By Bob Hicks
Snow? What snow? It’ll be gone by Sunday (that’s not a promise, only an extreme probability) and you’ll be wanting to get out of the house. Maybe over to Mississippi and Shaver in North Portland, where Northwest Dance Project has its studio.
That’s where I’ll be, starting at 3 p.m., for NDP’s latest Dance [...]
By Martha Ullman West
So I put on my black leather jacket and my uncut corduroy black jeans, but balked at a nose ring, and attended the Dance Talks panel at the Pacific Northwest College of Art yesterday afternoon. This outreach program for adults usually takes place at the Keller or the [...]
By Bob Hicks
One of the signs that a town is turning into a city is that it can’t squeeze everything into a box. So, for instance, while the newest Portland Jazz Festival kicks into high swing (and bop), some terrific jazz is popping up in spots that aren’t connected to the festival at all.
While the [...]
By Bob Hicks
This afternoon’s top story comes from ace reporter Cole Porter, who broke the news this way:
You’re the nimble tread
Of the feet of Fred Astaire,
You’re an O’Neill drama,
You’re Whistler’s mama!
You’re camembert.
In plainer English, Oregon Ballet Theatre announced today that principal dancer Anne Mueller, who has been with the company 15 years, will [...]
By Martha Ullman West
According to Jennifer Homans, whose Apollo’s Angels the New York Times Book Review has anointed one of the 10 best books of 2010, ballet is dead, not only because Balanchine is dead, but also because the courts of Louis XIV, XV and XVI are long gone.
That conclusion is [...]
By Bob Hicks
On Saturday night, Mr. Scatter put on his professional drama-critic hat (it’s a metaphorical hat; it was a blustery evening, so he actually wore a rain jacket with a hood) and went to Artists Repertory Theatre to see Martin McDonagh’s nasty little comedy The Lieutenant of Inishmore. He means that “nasty little comedy” [...]
By Laura Grimes
“I thought you’d like to write about it because storytelling is your thing.”
My thing?
My thing is very occasionally, if properly goaded, spinning a knotted-up yarn after a beer or two.
Mr. Scatter was trying to encourage me — nay, uncharacteristically apply pressure on me — to write about Love Jones, which we were seeing [...]
By Bob Hicks
Maryhill Museum of Art officially breaks ground at 3:30 p.m. next Friday, Feb. 18, on its $10 million expansion project, which will give the Columbia Gorge landmark some much-needed elbow room. Between an expansive plaza and expanded indoor spaces, the project will add 25,500 square feet. The museum will be open during construction: [...]
By Bob Hicks
He was on no one’s list of the great novelists of the 20th century. Many literary critics barely knew he existed. He didn’t create an overarching epic of good and evil like J.K. Rowling, or cause squeals of vampire lust like Stephenie Meyer.
But somehow or other, while critical eyes were cast elsewhere, Brian [...]
By Bob Hicks
The world of ballet has its share of exotic creatures, from lovelorn swan-women to a magical firebird to a princess who takes a hundred-year nap.
But no one seems quite as oddball, or as eerily sympathetic and nasty at the same time, as the Wilis, those sad young spectres of girls who were jilted [...]