Criticals – Page 4 – Ennis Smith

Widescreen Dreams

December 10, 2009

Published Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine Winter 2009 This is the Rorschach: be born of more-or-less humble origins. Grow up, get the 1) acting, or 2) singing bug, and make your way to the big city. After a few stumbles and starts, your talent outs in a notable way and Hollywood takes the bait; go there…

Criticals, Short Cuts

Short Cut: Roth on the Regress

December 8, 2009

Philip Roth, Indignation (Houghton Mifflin, 256 pgs). The moment when you cease to see eye to eye with your folks; the overwhelming shock of college campus life; the initial sexual encounter: Philip Roth turns his unerring eye on Marcus Mesner, a “straight A student” buckling under the constraints of his father, a smotheringly vigilant Newark…

Criticals, Dance, Literature

The Strange Ways of Love

November 8, 2009

Published Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine Before Decreation, the new William Forsythe work that appeared this fall at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Gilman Opera House, there was Anne Carson’s Decreation, the title of a book and essay. The word doesn’t appear in Webster’s, but Carson defines it as “… an undoing of the creature…

Criticals, Short Cuts

Short Cuts: Books On My Nightstand/September 2009

September 8, 2009

The Story of a Marriage, Andrew Sean Greer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). An African American woman wrestles with her husband’s mysterious past when a white man shows up on her doorstep—and reveals that he was once the husband’s lover. Set in 1950’s San Francisco, Greer’s novel is a kind of Sophie’s Choice filtered through the…

Criticals, Film, Theater

Broadway Gypsies, Through a Glass Darkly

August 1, 2009

Published Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine Fall 2009 “I think we’re all pretty interesting, and that all of you are pretty interesting.” Michael Bennett Young Mickey DiFiglia’s spirit permeates Every Little Step, the captivating, can’t-look-away documentary directed by James Stern and Adam Del Deo; at one point a black-and-white still reveals this teenager in mid-leap under…

Criticals, Dance

A Wonder World of Saints

May 26, 2009

It’s hard not to be impressed by Christopher Williams, or The Golden Legend, his new work that premiered at Dance Theater Workshop this spring. And grateful—we’ve all bemoaned those evenings of dance that lack ambition, or at least a stroke of boldness or risk. Arriving on the heels of another exploration of divine passion (his…

Criticals, Theater

Making the Broadway Show Dance, Part II—The Old Dances With The New

November 29, 2008

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine, Fall 2008 When Broadway scavenges itself, theater lovers pounce. More than a new work or its cousin, the Movie-made-into-a-musical-or-play, revivals are as close to a sure thing as one gets. Hardly anyone revives a flop; since returning shows were usually hits the first time out, the producer’s job is an easier road as…

Criticals, Short Cuts

Short Cuts: Book, Video and Music Picks/November 2008:

November 8, 2008

Solange – Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams (Geffen Records). Toss in a dollop of Diana Ross, a spritz of Erykah Badu with just a hint of Nina Simone to make it sexy, and you’ll get a sense of Solange’s new release. Fun, funny, autobiographical, it’s retro without cynicism, Motown grooves and grownup beats from…

Criticals, Dance

Neil Greenberg Questions the Right Way to Walk

October 1, 2008

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine, Fall 2008 I got a recessive jolt watching Really Queer Dances with Harps, Neil Greenberg’s intelligent, distanced new work that premiered this spring at Dance Theater Workshop. As a boy, not only was I cursed with a first name ripe for playground mutilation; I had, to quote my sister’s boyfriend at…

Criticals, Dance

Making the Broadway Musical Dance

July 20, 2008

Laura Belle Bundy (in pink) and the company of Legally Blonde: The Musical Published in Attitude: The Dancers Magazine, Summer 2008 “Come and meet those dancing feet.” So beckoned the great Harry Warren’s lyrics to 42nd Street, the title song of a 1932 movie musical that gave a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a Broadway…