Two generations of New York City Ballet luminaries. The latter is currently a soloist and principal; the former joined that company nearly 70 years ago as a Balanchine protégé and went on to found the National Dance Institute. Music from Jerry Korman, music director of the NDI, and Susan Walters. Continue reading »
Monthly Archives: December 2019
Episode 284: Shakina Nayfack
Actor, writer, singer, transgender activist, she argues surprisingly (and persuasively) that anti-LGBTQ laws need not arise from animosity toward LGBTQ people but from something even more cynical. With music from, well yes, Shakina Nayfack. Continue reading »
Episode 283: Valerie Steele
This cultural historian regards Coco Chanel as a titan of fashion but notes, “Like Picasso or Wagner, she was really really brilliant and just an absolutely despicable human being.” Anti-Semite, union-buster, Nazi spy: when great artists are bad people. Plus music from Eléonore Weill and Ali Dineen. Photo credit: ©2019 The Museum at FIT Continue reading »
Episode 282: Robert Wilson
I expected this opera director to be astute and eloquent, and he was. I did not expect him to do first-rate impressions of Tom Waits, William Burroughs, and his own father. (Be honest: neither did you.) At Pratt Institute, his alma mater. Music by Pat Irwin and Walter Hawkes. Continue reading »