Oregon Ballet Theatre’s spring program, which opened last Friday at the Newmark Theatre, reminded me why they’re one of the region’s most worthy arts organizations. The programming was risky and inventive, the performances were fully committed, and the quality of artistry never fell below a certain high standard of excellence. Occasionally it rose even higher: […]
Artsy
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Odd Couples: Chunky Move presents Two Faced Bastard
posted by Arts Intern Matthew Vollono Yesterday I attended a matinee performance of Two Faced Bastard, the latest by Australian troupe Chunky Move, and the last offering of the ‘08/’09 season from White Birds Uncaged Series (have no fear — they already have the ‘09/10 season scheduled). The setup for this latest production is disarmingly […]
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Catfood Friday
Portland Center Stage is offering a free ticket to anyone who brings in two dozen or more clean, empty catfood cans before May 15—they need the cans as props in their upcoming production of Grey Gardens, a show about two women who lived together with their 52 cats. (That’s 49 more than I have, so […]
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Five Questions with… OBT Guest Choreographer Nicolo Fonte
Oregon Ballet Theatre plows ahead with the second-to-last show of its 2008-09 season with “Left Unsaid,” a program of mostly new works opening tonight at the Newmark. One of the dancemakers in town to prep the program is youngish, Brooklyn-born choreographer Nicolo Fonte, returning to work with OBT after the 2008 premiere of his “Bolero” […]
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Stumptown Comics Fest
Tonight’s Stumptown Comics Foundation/Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Benefit Dinner—with guests Jeff Smith, Craig Thompson, Farel Dalrymple, Brian Michael Bendis, Derek Kirk Kim, and more—is “darn close” to selling out, I’ve just been informed, so hop to it if you’re interested. Details here; tickets are $100 for the dinner, but a pre-dinner cocktail party is […]
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Zeller Booms in Buffo PSU Student “Falstaff”
College age opera students usually have zero business singing Verdi. The music is too vocally demanding for voices with training wheels; the adult operatic melodrama is pitched somewhere between high drama (Macbeth, Othello) and high camp (a hunchbacked jester named Rigoletto; an Egyptian queen called Aida). But Verdi it was for Portland State University’s annual […]
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PCS’ Tax-Day Deal
Beginning at midnight tonight and running for 24 hours, Portland Center Stage is offering a $25 tax-day special on any ticket to any remaining show this season—that’s Crazy Enough, Frost/Nixon, and Grey Gardens. So: Storm Large’s musical memoir; a dramatized version of the 1977 interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon; or a musical about […]
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Wire Writer Sets New Pilot In New Orleans
News comes from New Orleans that The Wire writer David Simon is pitching a pilot series to HBO. Having joined the minions of white people who consider Simon’s last show to be “a drama of the streets,” I couldn’t be more excited. “New Orleans was knocked on its ass [in 2005],” Simon says. “And if […]
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Oregon Symphony Scheduled to Hit Carnegie Hall Stage in 2011
Big news from Portland’s own Oregon Symphony – they’ve been picked to make their Carnegie Hall debut at an auspicious new concert series called “Spring for Music,” in May of 2011. The Grey Lady first reported on the hometeam Symphony’s big score, in an article late Wednesday night, and the blogosphere’s been abuzz about what […]
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Here Are Some Things You Might Find Interesting.
(I had hard time coming up with a title for this post.) April has once again been designated “Portland Comics Month”—there about 40 comics-related events happening all over town, anchored, of course, in next week’s Stumptown Comics fest. Other events include the second annual “Alter Egos: Power Struggle” costumed pub crawl; a Comic Book Legal […]
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Tonight – PORTLAND! A Musical @ Buckman Elementary
Move the hell over you horny, hooker-and-gun toting high schoolers showing off in your “student editions” of Rent or Les Miserables! The kiddies over at Buckman Elementary wanna grab you by the throat with something even more shocking, gratuitous and untasteful: a song-and-dance history of our very own Portland, Oregon! Tonight and tonight only (6:30 […]
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Freshly Squeezed
Attention to all of the trillions of young, talented, and unemployed designers in PDX: The people who brought us the Cut&Paste design tournament are back with a fresh opportunity/challenge. L.A. non-profit J.U.i.C.E. is looking for someone to revamp their web-site (extra points if you have a graffiti background or bent—their steeze is as an arts […]