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  • Simplicity and Stillness

    By: Cheng Tong - Jun 21st, 2023

    Cultivating stillness requires hard work and perseverance. Stillness is far more than merely thinking simple thoughts, and it is much more than a weekly yoga session, a massage to calm yourself, or alcohol to settle yourself.  It is a state of being.

  • Photo 51 by Anna Ziegler

    Unwinding the Double Helix at Berkshire Theatre Group

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 21st, 2023

    The taut, austere, information crammed, one act play “Photo 51” rights a wrong. It dramatizes the true life story of the unaccredited role played by Rosalind Franklin (Rebecca Brooksher) in the discovery of the double helix pattern in DNA.

  • Artist Salvatore Del Deo 94 Evicted from Provincteown Dune Shack

    Has Maintained and Lived in It for 77 Years

    By: Daniel Ranalli - Aug 13th, 2007

    The artist and restaurateur (Ciro's and Sal's), Salvator Del Deo, 94 had been evicted from the historic dune shack in Provincetown which he has maintained for 77 years. Despite community protests he is being given the boot by The National Park Service . In 2007 Daniel Ranalli wrote about living in a shack.

  • The Contention (Henry VI, Part II)

    Rarely Seen Play at Shakespeare & Company

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 25th, 2023

    In Tina Packer's The Contention (Henry VI, Part II) we have the best possible cast and production of the rarely seen early play. It's described as the best of a trilogy. The first act focuses on why Henry is not fit to be king. A notion with which he would likely agree. Through a lot of exposition it sets up the eventual War of the Roses between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster. As heads roll the second act lurches into hilarious farce.

  • Million Dollar Quartet in Pittsfield

    Blows Roof off of Colonial Theatre

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 30th, 2023

    During raucous encores Million Dollar Quartet blasted the audience up out of their seats at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. By popular demand Berkshire Theater Group revises its prior production at the smaller Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.

  • The Dignity Circle

    The Grift Is On

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 05th, 2023

    Opening with the alluring pitch “How would you like to receive $40,000 with no strings attached?” Angela lures her prey into her seductive scheme.  But one of the devices of the Circle is wearing masks, which suggests that there is indeed something hidden beneath the surface.

  • A Chorus Line

    Character Laid Bare in the Pursuit of Dreams.

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 06th, 2023

    On Broadway and in Hollywood, the backstage genre endures and endears like few others. In the history of American entertainment, no backstage montage has proven more heart wrenching and more diverse in its themes explored and its characters examined than “A Chorus Line.”

  • Humane Ecology: Eight Positions

    Clark Art Institute

    By: Clark - Jul 07th, 2023

    Humane Ecology: Eight Positions, opening July 15, 2023 at the Clark Art Institute, features a group of eight contemporary artists who consider the intertwined natural and social dimensions of ecological relationships. The exhibition, which includes sculpture, sound installation, video, and plantings, is presented in indoor and outdoor spaces at the Clark

  • Les Misérables

    A Powerful Indictment of Justice in an Unjust Society

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 08th, 2023

    Jean Valjean spends his adult life paying for having stolen a morsel of bread for his sister.  Even after a long prison sentence, he finds himself needing to hide and lie to avoid the relentless Inspector Javert, who obsesses over making Valjean pay endlessly for his petty crime.

  • Week Seven at Jacob's Pillow

    Complexions Contemporary Ballet

    By: Pillow - Jul 12th, 2023

    For nearly three decades, Complexions Contemporary Ballet has thrilled audiences around the globe with its full-throttle, high-intensity performances on five continents and in over 20 countries, committed to its mission of “bringing unity to the world one dance at a time.” The diverse and inclusive company is made up of dancers “who blur lines and boundaries and exude an innate passion” (The Guardian). With their programs set to music from Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie, Metallica, and Lenny Kravitz, the company reinvents ballet with a mix of methods, styles, and cultures that engages and delights. 

  • Music at Williams College

    Schedule for 2003 to 2004

    By: Williams - Jul 17th, 2023

    Williams College presents many free concerts during the academic year. This is the schedule of upcoming events.

  • Artist and Rastafarian Peter Dudek

    Publishing a Limited Edition Book

    By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 18th, 2023

    For the past 15 years artist Peter Dudek has been a part of a team of three that manage Bascom Lodge on Mount Greylock. Prior to that, with Maggie Mailer, he managed Storefront Artists Project in Pittsfield. It brought life to the moribund downtown. Recently we met to discuss a limited edition facsimile of a 1951 Met catalogue American Sculpture.

  • Cruzar la Cara de la Luna: A Mariachi Opera

    Mariachi Music Makes it to the Opera House

    By: Victor Cordell - Jul 25th, 2023

    The story is about Laurentino, a man in New York who immigrated from Mexico half a century before.  On his deathbed, he reveals an undisclosed past to his family.  He had a first wife in Mexico who died in the crossing and a son who returned to his native land. A poignant metaphor of the butterfly recurs in the music and conversation.   When the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis and moves on from its life as a caterpillar, it never returns to the same location, reenacting life’s transformation in a new land.  It is only the descendants that circle back to the homeland of earlier generations.

  • Bach by Bike in Leipzig

    A Trio Stops in the Summersaal

    By: Susan Hall - Jul 31st, 2023

    An enthusiastic cyclist, violinist Marieke Neumann was the developer of the “Bach Bicycle Route” in central Germany, featuring guided tours to important locations from the composer’s life. Mezzo-soprano Anna-Luise Oppelt joins her for Bach by Bike to visit towns and cities where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked.

  • Eric Gauthier at Jacob's Pillow

    Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart.

    By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 01st, 2023

    Now 47, the French Canadian dancer, artistic director, and choreographer Eric Gauthier joined Stuttgart Ballet in 1996, where he rose to the rank of soloist. Initially with six dancers, in 2007 he founded Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart.

  • At the Precipice

    Design Museum of Chicago

    By: Nancy Bishop - Aug 04th, 2023

    The beauty of art and the tragedy of the climate crisis live side by side in a stunning new exhibit at the Design Museum of Chicago. Some 30 pieces ranging in size from framed art to wall-length tell the story of why we are “At the Precipice” in this record-breaking hot and stormy summer of 2023.

  • Margaret Swan Flow

    Ar Boston Sculptors

    By: Sculpture - Aug 04th, 2023

     Margaret Swan’s solo exhibition Flow investigates the duality of free-flowing forms versus structures of containment, choreographing an elegant dance between the two. The fluid, curving planes of her polychrome aluminum sculpture suggest movement, while contrasting latticed frameworks create tension and a sense of restraint. The final effect is that of water passing through nets or vessels—triumphantly finding its own way.

  • Rusalka

    Fine Performances Benefit This Appealing Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 06th, 2023

    “Rusalka” ranks as Dvorák’s most popular opera and with good reason.  Applying Wagnerian principles with leitmotifs and in sung-through fashion, it also draws from Czech folk music.  The thoroughly romantic, luxuriant music possesses extractable set pieces of compelling melody and emotion.  The fairy tale story draws on several sources, mixing light and dark, with a resulting dramatic outcome.

  • Hip Hop Across The Pillow at Jacobs Pillow

    A Festival inside the 2023 Summer Dance Festival

    By: Astrid Hiemer - Aug 07th, 2023

    Hip Hop Across The Pillow was curated by Melanie George and Ali Rosa-Salas. We were fortunate enough to catch the very last totally engrossing performance yesterday.

  • Strong Women in Renaissance Italy

    Fall Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts

    By: MFA - Aug 14th, 2023

    Strong Women in Renaissance Italy features approximately 100 works of art—sculpture, paintings, ceramics, textiles, illustrated books and prints—largely drawn from the MFA’s collection, alongside eight key loans from the British Library, the Dayton Art Institute, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the Boston Athenaeum and a private collection. Women became artists, writers, poets, musicians and singers. They acted as patrons and commissioned works of art.

  • Mahabharata

    A Highly Abbreviated Version of the Longest Poem Ever Written

    By: Victor Cordell - Aug 14th, 2023

    The Mahabharata is regarded by many to be the fifth veda, or sacred Hindu religious text. Appropriately, the storyteller in this production, J Jha, is transgender, as the stories are told from both male and female perspectives, and sexual ambiguity plays an appreciable role. Jha gives an inspired solo performance in delivering a narrative that centers on a war between competing bands of cousins fighting for control of BCE Bharat, which would become India.

  • Berkshire Art Center’s 2023 Artists-In-Residence

    Exhibitions and Talks by Noah Beauregard and Kelly Potter

    By: BAC - Aug 22nd, 2023

    Berkshire Art Center’s 2023 Artists-In-Residence, Noah Beauregard and Kelly Potter, are celebrating the end of their residencies this summer with virtual artist talks and in-person exhibition openings at The Red Lion Inn and Chesterwood.  

  • A Visit to Tippet Rise, Part I

    Local is the Future of Music and Art

    By: Susan Hall - Aug 22nd, 2023

    Tippet Rise is the passionate expression of Cathy Halstead, a painter, and Peter Halstead, a polymath (poet, pianist, photographer, and novelist) who met when they were very young and have lived like two peas in a pod ever since.  Having assembled about 12,500 acres in southern Montana not far from Yellowstone National Park, they have taken cues from the natural surroundings to build concert halls, place site-specific architecture and sculptures and produce an annual summer music festival which is a model for the future.

  • Remembering Dennis Hollingsworth

    About a Comment

    By: Martin Mugar - Aug 25th, 2023

    I have no idea what happened. I feel fortunate to have heard his opinions on the art world which were for the most part conservative in intent. He was commenting on Twitter on the ongoing struggle in Ukraine understanding the manipulation of the American Neo-Cons in perpetuating it. He had just started to take and interest in the notion of Monadology as it might apply to his work. Again, the irreducible 

  • A New Brain a Smash at Barrington Stage

    Revival of Bill Finn and James Lapine Musical

    By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 25th, 2023

    Absorbing, insightful, fun and hilarious are dumbfounding but accurate terms to describe the William Finn and James Lapine musical A New Brain being revised at Barrington Stage Company. It's a musical about neurosurgery.

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