(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...

(Jazz, New Orleans) If you’re looking around for someone to be, you could do far, far worse than to be Kermit Ruffins, who is just about the living embodiment of the city of New Orleans. ...more...

(Visual Art, New York) It’s getting near summer – by the calendar, at least; the weather’s not there yet, but it will be, presumably – which means that the Met is once again hauling a big sculpture up to its roof. ...more...

(Classical Music, Stockton) In 1952, Hank Williams was still alive, and there was no such thing as a sock hop. (Incidentally, how many people got injured, on average, at a sock hop, do you think? Bunch of teenagers sliding around a gymnasium in their socks? I’m going to go with – eight. Let’s say eight.) ...more...

(Ballet, Albany) When the Saratoga Performing Arts Center opened on 7/9/66, the very first performers to step on stage were members of the New York City Ballet, which, under the direction of George Balanchine, inaugurated the new place with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ...more...

(Visual Art, National) Right now, the St. Louis Museum of Art has mounted a new retrospective of Andy Warhol’s Polaroids, and in some curious way it feels like the obsolete medium is having another small moment in the sun. ...more...

(Classical Music, Visual Art, Albany) Laurie Anderson was NASA’s first artist-in-residence, in 2003, which made a lot of people very, very angry – not because it was Laurie Anderson but because why does NASA have an artist-in-residence, exactly? – and seems destined to never happen again. ...more...

(Classical Music, Detroit) Have it in your heads now, too! DE BANG DE DANG DIGGY DIGGY something something UP JUMP THE BOOGIE. ...more...

(Theater, Washington DC) Theater, thousands and thousands of pounds of theater, theater groups all across the country, new ones springing up almost every day (not all of which are replacing ones that have gone belly-up), because doing theater is fun, and going to the theater is fun, and sometimes writing for the theater is fun, even. ...more...

(Opera, Los Angeles) We should maybe clarify here, a bit: the Industry is not sort of a company, it is most definitely a company, run by the ex-head of the NYC Opera’s VOX Series and a former professional opera singer. ...more...

(Theater, Cleveland) Lauren Weedman did time on the Daily Show when it was still becoming itself (mid-2001 to fall 2002) and played a character on Hung named Horny Patty, and just by the way, if you see Lauren Weedman on the street do not yell out HEY, HORNY PATTY, HOW’S IT HANGING, because she does not like that and, thus, will not like you. ...more...

(Classical Music, Berkshire Co.) All right, it’s the ninth of May, and Tanglewood doesn’t get going until late June, so calling this prefatory is maybe just perhaps a slight exaggeration, but: Karl Jenkins’ Requiem is a big, monolithic beast of a work attended by all sorts of messianic and apocalyptic overtones ...more...

(Theater, New York) A man walks out on stage, trips over an ottoman, and falls down. A woman walks out on stage, trips over the man – who is still on the floor, writhing – and falls down, too. Then a picture falls off the wall and makes a loud noise. ...more...

(Theater, New York) A week after picking up a very surprising nod for Best Musical, Leap of Faith is done. ...more...

(Visual Art, New York) Lots of people are still talking about that Alexander McQueen show, Savage Beauty, which opened at the Met just about exactly a year ago and kept going. ...more...

(Theater, Philadelphia) “Hitting the ground running” is one of the most egregious and off-putting of clichés, even as clichés go, because: it is impossible. You know how fast you already have to be going to have a chance of hitting the ground running? ...more...

(Visual Art, Washington DC) The Kennedy Center does great work, but it’s not really a stretch to say that most of what gets offered there is not exactly on the cutting edge. Which is fine, because a lot of the time the cutting edge is a dangerous and unsavory place to be, although it’s often colorful and cheap out there, too. ...more...

(Theater, New Orleans, National) The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is very nearly unique among American prisons. For starters, it’s bigger than Manhattan, and functions both as a prison and as sort of a work camp. ...more...

(Theater, New York) You know, producers and directors and actors hype shows to a deafening pitch, mostly because they have to in order to avoid getting overlooked, especially when the show is heading to Broadway, because you will spend some serious money staging a show on Broadway, obviously. ...more...

(Visual Art, New York) Just to get you up to speed really quickly: Marina Abramovic pretty much set fire to the New York art world in 2010 with The Artist is Present, in which Abramovic sat in a chair at MoMA, and then people would sit in the opposite chair and stare at her. ...more...

(Jazz, New York) She was there in January for a bit, with a trio that included Esperanza Spalding, but this week’s residency is all about Geri Allen, who has been a big, big player in New York jazz for about thirty years now. ...more...

(Opera, New York) This particular staging is the John Dexter version, which was first at the Met in 1978 and has not been seen since, and is presumably unchanged since then, owing to the fact that Dexter died in 1990. ...more...

(Visual Art, Oakland) That actually might be a slight exaggeration; in lots of ways, Clowes’ work is sort of sui generis, so maybe it’s just a victory for him. But what the hell, he’s great. ...more...

(Theater, Minneapolis) The McCarthy era must have been a great time to be alive and an American. Think of the drama – never knowing if you’d be accused of being a Communist and blacklisted, unable to work in your chosen field or, really, any other, because you were a dread carrier of the hammer-and-sickle and an enemy agent and probably very very naughty besides. ...more...

(Theater, Hartford) Sajak’s pairing up again with KHON Honolulu’s Joe Moore, and no, he is not playing Oscar. ...more...