High Kicks and Doughnuts

The only thing better than supporting local vendors is doing it while you throw out a high kick or two. That’s Rock & Shop hosted by Mad Girl Productions. It’s an all-day shopping extravaganza-bonanza where $15 gets you unlimited re-entry and free drinks. (Tickets are $5 without drinks, but no…

Better Than the Real Thing

Surrealism, born out of Dada in the 1920s, is one of art’s most important, influential and lasting movements. It dominated the 20th century, inspiring artists of all media, often leading them to create new media altogether. While the names Dalí, Miró and Duchamp come to mind when surrealism is discussed,…

Cancer Gets a Kick in the Ass

Few moments in life feel more fulfilling than telling some horrid, debilitating disease to go do something to its mother that is anatomically impossible, even for a microscopic organism. You’ll be able to do just that at 8 p.m. Saturday at The Grotto in Fort Worth. The appropriately named nonprofit…

Mad Classical Geniuses

Bach played at speed-metal tempo: check. Tap dancers sweating buckets: check. Side story about Mozart in a comedic love triangle: check. This is The Bach and Wing — Live Classical Music Tap Dance Extravaganza, the latest from Open Classical. They’re the mad classical geniuses who brought you amplified chamber music…

Not Black or White, Just Read

You could, one supposes, redo Star Wars without lightsabers, Spider-Man without shooting webs or Peter Pan without wire rigs. But why? That’s the question that arises with Pegasus Theatre’s staged reading of A Degree of Death!, one in a series of 16 comedy-mystery spoofs by playwright Kurt Kleinman. For nearly…

Rach Your Ears Off

On Thursday, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and 23-year-old piano phenom Anna Fedorova perform Rachmaninoff’s gorgeous and seductive “Second Piano Concerto.” Fedorova was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and gave her first public recital at age 6. Since then she has been wowing audiences in the world’s greatest concert halls with passionate,…

A Taste of Lincoln Center

Just a few days before he performs the same program at Lincoln Center in New York, pianist Alessio Bax gives a recital at SMU’s Caruth Auditorium that features Beethoven’s always impressive “Hammerklavier” Sonata. Bax’s recitals are always stunning. He plays with ease and virtuosity in addition to a compelling sound…

Little Runaways

Try saying this: orthotics, carbo loading and rock ’n’ roll. Hmm. Nope. Doesn’t have the same ring as sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, does it? Can’t really picture Keith Richards doing split laps or Jerry Lee Lewis running from anything, except maybe the law. But this is now, when…

Don’t Forget the Didgeridoo

The Fort Worth Symphony has a reputation for innovative programming and presenting newer, unfamiliar music alongside more traditional fare. This weekend’s concerts in particular include some fascinating sounds, including music by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (“Earth Cry”) that features the music of a didgeridoo, a 1,500-year-old wind instrument invented by…

Don’t Forget the Didgeridoo

The Fort Worth Symphony has a reputation for innovative programming and presenting newer, unfamiliar music alongside more traditional fare. This weekend’s concerts in particular include some fascinating sounds, including music by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (“Earth Cry”) that features the music of a didgeridoo, a 1,500-year-old wind instrument invented by…

Kids and Controversy

Theater programs at high schools are filled with uninspiring monologues from Shakespeare, unsexy productions of Grease and scenes from The Crucible. Out in Plano, Fun House Theatre & Film serves as a counterpoint, skipping the usual riffraff and heading straight for the controversy. Playwright Neil LaBute with 15- and 16-year-olds?…

’Sup, Essayist?

Kenneth Goldsmith was the poet laureate at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. What does that mean? I imagine him wandering through halls, writing poems about Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. If anyone deserved the title, it’s Goldsmith. He’s the founding editor of an online archive UbuWeb, a…

Betting Blind on this Film Screening

Usually we use this space to recommend specific performances or events that sound awesome. With this particular event, we can’t promise you the movie will be good because the Alamo Drafthouse won’t tell us what they’re showing. We asked. Apparently the whole point of the AFGA Secret Screening is that…

Critic Picks

Hollywood’s awards season is over, and instead of being stuck watching an already self-obsessed industry lavish honors upon itself, we can finally get back to the business of watching that industry’s products. This is the perfect time of year to find a few cinematic gems ahead of the bloated summer…

Unleash Your Inner Voyeur

If you’re a hopeless people-watcher or your ears perk when you overhear bizarre or intimate thoughts, you’ll be interested in The Ties that Bind, the latest from Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts & Letters Live series, with authors Claire Messud and Meg Wolitzer. Wolitzer’s list of successful novels testifies to…

Ghostly Sopranos

If you’ve never heard of American composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, you’re probably not alone. The early 20th century composer made a name for himself writing film scores, but he also composed some gorgeous dramatic music for the stage, including one very creepy opera. Die tote Stadt, opening at The Dallas…

MTV:ReDefine Kicks off Fancy Auction with Public Exhibition

For a lot of people the art world can seem inaccessible. It’s a playground for the artists and a salesroom for the well-heeled. Across the city, institutions are attempting to overcome this insularity with free museum admission and fun parties. But when art is sold at fancy fundraisers or auctions,…

Five Dance Shows to Catch in Dallas this Spring

Spring has been flirting with us all winter, but it finally feels like it’s here to stay. OK, yesterday it might not have, but today it’s sunny. And let’s focus on today, shall we? Stepping outside into the sunny 75-degree weather is enough to put a spring in the step…

Open Classical Adds Tap Dance to New Show The Bach and Wing

Bach’s music performed at borderline speed metal pacing with disco beats, check. Tap dancers doing things that would put you into immediate cardiac arrest, check. Side story about Mozart in a comedic love triangle, check. This is The Bach and Wing–Live Classical Music Tap Dance Extravaganza, the latest tweaked and…