Chicago lost some of its Latin flavor this week.
After 14 years, Luna Negra is shutting down. The company, launched in 1999, specialized in cutting edge, contemporary Latin dance from around the world. In-house choreographers, like Mónica Cervantes, were considered “dancers to watch”.
But in March the music changed. Luna Negra had just performed Made in Spain at the Harris Theatre, receiving rave reviews.
Then days later, all the dancers were laid off.
Veronica Guadalupe was one of them.
The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex in Bangladesh on April 24 continues to make headlines. One of the "worst industrial accidents in the world" is now known to have killed at least 1,127 people.
The event has roiled Bangladesh. There have been worker protests, a number of other factories have been closed at least temporarily, and the owner of Rana Plaza was arrested and faces murder charges.
Those poor labor conditions within Bangladesh’s enormous garment industry have had consequences around the globe. Rana Plaza workers helped supply major European and North American chains, and there’s increased pressure on these companies to help improve safety standards in the global garment industry. Unfortunately, not everyone is getting with the program.
And many consumers, including me, have started to take a hard look at those innocent-looking outfits hanging in our closets or stuffed in our drawers. What, exactly, are we buying into?
Now I’d like to be able to give myself a pat on the back when it comes to sustainable or ethical fashion. After all, I buy the majority of my clothes at thrift or secondhand stores.
When it comes to the Chicago Bulls, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. I’m not talking about Derrick Rose on the sidelines. Or whether or not Nazr Mohammed should have shoved LeBron James (he shouldn’t have; but nor should James have pulled that Al Pacino-worthy bit of overacting on his way down to the boards). I’m not even referring to what the Bulls need to do to stay alive in their series with the Heat.I’m talking about the absolute lack of respect that the Bulls get from the national media covering the NBA playoffs.
At first it was amusing, watching The New York Times scramble to give props to the team and to players like Nate Robinson, as the Bulls won their first playoff series against the Brooklyn Nets.
When Robert Sickinger came to Chicago in the early 1960s, Chicago had great theater. But most of it - think The Goodman Theater - was largely confined to the Loop.
Sickinger, who died Thursday at the age of 86, was hired to be the director of the Hull House Theater, on Chicago’s North side. When he arrived in 1963, the theater was still at the corner of Broadway Street and Belmont Avenue - the building’s an athletic club now.
Donna Marie Schwan was Sickinger’s assistant, and, eventually, his friend.
She said Sickinger, along with Paul Jans, the new executive director of Hull House, were looking to the past to do something new in theater.
“They were basically trying to do something like what Jane Addams originally had in the community. So he went out in the community and had open auditions. I mean, sort of the original ‘Chicago’s Got Talent’.”
Those open auditions not only drew people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity or venue in which to perform or sing, they were a pipeline to Chicago’s talented actors.
Chicago’s rich and lively arts and culture scene is due no doubt to our deep bench of homegrown talents.
However, our city has also been marked in significant ways by artists from around the world.
Many of their contributions have been grandly public. The Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate are notable for their trajectory from daunting sculptural objects to beloved playground-style icons.
More ephemeral projects include Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1969 project to wrap the Museum of Contemporary Art, a move which made art history and elevated the reputation of both the artists and the MCA.
But we can’t always see the ways global artists work in Chicago. Some come for very brief spells. And as artists in residence at small cultural organizations or universities, their opportunities to meet with a broader public can be limited, or fly under the radar.
In an effort to give more visibility to their work and to provide opportunities for you to interact with these artists, we’re launching a new global arts initiative on WBEZ’s international affairs show Worldview.
Never mind the weather, here’s how I know that spring has really arrived. It’s the moment when I find myself inside a temporary tent set up in Millennium Park, perched on the edge of a long, white runway, seated next to my colleague and fellow fashionista, Natalie Moore.
Pens and cameras in hand, outfits tight and sharp, we were more than ready to review “The Walk,” the School of the Art Institute’s annual student fashion show.
Now in its 79th year, the show features the work of sophomore, junior and senior students. As you might expect of an art school, some of the looks are highly conceptual and absolutely unwearable. They’re explorations of an idea or theme or moment in history which makes for drama on the runway, but won’t translate into a street look — at least not without major refinements.
Natalie and I both appreciate experimental or cutting edge art and fashion. But face it, like most of you, we’re also just looking for something to wear!
The sophomores in some way face the biggest challenge.
This weekend I went on an odyssey of sorts, through some of the strongholds of American popular culture.
Friday night I was at McCormick Place for C2E2 – the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo.
Then Saturday, along with my colleagues Tim Akimoff and Andrew Gill, I headed to Munster, Indiana to brave Dark Lord Day, the annual heavy metal and beer event hosted by Three Floyds Brewing Company.
Both are fairly major cultural events. Over 50,000 folks made their way through C2E2 over the weekend. And in just a few years, attendance at Dark Lord Day has grown from a couple of hundred to 8,000, according to organizers.
Over the course of two days I got to talk with lots of great people: Local and international master brewers, musicians, comic book talent scouts, graphic artists, and novelists.
Still, in the midst of all this adult achievement, I couldn’t help feeling like I was among a pack of highly articulate adolescents.
Reading/talking about comics? Drinking huge amounts of beer?
The 15th annual Roger Ebert Film Festival kicks off in Champaign, Illinois on Wednesday.
Roger Ebert won’t be there. The famed Chicago film critic died earlier this month, just after stepping down (he called it a “leave of presence”) as the Sun-Times film critic.
But Ebert’s ethos—his influence and taste and general good spirit—is all over the event.
Ebertfest doesn’t work like a typical film festival.
The movies aren’t submitted. They are hand selected by Ebert and his staff. They’re not “in contention,” or vying for prizes from select juries made up of celebrated members of the global film community.
