1 Chicago stepping lessons from award-winning south sider Shaun Ballentine of Effortless Stepping. —Salem Collo-Julin Open group lessons Wednesdays at 7 PM, Effortless Stepping Studio, 1850 E. 79th. $20 per person, 21+ only. For private lesson rates or information about having Ballentine do a stepping class at your event, message through Instagram or Facebook. 2 […]
Author Archives: Deanna Isaacs
Posted inOn Culture
Lights, music, Scrooge, and Shostakovich
A piercing wind from the north whipped down darkened Dearborn Street, turning noses and fingers to icy lumps and testing the resolve of pedestrians on the opening night of Goodman Theatre’s 46th annual production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol last weekend. As if current events weren’t already enough to chill the holiday spirit! Dreadful, […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Review
Seduced, abandoned, and excellent
Lyric Opera audiences have the luxury of expecting great performances from everyone on the Opera House stage. It’s par for the course; we’re spoiled that way. But once in a while, someone comes along who knocks our socks off. Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, in a stunning Lyric Opera debut as the title character in Jenůfa, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lyric’s victorious Daughter of the Regiment
Opera seasons are usually planned far in advance, so there was no way for the folks in charge of scheduling at Lyric to predict that not one but two actual wars would be raging when the curtain went up on their second production of the season, Gaetano Donizetti’s 1840 comic work, The Daughter of the […]
Posted inOn Culture
Navigating a rocky arts and culture recovery
Years ago, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, which is the business end of the CSO, was undergoing one of its periodic contract negotiating face-offs with its unionized musicians, someone close to the musicians told me something surprising: the administration wouldn’t really mind a strike. If the orchestra doesn’t play, they save money. It’s better […]
Posted inOn Culture
Maus in wartime
It’s common knowledge in the book business that a well-publicized ban can lead to a short-term spike in sales. Take Art Spiegelman’s two-volume graphic novel Maus for example, which tells the story of his parents’ experience in the Holocaust, as told to him much later by his father. After it was banned by a Tennessee […]
Posted inOn Culture
Something about The Lehman Trilogy
Last week, the Tony Award-winning play The Lehman Trilogy opened in a TimeLine Theatre/Broadway in Chicago coproduction at Broadway Playhouse. The play is based on the novel Qualcosa sui Lehman by Stefano Massini, first published in Italy in 2016 and in an English translation by Richard Dixon in 2020. If you’ve never read the bookyou […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Little orphan Annie meets Dracula
Director Christopher Alden is back at Lyric Opera for the first time since his racy production of Rigoletto created an uproar there back in 2000. The Alden project onstage now—his take on Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman—is of the same approximate vintage, debuting at Canadian National Opera in 1996. And yes, on opening night last […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Season of plenty
Despite rumors of its demise, live performance is still happening in abundance on Chicago stages this season. Here are just a few suggestions in opera, dance, theater, and comedy to consider in the months ahead. And as always, be sure to check out our updated reviews and features every week for the latest comprehensive coverage. […]
Posted inOn Culture
High-wire act
If you were a Bloomie’s Chicago customer at the River North store, you won’t be hugely surprised when you walk into Bally’s new pop-up casino in the 111-year-old Medinah Temple. Bloomingdale’s saved this massive Moorish Revival architectural fantasy (at 600 N. Wabash) from demolition when it opened a store there in 2003, restoring the dome-topped […]
Posted inOn Culture
The butterfly in your throat
My throat was slit. It was back in the dark ages of the 20th century, but if you take a close look at me you can still see the scar—a fine line running along the base of my neck, from ear to ear. It’s the necklace I can’t take off, the trail of a scalpel. […]
Posted inOn Culture
Oppenheimer‘s Loyola connection
Thanks to Reader reader Anthony Gargiulo Jr., who read this story about Chicago connections to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer film and pointed out via Twitter another one: former Loyola University (and Northwestern University) chemistry professor Ward V. Evans. Evans was the surprise dissenting vote on the three-man panel that recommended permanent suspension of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s […]
Posted inOn Culture
A well-timed Oppenheimer
At my elementary school, a lifetime ago, duck and cover was as integral to our routine as recess. An alarm would signal the drill, and we first-through-sixth graders would drop whatever we were doing and scramble into a crouch under our wooden desks. The prescribed position was head down—one arm curled around your noggin, the […]
Posted inOn Culture
The Chicago Project
What’s the Chicago connection to the events depicted in Christopher Nolan’s explosive, confusing, and acclaimed Oppenheimer film? Here’s what I learned from University of Chicago professor emeritus and astrophysicist Don Lamb. We spoke last week, before the film opened. J. Robert Oppenheimer led the World War II effort known as the Manhattan Project, but the […]
Posted inOn Culture
What we talk about when we talk about guns
On July 4, 2023, the hottest day on earth, residents of Highland Park gathered in front of their city hall to remember the victims of the massacre that took place there a year earlier. There was music, a moment of silence, and Mayor Nancy Rotering spoke of the damage done by a single gun in […]