When I was a tween writing “X-Files” fan fiction, I never suspected my interest in storytelling would lead to an actual career as a writer. But then I enrolled in the creative writing program at a performing arts high school—and discovered my creative power. Dozens of local arts organizations offer Charlottesville children and teens opportunities […]
With the release of Black Panther, it’s tempting to reflect on how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come in 10 years, and how it has essentially reinvented the film industry and become the standard bearer for quality mass entertainment in a genre that has rarely risen above straight-to-video viability. But that would take away […]
Premiered on Broadway in 1949 and revived in 2008, South Pacific tells the story of American naval officers (both nurses and sailors) stationed on an island during World War II who are forced to confront their own racist attitudes amidst love and war. This month the musical comes to life on stage at Charlottesville High […]
In the warm glow of a few strings of lights strung above the dance floor of the Music Resource Center auditorium, Ike Anderson leads a group of dancers through a hip-hop routine, demonstrating each toe touch and head bob as he calls: “One and two and three and four, five and six and seven and […]
A variety of techniques, budgets and effects come together at the 19th annual Animations Show of Shows. The festival traverses themes of societal trends and modern anxieties with 16 screenings including The Burden, a quirky stop-motion short about how being trapped in a routine life makes the apocalypse seem liberating, and Everything, “a simulation of […]
Asher McGlothlin perfectly captures the spirit of his childhood in the Appalachian Mountains, as well as the leap from teenager to adulthood, on his January 2018 debut EP Bardo, which takes its name from the Buddhist term describing the halfway place between death and rebirth. Able to be both chaotic and delightful, McGlothlin takes on […]
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox can be summed up in three words: musical time travel. The group, founded by pianist and arranger Bradlee in 2009, takes listeners on a journey across decades, playing songs from the modern era—everything from the party pop of Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga to the minimalist rock of Radiohead—and rearranging them, […]
African-American culture in 1920s New York City is discerned through the poetry of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay, seen through the eyes of painter and muralist Aaron Douglas, and told through the voice of art historian David Driskell in Of Ebony Embers: Vignettes of the Harlem Renaissance. These iconic figures form an ensemble […]
Imagine the thousands of hands that have held the spine of a library book, the fingers that have turned the pages. Imagine the moments in history that have intersected with the text through the lives of its readers. Beginning in 2015 and ending in June of 2017, a project called Book Traces @ UVA sought […]
This whole thing started as porn, right? Like, I’m not making that up, am I? I don’t say that to ridicule anyone’s idea of what’s sexy—you do you and have fun doing it, don’t apologize if no one’s getting hurt—it’s just puzzling to sit through a silly, directionless adoption/kidnapping intrigue with a vague notion that […]