ARTS Pick: Amahl and the Night Visitors

Ash Lawn Opera’s seasonal offering Amahl and the Night Visitors is the perfect excuse to bundle up in formal attire and take in a show. The popular 60-minute holiday story about three kings stopping by en route to Bethlehem is performed in English and accessible to the whole family. The cast features 16-year-old Georgia Castleman, who […]

ARTS Pick: Holiday Spotlight

Break away from the repetitive carols and TV reruns by checking out the day-long local lineup at the 13th annual Holiday Spotlight. Get jazzy with Dr. Jeff Vaughan and Greg C. Brown, tap into your Appalachian roots with the Skyline Country Cloggers (below) or spice up your night with the Latin flair of Zabor Dance […]

ARTS Pick: Let There Be Light

PVCC’s Visual Arts Department ushers in the longest nights of the year with its illuminating December tradition Let There Be Light. For one night only, curator James Yates and a slew of local artists will show their outdoor exhibit on the grounds surrounding the V. Earl Dickinson Building. The eighth installment of the winter gala […]

Film review: Exodus: Gods and Kings stumbles under its own weight

The debate over Ridley Scott’s decision to cast white gentiles in Ancient Hebrew and Egyptian roles in Exodus: Gods and Kings is worth having, but it might carry a bit more weight if the movie were any good. If the forced 3D and mixed-bag special effects had matched Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, maybe we’d be able […]

Organic storytelling: Building theater from the body up

When you think of storytelling, you might imagine your animated girlfriend gesticulating over Sunday brunch or a kindly grandfather telling the kids to gather ’round. But for Siân Richards and Kara McLane Burke, stories begin in the body. “You just kind of start somewhere and give yourself rules, a series of assignments, even if you […]

Music man: Jason Burke moves his local music showcase to the Southern

What line of work is Jason Burke in? “I’m an insurance man,” he said—without a trace of irony, without a hint of recognition that what he’d just said sounded like a line from a grainy black and white movin’ picture. Burke, in a vast landscape of Charlottesville insurance men, has pulled himself up (or burrowed […]

ARTS Pick: Steven Isserlis

December begins on a classy note with a program of Schumann, Bach and more that features internationally renowned cellist Steven Isserlis. The concerto soloist and chamber musician is one of only two living cellists in the Gramophone Hall of Fame, and in this sonata-centered performance he is joined by Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival co-founder, and accomplished […]

ARTS Pick: Karate Tango

PVCC’s theater and dance departments team up for the first time in a revamped production of local award-winning playwright Peter Ryan’s off-Broadway musical Karate Tango. The bold and witty plot weaves romance and show biz into a bittersweet exploration of marriage’s ups and downs. Choreographers Katharine Hall and Amanda Liscouski lead a cast of nearly […]

ARTS Pick: Holiday Burlesque

While the holiday season doesn’t necessarily conjure visions of scantily clad women doing the bump ‘n’ grind, Deanna Danger and her crew of vaudevillian and burlesque performers see no harm in weaving some risqué into your merry making. Performer, producer and instructor, Danger leads the second annual Holiday Burlesque—her personally crafted erotic comedy and dance […]