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Willie Colón
I assumed that seeing Willie Colón: La Historia last Saturday at the Lehman Center in the Bronx would be entirely new territory for me, and I was uncertain whether I would be able to follow my usual practice of publishing a few notes when I see a performer that I enjoy, find interesting, or otherwise…
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La Chicana
Last week was my second time seeing La Chicana at the Buenos Aires tango spot called Torquato Tasso. This innovative band was founded by Dolores Solá, Acho Estol and Juan Valverde in 1995, but what defines them for me is the metallic resonance of Solá’s voice and the acerbic wit of her interpretations. That wit…
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Cristina Pato
It’s not clear just how seriously to take the claim of the Iberian province of Galicia to Celtic heritage. There were some ancient settlements, the ruins of which can be seen today. The country’s name is related to “Gaelic” and to “Gales”, which is Spanish for “Wales”. But anyone who has looked into the subject…
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The Master Builder
There is much to appreciate in the version of THE MASTER BUILDER now playing at BAM. John Turturro’s sheer onstage presence as Ibsen’s feckless protagonist can scarcely be gainsaid, nor can the charm and playfulness of Wrenn Schmidt as Hilde, the young woman who changes everything by walking into – BACK into – the master…
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Social Tango
I was privileged to observe a rehearsal of SOCIAL TANGO and am the more regretful that the show’s opening does not overlap with my stay in Buenos Aires. This does not fit the stereotype of a tourist show, but a tourist ought to love it. The dances are not about acrobatics or overwrought sexuality. There…
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Giacomo Variations
Michael Sturminger’s GIACOMO VARIATIONS places the protagonist of the title – whom we know better as Casanova – at the end of his life looking back not only on his romantic conquests but on the resentments he has nursed at never having been fully accepted by the aristocratic classes he moved amongst. The text is…
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Much Ado About Nothing
Joss Whedon’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is something to see, a smart, elegant, fast-moving romantic intrigue filled with the spirit and surprise of the best storytelling. It’s that rare film of a Shakespearean comedy that, without modernizing the language, is utterly comprehensible from the first frame to the last. Kenneth Branagh’s version of the play…
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The East
What I like about Brit Marling, who co-wrote (with director Zal Batmanglij) and stars in THE EAST, is that you can see her thinking, not in a mugging, brow-wrinkling, eyes-going-wide way, but in the faintest modulations of expression, a parted lip, a linger in the look, a shift in the weight. There is something alert…
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La ruta de Lorca
On June 5, the birthday of the great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, I joined LA RUTA DE LORCA EN NUEVA YORK, a walking tour of some of the poet’s haunts in the vicinity of Columbia University. We gathered at the university gate, bearing as our standard a rendering of Lorca’s face, composed,…
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Pedro Giraudo
It is not just his “big” band. Everything about the music of Pedro Giraudo is vast, enlarged in space, time and ambition, extended to the far-off horizons that the sounds he makes compel us to visualize. His compositions feel as though they traverse landscapes, squeezing whole journeys into musical adventures that set out as from…