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In England, Morris Dancing is loved, mocked and getting a makeover
LONDON.- Four women in gold lamÃ© jumpsuits with painted faces and floral headbands leaped in tandem, their shins bedecked with silver bells. Hands each gripping a white handkerchief cut the air at angles above their heads. Two enormous papier-mÃ¢chÃ© beasts a sheep and an owl were being manipulated to dance at the edge of the stage. Joy beamed from each dancers face. The crowd was whooping. But what on earth was this spectacle? The women, part of the all-female company Boss Morris, were performing the Cotswold Morris, an often mocked English folk dance that was having a rare moment on the proscenium stage at the Southbank Center in London in May. But this was not Morris dancing as it has come down through the ages. We go a bit wild, said Rhia Davenport, a founding member of Boss Morris. In Morris dancing, a ... More

Artpace receives $100,000 award from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative
SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Artpace San Antonio announced that it has received a $100,000 grant award through the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, a grant-making program established by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in collaboration with Environment & Culture Partners and RMI to catalyze climate action in the visual arts. The provided funds will be used to install solar panels on the renovated rooftop of the Artpace building. The installation of solar panels is part of a more extensive rooftop renovation that will create an event space for a greatly expanded schedule of contemporary arts programming and additional venue for building rentals. While the rooftop renovation and structure will provide weather protection and shade for a significant portion of the rooftop, feature state-of-the-art design, and bring a modern architectural element to the building, ... More

New York Live Arts presents outdoor site specific work in dance for sunset series on Long Island
NEW YORK, NY.- New York Live Arts presents an outdoor site specific performance by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company as part of the Dance for Sunset series at The Post-Morrow Foundation in Brookhaven, Long Island, August 26 at 6pm. This special, one-time engagement will feature the Company joined by live music in and around the Southern Nearshore Trap/Pot Waters, including its lush surrounding of marshes, wooded areas, and nature walkways. Over the past 40 years the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the company was born of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces ... More

CEPA Gallery exhibits artist Joe Ziolkowski's 'Quester of Light'
BUFFALO, NY.- The Center for Exploratory & Perceptual Arts is hosting Quester of Light, an exhibition by Joe Ziolkowski. The show is taking place in the historic Market Arcade Building located at 617 Main St in Buffalo, NY. Joe Ziolkowski was one of the selected winners from the CEPA Gallery Members Exhibition (2022). As part of the exhibition, the artist will be installing a walk in camera obscura in CEPAs Flux Gallery. Quester of Light: Behold the accumulation of a single soul; a life lived in intensity and torrent. A dense mountainous cloud shaped from desire and obsession, piling up, engulﬁng its originator, and sprawling out across the horizon; the overwhelming drive to create, lest one disappear. It is to awaken in the dead of night in a cold sweat, with an abstract yearning. A pull to compulsively document, preserve, protect, and project out into ... More

A 'Golden Age' for Heritage as historic Batman and Robin, 'Star Wars' and 'X-Men' covers take a spin Sept. 14-17
DALLAS, TX.- Anyone who has ever spent their free hours spinning a comics rack or opening their newspaper to the comics page will find something in Heritage's Sept. 14-17 Comics & Comic Art SignatureÂ® Auction that jogs the memory, quickens the pulse, stirs the soul. Among the event's more than 1,330 offerings are significant works handmade by celebrated titans and unsung heroes, valuable titles both famous and forgotten, and countless panels that have provided enduring pleasures. Randomly scan the lots, as one might have done as a child, and you will find no shortage of Major Works. Among their venerable and valuable lot are scant survivors from DC Comics' Golden Age: Mort Meskin's original ... More

Bob Jones, behind-the-stage force at Newport Festivals, dies at 86
NEW YORK, NY.- Bob Jones, who began as a volunteer at the Newport Folk Festival in the early 1960s before rapidly gaining the trust of its impresario, George Wein, and going on to produce the event over two decades, died Aug. 14 in hospice care in Danbury, Connecticut. He was 86. His daughter Radhika Jones said the cause was complications of dementia. Jones spent a half-century with the folk festival, held every summer in Rhode Island, as well as with its companion, the Newport Jazz Festival, and other events produced by Wein. He was there when Bob Dylan outraged purists by going electric at the 1965 folk festival, and he helped persuade Wein to resurrect the festival in 1985 after a 16-year hiatus. In his autobiography, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music (with Nate Chinen, 2003), Wein, who started the jazz festival in 1954 and the folk ... More

'Once Upon a One More Time,' the Britney Spears musical, is closing
NEW YORK, NY.- Once Upon a One More Time, a pop musical using the songs of Britney Spears, will close on Broadway on Sept. 3 after opening to mixed reviews and failing to find an audience. The musical was a costly misfire, capitalized for $20 million at a time when many Broadway shows have been struggling with rising costs and diminished attendance after a pandemic shutdown that made an always-challenging industry even more difficult. Once Upon a One More Time is about a group of fairy-tale heroes whose outlook on their familiar stories is shaken when the book club to which they belong encounters a feminist classic, Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique. The musical features some of Spears biggest hits, including Baby One More Time, Toxic and Circus. The songs have several writers but were originally performed and recorded ... More

Howard S. Becker, who looked at society with a fresh eye, dies at 95
NEW YORK, NY.- Howard S. Becker, an eminent American sociologist who brought his wide-ranging curiosity, sharp observation and dry wit to subjects as diverse as the art world, marijuana use and the meaning of deviance, died Wednesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 95. His death was confirmed by his wife, Dianne Hagaman. Becker was probably best known for Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, a groundbreaking book published in 1963. The central fact about deviance: It is created by society, he wrote, arguing that deviance is inherent not in certain behaviors but in the way those behaviors are viewed by others. The book presents two deviant groups, marijuana smokers and dance musicians, and examines their cultures and careers. It is rich with the language of its subjects. The notion that deviance is a label ... More

Two musicals, one lonesome world
STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.- There is little to be gained from getting overly attached to source material. When a story told first in one form is adapted into another, it becomes a different creature in the details and sometimes the broad outlines, too. So it goes with art; so has it ever gone. And yet I ask for a special dispensation in the case of the new musical, On Cedar Street, onstage through Sept. 2 at the Berkshire Theater Groups Unicorn Theater in Stockbridge. The show is inspired by Kent Harufs slender final novel from 2015, Our Souls at Night, about how two widowed, small-town neighbors, Addie and Louis, gingerly find their way into each others life after she proposes a remedy for their loneliness: that they start sleeping together platonically, for conversation and companionship. The book is a quiet, gentle thing, and it takes its time, ... More

The Armory Show announces the public art installations of Armory Off-Site
NEW YORK, NY.- The Armory Show announces the public art installations of Armory Off-Site, the third edition of the art fairs outdoor art program, which brings large-scale artworks to New York Citys parks and public spaces. In addition to partnering for the second time with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) to present three large-scale sculptures at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center during the US Open, The Armory Show is partnering with Times Square Arts on the organizations Midnight Moment program. Each Off-Site work will be on view during The Armory Show, which takes place at the Javits Center this September 810, and many will remain in place for the rest of the year. Installations at the US Open are on view for the duration of the tournament. The featured artists and locations are Ayesha Singh ... More