Staged Rave: Batsheva Dance Company’s Anaphaza Lori Ortiz Ohad Naharin’s1993 Anaphaza is a frenetically paced birthday party celebrating the ordinaryaudience member. Naharin, choreographer, chose Anaphaza for the festival becauseit is a festive dance. In rehearsal, as in Jewish custom after the death of a loved one, mirrors are covered to avert the gaze from the […]

Danced Paintings: The Rite of Spring/Folding Lori Ortiz  Several largegestural abstractions on canvas hang in the lobby of the LaGuardia concert hall.The calligraphic action paintings were created — and danced — by Shen-Weiwith a wide brush in his studio, to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The blackstrokes are almost calligraphic notations of the movement of his […]

Ballett Frankfurt: Order, Chaos & Evolution L.P. Streitfeld  The prolongedstanding ovation resounding through the Brooklyn Academy of Music Howard GilmanOpera House on Tuesday, the final opening night for Ballett Frankfurt in NewYork, was a tribute to the man who challenged all artistic expression by hisdaring. William Forsythe succeeded in stripping movement down to the fundamentals– […]

Threads of Consciousness: Kelly Heaton’s Live Pelt@ Ronald Feldman Fine Art Anitra Haendel  Kelly Heatondescribes her multi-media installation Live Pelt as a documentary of contemporaryAmerican culture, tracking our progression through new media with the scent oftimes past.” Fascinated by theAmerican obsession for the Tickle-Me-Elmo doll, she investigates as a scientist(with a Masters from MIT and […]

Turning Point: Toward A Second Modernism Carla Subrizi  The potentialfor a second Modernism emerges through the way recent art both destroys and rethinksart of the first Modernism. The concepts of Charles Baudelaire and later WalterBenjamin were the soil into which the 20th century laid its roots. Contradictionand intuition regarding identity (individual and social), history, and […]

Susan Kaprov: Captivating the Public Sphere John Perreault  Like manyartists, Susan Kaprov tackles a full range of techniques and formats: from drawingsto large public mural installations, to photographs, to paintings for galleriesor private collections.  She has workedon paper, canvas, wood, and aluminum, and produced a 54 foot enamel-on-glasswall installation. Think of it as the Picasso […]

Meditation/Mediation for Daniel Rothbart Enrico Pedrini  Daniel Rothbart,as part of an ongoing conceptual project, carries a series of twelve metal vesselswith him on his travels to different countries. The artist selects environmentsin which to arrange these vessels, and documents the resulting tableaux withphotographs. His vessels, due to the intervention of unpredictable outside factors,are filled with […]

NOT FOR CREAMPUFFS: CULTURAL JETLAG Jim Siergey Cartooning ain’tfor creampuffs. It takes a strong back, a strong hand and a strong mind. A thickhide doesn’t hurt either. An acceptance of living an ink-stained life isa must as well. What kind of person becomes a cartoonist? An observer, a seeker,a smirker, a truth-teller, a tall story […]

Cartoons and Me Andy Singer Cartoons are a great medium for educating people by quickly showing ideas and relationships.The word “Cartoon” comes from the Italian word Cartone, “a Preparatorysketch, as for a fresco or painting.” Cartooning combines images with wordsin a kind of verbal and visual shorthand. This combination of words and images(or just multiple […]

Donkey, Elephant, Roadkill. SCOTT BATEMAN Editional cartooning-whydoes it suck so much ass these days?  First, caneditorial cartoonists maybe come up with a better, more contemporary system ofsymbolism? I mean, most of us are still drawing talking donkeys and elephantsin suits. Now, when Thomas Nast came up with these symbols for the Democratsand Republicans back in […]