REVIEW: Encantado means delight. Rio de Janeiro’s Favela de la Maré, Lia Rodrigues, presented her fabulous dance company in this nearly excellent new work at BAM this week. The performance begins with a stage awash in vividly colored blankets, carefully rolled out by several dancers. …

If COVID-19 had not happened what would the Prototype festival have looked like? Melanie Milton, PROTOTYPE Producer PROTOTYPE typically produces and presents 5–7 live opera-theatre works across 7–10 days in January. From chamber opera to staged song-cycles and everything in between, PROTOTYPE presents work in intimate spaces, concert halls, and…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently presented a beautiful night of music in Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium as part of their lineup of live performances. After a delay due to multiple events, including the president’s motorcade interrupting traffic and shutting down 5th Avenue, while audience members rebelliously clapped to encourage…

MOVIE REVIEW: Exacting and moody, Ulrich Seidel's Rimini is hard to take because of its vulgar reality in which we are captive and cannot help watching. As the audience, we are the proverbial fly on the wall, subject to hapless sex, despairing aging, and dead ends that make us wonder…

Imagine you’re on holiday in the tropics. Actually, you are in sultry, green, exotic Brazil. Generous palm trees sway in the breeze; the wind blows through the long lush leaves while you are wearing your favorite summer loungewear. You feel the breeze swish through your hair and billow about your…

It was a superb evening of pure psychological insight expressed in the mighty art of dance at City Center, with Alvin Ailey dancers performing three works, both new and nuanced. It began with Azure Barton's meticulously realized work of art, Busk, which I have seen before but could watch a…

Conceived and directed by Ong Keng Sen, Trojan Women is an epic passage through thousands of years of mythology and thousands of miles of culture, having been created from the original Greek play by Euripides of the sacking of ancient Troy in Asian turkey by the Greeks. This extraordinary opera…

REVIEW: Intention and actualization are not always easy to demonstrate, as illustrated in the new dance piece Embarqued, created by Stefanie Batten Bland. While the cast was full of life, wonderfully talented, engaged, beautiful, and committed to the dance, continuity was lacking in the storytelling. …

REVIEW: Another beautiful night of music from Death of Classical was presented inside the gates of Greenwood Cemetery. The audience began the evening first with some fine spirits from the Kings County and Appalachian Gap Distilleries and some delicious tawny cider from Brooklyn Cider House in the main reception area…