me stick straight in anticipation of what comes next.  That is unless they’re bad.  Then I get monumentally disappointed and feel ass though the life was drained out of me during the performance.  I went into the Bush Women performance kind of wary, trying not to get my hopes up too high and because of my fellow students doubt was permeating my usual enthusiasm.  [Read more →]

Capa’s startling black and white photographs brought out the sympathy that usually resides deep in my being, back by the spine, slick with cynic oil.  I saw the solemn eyes peering between barbed wire and somehow felt chills of recognition down my spine.  [Read more →]

As soon as I saw the stage light up at BAM, my imagination was captivated. The music and light from the first scene created a serene atmosphere and I was reminded of the ocean, as if the dancers themselves were placed on the shores of Africa. When I watch dance performances, my mind usually lingers, and linger it did in a sense, but my eyes were still drawn to the stage. My favorite part of the performance, done by the Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi, was when a group of guys came on stage. This was partly because from afar, before that I could not entirely tell which of the performers were male or female. The men danced raucously but with graceful and synchronized movements. [Read more →]

Urban Bush women, the scales of Memory, is a very symbolic dance performance. The name can be a little confusing because “bush women” would imply an emphasis on nature, but urban gives us the mental image of city life. This confusion that I had when I read the title was the same level of confusion that I had during the performance. Throughout the entirety of the performance I had trouble understanding what, if anything, was going on. The dancing was very entertaining but it was hard to appreciate it when the symbolic meanings were completely lost on me. [Read more →]

Trying to keep a positive attitude about the upcoming opera, as I walked into the Metropolitan Opera my perspective drastically changed.  Earlier in the week, I was actually looking forward to “Doctor Atomic” since it was based on a topic I was greatly interested in, the atomic bomb.  One thing I was not looking forward to was the opera style singing that was to be expected in the performance.  When I think of opera, I imagine heavy-set opera singers singing so loud that it shatters wine glasses and audience members’ eyeglasses.  This was the way it was in the old days, opera singers were usually heavy men and women because they were the only singers capable of hitting the loudest notes.   I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong about the big-boned singers.  To be fair, as an eighteen-year-old college student, opera is not my music genre of choice.  I would be much happier listening to hip-hop, rap, or even country music. [Read more →]

When I initially sat down in anticipation of “Waltz With Bashir,” I didn’t know what to expect.  My instincts told me that it would be an old-fashioned movie with dated, classical music, making sense of the name of the play.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong.  The delivery and style of the movie was truly unique and unlike any other production I have ever seen before.  [Read more →]

 Susan Meiselas’s decision to pursue photography has taken her around the world. From Nicaragua, El Salvador, small towns and even South Bronx Mieselas had focused on capturing the horror of war ravaged and impoverished nations. In her series “Carnival Strippers” she focused on following the itinerary of carnival strippers. She took pictures not only of their performances but their own personal moments when they stopped being entertainers on stage and started being human. [Read more →]

Not everything looks worse in black and white.  In the case of David Fenton’s small gem of a photography collection “The Eye of the Revolution”, worse could be more loosely translated to more serious.

These serious images of the seventies revolution are pocketed away in the nondescript Steven Kasher Gallery. This small exhibit is in a high ceiling room with the black and white photo prints interrupting the otherwise stark white walls. Their somber gray tones draw the unsuspecting viewer in with a note of concern. After a closer inspection they either draw back with indulgent smiles. John Lennon and Yoko Ono onstage together, Mick Jagger doing a power jump, bare feet dancing girls with long flowing hair. [Read more →]

“Let me introduce you to my man Clay!”  The hip one man musical with hip hop, yes hip-hop.

Now any skeptic or Broadway buff that might scoff at the idea of hip-hop or any non traditional form of music on a stage.  They might even deign to hide a condescending laugh at the idea of a white guy going to a bookstore of all places and rapping his way to self-actualization. Just watching the first five minutes of “Clay” can change those judgmental notions and there lies the power of Mr. Sax. Matt Sax’s refreshing rhymes and contagiously energetic performance joins the ranks of such musicals as “In the Heights” a Broadway musical with the enterprising Lin Manuel Miranda. [Read more →]