(Opera, National) Just the thought of it is enough to suck the wind out of you, considering how stark the circumstances were: on a March night in 1962, in a boxing ring in Madison Square Garden, Emile Griffith beat Benny “Kid” Paret to death. ...more...

(Visual Art, Tampa) Consider the humble chair. What does it want? What are the chair’s fundamental desires? ...more...

(Visual Art, Portland, OR) For whatever reason, or combination of reasons – and theories abound – diagnoses of autism and its less-crippling cousin, Asperger’s Syndrome, have increased remarkably in recent years. ...more...

(Theater, San Diego) Somebody had to do it, we suppose; the genre’s too ripe for satire, even if it does manage to be more self-satirizing than any scripted production could possibly be. ...more...

(Theater, Opera, Santa Fe) There isn’t much discussion of Emma Goldman these days, and there are probably a lot of reasons why that’s the case; regardless of political climate or the tone of the national conversation (more accurately deemed a shouting match, currently, but we digress), there isn’t a lot of excitement to be had right now in discussing the life and politics of a Lithuanian anarchist who’s been dead more than 70 years, and probably lots of people won’t know what you’re going on about anyway. ...more...

(Visual Art, Classical Music, Seattle) Bluebeard’s Castle is one of Bela Bartok’s masterpieces, and that barely matters in this case. ...more...

(Theater, Richmond) Say it one more time, and it’ll start to sound really odd. Yes, well. Anyway. ...more...

(Dance, New York) The Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet hasn’t been seen around these parts much recently, and by “recently” we mean this year, and by “these parts” we mean: well, New York, mostly. ...more...

(Visual Art, Dallas) Andres Blaisten knew what he liked, and what he liked was paintings. Specifically, paintings by Mexican artists that date from the first half of the 20th Century. ...more...

(Visual Art, Reno) If you ever find yourself needing evidence that America began as – and, for the most part, remains – a Puritan country, look no further than our collective societal attitude toward the human body. ...more...

(Theater, Twin Cities) Some nights, you get home and turn on the television, or the radio, or jump online, and after you’ve Drawn Something or whatever, you might – just – catch a little of the news, either local or national, and unless things have changed, drastically, you’re going to get – what? ...more...

(Jazz, National) The Jazz Education Network is big, and nationwide, and four years old, nearly, and they have spent many, many dollars to increase jazz education and awareness. ...more...

(Dance, Los Angeles) At Christmas, it’s the Nutcracker; in the spring – at least this spring – it was Swan Lake; but now the L.A. Ballet’s ushering out its season, and that’s when the Next Wave hits. ...more...

(Theater, National) So, yesterday, Christopher Isherwood was feeling pretty bad about Broadway’s musical offerings this season. ...more...

(Visual Art, Dallas) Probably since the time in 1962 Yves Klein traded “immaterial space” for gold leaf – and then threw lots of that gold leaf into the Seine – performance art has inspired controversy, of one form or another. ...more...

(Theater, San Francisco) Google “don’t like site-specific theater” and you get one lonely hit. ...more...

(Visual Art, New York) Things are, presumably, fairly sad at NASA right now; all the space shuttles have taken their final rides and are now installed in their permanent, last resting places; funding for further manned missions has dried up because America, as a country, has no money at all anymore, anywhere, if you are not Mark Zuckerberg or that guy who runs Zynga, and besides, there’s nothing fun about going into space anymore because where are we supposed to go, back to the Moon? ...more...

(Dance, Portland, OR) So, BodyVox has a new thing up, a hyperkinetic melange of light and sound called The Cutting Room that’s basically the Vox’ tribute to the movies. ...more...

(Visual Art, Detroit) Mike Kelley took his own life, apparently, in January of this year, and regardless of the finality of that act for Kelley personally, it also threw into flux Kelley’s planned Mobile Homestead, a project planned in conjunction with the Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art that sought to replicate Kelley’s childhood home in as precise a fashion as possible – exact dimensions, exact furnishings, that sort of thing. ...more...

(Theater, New York) Once, the musical adapted from the 2006 film that is pretty much a lock for Best Musical at next month’s Tony Awards, has a moment in Act I after which the show really starts to take off, an action moment, and it is: a guy fixing a vacuum cleaner. ...more...

(Theater, Chicago) A jury finally managed to convict former Chicago PD detective Jon Burge of perjury and obstruction of justice in January of 2011, nearly twenty years after he was fired from the force for using torture. ...more...

(Visual Art, Los Angeles/Orange County) Not content to be our nation’s repository of all things meta and self-referential, while simultaneously studying at six different universities and playing himself/not-himself on General Hospital, James Franco… ...more...

(Classical Music, San Francisco/Oakland) Gradually, very gradually, we’re starting to see more groups like the Portland Cello Project springing up from the ground, groups whose members see nothing wrong with adapting Britney Spears’ “Toxic” for cello and flute. ...more...

(Theater, New York) After a steady run of nearly three decades, Gerard Alessandrini shut down his satirical revue Forbidden Broadway in early 2009, reasoning that there was no way to adequately parody things like Shrek: the Musical and Guys and Dolls. ...more...

(Dance, Seattle) Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theater is no stranger to a little bit of controversy, but anyone who’s been following Byrd since he tore through the New York dance world in the late ’80s and early ’90s is probably slightly less than surprised to hear that. ...more...