The dance world has been slow to let go of certain stereotypes. Chief among them might just be that men shouldn’t dance en pointe, and that romantic love is best expressed by men and women dancing together. Which is one of the reasons that Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the 45-year-old, New…
Popular debut novels are an intriguing phenomenon, often the book equivalent of an ingénue who notches a surprising win at the Oscars every decade or so. Some are deserving—think Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God—and some are, to put it nicely, puzzling (Anna Paquin in The Piano, anyone?). The Woman in the…
On some level, it must suck to create a work of great innovation or genius. Though you’re forever lauded for and associated with that work, everything else you do is also compared to it in perpetuity, and generally found lacking. Such is the case for Markus Zusak, Australian YA writer, whose 2005 novel The…
Some people know a lot about a few things. Others know a little about a lot of things. Rachel Reuben, a higher ed marketing consultant, is one of those rare professionals who knows a lot about dozens of topics, and is able to handle them all with equal skill. I met Rachel through…
I feel for folks who don’t live in proximity to world-class museums—I really do. Even in my remote little neck of the woods, I’m 40 minutes or less from a few biggies, including MASS MoCA in North Adams. Since I have a strong preference for contemporary art—generally, the more offbeat and provocative, the better—I…
If you have a writer in your life, you’re an uncommonly lucky duck. Beyond having someone witty and wise to banter with every day, you also have a person who’s ridiculously easy to please in the gift department. Think I’m exaggerating? I polled my writer friends—real, paid professionals who work the word nerdery all year…
Lauree Ostrofsky has a theory about entrepreneurs: they’re often lifelong A students, people who continually try to do everything “right,” sometimes to their own detriment. She explains, “Most of us found third grade really comfortable; we knew exactly what was expected of us to get an A or a gold star. That structure is…
Rare is a murder mystery that’s less gripping than a psychodrama about a middle-class family. But the whodunit at the center of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You plays a much-lower-key second fiddle to the twists and turns of mixed-race familial relationships, as they evolve—or refuse to—over the decades. Packed with secrets, lies, and…
What are you doing next May? If you’re a travel writer, a blogger (especially of the travel variety), or you want to be part of the travel industry, I’ve got your answer: going to the 2019 Women in Travel Summit, aka WITS19, in Portland, Maine, May 3 through 5. Hands-down, WITS is the best…
It’s no easy feat to pull off a vibrant, riveting theatrical performance almost entirely on an office stage set, either in one-way “chats” with a phone receiver or in conversations with a disembodied voice on an intercom. But Ann, a WAM Theatre production playing now through October 28 at Shakespeare & Company, and starring Jayne…