Matt Hanson - Page 4

The short two-day run of Legends & Visionaries by New York Theater Ballet drew a warm showing from the public, apparently enticed by what was a soft opener to the upcoming season of live arts at the Schimmel, a fine venue at Pace University.

Picturesquely unadorned, City Center Studio 5 is a blank canvas. Therein, minds move bodies, and bodies stir minds. Choreographer Miro Magloire is a soft-spoken German visionary, and now an artful resident of New York. New Chamber Ballet, the love child of Magloire is a wellspring of opportunity for American dancers, six of whom graced the studio floor to rehearse steps and posture before Magloire's modest presence, his unmistakable visage light with the smile of a reputable life well-lived. Among his accomplishments are fifty ballets, not to mention a practitioner's ear for musical composition and a pioneering sense of purpose in the international dance community.

The East Fourth Street cultural district is a wildly fascinating and most humbly inspired reintegration of the old and new that makes New York, New York. For the patient flaneurs and public amateurs, it's a vibrant dreamscape for the 21st century.

In terms of the origins of contemporary American culture as Americans know, breathe and live it today, authentic is a word rarely seen with such exacting definition than in the presence of David Amram. If America had a monarch, he would not only be Sir David Amram, he would be the palace seer, a magician of sound and word who transcends prophecy to the realm of absolutely artful wisdom.

In my arts criticism, I have sought to maintain an objective voice. As the preeminent American historian Howard Zinn said, "Objectivity is neither possible nor desirable." The fifth annual 9/11 memorial performance of Table of Silence demands a personal perspective.

Opening in Chelsea in 2004, the Rubin Museum of Art has since enlightened worldly art lovers and enriched the masses with a sense of the sacred in the heart of New York.

There are a few reasons why a nomadic ethnic minority from the Western Sahara has become the poster child of world music in the 21st century. In truth, no one can really put his or her finger on Tinariwen definitively, because they are the living, pure sound of a people, a place, and a time so authentically exotic. To categorize Tinariwen in predefined musical genres is as elusive as believing in a mirage.

There are other paths in this world than the clearest, largest, and most trod. The dominant paradigm is not the only way. That is the message of cultural integrity in the 21st century. The truth about other paths is that they begin from a different place and so have a different perspective on the world. They also lead towards a different future.

Mozart isn't exactly casino music. In 1788, it was. "So you can see how far we've come," said Vancouver Symphony Orchestra conductor Gordon Gerrard, reminding a full house audience of how, at times, historical progress is truly linear.

British Columbia is still British in more ways than one. Along the scenic walkway to Vanier Park, fans of The Bard sidle past the sail-strewn glittering facades overlooking False Creek and the craft beer mecca of Granville Island.

Looking back thirty years ago, the world appears to have been a very different place. Soviet Russia continued to perplex the foundations of western civilization from behind the Iron Curtain, and apartheid South Africa would not see a political resolution for another ten years.

A funnel cloud split the sky in a terrifying twist of darkening wind as the Calgary Folk Festival began under a cold rain that swept over the prairie river valley. At the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the Bow River embraces the city of Calgary in power and steam, all emptying into dry air under the incredulously spacious Alberta horizons.

Folk people are the People's People. Folk signify kith, kin, family, ancestry, and flesh and blood.

98. Seventeen years ago, Hong Kong became independent. "DEAR HK," a projector blinked to a visceral thump, as the pulsing paroxysm lingered (HK = Hong Kong). Dancers Michelle Lui, Alex Tam, and Milton Lim shook spasmodically under stroboscopic shadows.

For fear of falling into the Eurocentric trap of appreciating East Asian literature through an Anglophone lens, what must be said first is that Korean author O Ch?ngh?i is an incomparable visionary of the heart.

Butoh is a sacred modern art. Originally spawned of postwar Japan, Butoh has since invigorated the world to a new style of movement. Kokoro dances Butoh in the nude. From the lower mainland of British Columbia to the world, this Dancing on the Edge Festival surely lives up to its name.

If art does not make the public more capable of feeling, of seeing the world through other eyes, and wanting positive change for all, then it only perpetuates class division, and in so doing, social strife.

Preeminent dance companies of New York, London, and Winnipeg all collaborated to celebrate the tenth birthday of Move: the company with a world premiere collection of works by company choreographer Joshua Beamish.

The uncanny and ingenious artistic resemblance of human relationships, Misfit Blues performs the tragicomic complex of relative mental states, the interplay of caustic vagaries, and invites onlookers to peek into a womb of loving solidarity.

If the first casualty of war is truth, the first casualty of capitalism is music. Snarky Puppy is a reminder to the American (and thus, global) consciousness that in a culture homogenizing music faster than milk, there are still authentic explosions of human ingenuity in the midst of the seemingly endless mires of tasteless musical capitalism.