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Little Feat is on the cusp of a rebirth – again.
All of the gritty challenges for today’s ballet companies are touched on in “Étoile”, including financial troubles, union strikes, rapaciously controlling donors, jealous, egomaniacal dancers, and more bumps in the road.
Every subject in Jim Dine’s richly rendered work seems to edge towards something other than itself, deeper and more personal.
I wish this catalogue spelled out John Singer Sargent’s professional stance as a “juste milieu” painter more methodically. That term refers to those eager to be associated with new stylistic tendencies yet careful not to transgress the establishment’s norms.
The Independent Film Festival Boston has been a major showcase for short films from New England and beyond. Here’s a roundup of one of this year’s programs, “Shorts Dartmouth: Narrative” (collections are named after streets in the Back Bay). There’s not a weak one in the five-film bunch.
Perhaps “Izipho Zam (My Gifts)” might have become as well known as Pharoah Sanders’s “Karma” — if Impulse! rather than the tiny cooperative label Strata-East had recorded it.
The emphasis of the B&P troupe has become increasingly apocalyptic: the struggle we are engaged in is for nothing less than the preservation of our planet, and for the preservation of our individual — and collective ––hearts and minds.
While he paints, Stanley Whitney listens to and is inspired by jazz. Miles Davis’s album “Bitches Brew” is his constant companion in the studio.
This week’s poem: Martha McCollough’s “always the “schaden “never the “freude”
Arts Commentary: From the Editor’s Desk — By Popular Demand, 2025
Back in February of 2024 I began to write a weekly column for AF newsletter on Substack. A few readers have asked that I post these opinion pieces in the magazine. Here is a selection of my favorites of 2025
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