In the run-up to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest final, Joost Klein was amped for victory. Klein, a Dutch pop star, was a favorite to win with “Europapa,” a madcap song in which he raps over a bouncy beat and circling piano riff about a journey through Europe. The track ends in a hyperfast dance … Read more
Do you have a question for our culture writers and editors? Ask us here. Q: What do you say to a friend at the stage door when their show was kind of terrible? Is there a “nonpliment” you’d recommend? There are three basic options here: Tell the truth, as a form of tough love. Find … Read more
History is integral to Danspace Project’s 50th-anniversary season. As part of “Danspace@50: The Work Is Never Done. Sanctuary Always Needed.,” a four-month festival of performances, screenings and conversations, spring programs pay homage to an older generation of dance artists with fresh takes on notable works from their careers. Dances can never really be brought back … Read more
by David Szalay Szalay’s new novel traces the life of a young man in Hungary who eventually makes his way to England, following him from troubled youth to immigrant success to tragic fall. Each chapter provides glimpses of the major stages of adulthood — first love, marriage, parenthood — interwoven with intervals of aimlessness, reinvention … Read more
Who exactly is in charge here? Is it the strutting general or his self-effacing ensign? The man celebrated for his “free and open nature” or the sociopath who keeps stockpiling secrets? That question has been occupying the minds of theatergoers and readers since Shakespeare’s “Othello” was first performed in London in the early 17th century. … Read more
Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that air or stream this week, March 31-April 6. Details and times are subject to change. Certain circumstances of being a woman. In 2020 Nikki Boyer hosted a podcast in which she … Read more
Given what we have seen of Saxon this season, I am not sure he is the kind of guy who would give such a self-aware speech, saying things like, “If I’m not a success, I’m nothing, and I can’t handle being nothing.” (I can, however, believe that Tim would answer his son’s very real concerns … Read more
When mini-series ruled prime time, their maxi-est star was Richard Chamberlain. Today we call them “limited series.” But in their 20th-century heyday, under another inapt diminutive, mini-series were the megafauna of TV, lavish events that achieved the kind of cinematic spectacle that was otherwise rare in living-room entertainment of the time. They were TV specials … Read more
Linda Williams, a trailblazing scholar whose research was foundational to the field of film studies and to feminist film theory, and who wrote extensively about pornography, died on March 12 at her home in Lafayette, in Northern California. She was 78. Her husband, Paul Fitzgerald, said the cause was complications of a hemorrhagic stroke she … Read more
Raul De Lara’s Transcendent Takes on Household Things The Mexican-born, Ridgewood, Queens-based sculptor Raul De Lara is aware of the irony of his choice of medium: wood. The most rooted of materials is a contrast to the precarity of his upbringing — he came to Texas at 12 with his parents, and remains here under … Read more