Arts

REVIEW

Performance art unleashes gamut of emotions in audience

If you want details, I can give you a list: Feather headdresses, loincloths, tools of death, a blond wig, shimmering skin, saturation, a wheelchair, drums, an exercise bike, wine in a paper bag, a lectern, executioners, vodka and Pepto-Bismol in a martini glass, savages and roulette.

Blog: Art Snob

REVIEW

Botti concert featured smooth jazz, a dash of humor

A capacity crowd filled Atwood Concert Hall on Saturday night to hear a fine concert that balanced music, showmanship and even a dose of education delivered as smoothly as the jazz that flowed from Chris Botti's trumpet.

Blog: Art Snob

Artists put their visions of Palmer on display

Ask an artist to submit a piece of artwork that represents Palmer, and you might be surprised at what you get.

Fireweed 7 slashes price of movie tickets to $3

Regal Entertainment Group has premiered bargain ticket prices at the aging Fireweed theater.

Movies and showtime listings

ART BEAT

Curious connection between 'Snub-nose,' William the Conqueror

Anchorage artist Charles Oakley was looking at one of the pieces in the "Giinaquq" Alutiiq mask exhibit on display at the Anchorage Museum and something looked familiar to him.

Blog: Art Snob

Forced serendipity

If a picture speaks a thousand words, how many sentences does it take to paint a picture? Indeed, how do images become story and story image. And what happens when both appear side by side?

You be the critic

Glorious evening of organ music

Blog: Art Snob

'Lion King' will have 6-week Anchorage run next fall

A six-week run of the hit Broadway musical "The Lion King" will come to the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts next fall, presenters announced Thursday.

When watching 'Eating Alaska,' don't let food get in the way

"You have to go see the movie," Sitka filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein said when asked about the central question in her latest film "Eating Alaska," set to premier tonight at the University of Alaska's Museum of the North in Fairbanks.

REVIEW

Roots' showmanship gives Alaska one of year's best shows

The Roots rode a hip-hop tsunami to the crest of rock opera before easing into superbad soul during one of the best concerts of the year at the Egan Center Friday night.

Blog: Art Snob

REVIEW

'Carmen' provides good music, flinty emotion

Conductor Sara Jobin set a fast pulse with the first measure at Saturday night's opening of Anchorage Opera's production of "Carmen." Her tight, fast tempos worked well in the introductions to the first and last acts and the "Toreador song" but tended to bulldoze through the gentler music, as in the introduction to Act 3.

Dancing toward darkness

Photos: Carmen gallery

Blog: Art Snob

You be the critic

'Carmen' baritone magical in Russian program

Whitekeys returns with Alaska 'history' video

Hey, boys and girls! Election results got you down? Looking for laughs in all the wrong places? Missing the old mood boost you used to get from the silly skits at the Fly By Night Club while enjoying six beers and a Spamburger?

REVIEW

'Beyond Nudity' places varied art in unlikely venue

An art show billed as nude self-portraits on display at a bar advertised as "Alaska's gay entertainment complex" may suggest prurience. But Aakatchaq Schaeffer's "A Revealing Beyond Nudity," showing at Mad Myrna's through Nov. 28, will appeal more to the aesthetic intellectual than to the libertine.

Blog: Art Snob

Social worker tries to leave tragedy behind

A life of gut-wrenching crisis work has shaped and damaged Sandy Kleven. It's made her more real, more down-to-earth as a counselor, she says, which can be useful in her work. In her art, it's indispensable.

Video: Sandy Kleven, belly dancer

Dancing toward darkness

The women behind Anchorage's new production of "Carmen" are angling to cast Bizet's opera in a fresh light. Or rather a fresh shadow. Director Cynthia Edwards chooses to highlight the darkness of the story by moving the time period forward 100 years to the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War.

Photos: Carmen gallery

REVIEW

Dances display chaos, confrontation

Hot-pink shoes are everywhere: Sliding on and off feet, hanging from the ceiling, trailing on the floor like a train on a black wedding gown. A fuchsia-haired woman zips herself into a plastic shopping bag and lifts her bobbing head to the light. Music goes from a metallic trickle to an ear-shattering shriek. What's happening here?!

Blog: Art Snob

REVIEW

Thoughtful songs and good guitar mark folk concert

Singer-songwriters Patty Larkin and Peter Mulvey put on a wicked and winsome show Saturday night in the Sydney Laurence Theatre, performing a double bill ranging from the funky and downtrodden to jazzy, earnest, eerie and ironic.

Blog: Art Snob

REVIEW

Asleep At The Wheel just awesome

Asleep At The Wheel was anything but Saturday night at Atwood Concert Hall. With nine Grammys under the Austin group's belt, these country swing musicians put the yee-haw into a night of Texas-style big-band music.

Blog: Art Snob

Country duo riding charts with new hit

A lot's been happening with mega-selling country duo Montgomery Gentry since their last performance in Anchorage four years ago.

ART BEAT

Boosters seek more funding for arts

The renascent Anchorage Cultural Council hosted a "rally" on Wednesday at the Wild Berry Theater. Emcee Torrie Allen of Anchorage Opera explained the goal of the group thus: To increase public investment in arts and culture.

Blog: Art Snob