NOTE: All four short films are available for viewing here. In its 15 years, the PitchNic film program at Spy Hop Productions has succeeded because student filmmakers first learn the rules of crafting a good narrative for a short film, whether it is fiction or a documentary piece, and then learn how to break them, … Read more
Expressing the art of dance in painting is among the most difficult challenges artists attempt. Many know of Edgar Degas, who practically lived at the Paris Opera in the 1870s, watching ballet rehearsals and performances, often from backstage, so that his paintings would be as true to representing the intensity of movement and focus of … Read more
Two local theatrical companies recently staged productions of locally written adaptations of two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. One is the witty The Weyward Sisters, inspired by Macbeth, as staged by PYGmalion Productions and the other is Ten Deaths of Hamlet, a one-actor adaptation featuring 16 characters, presented by Sackerson. PYGMALION PRODUCTIONS: THE WEYWARD SISTERS There’s … Read more
One of the most impressive scenes in The Ice Front, the Eric Samuelsen play in a world premiere Plan-B Theatre production, comes in the second act, where the five actors, stage manager and assistant manager have assembled at a restaurant. Shortly before this scene, Morten, the Nazi collaborator who is running the Norwegian national theater, … Read more
The premiere of one of the two works in the upcoming NOVA Chamber Music Series subscription concert, the second of its 40th anniversary season, took place in the unheated barracks of a Stalag prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany during World War II. The other, composed in the 1750s, was premiered by Bohemian cellist Ignaz Mara … Read more
In spirit, creative passion and his life experiences, William ‘Bill’ Evans epitomizes that beloved family member who occasionally returns home to reconnect, celebrate and nourish the memories of wonderful times and to exchange stories about how the family came together to turn the most challenging moments into a new expression of love and learning. At … Read more
In a 2003 lecture sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congress, Harold Bloom, the American literary critic, said Hamlet, Shakespeare’s quintessential tragedy for the theater, still is “the most experimental play ever written.” He added, “You can make of the play ‘Hamlet’ and the protagonist pretty much what you will, whether you are playgoer or … Read more
Carmina Burana has long been the most requested non-full-length work of Ballet West. It was first staged by Ballet West’s founder Willam Christensen in 1974. Since then, the collection of 24 poems set to music by Carl Orff has been performed by Ballet West more than 100 times. So, on the opening of Artist Director … Read more
In occupied France during World War II, writers and intellectuals did not approach the moral dilemma of collaboration and accommodation in a unifying response. A leading figure of the Resistance from the outset, Albert Camus edited an underground newspaper. But, Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux, while sympathetic to the Resistance efforts and contributing anti-Nazi content, … Read more
In 1991, a very young Carlton Vickers was one of the featured musicians on a Salt Lake City performance of Composition for Four Instruments, a prescient work American composer Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) wrote in 1948 that foreshadowed the New Complexity School, one of the most significant developments in music over the last half century. Babbitt, … Read more