Ragamala Dance Company performs Written in Water, a contemporary work in bharanatyam, a tradition of Southern Indian dance.
Read articleGlass art takes on intricate natural forms at Schantz Gallery
Streaked petals open like water lilies in Herman Melville’s Garden. A sperm whale dives with skin like striated ice. Barnacles cling to a shell. And they are all made of glass. Three internationally known artists — Kelly O’Dell, Raven Skyriver and Paul Stankard — sculpt plant life and sea life in […]
Read articleRoyal Danish Ballet returns to Jacob’s Pillow
In the summer of 1954, in the middle of his international dance festival, Ted Shawn was staying up nights and sending long-distance cables. Just before the curtain of his next performance, a key dancer had dropped out, and Shawn found himself reaching out to a woman and a company with a bare […]
Read articleFiddlers jam in a day of music at Hancock Shaker Village
Imagine holding hands and spinning until the room blurs. Imagine that movement in someone’s arms, to the beat of music. Imagine the musicians sliding from one tune to the next, the melody racing over the chords. Across the country, across 200 years and more, folk dance music has stayed alive. Mill workers […]
Read articleWilliam Kentridge honors Africa in World War I
You have already taken all I have. Now you are taking my son. The words appear on a vast wall. At center stage a man faces a round microphone, as though he is speaking on the radio in 1918. He is reliving the history of Africa in World War I — a […]
Read articleEllsworth Kelly leaves Berkshire Botanical Garden
A line curves into a ripe pear, or a petal, or a stem. Walk past a flaming fountain, through a door in a living wall of cyclamen and maidenhair fern — and here one of the most important painters, printmakers and sculptors of the 20th century has drawn the forms of leaves.
Read articleCantilena Choir comes face to face with Joan of Arc on silent film
She is a teenager, and she is in a court room. She is tall and broad shouldered, her dark hair is cut short, and she is wearing a man’s buttoned shirt — one reason she is here, fighting for her life. She is a poorly educated farm girl from a small […]
Read articleTed Shawn and Ruth St. Denis transformed American dance with teachers around the world
On a warm summer night, a company of dancers comes to a park in Tokyo to see Koshiro Matsumoto, the foremost man dancer of Japan, performing kabuki. He performs to the music of stringed samisens and flute, drums and singers, transforming from one role to another — a young woman, a […]
Read article