All the excitement about the visual arts during Basel can leave performing artists feeling neglected. But the experimental choreographers at Inkub8 are not to be left out. They hooked up with visual and sound artists and renamed their art form “visual dance” – at least for last week’s performances. Smack…
Are you a constant disappointment to your mother? Are your lady cojones bigger than the matzoth balls in your metaphoric soup? Then you might be a nice Jewish girl gone bad. And we have the perfect way for you to spend tomorrow night, the last night of Hanukkah. A new…
Cranky New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay has embarked on a “Nutcracker marathon,” pledging to see as many productions as he can of this classic ballet this season across the United States. Well, we have one for him to attend in Miami this weekend. Save room for sugarplums on…
Choreographer Merce Cunningham and visual artist Robert Rauschenberg were groundbreaking when they first collaborated from 1954 to 1964, and they kept breaking ground right up through their last collaboration in 2007. The two men believed art referred only to itself, and they created riveting works together. Even now in the…
Spoof movies have become a staple of our film diet. And a lot of that has to do with Leslie Nielsen, who passed away in his sleep on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale. He was 84. Nobody played a goofball straight man better than Nielsen. Roger Ebert called him the “Olivier…
We know we don’t have to sell you on the talents of Louis C.K. or at least we shouldn’t have to. His comedic tenacity is only rivaled by his substantial body of work — he’s been everything from a standup comedian, actor, writer, and director. And though he’s been busy,…
It’s hard not to love a Jersey/Miami-brewed comedian. Especially one that makes jokes about white people’s response to his black family skiing (“Are those bears?”) and being mistaken as smart because of his glasses (“You look like you went to college. No, I went to Pearl Vision.”). And after years…
We all grew up with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Whether we read the book, watched the movies, or caught a theatrical production of the age-old story, a holiday season didn’t get by us without Ebeneezer Scrooge making an appearance. And whatever your preferred method of dosing on Dickens was,…
FGO’s Turandot: Ridiculous and beautiful
A few years ago, porn-seeking perverts with colonialist ambitions began stumbling onto the wrong mail-order bride website. Presenting itself as a “source for meeting a nice, subservient Asian bride,” BigBadChineseMama.com proceeded to break down sexual politics, racial stereotypes, and power structure via pictures of ass-kicking females above testimonials such as,…
When Miami Contemporary Dance Company artistic director Ray Sullivan decided to research the life of migrant workers for his new piece, Harvest Voice, he was more interested in the workers’ dreams than in the working conditions in the Homestead fields. “As we know there are no borders for dreams,” he…
This weekend, the Florida Grand Opera opened their season with Turandot. As the plot goes: In Peking, there’s a princess named Turandot who will wed the first royal suitor to answer three riddles correctly. Suitors who fail will be beheaded. The iffy cost-benefit analysis has, alas, not dissuaded many suitors. …
From Les Cage Aux Folles to Urinetown, Actor’s Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre puts on some pretty varied fare. Starting November 17, the theater is going old-school with Oliver!, a Tony Award-winning musical about that lovable little scamp, Oliver Twist. Stealing hearts as easily as he picks pockets, Oliver could…
Choo! Choo! That’s the sound of the No Shave November train, and we’re riding it all month long. Last week, we met a dude who’ll outfit your cerveza bottle with a mini mustache, and today we’re testing your beard and/or mustache knowledge. The above four are no brainers, right? There’s…
The House of Yes and No Exit depict two versions of hell
Merce Cunningham was hip before his time. The choreographer’s spectacular collaborations with off-the-mainstream-grid musicians and artists such as John Cage, Bruce Nauman, and Sonic Youth, broke all boundaries and changed dance forever. In one of his last multidisciplinary pieces before his death, Merce tapped Miami visual artist Daniel Arsham to…
In the Cirque du Soleil production Kooza, an extremely naive, melancholy character known as the Innocent finds himself unable to launch a kite. Instead of giving up, he initiates a Fight Club-esque mental illusion in which a trickster appears in a box and begins to command the world using a…
Maybe the name Godfrey doesn’t immediately ring a bell (and no, it’s not Gilbert Godfrey). Ever seen Soul Plane? Phat Girlz? Zoolander? Cheslea Lately? We’re going to guess to answer “yes” to at least three out of the four. Well, the sexy comedian himself that has been featured in all…
Lisa Lampanelli, the insult comic dubbed “The Lovable Queen of Mean” and the belle of many celebrity roasts, is performing tomorrow night at the Fillmore Miami Beach. Cultist caught up with Lampanelli, as she lounged on a swooning couch at home in New York, to ask her a few mind-numbing/profound…
You can view Lewis Carroll’s classic story Alice in Wonderland through many different lenses. There’s the Disney scope, which renders it an innocent, happily ending tale; the acid-laced goggles that focus on Alice’s trippy hallucinations of grinning cats and anxious white rabbits; and the philosopher’s view, which sees the deep…
Ballet fans and indie heads often sit on opposite sides of the aisle. But this weekend, they’ll be tempted to mix company when Miami City Ballet performs The Golden Section, choreographed by Twyla Tharp and scored by David Byrne. A couple of years after founding Talking Heads and a few…
When we heard that Miami comedian Daniel Reskin (of Casa de Ha-Ha) was headed to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington D.C., we strapped a mike on him and equipped him with a head cam. OK no, not really. We just asked him to tell us what…
