Have you ever wondered what museum directors talk about when they get together? I’ve always wondered if it was small ego battle where they get together and one-up one another with recently acquired works. Who wins, I wonder, when the director of the Louvre pulls out the Mona Lisa and…
When you’re trying to start a successful rock band, moving from California to the ultraconservative city of Provo, Utah, would seem to be a move in the wrong direction. Yet that’s exactly what Neon Trees did. After being taken under the Killers’ wings, Neon Trees had enormous hits with the radio-friendly…
The eternal swan. That might a better name for the ballet we love to hate. OK, so maybe hate is too strong of a word to use, but more often than not, when we dance writers see Swan Lake on the bill for a company’s season, we shudder with fear…
André Watts’ big break came when he was just 16 years old. In 1963, Leonard Bernstein invited the tall, lanky teenager to make his professional debut with the New York Philharmonic. Almost overnight the young African-American/Hungarian pianist was a classical sensation, selling records and traveling the world as a performer…
Diana Ross is legendary. Janis Joplin passed before her time. Connie Francis was a radio queen. But there’s just no other voice like Patsy Cline’s. Only she could record Willie frikking Nelson’s “Crazy” and make it hers. Only she cold run with the boys of Nashville and cross over into…
The Beach Boys get all the credit for expanding the horizons of pop music, and rightfully so, given their experimental and innovative sounds. But on the opposite coast, Franki Valli, Bob Gauido, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi were nothing to sniff at: their band, The Four Seasons, nailed a distinctive…
The first time the cute boy from science class typed “lol” into our AIM chat, my heart fluttered. Of course, later my older, wiser sister had to explain to me that these three letters were internet speak for “laugh out loud,” not “lots of love” as I’d hoped. This easy…
I don’t know how, when you lump them all together in a montage, the works of the ’70s pop band ABBA add up to a story about a bride’s search for her real father — one of three men who slept with her mom back when. Dunno why the musical…
If you weren’t an only child, then you surely understand the realities of relatives in family dynamics. As the middle child, I fell between the first child strictures and the spoils of being the baby, which means I was allowed to date, but not given a car to drive to…
Your Instagram feed is a work of art. You’ve spent hours perfecting it, getting the perfect angle for that shot of your breakfast or of the puppy you recently adopted. Everyone needs to see your adoption story. Hashtag puppy. Hashtag look how good I am. Hashtag down with puppy mills…
Los Angeles based artist Mark Grotjahn has earned a following across the world for his focus on textures, colors and forms. In his Face and Butterfly painting series, he uses color to sear the canvas to what some have described as a hallucinogenic effect. Opening at 11 a.m. Saturday, the…
We’ve been talking about AMC’s new show Halt and Catch Fire for months. If we sound a bit excited, it’s because we are. In fact, we’ve been nerding out so hard, we convinced our cool friends over at Sundown at the Granada to invite us over to watch it on…
There’s no real way to describe how Tony Barsotti enters a room. It’s part Kramer, part swagger, mostly Tony. He’s full of energy and confidence and talent. And holy shit, this man has talent. He was the drummer in Hagfish back in the day — the hard driving, mid-’90s Deep…
I should open this blog post with a caveat. These are the 10 best theater companies in town that aren’t the Dallas Theater Center. The budget of the Dallas Theater Center sweeps it out of the competition. It’s our local member of the League of Resident Theaters (LORT), which implies,…
Boston native Bill Burr may sound bothered and on the constant edge of a nervous breakdown on stage but he has a weird, almost Zen-like attitude toward his aspirations, or as close to Zen as most clinically depressed comics can achieve. While comics may dream of getting their own self-titled…
If you haven’t seen the hashtag #YesAllWomen pop up in your newsfeed this week, you have the wrong friends. In the wake of the Elliot Rodger shootings, women across the globe began to stand together, sharing harassment and assault experiences, in order to draw attention to the continued reality of…
Jim Henson created some of film’s most lovable characters. Kermit the Frog, Gonzo and the gang only grow more endearing with age. But Henson also created quite a few fantastical monsters that scared the bejeezus out of little kids. The creatures in the mystical, often scary world of Henson’s The…
Something’s been missing from the past few years of the Festival of Independent Theaters. It’s been difficult to pinpoint exactly what was missing and the upbeat festival organizers aren’t ones to complain. But it seemed from the outside that must have been a lack of truly engaging submissions. Of course,…
From the outside, the Dallas arts world is filled with enigmas. Certain projects, galleries, or even artists, demand definition or exposition or at the very least a label that says, “This is art.” Two puzzlers linked arms last month, skipping into the much deserved spotlight. The local anachronistic zine, semigloss…
Each year, season subscribers to The Dallas Opera get a chance to vote on their favorite of all the singers who debuted with the company during the previous season. Votes are tallied and the winner receives the “Maria Callas Debut Artist of the Year” award. This year’s award-winner was no…
Name the most walkable or bikeable city. GO! No shocker if Dallas wasn’t your first pick. At least not yet. We may be a veritable metropolis of sprawling-sprawl-McSprawl and super-sized suburbs, but we have efforts like The Better Block Project, the Dallas Bike Plan and other short-term events to create…
The eternal swan. That might a better name for the ballet we love to hate. OK, so maybe hate is too strong a word, but more often than not, when we dance writers see Swan Lake on the bill for a company’s season — it’s being performed by the Texas…
