Celebrity Beat: Politicking with Pete Wentz

Fall Out Boy bassist and Wilmette native Pete Wentz hosted a fundraiser for presidential hopeful Barack Obama Tuesday night at Lakeview Broadcasting Company. “I’ve been an Obama supporter since he announced he was campaigning,” Wentz told me. “I was aware of him as a senator, but I wasn’t as engaged as I probably should’ve been.”

I Geek Out on Dance V. 692

I hear there are still a few spaces open to the public for the Hubbard Street-IIT show this weekend at Crown Hall. (For tickets, call 312-850-9744.) It’s a noteworthy pairing—and not just because Hubbard Street is the city’s leading contemporary company.

Over the past few years writing about culture, I’ve interviewed a number of dancers and choreographers who talk about the influence of architecture on their art. The first time someone mentioned it—it might have been the Chicago-born (New York-based) choreographer Lar Lubovich—I remember thinking how incongruent it sounded. I mean, a building is a fixed thing; a dancer is anything but…

Hey Girl, This is Freaky

Before I get into the goo, let me just say: I’m usually a fan of the Museum of Contemporary Art‘s performance series as curated by Peter Taub. It’s challenging stuff, often culled from performance groups abroad. Whether it’s music, theatre, or dance—the one commonality is that there is generally a strong visual art element. Sometimes I think you could snap a picture mid-scene and create an image worth hanging in the art galleries upstairs…

Celebrity Beat: Common

“I’ve been traveling around the world; there ain’t no ladies like [in] Chi-Town,” Common told the sold-out crowd of 1,400 at his House of Blues concert Saturday night. Be still my heart.

I managed to catch up with the rapper, actor, fashion designer, book author, and native Chicagoan before the show, which benefited his own Common Ground Foundation. “[I] stay in tune with the people from where I’m from,” he said. “The more you get, the more you give back.” …

The Blip – February 2008

    photography: (scissors) sanja gjenero/stock.xchng, (toyota 1/x) courtesy of toyota motor sales, u.s.a., inc., (isotope 217) courtesy of thrill jockey, (disco ball) © jason lugo/istockphoto.com, (pierce) library of congress brady-handy collection, (ashtray) © bruce lonngren/istockphoto.com, (cupcake) megan lovejoy, (flip-flops) © jasmin awad/istockphoto.com, (parton) Kii arens, (frog) © chen chih-wen/istockphoto.com

Guest Blog: It’s Da Bomb

“The audience in Oedipus Rex knew what was coming,” said Doctor
Atomic
librettist and director Peter Sellars in his pre-concert lecture at
Lyric Opera last night. He was drawing a comparison between Greek drama,
when the stories being staged were traditional tales already known to the
theatergoers, and Doctor Atomic, which is based on the real-life
testing of the first atomic bomb, in 1945. The second half of Sellars’s talk
took listeners through the opera scene by scene, describing what would
happen, what he thought was great about it, and his anti–nuclear weapons
politics…