Desperate times brought them together: Blindsided by $665,000 in proposed cuts for arts funding in Gov. Mike Easley’s initial 2003-2004 budget–and what would have been a total 42 percent cut in funding for the North Carolina Arts Council since Easley took office–artists and concerned citizens across the state organized in 2003 and became politically active […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inNews
A necessary Lesson
DUBLIN, NC–When you get a first look at Bladen County, they don’t exactly seem to be hurting for space. Farmland stretches out on either side of Highway 87 once you finally get past Fayetteville, as the road ambles south by east toward the coast. The terrain’s flat; the cloudless sky is broad. Even by the […]
Posted inNews
in disappearances
Fred Cuny was that quintessentially American commodity, a self-made man: a tall Texan who kept reinventing a checkered past (a busted marriage, an early washout in the Marines) until he finally found the one that fit. When it did, Cuny proceeded to rewrite the book on international disaster relief–quite literally saving the lives of tens […]
Posted inNews
The grate, outdoors
The cheery whistle of a steam locomotive. The full-throated brraappp! of a motorcyclist getting the hell out of Dodge. A police siren, shortly after that. Eighteen-wheelers downshifting. Most of all, a fusillade of hasty footsteps on plywood, amplified by pressure-zone microphones. Shakespeare had few of these things in mind, of course, when he wrote Romeo […]
Posted inGuides
Ten-hut!
“I understand you’re pretty good at predicting what will happen in a theater of operations, Mr. Woods.” It wasn’t the first time I’d been jolted from a sound sleep by a troubled soul. As a rule, it tends to happen sometime during that crucial third week of rehearsals to a disaster in the making. The […]
Posted inNews
Bridges made of words
The women on South State Street have been writing. Perhaps you met them last August at the ArtsCenter, or in October at St. Mary’s School. These are the only times the members of the N.C. Women’s Prison Writing and Performance Project have been allowed out of the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women to perform their […]
Posted inArt
Critic’s notebook: A shrinking harvest?
The economics of modern dance–at least as it is currently practiced–tend to do several things to the region’s emerging choreographers and dancers. Some it drives together. Others it drives off. In some cases it does one first, and then the other. Increasingly in recent years, we’ve seen area dance artists band together in their work. […]
Posted inNews
Lovers–and other demons
Demon lovers–or those merely once removed–factored into most of the major openings last week. The one exception? Deep Dish’s Holiday, which neatly inverted the proposition. Johnny, the loner boyfriend, is not the satanic one in Philip Barry’s toothsome, unapologetic 1928 jazz-age soap opera. Hell begins at home instead, which is the main reason certain family […]
Posted inArt
Imagining dreams and Nureyev
This Friday, April 30, Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books will present author Colum McCann in a benefit reading and book signing for the Carolina Ballet. McCann’s subject will be Dancer, his critically acclaimed 2003 historical novel about the life of Rudolph Nureyev. Last week we spoke with him by phone, during a book tour stop in […]
Posted inNews
in North Carolina dance
It’s too good an idea for just once a year–and even better since it’s free. That would be the N.C. Choreographers and Dancers showcase, Saturday, May 1 at Cary Academy’s Fine Arts Center. Some names will already be familiar to those who’ve caught recent episodes of the North Carolina Dance Festival: Greensboro’s Jan Van Dyke […]