Coming Home: ADF Alumni Return ★★ Saturday, Jun. 23 & Sunday, Jun. 24 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham Homecomings can be bittersweet affairs, and ADF’s alumni showcase was a particularly dispiriting one. It’s hard to imagine that more than a hundred other submitted dance works were less accomplished than the mostly unfortunate quintet selected by a […]
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ADF Review: Pilobolus’s Crowd-Pleasing Dance Is Apolitical. Unfortunately, the World It Inhabits Is Not.
Pilobolus ★½ Thursday, Jun. 21 & Friday, Jun. 22 Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham Pilobolus exempts itself from politics. The dance company wants you to escape the real world and have a good time for a couple of hours. It wants to give you a handful of chuckles and elicit some oohs and aahs in […]
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Theater Review: One of Theater’s Great Sacrificial Characters Strikes Back in Iphigenia in Splott
Iphigenia in Splott ★★★★½ Through Saturday, Jun. 23 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh Iphigenia is one of the greatest sacrificial characters in Greek mythology. Splott, however, is a rundown section of Cardiff, Wales, best known to locals as the place where a library, swimming pool, doctor’s office, and other amenities used to be—before government funding cuts. […]
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ADF Review: Shen Wei, Samuel Beckett, and Morton Feldman Meet in the Bardo in Neither
Shen Wei Dance Arts: Neither★★★★½ Saturday, June 16 & Sunday, June 17 Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham In retrospect, it was obvious. If grim Samuel Beckett, indeterminate composer Morton Feldman, and choreographer Shen Wei were going to meet anywhere, it was going to be in the bardo, that liminal space between lives contemplated in the […]
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Durham Comics Fest 2018
Saturday, June 23 Durham County Library Southwest Regional Branch) 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m., free, www.durhamcomicsfest.org If your budget or tolerance of crowds makes you wary of NC Comicon or Raleigh Supercon, the Durham County Library’s free, relatively intimate annual comics festival is a less intimidating venture into the waters of fandom. The main event is at […]
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Coming Home: ADF Alumni Return
Saturday, June 23-Sunday, June 24 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham 7 p.m. Sat./2 p.m. Sun., $12-$33 www.americandancefestival.org Each summer at the American Dance Festival, student choreographers and dancers sharpen their skills in its rigorous Six-Week School and frequently launch professional careers. Here, a blue-ribbon panel of choreographers has chosen five emerging talents, all ADF alumni, for […]
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Movie Review: A Murky Moral and the Diminishing Returns of Digital Dinos Weigh on a Once-Mighty Franchise in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ★★½ Opening Friday, June 22 The tension between science and consumerism is the narrative thread running throughout the Jurassic Park franchise. It’s a marvel to revive an iconic extinct species, but these dinos ain’t going to sell themselves. In 2015, Jurassic World saw the realization of John Hammond’s dream of a […]
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After a Year Off, Rock ‘n’ Roll Partyfest Revs Up Again at Slim’s
Saturday, June 23-Sunday, June 24 Slim’s, Raleigh 6 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday, $15-$25 www.slimsraleigh.com To some extent, every music festival is an endurance test. But whereas most music festivals are marathons, Raleigh’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Partyfestback in action after a year offis a two-night sprint, a mad dash that crams more than twenty bands […]
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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, […]
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ADF Review: Dayton Contemporary Dance Company Offers a Muscular, Political, Restless Evening of Virtuosic Dance
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company★★★★½ Through Saturday, June 16 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham We are watching. We have been preparing. And we are ready for whatever you can throw at us. That’s the message that Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, which is devoted to the work and performance of artists of color, delivered with an inspiring program […]