The last time I saw the Joffrey’s brother-sister act, now being remounted, was in March 1990. The company had recently revived Bronislava Nijinska’s 1923 Les noces (“The Wedding”), just two years after it reconstructed a more famous work by her brother, Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1913 Le sacre du printemps (“The Rite of Spring”). Both works are thrilling–brilliantly original and viscerally exciting as well as historically important–but I found Les noces more modern and more moving....
To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We agree with your thesis that different “types” of civil libertarians may have varying perspectives on the act. Yet your argument should have also included the fact that many groups not traditionally recognized as civil liberties advocates have come together to oppose the act. Indeed, resistance to the act and its related executive orders has seen the leaders of the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Rutherford Institute, as well as bona fide conservatives like Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Dick Armey, Pat Buchanan, and Phyllis Schlafly, join forces with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Religious Action Center, and other “traditional” civil libertarians....
Richard Shindell was born near Paterson, New Jersey, the waning industrial town immortalized by William Carlos Williams, and like Williams he has a gift for evoking a whole world through a few vivid details. Shindell’s fables of guilt, death, and redemption (subject matter in which he’s well versed, as he was once a candidate for the priesthood) are dark and complex, yet his language is so pristine and his melodies are so richly textured that even when the story line gets murky, the imagery keeps you riveted and the tunes keep you humming....
Roy Haynes arrived too late to claim a place among the drummers who helped invent bebop. He began playing with Charlie Parker in the late 40s, and though he quickly made his mark–with crisp explosions on the bass drum, a stinging, chattery hi-hat, and an almost feral energy–the styles of Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Max Roach had already defined the idiom. But Haynes (who, though you’d never guess it to look at him, turned 78 in March) has done so much since then, and with such continued exuberance, that he’s transcended his part in jazz history....
It’s standing room only at Ginger’s Ale House. That’s not unusual for this neighborhood pub at the corner of Ashland and Grace but for two reasons: the place is packed with singing Brits and it’s 6:30 on a Friday morning. The banner hanging outside proclaims this “Soccer World Cup Headquarters.” Inside, ten TV screens beam live from the soccer stadium in Sapporo, Japan, where England will shortly kick off against Argentina....
Don Baylor likes to manage. He likes to play little ball, with sacrifice bunts and the hit-and-run. This is an odd tendency for a manager who previously served with the Colorado Rockies in Coors Field, the most homer happy of today’s new launching-pad stadiums, and who arrived in the majors with the Baltimore Orioles when Earl Weaver was preaching the benefits of pitching, defense, and the three-run homer. Baylor apparently was more influenced by the time he later spent with the California Angels under Gene Mauch, one of baseball’s fiercest proponents of the bunt....
In 1994 I read an article in the British music journal the Wire that claimed that compact discs have a life expectancy of ten years. I have seen references to an article in Scientific American making the same claim and heard that this has been confirmed many times by other studies. The only thing is, uh, I’ve had a few CDs for more than ten years, and they play fine. So what exactly is the deal?...
The Evanston Historical Society has been calling its costume collection the second largest in the state (after the 50,000-odd pieces at the Chicago Historical Society) for a long time, but it was just a guess. Now, having completed an inventory that tallied more than 10,000 items–80 percent of them women’s wear–EHS can make the claim with assurance. Curator Janet Messmer says the fresh look at the collection’s hundreds of accoutrements inspired her to mount the current exhibit, The Perfect Accessory–a peek at some of the necessary trimmings for the well dressed from 1820 through the 1950s....
Rock, Pop, etc. AMERICAN MUSIC DRIVEWAY TOUR Jay Mathes and other artists perform in local driveways and parking lots through mid-October. Fri 8/30, 7 PM, the Haupts’ driveway, 635 Hiawatha, Carol Stream. Sat 8/31, 1 PM, the Kellys’ driveway, 557 Brewster, Lombard. Sat 9/7, 1 PM, the Kellners’ driveway, 9 S. 530 Clarendon Hills Rd., Hinsdale. 630-495-0993. CAKE, FLAMING LIPS, DE LA SOUL, MODEST MOUSE, KINKY, HACKENSAW BOYS perform on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour....
Mystic River ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Clint Eastwood Written by Brian Helgeland With Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Kevin Chapman, Laura Linney, Adam Nelson, Emmy Rossum, and Cameron Bowen. But the larger issue isn’t the degree to which Eastwood’s movie qualifies as art. It’s why reviewers are so desperate to establish its artistic pedigree. Many debates have been waged in the past–often sparked by Pauline Kael–about whether Eastwood the director deserves to be considered an artist rather than a poseur or a popular entertainer....
On a warm day in 1973, my wife and I packed our one-year-old into her stroller and headed for the neighborhood Tastee-Freez, a dozen blocks northeast of downtown Peoria. We walked past houses and small businesses that had seen better days, and as we looked downhill across the one-way streets we could glimpse sailboats and barges on Peoria Lake, actually a wide place in the Illinois River. Then we stood on the corner at the Tastee-Freez, chatting over the traffic noise while our daughter lathered herself with ice cream....
The more I stared at Bernard Williams’s large assemblage Queequeg’s Monument at I Space, the less I understood it. At first the buckets, chairs, and bulging shelves looked like the view through the back door of a packed moving van. But the strangely cohesive and precarious composition drew me in with the rhythms of rich wood tones and textures matched to simple geometric forms–like the perfect wicker circle set next to the polished molded spirals of a bentwood rocking chair....
The laundry bills alone would be frightening. In an ongoing controversy over the future of the smelly waste-disposal mountain next to I-94 just south of Michigan City, Indiana, mayor Sheila Brillson responded to a local newspaper article by saying, “I am not in bed with the landfill” (News-Dispatch, November 7). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » How do you undeclare war? Sam Smith quotes historian Michael Howard in the “Progressive Review” (October 31): “I hate having to say this, but in six months time for much of the world that atrocity [the destruction of the World Trade Center] will be, if not forgotten, then remembered only as history; while every fresh picture on television of a hospital hit, or children crippled by land-mines, or refugees driven from their homes by western military action, will strengthen the hatred of our adversaries, recruit the ranks of the terrorists and sow fresh doubts in the minds of our supporters....
Down Comes the Oak Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The grant, delayed because of the state’s budget crisis, wasn’t the only thing, but it was the final thing, Wilcoxon says. “We expected it last fall, and at first they said it’ll only be 30 days late.” When January rolled around and the money hadn’t arrived, the River Oak board laid off its only full-time employee, executive director and chief bottle washer Cynthia Todd Quam; when the grant still hadn’t come in March, they gave up the office in downtown Oak Park....
With the U.S. on the brink of war with Iraq, this fine exhibit of 42 works by 30 artists living in and outside that nation serves as a vital reminder of Iraqi humanity and suffering. Islam proscribes figuration, but Iraq’s secular culture has made its art relatively diverse. Sadik Alfraji’s Loneliness is a grid of glyphlike shapes that suggests an ancient clay tablet; a large abstract head both disrupts the grid and seems trapped by it– as if a loner were struggling against history....
Bailiwick Repertory and the Lesbian Theatre Initiative have teamed up to present the first edition of what they hope will be an annual multidisciplinary lesbian-centered fest showcasing drama, stage combat, poetry, comedy, and music by artists from around the country as well as Chicago. The event runs through May 4 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont. Individual ticket prices are shown below; a festival pass costs $50. In addition to the shows, the festival sponsors workshops on performance techniques taught by Cin Salach and Bev Spangler Saturdays at noon; admission to these is $10 or “pay what you can” at the door....
Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In August in Naples, Florida, city councilman Fred Tarrant demanded that local artist Ted Lay’s painting Famous Tongue Mona Al Monica (side-by-side images of the Mona Lisa, Albert Einstein, and Monica Lewinsky sticking out their tongues) be removed from a Naples municipal art center because he thinks Lewinsky’s tongue looks like a penis. Tarrant is blind, but says his trusted advisers find the painting offensive....
“Tragedy is not an integral part of modern life the way it was in other eras,” says Danish director Susanne Bier, and in her wrenching 2002 drama the characters’ inability to accept suffering–their own or other people’s–leads to even greater heartache. A mother of three (Paprika Steen) hits a young man (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) with her car, leaving him a quadriplegic consumed by rage and self-pity. After he rejects his fiancee (Sonja Richter), the young woman rebounds into the arms of a compassionate doctor (Mads Mikkelsen) who turns out to be the driver’s husband....
Cuban music is shot through with African rhythms brought over by slaves–and in an improbable circle of influence, Cuban sailors who took their favorite records to Africa in the 40s worked a profound change on the music there. Congolese rumba, or soukous, remains the most famous instance, but Cuban sounds also turned up in Senegal, Guinea, and Mali, where they became a strong flavor in the local music. Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab went a step further, adopting the influence almost completely undigested: formed in 1970 to entertain Dakar’s elite at the Baobab Club, the group began by playing straight-up Cuban dance pop....
BOTTLETONES 2/9, SCHUBAS With their new album, Adult Time (Relay/Hepcat), the local Bottletones seem more intent than ever on working that rockabilly-revivalist tag off their big toe. Of the nine tracks, only “Everybody’s Lookin’” has that Stray Cat stench to it, and on the whole the album is more focused than 1999’s The Sheriff of Bottletone County–solid, raging country rock with a hint of loopiness and a whiff of corn liquor....
