Dancing Industrial Complex at AAC?

SYTYCD? is coming to town this Wednesday!! Ohmahgady’all!! No, SYTYCD? isn’t an acronym for a sexually transmitted disease, it’s So You Think You Can Dance?! 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, the live tour of So You Think You Can Dance? hits Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie (1001 Performance Place in Grand Prairie)…

Hops to the Stove

Remember those days when money spent at the bar sounded more reasonable than money spent at a restaurant? Ever consciously chose and then boasted about beer for supper? Step it up and bring your evening meal full-circle, pint to plate. Central Market Dallas’ new course, BREWTOPIA, with instructor Kent Rathbun,…

Proof Positive

Could you survive everyday life in Africa? Sure, it’s easy to imagine the everyday lives of African children, but could you actually grow up in such poverty-stricken conditions? The World Vision Experience’s AIDS: Step Into Africa exhibit invites visitors to walk through replicas of Sub-Saharan villages, where about 22 million…

Earnestly, Speaking, Of Course

It’s important to be honest, but, in Oscar Wilde’s comedy of misidentification, it’s way more important to be — yep I’m going to say it — Ernest. Wilde’s play, a satire of Victorian mores and social obligations, was a hit when it premiered in 1895, showing off the Irish playwright’s…

I’m Still Here: Joaquin Phoenix Makes a Point About Something. Maybe.

I’m Still Here—”that Joaquin Phoenix movie”—capitalizes on an anxiety that’s very of-the-moment, uniting pop cultural phenomena as seemingly disparate as the too-stupid/good-to-be-true Jersey Shore characters, James Franco’s baffling side careers as a professional student and soap opera stud and pretty much every thing having to do with Vincent Gallo. Basically,…

Lebanon: A Claustrophobic Look at War’s Horrors.

Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is not just the year’s most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I’ve seen in 2010. Actually, Lebanon—which won the Golden Lion at Venice, after being rejected by Berlin and Cannes—hardly seems like a debut, perhaps because…

Rub Me the Right Way

Massage Envy will be lending a helping hand, or two, to Susan G. Komen for the Cure with Massage for the Cure, an all-day event with specially priced one-hour therapeutic massage sessions for $49. Each of the 27 DFW locations will donate $15 per massage to support breast cancer education,…

Piano Man

If you want to see some badass piano playing then get yourself a ticket to Haochen Zhang’s performance in Fort Worth stat. Zhang became the youngest and the first Chinese competitor to win the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in…

Machine Head

It’s a good thing we’re all robots — human beings were too fragile anyway. Things sure got a little more interesting the day those scientists mindscanned us and launched our feeble bodies to the moon so we could live on earth as androids controlled by our minds, huh? Sure, people…

Not-So-Mellow Yellow

The yellow jersey of the Tour de France has long been synonymous with Lance Armstrong, and rightly so. No one else can say they’ve won the biggest cycling race seven consecutive years AND beaten cancer. And though he returned from retirement to win third place in the race last year,…

Regarding Henry’s Son

Remember what it was like when you were young? Your father was always ragging on you about cutting the grass, pulling up your pants and hanging with the wrong crowd. Well, William Shakespeare knows how you feel, or he wouldn’t have written an entire play about it. Reminisce about those…

The Fun of Ritz

If Esther Ritz paints to “express her freedom of imagination,” then we naturally have the undeniable right to “express our freedom of interpretation” when looking at her colorful, abstract paintings, right? For instance, when we look at Ritz’s “It’s a Long Long Road,” we see a horse trotting through the…

Musical Nazis!

If your nanny made kickass matching outfits for your seven kids out of nasty curtains, you’d probably bone her. Especially if all your other bone-able options were super scary Nazi chicks. But, would you be a total douche and make her call you “Captain” like that bag o’ dongs Georg…

Hepcat

Maggie the Cat, the character responsible for thousands of overwrought Southern accents in high school drama competitions every year, is one of the most iconic parts in modern theater. The overheated, frustrated and passionate creature was embodied by Elizabeth Taylor in the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin…

Bang Some Gongs

Mineko Grimmer isn’t screwing around with existential quandaries when it comes to naming her latest exhibit at the Irving Arts Center. No, sir. It’s called Gongs.Wires.Bamboo. Guess what it’s made of. Grimmer’s work is an aural and a visual experience, with ice pyramids suspended above bronze, bamboo and wire (ahem)…

Adaptation

If you’re getting tired of the old “dinner and a movie” routine, then Fort Worth’s Stage West may have the perfect treat for you this weekend. They’ve recently started Prix Fixe Fridays, a special deal where you get admission to the current show and a meal (with dessert!) from the…

Welcome to Our Home

It is commonly accepted wisdom that all good things must come to an end. And they do. It’s just that some of them are reborn and begin again, like the phoenix rising from the ashes, or the renovation of the Dallas Museum of Art’s Center for Creative Connections, 1717 N…

The Lord God Bird

Sometimes the things we’ve lost come back to us. A favorite lipstick tucked away in a forgotten coat pocket; a family heirloom rescued from a pawn shop; a pet that, against all odds, traveled hundreds of miles to find its family. But what about something we’ve destroyed? Can those things…

Jaap It Up

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is hosting a black-tie night of Beethoven for its annual gala, themed “Of Life and Love.” Music director Jaap van Zweden will lead the DSO in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, Eroica–Italian for “heroic.” Beethoven originally wrote the symphony for Napoleon, but changed the title after Napoleon…

Om the Way to Serenity

It doesn’t take much concentration to conclude that our minds are overworked. To-do lists, stress from traffic and constant “what’s for dinner” plans fill our heads even when relaxing. If you’d like to learn how to control your scattered thoughts and clear your mind through meditation, check out a workshop…

XLV Cometh

In just a few more months, thousands upon thousands of NFL fans, celebrities, dignitaries and the prostitutes and strippers that serve them will descend upon our fair metroplex for the media zoo that will be Super Bowl XLV. It remains to be seen whether our own Dallas Cowboys will have…

Suds and Laughs

Maria Bamford has an incredible gift for doing impressions of members of her family, as well as the many varied characters she runs across in her life. She’s a bit of a surrealist, and openly talks about her own depression and OCD. As part of the “Comedians of Comedy” tour,…