Arts

Performing Arts

Bamfordtown

Maria Bamford’s wild and constantly inventive stand-up style relies on her never flinching from the most difficult realities.

January 15, 2026 issue

Marina Harss

Alexei Ratmansky’s Leap of Faith

Having wrested himself from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, the great choreographer has sought to remake himself and his work in Denmark.

March 12, 2026 issue

Geoffrey O’Brien

The Escape Artists

Mason Bates’s operatic adaptation of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay condenses the encyclopedic novel into a story about two outsiders caught between the harsh reality of World War II and their success as creators of a comic book superhero.

November 6, 2025 issue

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are inspired casting to lead Waiting for Godot, but the Broadway production amounts to Beckett with emotional subtitles.

November 8, 2025

Christopher Benfey

Anni’s Orchestra

The late prints of Anni Albers bear out her conviction that artists need to “listen” to their materials, be “tuned” to them.

November 12, 2025

Catherine Nicholson

The Cares of State

The scholar Nan Z. Da reveals how naturally Chinese history can be read through the cruelty and corruption in King Lear.

October 9, 2025 issue

Alma Guillermoprieto

Bodies by Joe

With his strange machines and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of muscles, Joseph Pilates created a new technique for improving strength and movement.

August 21, 2025 issue

Joseph Horowitz

Grand Opera’s Tribulations

This season’s production of Aida at the Met sheds light on issues facing both the company and the genre of grand opera itself.

May 29, 2025 issue

Theater & Dance

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are inspired casting to lead Waiting for Godot, but the Broadway production amounts to Beckett with emotional subtitles.

November 8, 2025

Francesca Wade

‘One Being Dancing’

In her latest performance, the eighty-five-year-old dancer and choreographer Lucinda Childs takes up one of her great influences: the work of Gertrude Stein.

October 10, 2025

Larry Wolff

Those Who Live in the Dark

A recent production of The Threepenny Opera recovered the work’s emphasis on subversive anarchism and destructive sexuality.

May 10, 2025

Hannah Gold

Mama Tried

In Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold On to Me Darling, newly revived with Adam Driver, a country star looks back on his wasted years.

December 8, 2024

Joan Acocella (1945–2024)

Joan Acocella

Joan Acocella

Dancing for Balanchine

October 11, 1990 issue

Joan Acocella

On Tap

June 6, 1996 issue

Joan Acocella

The Neapolitan Finger

December 21, 2000 issue

Joan Acocella

The Elmore Leonard Story

September 24, 2015 issue

Joan Acocella

Crotch Shots Galore

May 24, 2018 issue

Joan Acocella

From Russia, with Love

May 25, 2023 issue

The Latest

Andrew Katzenstein

‘Not Insane!’

The Firesign Theatre, a comedy group formed in the 1960s, created surreal albums that mixed satire and science fiction, and inspired a generation of misfits.

April 9, 2026 issue

Anika Banister

Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

For six decades, Yoko Ono’s art has considered how we should live with ourselves and one another in an unknowable, painful world.

January 25, 2026

Francesca Wade

‘One Being Dancing’

In her latest performance, the eighty-five-year-old dancer and choreographer Lucinda Childs takes up one of her great influences: the work of Gertrude Stein.

October 10, 2025

Larry Wolff

Those Who Live in the Dark

A recent production of The Threepenny Opera recovered the work’s emphasis on subversive anarchism and destructive sexuality.

May 10, 2025

Geoffrey O’Brien

Eddying Toward Doom

Any adaptation of Moby-Dick must pick and choose from the novel’s many themes and tones; Jake Heggie’s opera tends toward a frequency attuned to sorrow.

May 15, 2025 issue

Jed Perl

Echoes of Eternity

The critic Arlene Croce found in classical ballet timeless values in a timely form, but she looked to modern dance for the reverse: timely values taking on a timeless form.

March 27, 2025 issue

Blair McClendon

It’s Technicolor

Alvin Ailey is one of those artists, like Picasso and Faulkner, whose name is shorthand for a whole field.

February 13, 2025 issue

Nathan Shields

‘Every Carnival Has Its End’

A recent performance by the Santa Fe Opera of Don Giovanni showed what is gained—and what is lost—in demystifying its demon protagonist.

January 12, 2025

James Shapiro

Rebels Without a Cause

In Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet, the lovers’ headlong rush into marriage is in tension throughout with the surprising regression to childhood that characterizes so much of the production.

January 16, 2025 issue

Sarah L. Kaufman

Limitless Space, Endless Motion

When the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky first saw a tape of Balanchine’s Apollo, he watched in disbelief. Here was elegance without exaggeration, tension and beauty without stagy excess.

January 16, 2025 issue