Stand in a semi-circle. On cue, stomp your right foot, then clap your hands, then thrust your right hand in the air while speaking a letter of the alphabet, clap your hands again, then stomp your left foot. Then the person…

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   Outside, a million people streamed through the streets in revolt. Inside, a million thoughts swirled through my head.

   On May Day, 2006, protestors across the…

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   I wish I had been a better student.

   I attended Eisenhower College for my bachelor’s degree. Don’t bother looking for it. It no longer exists. Its syllabus…

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   You’re headed to New York for a conference that starts Wednesday morning, so you have to be in the city the night before. You decide to catch the opera Tuesday night. Your plane is scheduled to land at 2:30 Tuesday afternoon, the opera starts at 7:30:…

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     A woman dabs on a bit of perfume for her night out. She and her husband are seeing a show in Popejoy Hall. They arrive at their seats. The man next to them complains to the ushers that the…

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         Some mornings it’s tough to know what business I’m in.

     I work in a basement office. I process numbers, edit words, answer phone calls, attend meetings, monitor budgets. How different is that from any other office job?…

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     Tom Popejoy attended symphony concerts in Carnegie Hall with President Franklin Roosevelt and fell in love with the music. He loved it so much, his son said, that Tom Popejoy, Jr., never wants to hear Carmen again, his father played…

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     “I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly high.”

     People who perform for a living do it for the glory, right? They just want to be…

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     If two performers meet on Christmas Day — or New Year’s Eve or Thanksgiving — one will certainly ask “Where’s your show tonight?” People in show biz work a lot of holidays.…

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     When I first watched the video of Alice Tan Ridley singing on America’s Got Talent, I had the same reaction as the judges: surprise, awe and a shiver of joy. When I…

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About 150 years ago in Western cultures, men and women did not touch while dancing. It was considered far too indecent. Then along came the waltz.

Of course, now we consider the waltz to be a very tame dance, but in its origins the idea of a man putting his hand on a woman’s waist or…

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The Kings of Salsa, a show from Cuba, comes to Popejoy Hall next month. Do you want to know how rare the performance will be?

Eight days ago, the Cuban company arrived at JFK International Airport, a facility that handles nearly 23 million passengers yearly. The first…

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In ancient Greece, theaters were only active twice a year. The elders considered drama powerful enough that it was rationed to the public so as not to cause too much emotional distress for citizens.

In Shakespeare’s day, there were only a handful of theater companies, so…

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Stephen Douglass sits out the dance with Gwen Verdon in the original production of Damn Yankees. Peter Stackpole/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

 

Janet Eilber, artistic director of the…

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We’ve heard the stories far too many times.

Keith Saunders didn’t start dancing until he was in college. He was on his way to law school when he decided it would be fun to take a dance class. He discovered that he was pretty good at it and was encouraged by his teacher to continue. Five years later, he was dancing with…

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I’ve been thinking a lot about cooperation lately. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’ve been watching the lack of cooperation in Congress and am hoping for better.



Whatever the roots, my thoughts tend toward the performing arts. Artists are known for their egos and their temperaments, but what they should be known for instead is their cooperative attitude, especially those in the performing arts. Yes, there are those whose egos become impediments to cooperation, but most performers I’ve… Continue