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Doruntine
A lot of theater happens because its creators have something to say. But New York’s Blessed Unrest has something to tell. To see them is an act of devotion to the significance of storytelling, psychological, aesthetic, and ideological, and the pleasure to be had from it. They enact not just the allure of the tale…
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Comida de puta
COMIDA DE PUTA (F%&KING LOUSY FOOD), a new play by Desi Moreno-Penson at the West End Theater, transposes the Greek myth of Phaedra to the Nuyorican Bronx and its cosmology to the spirit world of Santeria. There are signposts along the way that point to the original, if you wish to follow them. The Phaedra…
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From the Earth to the Moon
He was, when I was growing up, a boy in a normative Middle American family, essential reading, along with Conan Doyle, Tolkien, and a few others. But I have the sense, hoping that I am wrong, that Jules Verne is not, at least in this country, so much read anymore. Part of this is simply…
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Sofia Ribeiro
Hearing the Portuguese jazz singer Sofia Ribeiro last weekend at Cornelia Street Café was, for me, a real discovery. She is, to begin with, wonderful in front of an audience, good-naturedly self-effacing, bouyant and open in a way that wends its way through her personality and into her music. The most wistful and reflective of…
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Skylight
Carey Mulligan is as good onstage at the John Golden Theatre as she is in the movies. As Kyra, the passionate teacher in David Hare‘s SKYLIGHT, she seems, quite simply, settled into the modest flat and routine, hard-nosed realism of the character. It is her place, her home, her way of being. Echoing what I…
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10
I haven’t seen the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet so elegant, in sound or deportment, as they were Monday night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. The spot has an elegance in its own right, with a view of Central Park and a good, Southern inspired menu. The band has appeared there before, in a series sponsored by…
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Origin of Adjustable Things
It was by whim and circumstance that I found myself, on Tuesday night, at SubCulture for the CD release of THE ORIGIN OF ADJUSTABLE THINGS, by the singer Joanna Wallfisch and the pianist Dan Tepfer. The strange poetry of the title belies the eccentricity of how it came to Wallfisch while water skiing on a…
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Flamencos y mestizos: Lara Bello
I would no more call what Lara Bello does “fusion” than I would the diverse flowers of a meadow seeded by the winds. The flora of her landscape seem to have landed there quite naturally and grown at their own pace. Flamenco, jazz, and folk, the genres of North Africa, the Near East, Asia, Iberia,…
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Mariel Martínez
BUENOS AIRES … CUANDO LEJOS ME VI is the title of a show by Mariel Martínez & La Porteño Tango Trio currently in Madrid to promote a CD of the same name. I have admired Martínez’s recordings since listening to her 2010 Perfume de tango. The album includes a compelling interpretation of “Luna curiosa,” a…
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Granada
There is something in Sílvia Pérez Cruz’s voice so pure that it makes you lose your mind. You wonder where it possibly can be coming from, for it seems a thing of nature, but utterly unique, a plant never before seen, yet born organically. There ought to be many of them, but there is only…