It’s that time of year. No, I’m not talking about Groundhog Day or Valentine’s Day. The Independent Dancemakers’ annual concert, happening this weekend in The Ark at Duke, is a precursor to spring in its own right. Comprised of dancer-choreographers Rebecca Hutchins, Mindy Cervi, Anne Griffiths and Laura Thomasson, this group’s makeup has changed subtly […]
Art
Posted inArt
The eyes have it
Private Eyes, now playing at Manbites Dog Theater, features an intelligent, witty script by Steven Dietz, excellent acting and directing and a style that mixes raw emotion with unashamed theatrical effects. In short, it would be a typical, top-flight MDT production, if it weren’t for one not-so-minor detail: The show is actually being presented in […]
Posted inArt
Cuba vive
When I first started writing for The Independent in the late ’80s, multicultural in the Triangle pretty much meant you could see art by African Americans in February. We’ve come a ways since then: We now regularly see art by and about people from all over the world, and in the process have begun to […]
Posted inArt
Love power
Since the 1980s, bell hooks (a pseudonym for City College professor Gloria Watkins) has become one of America’s premier public intellectuals. With her 1981 book, Ain’t I a Woman, she emerged as a strong and visible opponent of white, classist feminism and African-American patriarchy. The rest of her 15-odd books propelled her to the top […]
Posted inArt
The Bible and the barcode
Flannery O’Connor once characterized the South as “Christ-haunted,” and the same could be said of her fiction. Many Southern writers have followed in her footsteps, producing impressive works informed by an understanding of the importance of religion in Southern culture. In fact, it’s safe to say that Southern literature would be nowhere without God–so who […]
Posted inArt
Spirit and light
We had all kinds of tiring hoopla surrounding the end of the year–the century, the “millennium”–but hang on, folks, it’s not over yet. Now we get a round of “new” and “fresh.” I’m not saying this is such a bad thing, just that I’ll be glad when we get to some less portentous days on […]
Posted inArt
Leaving Itta Bena
There’s getting to be a serious home shortage in this country. I’m not talking about houses, I’m talking about where you’re from. The megamall culture is gobbling up towns and countryside, spitting out chain stores, making every place like every place else. Southern culture has always been based on the idea of home, the notion […]
Posted inArt
Trying to tell you something
In his introduction to The Yellow Shoe Poets, an anthology of poets published by Louisiana State University Press since 1964, George Garrett claims that the second half of the century has seen “a virtual uprising, a revolution in poetry, the likes of which has not been seen since the final decade of the rule and […]