Sure, it started late, but this week has felt like a never-ending hangover from the three-day weekend. Maybe I’m just getting too old for Memorial Day Jell-o shots. It’s been a slow slog to Friday, but it’s finally arriving. You’ve barely touched your work this week, why start now? Let’s…
Bruce Wood, founder of Bruce Wood Dance Project and perhaps one of the areas most esteemed choreographers and advocates for the Dallas dance scene, has died of complications from pneumonia and heart failure. He was 53. His death was extremely unexpected. I just saw Bruce a couple of weeks ago…
The story of how the Meadows Museum came to host its current exhibit starts somewhere in the 17th century when a group of Spanish artists decided to establish an academy in Seville. Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to begin the story in the 18th century when the academy…
Closing out their first year as a company, Pedestrian Dance Movement will be moving into the Courtyard Theater in Plano for two shows of their original production, Acceptance. Pedestrian Dance Movement is a contemporary dance company based in Dallas with the mission to connect with audiences by bringing a human-like…
It’s not the end of the world if your dinner party is a bust. Or is it? In the smart new comedy Barbecue Apocalypse by Matt Lyle, a big city husband and wife struggle with adulthood. “We are in our 30s and have movie posters thumb-tacked to the walls!” wails…
The staging of Booth, the world premiere drama by Dallas actor-writer-director Steven Walters at his Second Thought Theatre, is small. Just 60 seats in Bryant Hall. The main acting space is about 12-feet-by-12 of wooden planks. But the scope of this historical tragedy is huge, covering events leading up to…
We’re still adjusting to Seth MacFarlane as a big-screen star. Not just because his breakneck absurdist humor often demands viewers pause and rewind, but because the man himself looks like a hand-inked cartoon, with his black hair, pupil-less eyes and an alabaster baby face that, lacking cheekbones that could carve…
Boil Maleficent down to one newt’s nose-size piece of advice and you’d get this: Don’t dump Angelina Jolie. It’s not a problem most mortals will face, but as seen through director Robert Stromberg’s lens, the antlered arch-villain of Sleeping Beauty is a sympathetic scorned woman, equal parts Gloria Gaynor, Princess…
Attention Yankee transplants, snowbirds, corporate carpetbaggers and assorted other Texas immigrants: Do your adopted state a favor and go check out the free concert by the Quebe Sisters Band at 8 p.m. at Klyde Warren Park. Hulda, Grace and Sophia, the fiddle-playing, three-part harmonizing trio from Denton, have won awards…
In a world where a raging torrent of filth is available to anyone with an Internet connection, where coprophagia goes viral and the hopelessly banal are awarded TV shows, it’s inevitable that people would begin to question the value of being willfully offensive. Some would posit that it comes down…
Can you name the seven deadly sins? Furthermore, are they really that deadly? Sure, gluttony will kill you, but so will starving yourself. Besides, aren’t we all on a slow path to death anyway? On our way to hell, why not stop by the Wits End (2724 Elm St.) for…
Need a bit of a karmic adjustment? Sometimes, no matter how kind you think you’ve been, it still doesn’t hurt to tip the scales a little in your favor. Do just a little something good and net a little extra currency in the karmic checkbook by spending some time at…
There comes a time in most men’s lives when they realize they will never front a rock band, never dunk a basketball, never engage in witty banter with Penelope Cruz, never own a European sports car capable of hitting 200 mph. New ships are sailing every day, and that’s too…
He’s been the star of major motion pictures. He’s had his own CBS sitcom. And yet he still does stand-up. You can take the comedian out of the club but you can’t, well, you know the rest. Rob Schneider, former Saturday Night Live cast member and star of Deuce Bigalow:…
Have you ever wondered what museum directors talk about when they get together? I’ve always wondered if it was small ego battle where they get together and one-up one another with recently acquired works. Who wins, I wonder, when the director of the Louvre pulls out the Mona Lisa and…
When you’re trying to start a successful rock band, moving from California to the ultraconservative city of Provo, Utah, would seem to be a move in the wrong direction. Yet that’s exactly what Neon Trees did. After being taken under the Killers’ wings, Neon Trees had enormous hits with the radio-friendly…
The eternal swan. That might a better name for the ballet we love to hate. OK, so maybe hate is too strong of a word to use, but more often than not, when we dance writers see Swan Lake on the bill for a company’s season, we shudder with fear…
André Watts’ big break came when he was just 16 years old. In 1963, Leonard Bernstein invited the tall, lanky teenager to make his professional debut with the New York Philharmonic. Almost overnight the young African-American/Hungarian pianist was a classical sensation, selling records and traveling the world as a performer…
Diana Ross is legendary. Janis Joplin passed before her time. Connie Francis was a radio queen. But there’s just no other voice like Patsy Cline’s. Only she could record Willie frikking Nelson’s “Crazy” and make it hers. Only she cold run with the boys of Nashville and cross over into…
The Beach Boys get all the credit for expanding the horizons of pop music, and rightfully so, given their experimental and innovative sounds. But on the opposite coast, Franki Valli, Bob Gauido, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi were nothing to sniff at: their band, The Four Seasons, nailed a distinctive…
The first time the cute boy from science class typed “lol” into our AIM chat, my heart fluttered. Of course, later my older, wiser sister had to explain to me that these three letters were internet speak for “laugh out loud,” not “lots of love” as I’d hoped. This easy…
I don’t know how, when you lump them all together in a montage, the works of the ’70s pop band ABBA add up to a story about a bride’s search for her real father — one of three men who slept with her mom back when. Dunno why the musical…
