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…
“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.” …
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
“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…
Why we hate plasma screens in restaurants
Chicago’s Paul Blair, better known as DJ White Shadow, has played practically everywhere.
I’ve been wrestling with the whooping cough, so Coda has been silent. (No one, I’m sure, wanted to read my musings on Ellen reruns and French existentialist writers–my main activities when I was bedridden.) Fortunately for you, Web editor Esther Kang and her pal, local writer Jackie Ostrowski, hit the annual Sketchfest in my absence and came up with a must-see: a local group called Bri-Ko. Read the review, view the photo gallery, and catch Bri-Ko again this Friday, January 11th, at 11 p.m…
New Zealand/Australian artist/scholar Ruth Watson makes art using salt, images of her own tongue, and other unconventional media. Hear her discuss her work.
Winter may be the perfect time to curl up with a good read, but even better than turning into a housebound bookworm is becoming an erudite social butterfly.
