Take about a dozen people lubricated with beverages, alcoholic and not, appetites whetted by spareribs with Hoisin sauce. Put them in a luxuriously sparse kitchen showroom in the Design District. Add a patient instructor offering directions while wielding a spatula and well-seasoned wok — cast iron, please, not carbon steel!…
One hundred five years: Not long in the life of most cities, except if you’re Miami. Our town has changed radically over its brief lifespan. A glance at area buildings that reflect our history reveals just that. Dade County pine houses and bungalows offering porches and expanses of windows exemplify…
Blues Night: For more than six months that’s been the official tag on Thursday evenings in the Veranda Bar at Miami Beach’s Palms Hotel. But as those who frequent the place know well, there is little to be sad about. Even after dark, the room seems sunny. A lengthy bar…
The seemingly endless cycle of arts events, though slowing, has yet to cease. As one festival (the International Hispanic Theatre Festival) ends, another (the Florida Dance Festival) begins. For the next seventeen days expect this town to be overrun with hardbodied, expressive types when dancers of all kinds begin to…
A few famous artists on regret: “I Regret Nothing,” proclaimed French chanteuse Edith Piaf in what came to be known as her signature song. “Miss Otis Regrets,” wrote composer Cole Porter about a woman who murdered her lover and politely canceled a social engagement owing to the dire consequences she…
“It’s not like I’m going to be sitting there and balancing eggs on spoons,” says actor/playwright Bill Spring about his new performance piece Miss Vanilla and the Hustler, debuting this weekend on Miami Beach. “It’s accessible material.” Set on South Beach, where the Atlanta native has resided for the past…
It is often said, this town is going to the dogs. Nothing could be more apt this weekend when the South Dade Kennel Club holds its eleventh annual All Breed Conformation Show and Obedience Trials. Close to 700 canines will jump through hoops, run through tunnels, pose, and obey commands,…
For true South Florida-style diversity, look to Coconut Grove. Located on Biscayne Bay, a few miles south of downtown Miami, the lushly landscaped area is perhaps this city’s most eclectic neighborhood. Over the years it has boasted bratty college kids carousing and cruising around in their cars on weekend nights,…
Peering at a shiny object through a shop window. In the late 1930s, a teenaged Jean Baptiste Thielemans found himself doing that one day during a school field trip in his native Belgium. And that’s how it all began. A couple of francs lighter, he was the proud owner of…
They move blithely with abandon, young women clad in filmy tunics like Greek goddesses, barefoot, long hair cascading down their backs. A gathering of fairies in the forest? A hippie wedding in a meadow? More like a performance by the Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble, a local group devoted to preserving…
“How to be a Non-Stop Beauty” promises a line on a colorful Harper’s Bazaar cover from January 1970, where an electric-blue female swimmer clad in a white bikini and red-and-white bathing cap crouches. Her arms lifted straight up and head bent down, she appears more than ready to take a…
The first day of May is significant for many people. Ancient Celts and Saxons commemorated it to mark the end of winter and the start of spring planting season. Medieval craft guilds elected a May queen and danced around the maypole in hopes of a fruitful harvest. In 1889 Paris,…
As a child Miami-born-and-raised Glenn Terry didn’t own a Water Wiggle or a Slip ‘n’ Slide, and he only recently began drinking the recommended eight glasses of water a day. So what led to his affinity for liquid? “I’m a Pisces,” he giggles. And what ignited the idea for the…
Quiz composer/vocalist Lila Downs about her striking resemblance (minus the unibrow) to troubled Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and surprisingly she doesn’t tear your head off or sigh impatiently. Ask her the question, which she’s heard 100 times, and Downs gently explains she’s not that unusual: “If you go to Oaxaca,…
The Beatles mugging, President Richard Nixon resigning, the Reagans dancing, IRA bigwigs lying in state. A few of the spontaneous moments captured by intrepid Scottish photojournalist Harry Benson. The maverick lensman strives for what he calls “pictures with air in them.” Given the countless scenes he has shot over the…
Ahhh … Abba. The Swedish pop supergroup that did disco better than any American ever could, amassing scores of catchy Top 10 hits including “Dancing Queen,” “Waterloo,” and “S.O.S.,” selling more than 300 million records worldwide from 1971 until its 1983 demise, and spawning tribute bands such as the wonderfully…
Artist Abiodun Oladewa wants you to have his art. Really. So much that if you find yourself drawn to his drawings, pining for his paintings, he’s going to give you one or two or three or more at no charge. Yes, free, gratis, complimentary. The Nigerian-born Oladewa, who uses the…
What’s it like to listen to a piano solo by musician John Hicks? “Taking a five-minute compressed course in piano history,” once said a writer for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. While one is more likely to hear something closer to Duke Ellington than to Chopin when he plays, the depiction…
Imagine taking dance lessons for several years during your childhood, entering the university later to study economics, contemplating life as a businesswoman, and then giving it all up to spend more than ten years living in a village strictly devoted to reviving and preserving classical Indian dance forms that date…
Zany Brazilian theatrical company Pia Fraus has a name that derives from Latin and translates roughly to a white lie. Aptly enough the notion that Pia Fraus would perform in Miami five months ago as part of Tigertail Productions’ seventh annual Florida/Brazil Festival (FLA/BRA) seemed like a white lie as…
Enough with the letter i or lack thereof in actor Jim J. Bullock’s name. “I should have just left it Becky!” he jokes on the phone from his California home. The former costar of the hit ABC sitcom Too Close for Comfort once went by the cryptic handle “JM J…
April may indeed be the cruelest month, according to poet T.S. Eliot. But if you believe Shakespeare’s soothsayer (and Julius Caesar really should have), mid-March is the time of year that really stinks. One of the few months boasting no real holidays to speak of (that is, unless you’re Irish),…
