Review

Dance Review: Dancing with Ancestors

March 21, 2005
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Urban Bush Women go back to the past in the name of a more communal and compassionate future. By Debra Cash View Gallery The names of Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. Dubois, Shirley Chishom and Ossie Davis roll down like a mighty stream. On stage, Amara Tabor-Smith of the Urban Bush Women reaches across space, at turns…

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Book Review: The Fame Game

February 28, 2005
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In this moving memoir, the daughter of celebrated psychologist Erik Erikson meditates on how fame and ego shatter the foundations of family life. “In the Shadow of Fame: A Memoir by the Daughter of Erik H. Erikson” by Sue Erikson Bloland. (Viking) By Debbie Porter Sometimes, the lives of the famous resemble fairy tales: an…

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Book Review: “The Swimmer” — Wading Through the Ripples of History

February 22, 2005
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By Tess Lewis A new novel captures the atmosphere of post-1956 Hungary from a child’s point of view. The Swimmer by Zsuzsa Bank. Translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo. (Harcourt Books) In tales of exile, the stories of those left behind are rarely told. This is hardly surprising because the abandoned, when they…

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Book Review: Samuel Delany’s Phallic Fun

February 7, 2005
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 Sci-fi master Samuel Delany’s latest novel is a mystery set in the ancient world. Phallos, by Samuel R. Delany. (Bamberger Books) By Vincent Czyz Samuel R. Delany is best known as “l’enfant terrible” who published his first novel at age 20 and then went on to win science fiction’s most prestigious awards — the Nebula…

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Dance Review: Race and Dance

November 9, 2004
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Dance icon Bill T. Jones confounds expectations about race and the power of stereotypes in two new dance pieces. “Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger” and “Mercy 10×8 On a Circle” by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company By Debra Cash Bill T. Jones would no doubt take umbrage at being compared to the white…

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Book Review: The Dazzling Dissent of Cynthia Ozick

September 24, 2004
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  By Tess Lewis This masterful new novel sees heresy and idealism as the warp and woof of history. Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick. (Houghton Mifflin) Little in Cynthia Ozick’s books is predictable or simple. Her sinuous essays are, as she says, “thing[s] of the imagination,” “the movement of a free mind…

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Book Review: Kenneth Tynan — A Critic’s Decline

January 3, 2002
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“The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan” provides literate entertainment and cautionary tales about what happens to a critic when the will-to-celebrity triumphs over the urge-to-critique. The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan Edited by John Lahr. Bloomsbury, 439 pages. By Bill Marx Kenneth Tynan’s descent from brilliance to muddle is a fable for theater critics, a cautionary tale…

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