Vaude-Villains

Vaude-Villains

Sitting in Hugo's, nursing the end of a head cold and a whiskey sour one rainy February night last year, I was surrounded by friends, acquaintances and assorted locals in various states of dress and sobriety. There was a building sense of anticipation, as those of...
Ballet  For  Battle

Ballet For Battle

The 1957 Broadway debut and the 1961 version of West Side Story featured explosive, athletic ballet, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, who had the initial idea for the musical. Drawing inspiration from Robbins, break dancing, crumping and capoeira, choreographer Maura...
Diaspora Diorama

Diaspora Diorama

Think of shadow puppets, and diaspora and political persecution are not necessarily the first things that come to mind. However, Philadelphia-based artist Erik Ruin has used a fairly unsophisticated medium to explore darker topics. His show, Flight, utilizes intricate...
Amazonian Appetites

Amazonian Appetites

The myth of Medea has been a profound source of inspiration for 20th- and 21st-century artists with drastically different aesthetics: everyone from Leonard Baskin to Margaret Atwood has been inspired by the tale of the mother who murdered her children to avenge her...
Dream the Impossible Dream

Dream the Impossible Dream

Firmly established as a seminal work of fiction, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote not only deals with philosophical themes like identity and deception, but also with their comedic foils, imitation and fantasy. Cervantes instills in his character qualities that...