To appreciate just how clever our Chinese neighbors are, you’d have to look beyond the cheap imports and knock-offs they ship by the container load to the dollar stores. More than 2,000 years ago, when Western civilization was just a glimmer in some Greco-Roman’s eye, the Chinese were dreaming up…
What one considers to be art is subjective. Great art, however, leans on this principle to the point of breaking it, becoming a subversive force that tears through quiet salons and galleries with its raw attitude and unprincipled demands. Matthew Barney has the soul of great revolutionaries such as Dali,…
You know your next assignment will probably take anywhere from one to four weeks to complete. What you don’t know is what country it will be in, what immunizations you’ll need to survive and whether to pack the SPF 50 or snowshoes. Calling in sick with malaria or dengue fever…
Snow and the gentle plink of a balalaika reminds me of my childhood, bundled in a sleigh crossing the Latvian plains…wait. That wasn’t me. Sergey Vashchenko and Vladimir Kaliazine wore those fur hats and muffs and later mastered the three-stringed balalaika and buttoned accordion that Russians call the bayan. In…
Maggie Cheung is a gorgeous Asian superstar. She’s earned it, doing 82 films and TV shows since 1984—quadruple the work of film “sisters” Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh. She’s worked alongside Jackie Chan and, more recently, Jet Li (Hero, 2002), but her work in Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box (1997) and…
There’s nothing quite like sitting on a hill of snow, eating a corny dog in the heat of a Texas summer. I think the Grapevine city fathers were sippin’ in the wine cellar while they planned this year’s Main Street Festival. But, they deserve some credit because they managed to…
OK, Dallas. It’s your last chance to catch acclaimed conductor Andrew Litton leading our Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He’s an international legend now. The last 12 years of his 23-year conducting career have been with the DSO, a group he’s led through three major European tours, seven annual summer residencies at…
Butterflies flutter about our stomachs when we ride rollercoasters and frazzle us when we give speeches. Hawthorne compares them to happiness, quietly lighting on our shoulder if we’re patient, while Nabokov intensely pursued and named more than 20 subspecies of the illustrative insect he called “intolerable bliss.” Whether you see…
Rubber gloves, frost-encrusted freezers, stark bathroom fixtures, bars of soap, etched desktops—Orit Raff’s artistic subjects sound like a cross between local performance venues and Diary of an Insomniac at 2 a.m. This young Israeli-born minimalist captures common objects through video and camera lens in a way that turns their innocent…
“Well, what can you eat?” is a common question amongst my group of friends. I am notorious for my food allergies—eating and cooking is a daily adventure. As a health-conscious food snob who’s been brown-bagging for years, I am constantly in search of new ideas. More than 11 million Americans…
There’s nothing more therapeutic than beating on something loud and hard…and with feeling. Percussion is timeless, universal instrumentation. It’s how we all unleash pain and joy, frustration and exultation—whether by sticks on a log, broomsticks on trashcans, wooden spoons on pans or palms on a steering wheel. The world is…
When you’re a kid, the pinhole image of a solar eclipse through a paper plate more or less defines the unfathomable breadth of space. Now the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is teaming up with The Science Place to introduce patrons to true galactic majesty, featuring a pre-concert lobby viewing in their…
There is nothing more tranquil than watching waves lap around your feet. Or schools of fish swirl like graceful beads on invisible threads of ocean jewelry. That’s what draws us to ocean odysseys—the fluidity allows us clumsy bipeds a momentary experience of coordination and weightlessness. Choreographer Moses Pendleton pours this…
If you want a healthy challenge, try ice-skating on a frozen lake. The two main problems: no railings to grab and grass-cicles poking up every few feet—conditions even the best toe-pick can’t compensate for. As someone who can hardly negotiate a Zamboni-polished rink, I took the challenge wearing so many…
Vegas is good for three things: slots, sluts and Cirque du Soleil. Many have traveled hundreds of miles to see Latourelle’s Cirque shows, but here’s a new twist in the shape of a horseshoe. Cavalia—or “horsemen”—is Texas-sized entertainment tailor-made for Dallasites who haven’t forgotten their Wild West roots. Forty-seven horses…
Some pictures say a thousand words. Some grab your throat. Dorothea Lange’s photograph of Oklahoma Dust Bowl migrant Florence Thompson forced a nation to experience fatigue and hunger through the hollow, dirt-lined face of a mother desperate to feed her children. Dr. Linda Gordon, writing her second book on Lange,…
“Tied to apron strings” is thrown as an insult to exploited, homebound females only able to cook, sew and clean…whoa! ‘Scuse me, but I pay dearly for people to do that for me! Our great-grandmothers could make their own soap in a backyard kettle that got the skidmarks out of…
I admit men can look better in dresses than women, but what chaps me is seeing them run around onstage wearing three-inch heels without falling. I can’t do that. That makes cross-dressing performances an exciting draw for girls’ night out—getting style tips from pros like Eddie Izzard, Cillian Murphy and…
“Tied to apron strings” is thrown as an insult to exploited, homebound females only able to cook, sew and clean…whoa! ‘Scuse me, but I pay dearly for people to do that for me! Our great-grandmothers could make their own soap in a backyard kettle that got the skidmarks out of…
“Tied to apron strings” is thrown as an insult to exploited, homebound females only able to cook, sew and clean…whoa! ‘Scuse me, but I pay dearly for people to do that for me! Our great-grandmothers could make their own soap in a backyard kettle that got the skidmarks out of…
The Iraqi government could learn something from mistakes made in Germany after World War II. In 1944, when the Allies started carving up his country to ward off post-war religious and class disputes, playwright Bertolt Brecht said, “Back off! Let the people who have to live in the house decide…
What better way to start your new year than by going to a musical called Urinetown? One of your resolutions was to be bold and try new things! This three-time Tony Award winner is coming to town just in time to clear the Year of the Hurricanes out of our…
