Earlier this month, a friend of mine urgently texted me: “You do tai chi, right? A director is filming a movie in Stockbridge and she needs people to do tai chi at a cemetery. I recommended you.” Now, I do not, in fact, do tai chi, but I get this a lot because…
Kyle Abraham is looking for something. The multi-award-winning choreographer and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, whose company, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, makes its mainstage debut at Jacob’s Pillow this week, brings his signature search for identity and struggle with personal and societal emotional trauma to a packed, five-dance program. The performance begins with state, an…
Maria Semple’s Today Will Be Different was critically well received when it was released in 2016, though fans of her previous, rapturously lauded novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, weren’t quite as taken with the story. Many cited its similarities to Bernadette—the frustrated creative at its center, the skewering of a faux-woke Seattle, the upper-middle-class…
Happiness is tricky. It’s something we all want, but it often feels just out of reach—that if we do this, buy that, go there, we’ll find it, wrapped and waiting like a birthday gift. The fleeting, often elusive quality of happiness lies at the center of The Happiness Project, a 2016 work by Dutch-born…
The Hudson Valley has had a long, some might say checkered, history with alcohol. Almost as soon as farming began, farmers distilled their grains and fruits—partly to prevent spoilage during the long winter months, and partly create alternative sources of revenue. By the mid-1800s, there were about 1,000 small distilleries dotting the New York…
The term laser cut has become ubiquitous in fashion and home décor over the past decade, with everything from patterned earrings and handbags to wall art created with machines that can inexpensively, if generically, cut large quantities of materials in minutes. But in the hands of Sarah Pike, founder of FreeFall Laser, the often-untapped…
Shopping is one of those activities that roughly half the population loves, and does partly for the sheer fun of browsing or bargain hunting. The other half won’t step foot in a store until they’re down to the last smear of peanut butter in the jar or are desperate for socks that don’t have built-in…
Akram Khan doesn’t just perform his dances; he lives them. In Xenos, which played to a packed audience on February 21 at the Williams College ’62 Center for the Arts, he isn’t just a formidable dancer, but also a skilled actor adept at storytelling through explosive movement, small gestures, and poignant moments of stillness….
Shari Peltier has heard all the myths and stereotypes about veganism and vegan food. When asked to recount some of them, she settles back in the vinyl-upholstered booth of Thrive Vegan Diner, her new Pittsfield restaurant. “It’s tasteless. It doesn’t contain enough nutrition or protein,” she says, ticking off each point on her fingers….
In early January, French author and filmmaker Yann Moix took a bath into a cauldron of hot water by declaring in an interview with the French edition of Marie Claire that women over age 50 are “too, too old” to love, and thus are “invisible” to him. He based his argument on the highly…