“The eleven-thirty Amtrak Silver Star bound for Tampa and Miami,” announces a voice at Grand Central Station. Then Al Pacino shoots like seventeen people to death before being killed himself, his body sliding down the dull silver hull of a coach-class train. My sojourn on Amtrak’s Silver Star line wasn’t quite as dramatic as that […]
Brian Howe
Posted inCulture
Dance Review: The Many Moving Parts of The Bipeds’ 54 Strange Words Don’t Always Perfectly Mesh. But When They Do, It’s Spectacular.
The Bipeds: 54 Strange Words ★★★½Thursday, Jun. 21–Sunday, Jun. 24 The Fruit, Durham Perhaps halfway through local dance-music company The Bipeds’54 Strange Words, which premiered as the closer in the DIDA season near the end of June, I saw something I’ll never forget. Dana Marks, whom you likely know as an actor and director with […]
Posted inArt
Murielle Elizéon Sifts the Ashes of Racism, Sexism, Cultural Displacement, Domestic Violence, and Her Relationship with Her Father in Brown
Sunday, Jul. 8 (2 & 7 p.m.) & Monday, Jul. 9 (7 p.m.) The Fruit, Durham www.americandancefestival.org This is a condensed version of our review of the premiere of Brown at Monkey Bottom Collaborative last December. Murielle Elizéon sets the scene for Brown, her hour-long dance solo, by telling the story of reconnecting with her […]
Posted inCulture
Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins and Pierce Freelon Bring 5P1N0K10, a Hip-Hopera to the ArtsCenter
Friday, June 22 The ArtsCenter, Carrboro 8 p.m., $15, www.artscenterlive.org In recent years, you can hardly turn around without bumping into the uncanny puppet artistry of Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins, whether it’s in Paperhand Puppet Intervention shows, Missy Elliott music videos, public libraries and schools, The Steve Harvey Show, or the Durham Hotel’s lobby. Last year, […]
Posted inTheater
Modern Masters: The American Dance Festival Doesn’t Just Trace the Shape of Modern Dance. It Creates It.
The American Dance Festival is dedicated to modern dance. But this pat statement belies a complex and fluid state of affairs. In a tenure than spans nine decades, the last four of them spent drawing together local and international dance artists and audiences in Durham, the festival has earned enough global influence to play a […]
Posted inArt
An Old Tobacco Complex Turned Arts Hub Evolves as the Carrack Appoints a New Leader and SPECTRE Arts Closes
The Carrack Modern Art and SPECTRE Arts are separate entities, but fate seems intent on linking them. First, SPECTRE founding director Alicia Lange paved the way for the Carrack’s relocation from Parrish Street to the Golden Belt area. Now, by coincidence, both galleries are undergoing major transitions at the same time. SPECTRE closed at the […]
Posted inCulture
A Villain Burglarized All Three Ultimate Comics Stores Last Night
It was about ten o’clock last night when Ultimate Comics owner Alan Gill got word from two employees returning from a convention that his flagship store, on the border of Durham and Chapel Hill, was a shambles. A window was shattered, as were many of the “geek boxes” inside—the glass cases housing the most precious […]
Posted inCulture
Meet New Friends and Hear About Old Ones at Audio Under the Stars
Friday, May 25 Center for Documentary Studies, Durham 8 p.m., free, www.audiounderthestars.org Whether it’s NPR in our cars or podcasts at the office, many of us are constantly awash in audio documentaries. The stroke of brilliance of Audio Under the Stars was to open the doors, pull out the earbuds, and fling these stories open […]
Posted inCulture
Tom Whiteside Spins a Fantasia Around Sophia Loren in Movies in the Park’s “Crazy Italian Night”
Friday, May 25 The Leaf at Durham Central Park, Durham 9 p.m., donations accepted, www.durhamcentralpark.org If the Center for Documentary Studies’ Audio Under the Stars series is an emerging hallmark of Durham summers, then Durham Cinematheque’s Movies in the Park is a well-established one. To kick off his tenth season of showing vintage film oddities […]
Posted inMusic
Moogfest, Night One: Ominous Armory Noises to Divine, Danceable Pop
Moogfest: Kelela, Author & Punisher, Jon Hopkins Downtown Durham Thursday, May 17, 2018 Moogfest is a land of circuits and loops, so I guess it’s apt that I got stuck on a track between The Carolina Theatre and The Armory all night, as if I too were a digital packet or analog wave spinning in […]
