ARTS Pick: Nutcracker Mini-Suite

No need to wait until Christmas Eve for visions of sugarplums to dance in your head. This weekend, Clara and her beloved nutcracker doll take center stage in the Albemarle Ballet Theatre’s Nutcracker Mini-Suite. Twenty-four local dancers populate the Land of Sweets for selected scenes from the seasonal ballet, embellished by handmade costumes and Tchaikovsky’s […]

ARTS Pick: Srikanth Reddy

Harvard graduate, University of Chicago professor, and literacy director for the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Trust, Srikanth Reddy shares selections from his two books of poetry, Facts for Visitors (2004) and Voyager (2011). Using a variety of methods, including prose, syllabic, and terza rima, Reddy’s form plays like a pop-up book of images and ideas that feel odd and inclusive. Monday 12/2. […]

ARTS Pick: A Christmas Carol

Four County Players’ production of A Christmas Carol has been a local favorite since 2008, but in this go-around director Joncey Boggs and local playwright Miller Murray Susen are keeping it fresh by taking a step back and using Dickens’ age-old text while adding some musical numbers for originality. Through 12/15. $12-16, times vary. Four County Players, 5256 Governor Barbour St., […]

ARTS Pick: The Santaland Diaries

“I am a 33-year-old man applying for a job as an elf,” wrote David Sedaris at the outset of his career. Like most great writers, Sedaris has worked a variety of menial, often humiliating, jobs to support his literary career, and the humorist’s turn as an elf at Macy’s in New York City may be […]

ARTS Pick: Create: Justice

International Justice Mission’s chapter at UVA is connecting the community with local artists for original performances and visual art under the theme Create: Justice. The event is meant to raise awareness of injustice and bring attention to IJM’s work in rescuing victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and violent oppression around the globe. Saturday 11/23. $7, 6pm. […]

ARTS Pick: Tosca

Puccini’s Tosca—an arresting thriller about lust, political corruption, and murder—is brought to life by Patricia Racette in the lead role of the jealous diva who gets duped by the villainous Scarpia, and is denied her true love. Once famously referred to as a “shabby little shocker,” the HD opera viewing is proceeded by a free […]

ASC’s She Stoops To Conquer stands on comic timing

With a tilt of her head and a cascade of red curls, Kate Hardcastle considered her suitor across stage. “You’re so great a favorite there, you say?” “Yes, my dear,” Young Charles Marlow grinned, determined to prove to this beautiful barmaid his popularity at the Ladies Club. Swaggering toward the stage right audience, he looked […]

Savion Glover teaches students of tap to look within

Tap dancer Savion Glover can see the future of his art form. “Where do I see it going? Wherever I am. Tap’s going wherever I am,” he told C-VILLE Weekly in a recent phone interview. Glover is the modern day face of tap, on a mission to reinvigorate a dance more closely associated with black […]

PVCC reaches out to the community for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

When Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist comedy about two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he was only 27 years old. Trapped in a nebulous otherworld, courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern debate the nature of freedom and fate from lives pre-scripted to death. Comic dialogue coupled with philosophical themes, including the use […]

Filmmaker and actor Brian Wimer on freedom in expression

“There’s a point in Peter Pan when Peter and Wendy are pretending to be parents to the Lost Boys. Peter says, ‘Are we playing or is this real?’ Wendy says, ‘Oh it’s a game, but it’s real.’ Eventually Peter says, ‘I’m tired of playing this game, let’s play a different one.’ But that’s the reality […]