Louis Laloy, a critic, musicologist, and drug-addict célèbre, once told Jean Cocteau: “Some things should be tried only once.” Laloy was referring to opium, but when it comes to writing about a figure like Pablo Picasso, I feel I’m ready to heed his advice. This is why: Picasso is, arguably,…
Florida Artists Series: R.F. Buckley and Clive King: FIU visual arts faculty members Buckley and King exhibit way too many artworks in a small museum. Overhung inevitably leads to overworked. In the case of Buckley, despite a few serendipitous still life elements, the forged and welded aluminum doesn’t reward the…
THU 15 Garnering comparisons with keyboard giants Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, and Bud Powell isn’t half bad for jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut. Of course you might expect he’s pretty good, as he’s been banging on the keys since the age of five and later graduated to sharing the stage with…
In the restaurant business, one classic mistake is to pay more attention to the presentation of the meal than the cooking itself. Beautiful décor and lighting and expert service always enhance a dining experience, but they can’t compensate for an ill-prepared entrée. The same truth applies to show business. Take,…
With Josephine’s Bakery, showing at the Prometeo Theatre’s new home on the downtown Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade College, things get off to a raucous, deliriously fun start, then slow down and never quite get back up to speed. The play, informed by Jean Anouilh’s The Orchestra, is billed as…
King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The New Theatre’s annual Shakespeare fest is played in true repertory, with King Lear, the Bard’s greatest tragedy, alternating nightly with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that popular comedy of lunacy, love, and poetry. Director Rafael de Acha and his superior design team deliver…
Recent artists’ exhibitions such as “Making Up Carolyn” at Worm-Hole Laboratory, “The Last Show” at The House, and a flurry of articles in the media have put the issue of gentrification in the forefront of the news. (As I write this, The House is being demolished to make way for…
Definitive Juxt: Curated by Lissette Garcia and co-organized by José Carlos Diaz at the Odegard Building in the Design District, this show challenges viewers to accommodate highly personal visions of a group of Miami artists. Works by the Paper Dolls, Mauricio Espinosa, Sarah Murrie, Brian O’Dell, Jason/Opalka (FeCuOp’s Jason Ferguson…
The dramatically useful accident that befell Davaa and Falorni happened in the spring of 2002. According to Mongol legend, if a mother camel rejects her newborn calf, the herding family must call in a musician to perform a kind of seduction ritual. The musician plays. The mother camel becomes enchanted…
Behold what is, in theory, the thinking person’s ideal summer blockbuster. King Arthur features some of the planet’s most beautiful people, dressed way sexily, gallantly galloping and bashing each other with all manner of implements amid lush vistas and robustly appointed sets. Add an intriguing historical pedigree and apparently unprecedented…
Just after 6:00 on a Wednesday, chef Dewey LoSasso is getting ready for a bustling evening at North 110, the new Biscayne Boulevard eatery he recently opened with his restaurant-manager wife Dale. Nevertheless he happily answers his cell phone, eager to discuss the merits of the mango. Perhaps the sweet…
Thursday 7/8 You’ve ogled the more than 300 bawdy prints by artist/provocateur Pablo Picasso currently on display at the Bass Museum, and now all you want to do is … learn how to make prints yourself! Tonight’s lecture and demonstration with local artist Charo Oquet will teach you to do…
The first time, self-appointed arbiters dismissed it as a lark, this weird underwater musical performance (in January) concocted by a radio newsman (Bill Becker) and his dentist/arts-council diving buddy Dr. Fred Troxel. A few years later, doubters allowed that the “gimmick” had achieved fad status. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary, the…
Sat 7/10 During the 20th Century, people were fascinated with the future and the past. On the verge of moving into outer space, humanity ostensibly needed to recover its roots. From an Oscar Wilde play based on the Salome Bible story, an accused spy named Mata Hari, and other misrepresentations,…
Thu 7/8 Artist Rodney Jackson’s portraits are as bold and brash as the hip-hop icons he paints. Tupac Shakur, headscarf and all, stares defiantly from a solid-color, Pop Art background. A lively Aaliyah and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes are captured too as part of Jackson’s Angels of Hip-Hop series memorializing…
Sat 7/10 “They also serve who stand and wait,” said John Milton in Paradise Lost. But that was 350 years ago. At today’s 6th annual Waiters/Waitress Race, in downtown Coral Gables, they who serve will not be doing a whole lot of standing. Rather, local waiters and waitresses will be…
Thu 7/8 In the swelter of a South Florida summer, it is difficult to imagine anything more desirable than getting wet. Running the garden hose on your head is the low-end option. Much better is the high end, an aquatic chill-out that could change your life and maybe even allow…
Cakewalk: Aesthetic experience and erogenous pleasure have always been close relatives, to be sure. But rather than any genuine countercultural agenda, artists in 2004 are armed with a stylist’s finely tuned eye for the retro, a fascination with the abject and unlovable, a salacious eye for soft porn, and an…
The Life: The tiny Atlantis Playhouse takes a crazy gamble on The Life, a dark and gritty musical about pimps and prostitutes on New York’s mean streets in the Eighties. The risk pays off. This rarely produced Tony Award winner (in its first-ever regional production) features a fine score from…
The first exceptional drama of 2004 is here, and it only took, what, seven months? Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Mother comes from British writer Hanif Kureishi, who penned the gritty, South Asian-in-London marvels My Beautiful Laundrette and My Son the Fanatic. On the other hand, its director is Roger Michell, lately…
All you need to know about Spider-Man 2 is revealed in the opening credits, in which comic-book artist Alex Ross recaps the 2002 original in lovingly, lavishly painted panels. Spidey and Mary Jane Watson are once again entangled in that now-iconic upside-down kiss; nutty Norman Osborn, out of Green Goblin…
The Russian language and culture are complex, mysterious, and beautiful in their own way, but for vocalist Tierney Sutton, Russian was no match for the magical powers of jazz. While a Russian major at Wesleyan University in the Eighties, Sutton heard the music of sublime chanteuse Sarah Vaughan, among other…
