Star Dust
We are all of us, beings, in a constant state of continual change. We humans are a composition of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.
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At the Paris Universal Exhibition at the turn of the twentieth century, where it was said Debussy first heard Javanese gamelan music, near everything newly discovered or newly made could be found. The Eiffel Tower, now synonymous with Paris, for one; the world-encompassing scale of the Galerie des machines where visitors could delight in discovering such things as atmospheric hammers, cigarette makers, phonographs, and telephones. Add to this a colonial exhibition of the ‘other’ from across land and sea masses; the Imperial, the largest diamond in the world; and a giant wooden and stucco elephant, which was later purchased and placed alongside an infamous red windmill, the Moulin Rouge, to render complete the Jardin de Paris Elephant. For a franc, a gentleman could enter the elephant’s body, by way of a staircase twisting up one of its legs, and find themselves in an opium den and a froth of belly dancers.
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Adam Bull and Kirsty Martin in “The Merry Widow.” Photograph by Jeff Busby
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We are all of us, beings, in a constant state of continual change. We humans are a composition of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.
Continue ReadingThe title of Catherine Tharin’s latest production, “In the Wake of Yes,” is a reference to “Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy,” an inner monologue on womanhood and sexuality, from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Tharin matches the tone of this work as she picks up on an exuberant string of “yeses” from that text. Her witty series of dances explores romance and its complications. At the center of the show is a film by Lois Robertson that lifts the dancers out of the tiny East Village stage and transports them (and us) to scenes of contemporary New York City. Tharin, who danced with the...
Continue ReadingThrough its newly opened program, “Other Dances,” Dutch National Ballet kicks off the summer with a slate of lighthearted fare that varies in precise approach but altogether evokes an effervescent mood.
Continue ReadingTaking the historian’s long view, the message within “Last and First Men,” that “the whole duration of humanity, its evolution, and many successive species, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos,” is, to me, ultimately a comfort.
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