Category Archives: Entertainment

Entertainment, Fun & Games, Music
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The Winning Ticket: Scala & Kolancy Brothers

As a way to say thanks to our loyal readers, We Love DC will be giving away a pair of tickets to a 9:30 Club concert to one lucky reader each week. Check back here every Wednesday morning at 9am to find out what tickets we’re giving away and leave a comment for your chance to be the lucky winner!

This week’s ticket giveaway is for a pair of tickets to see Scala & The Kolancy Brothers perform at the 9:30 Club on Monday, April 25th.

If you don’t know what the heck Scala & The Kolancy Brothers is yet, don’t feel bad, you are not alone. Odds are you might know their work without even knowing who they are. Their weird and heart-breaking cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” was used heavily in the ad campaign for the film “The Social Network” last year. That’s where I was first exposed to this massive all girl choir from Belgium and the pair of brothers who work with them. Digging into Scala a little deeper reveals a group that specializes in soul searching choral arrangements of famous pop tunes; a niche market that they have been dominating for years. Thanks in no small part to the exposure that “The Social Network” provided, Scala & The Kolancy Brothers are able to bring their live show to America. I have a feeling this is going to be an unusual and special night at the 9:30 Club.

For your chance to win these tickets simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address between 9am and 4pm today. One entry per email address, please. If today doesn’t turn out to be your lucky day, check back here each Wednesday for a chance to win tickets to other great concerts. Tickets for this concert are available on Ticketfly.

For the rules of this giveaway…
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Entertainment, Special Events, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: The New Electric Ballroom

(l to r) Nancy Robinette, Jennifer Mendenhall, and Sybil Lines in The New Electric Ballroom by Enda Walsh. Directed by Matt Torney. Photo: Carol Pratt.

Countless poets have asked the question – is love worth the risk of a broken heart? Are fleeting moments of a racing pulse and desire’s first flush worth facing the possibility of loss and loneliness?

To those questions, Irish playwright Enda Walsh adds – is it better to just stay safe inside? In The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, playing now in repertory at Studio Theatre, “inside” is both the literal confines of a fixed space and the “inside” of one’s own mind and heart. “Inside” is both as safe and confining as the womb, the physical space as limited as the mental world is limitless. The choice of staying in or going out is of vital concern, stamping the characters with an equal dose of longing and repulsion.

Whereas The Walworth Farce deals with how this choice impacts three men and the woman who comes into their space, The New Electric Ballroom turns that question over to three women and the man who enters. “And enter then” is a phrase constantly repeated here, a reminder that no matter how safely we bind ourselves against risk, it always finds a way to seep in to our carefully constructed lives. Just as in The Walworth Farce, the three women in The New Electric Ballroom have constructed a daily world of stories, re-enacting the past where two elder sisters first met and lost love. The stories here are also a warning of the risk of the outside.

The results are not as physically violent, but the women are just as scarred, the desperate longing to escape from the demeaning cycle of small-town gossip driving them deeper into their minds. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Spectrum @ SONAR, 4/14/11

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all photos by author.

On Thursday night I trekked up to Baltimore to see Spectrum perform on the side stage at SONAR. After witnessing their transcendent show at the Velvet Lounge last year, how could I resist this opportunity to see them again? Based on the strength of their previous show (and my soul-crushing fear of being alone), I talked a friend into coming along for the ride. To get him to tag along, I really talked this show up; an easy task considering how impressive Spectrum was last year. Unfortunately due to problems both technical and olfactory, this experience was very different than last year. Instead of seeing an easy contender for show of the year, we watched as the band plowed through a glitch-riddled set while pinching our noses and breathing through our shirt collars.

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Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Cake at 9:30 Club 4/14/11


all photos by Andrew Markowitz.

Who doesn’t love Cake?

No, not the dessert (although everyone loves it, too), I’m talking about the band who has spawned such hits as “The Distance”, “Never There”, and “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”. These are songs that I think most everyone knows and everyone can sing along to. And when Cake opened up a three night set at 9:30 Club on Thursday night, that’s exactly what the entire crowd did.

No one opened up for Cake that night; as lead singer John McCrea later explained “We’re opening up for ourselves.” Before the band came out a small tree was brought out to the front of the stage and I can’t say I’d ever seen anything like that before. Shortly after 8PM, the show started by a recorded speech that would be similar to what you’d hear from a stewardess before taking off for a flight. The recording instructed audience members to turn off all electronics including cell phones and cameras. I had a good laugh as I looked around the 9:30 Club and saw people actually pulling out their phones and cameras and shutting them down in all seriousness. C’mon, didn’t you realize what band you were coming to see?

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Entertainment, Special Events, The Features, We Love Arts
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The State of Arts Education

Paul Ruther (Phillips Collection), Gail Murdock (DCAHEC Board member) and Michael Bobbitt (Adventure Theatre) at the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative gala. Photo by the author.

Last week, the Huffington Post ran an opinion piece by Michael Kaiser—President of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts— lamenting Millennials’ low “culture IQ.” “We now have an entire generation of young people who have had virtually no exposure to the arts,” Kaiser declared, citing anecdotal examples of young colleagues clueless of Caruso’s tenor or Giuseppe Verdi’s place in history. He warned that unless we bolster arts education (and make the arts more affordable to young people), arts organizations will flounder in a few years’ time as their donors, board members, volunteers and patrons age without anyone to replace them.

Unsurprisingly (and as noted on Friday by our arts editor Jenn Larsen), Kaiser has since faced a hailstorm of online criticism, with dozens of self-proclaimed art-loving Millennials labeling him “ageist,” “elitist,” and even delusional. In a frequently-linked post, blogger Liz Maestri accuses Kaiser of “[making] the ridiculous assumption that all young people are stupid, drooling rabble, when in fact young people are more culturally savvy than ever.” Challenging Mr. Kaiser’s “self-defined ‘high art,’” she concludes that “major arts organizations need to go away. They are their own worst enemy.”

In some ways, I agree with her. “Stuffy art”—to steal one of the HuffPo commenters’ jargon—is not the only form of art out there. I cringed when, strolling through Eastern Market a few months ago, my friend pointed out “bad art” at a local artist’s stand. In my mind, there is no bad art, just as there is no “high art.”

But that very mindset is something I learned. Unlike Ms. Maestri (or half of the HuffPo commenters, it seems), my dad is not a musician, nor are my brothers; I never had season tickets to “the BSO” and I haven’t worked for an orchestra. During my junior year in Paris, I sped through the Rodin Museum and dreaded Picasso exhibits. Where is the art in grotesque shapes? I asked myself.

Two years later, I see it now. In fact, I see art everywhere: in the Dupont Circle fountain sculptures, the Gothic architecture of neighborhood churches, and the countless murals speckled across the city. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Fun & Games, Music
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The Winning Ticket: Mogwai

As a way to say thanks to our loyal readers, We Love DC will be giving away a pair of tickets to a 9:30 Club concert to one lucky reader each week. Check back here every Wednesday morning at 9am to find out what tickets we’re giving away and leave a comment for your chance to be the lucky winner!

Now here is a ticket giveaway for a band that I personally endorse 100%. Mogwai are one of the very best live bands on the planet. They are elite. They are the special forces of the post-rock genre; of the many inspiring bands that post-rock has produced none are as consistently amazing live as them. Their concerts rattle souls. I once saw them play so furiously an amplifier burst into flames (seriously). Another time I saw them perform, they played so hard that their drummer had to be hospitalized immediately after the show. Enter to win two tickets to see Mogwai unleash their quiet beauty and thunderous power at the 9:30 Club on Tuesday, April 19th.

For your chance to win these tickets simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address between 9am and 4pm today. One entry per email address, please. If today doesn’t turn out to be your lucky day, check back here each Wednesday for a chance to win tickets to other great concerts. Tickets for this concert are available on Ticketfly.

For the rules of this giveaway…
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Entertainment, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: The Walworth Farce

Ted van Griethuysen and Aubrey Deeker in The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh. Directed by Matt Torney. Photo credit: Carol Pratt.

In a dingy public housing apartment three men act out a daily routine, a twisted attempt at farce that’s rife with repeated humiliation and competition. It’s a “routine to keep the family safe,” the patriarch justifies, and it takes a bit for the audience to catch on that what they are seeing is the desperate attempt of an immigrant family to hold on to their past – as the fleeting smell of their mother’s roast chicken fades from their jackets.

Irish playwright Enda Walsh is one of my favorites (seeing Disco Pigs is still among my top theatrical experiences in DC), and the brilliant opening of New Ireland: The Enda Walsh Festival at Studio Theatre – Penelope – definitely raised my hopes for the next two productions. The Walworth Farce is next up, and though its first act has the tension build of a horror movie, it slowly winds down when it should crank up in the second act. Perhaps that was only the energy level of the matinee I saw, and there’s still time to get it sharper with the run already extended.

The play is perhaps a metaphor for the Irish immigrant condition, with the family patriarch Dinny (Ted van Griethuysen) keeping his boys locked up from the outside world of South London. Keeping them safe means keeping their memories of the home they left behind intact, down to the very smell, their Cork accents untouched. The play’s language is full of the deep nostalgia for things you can barely recall. But the memories the father instills in his sons are false, a story told repeatedly to hide the truth – that their diaspora was a necessity out of guilt and fear. Just to kick up that metaphor even more, the guilt is fratricide, which the boys are doomed to repeat.

It’s truly freaky how the first act unfolds, like an Irish Monty Python doing a sick reading of Flowers in the Attic. The three men toss about wigs and prank glasses and 1970’s clothes all too seriously. Then the father notices a mistake, breaks character, and the horror movie begins in earnest.  Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Wire @ Black Cat, 4/7/11

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all photos by author.

Wire played at the Black Cat on Thursday night for an adoring crowd of older fans and hardcore music geeks. They are touring on their excellent new album, “Red Barked Tree”. The new album was featured heavily on Thursday night, but Wire also offered up a sampler of the many phases they have gone through in their 30+ years career. The show was an interesting blend of energy levels and quality as the many sounds of Wire don’t always fit neatly next to one another. This was my first time seeing Wire in concert; while I walked away satisfied by the show, it was not the knock-out performance I was expecting.

If Wire will be remembered for one thing, it will be that they always did things on their own terms. One of the most important bands in the punk to post-punk transition, Wire harnessed the energy of ’77 UK punk to fuel their strange creations. Along with peer-bands like Magazine and Joy Division, they helped herald in a new era of unconventional sounds. Never satisfied being pigeonholed by the critics as “this type of band” or “that type of band”, Wire shifted gears many times over the years. From punk to post-punk to pop to industrial and so on, Wire were and still are always in a state of flux. While this is the thing that makes Wire such a satisfying and exciting band to listen to at home, I’m afraid it held their live show back a little bit on Thursday.

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Entertainment, Life in the Capital, The Features, We Love Arts
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Do DC Millennials Care About Art?

Photo courtesy of
‘(065/365)’
courtesy of ‘kimberlyfaye’

Last night a friend pulled up an article on her phone that she said I simply had to read. It was a piece on the Huffington Post by Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, bemoaning the lack of exposure to the arts by Millennials. Among other things, he points out what he calls the “low culture IQ” of twentysomethings who may have achieved a great deal already in their chosen professional fields, but have little knowledge about or even interest in attending a theater performance or going to an art gallery. The bottom line for Kaiser is the fear of what happens when Millenials hit middle age and are in a financial position to help the arts – will they?

As a member of Generation X, I always find the anxiety of the Boomers over whether the Millennials will take care of them to be mildly humorous, considering those fears were also expressed about us, and every generation hits that fear eventually. We’re now finding ourselves being asked to join boards of directors of arts institutions and worthy non-profits. What happened to being called lazy slackers in our crazy clubkid days? After years of being asked to go in the servants’ entrance it’s always funny when they finally let you in the front door.

Joking aside, I definitely feel passionate about the future of the arts and of course I want to help in their support. When I’m out reviewing, to my untrained statistical eye it seems like DC audiences are relatively mixed in age. However, lately I’ve been hearing the same question over and over from different theater companies – how do we get young audiences in? By young, they mean Millennials, though at times they even stretch the age range up to the late thirties, which shows just how dire the lack of attendance might be.

So, I want to hear from you. Here in DC we seem to have an amazing array of opportunities to enjoy the arts. But is Kaiser right in his worry that Millennials have little to no exposure to the arts, and consequently won’t support them? How often do you attend theater performances, art exhibits, concerts – and what makes you choose the ones you do? Is it a question of interest, or of being able to afford it? Please sound off! I’d love to hear what you think of Kaiser’s views and whether, in DC at least, you see it as an accurate crisis.

Update: There’s a backlash growing in the arts community to Kaiser’s post. Read more reactions from 2AMt and Tipping Over Backwards.

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The Black Angels @ 9:30 Club, 4/3/11

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all photos by author.

On Sunday night The Black Angels played at 9:30 Club for the second time in six months. Last time they were in town, they opened for Black Mountain. This time at bat The Black Angels headlined the show, which gave them more time to marinate the audience in their dark psych-rock sound. The club was about two-thirds full, which made for a decent-sized crowd while leaving plenty of empty space for their guitars and vocals to swirl around in. The name of the game was “atmosphere” as The Black Angels enhanced their bad acid trip soundtracks with minimal red and purple lighting casting long shadows, occasionally interrupted by seizure-inducing strobes. The stage back-drop looked simple enough with its a wavy black and white pattern, but eventually continued the theme of acid freak-out as it created a number of optical illusions as different lights and projections bounced off of it. The best way to enjoy the show was to immerse yourself in The Black Angels’ audio-visual soup. Which is exactly what I did.

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Entertainment, Music, The Daily Feed
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Hot Ticket: Wire @ Black Cat, 4/7/11

Remember when there was that early to mid-00’s wave of pop bands masquerading as post-punk revivalists? Of course you do. Well, while most of those bands have already run out of steam, first wave post-punks like Wire have been going strong for over 30 years. Kind of puts the more recent generations to shame a bit, don’t it? I mean where is their commitment? Not to mention their innovation, experimentation, and/or stamina?!

Wire are one of the holy trinity of bands that mutated punk into post-punk in the UK back in the golden age and they have been mutating their own sound going on four decades now. Four! Their latest album, “Red Barked Tree” is phenomenal. During a conversation I had at the recent Gang of Four show, I said that Wire’s latest sort of had no right to be as ridiculously good as it is. I mean, c’mon guys, you’re making the kids these days look ridiculous. Where do you get off releasing an absolutely vital recording this late in your career? Put “Red Barked Tree” up against some of Wire’s earliest and best work and it doesn’t sound like they’ve aged a day. This concert is going to be fantastic!

Wire
w/ Weekend
@ Black Cat
4/7/11 – 8pm
$20

Entertainment, Fun & Games, Music, We Love Music
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The Winning Ticket: The Dirty Heads

As a way to say thanks to our loyal readers, We Love DC will be giving away a pair of tickets to a 9:30 Club concert to one lucky reader each week. Check back here every Wednesday morning at 9am to find out what tickets we’re giving away and leave a comment for your chance to be the lucky winner!

Two tickets to see The Dirty Heads at 9:30 Club on Monday, April 11th. You know you want them…

For your chance to win these tickets simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address between 9am and 4pm today. One entry per email address, please. If today doesn’t turn out to be your lucky day, check back here each Wednesday for a chance to win tickets to other great concerts. Tickets for this concert are available on Ticketfly.

For the rules of this giveaway…
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Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Sara Bareilles @ Rams Head Live!, 4/3/11

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all photos by Mike Kurman

After I heard that he was a big fan, I asked guest reviewer and concert photographer, Mike Kurman to cover the Sara Bareilles concert for We Love DC.

On a cold, rainy Sunday night in Baltimore, Sara Bareilles grabbed hold of the diverse, multi-aged crowd and didn’t let go for her hour and forty minute set. Rarely have I seen a performer with such confidence as Bareilles. Supporting the excellent ‘Kaleidoscope Heart’ LP, Bareilles came out with a backing four piece band that was equally energetic and extremely tight. There was no warming up or easing into the set. Barielles came out banging on the keys of a royal blue baby grand while swaying, swerving, and singing. Her voice didn’t crack once throughout the evening, not one note was sour or even close to off key, as it echoed off the industrial brick walls of Rams Head Live! as if it was a temple. The performance was downright flawless.

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Entertainment, Special Events, The Daily Feed
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Video Game Art Voting Extended!

Photo courtesy of
‘DC Meetups – 09-03-22 – Your Move’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’

In response to public demand, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has extended the deadline for public voting for the video games to be featured in its upcoming exhibition, “The Art of Video Games.” The voting period, originally scheduled to end April 7, now will close at midnight, Sunday, April 17.

The website offers participants a chance to vote for 80 games from a pool of 240 proposed choices in various categories, divided by era, game type and platform. More than three million votes have been cast since the voting site launched Feb. 14. A valid e-mail address is required to vote.

The winning games will be announced publicly Thursday, May 5. Anyone who registered to vote will receive advance notification of the winning games, as well as monthly updates and special behind-the-scenes offers leading up to the exhibition opening in Washington, D.C. and throughout the run of the exhibition.

“The Art of Video Games” is the first to explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. Chris Melissinos, founder of Past Pixels and collector of video games and gaming systems, is the curator of the exhibition. The exhibition will be on display at the museum from March 16, 2012 through Sept. 30, 2012; it then will travel to multiple venues in the United States.

Entertainment, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Photograph 51

Elizabeth Rich and Alexander Strain in Theater J's "Photograph 51." Photo credit: Stan Barouh.

Biographical plays can be tricky. The best – works like Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus or Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code – have come to brilliantly define the genre but also created conventions that theater audiences now take for granted. There are the poetic monologues illustrating the main character’s motivations, the chorus or narrator trying to shape the life for you (either trustworthily or not), crazy jumps in time, and an overall attempt to make some philosophical sense out of a life. The pitfall is, a life may not necessarily have a theme other than the playwright’s desire for one.

Playwright Anna Ziegler teases some sadly beautiful metaphors out of the life of scientist Rosalind Franklin in Photograph 51, now playing at Theater J. It’s a swift ninety minute production with no intermission, befitting the race it depicts but perhaps also the difficulty in breathing theatrical life into what was an intellectual and lonely pursuit. If you have a young niece or daughter whose interest in science you want to encourage, this may be the play to take her to – or not, considering it’s a deeply discouraging look at the boys’ club Dr. Franklin struggled against in her quest to map the contours of the DNA molecule.

It’s this struggle that Ziegler focuses on, and she makes us feel it keenly. We cringe every time the mature and learned Dr. Franklin is addressed by her backbiting colleagues as “Miss Franklin.” But there’s something else going on here as well, the suggestion that it was this prejudice alone that resulted in her not being the first to win the DNA mapping race. Does Ziegler want us to be convinced of that at the play’s end, or is it simply that Franklin’s pride was the block to success? Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Tim Reynolds @ Blues Alley, 4/1/11


all photos by author.

As a photographer, I’ve never had band management ask me to check on a venue’s photography policy. But when Tim Reynolds publicist sent an email asking me to check on the photo policy for Blues Alley in Georgetown, I hopped on the phone.

“Yes, I’m a photographer and I’m scheduled to shoot the Tim Reynolds show you have coming up. What’s your photo policy?”

“We have no photo policy.”

“Oh, ok. So I’m good to go, anything else?”

“No, it’s a ‘no photo policy.’ We don’t allow photos at all.”

“Uh….”

“But you can shoot the soundcheck if it’s okay with Tim’s management.”

Score.

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Entertainment, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Liberty Smith

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

With the success of films like Shrek and Toy Story, there has been newfound respect for the “family film”. Gone are the antiquated tales of Princesses and “Happily Ever After”, instead today’s G-rated fare uses satire and pop culture references that hits with a savvier generation of children and their parents.

After attending the world premiere of Liberty Smith at Fords Theatre it doesn’t surprise me that the musical tale of a fictional American Revolutionary hero originally started as a screenplay that almost made the silver screen. Instead the screenwriting team of Marc Madnick, Eric Cohen, Adam Abraham, and Michael Weiner decided to adapt their idea for the stage. The end product is a fresh new musical that is bound to be a hit.

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Adventures, Entertainment, Fun & Games, History, Life in the Capital, The Features, Tourism
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Tourism: Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens

Nestled in Northeast, you’ll find a time capsule from the past, where the remnants of Washington’s natural history of wetlands and rivers flourish. Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens is the hidden gem of the DC area National Park System and a excellent spot for DCers to escape to for a serene and educational respite.

In the late 1800s, Walter Spondhaw bought a piece of land along the marshland flats of the Anacostia River. Shaw, a Maine native, planted a few wild water lilies in a pond of this strip of land. The lilies took on like gangbusters and Shaw planted other lilies and varieties of flowers. When Shaw died in 1921, his daughter, Helen Shaw Fowler, expanded the gardens and made the location where U.S. presidents, their families, and neighbors would take day trips to. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Cut Copy @ 9:30 Club, 3/29/11


photo by Mike Kurman.

As you may have read earlier, I went down to Miami last weekend for the Ultra Music Festival. Cut Copy and Holy Ghost! performed there, but since I knew I would be seeing them at 9:30 Club on Tuesday night, I opted to skip them at the festival. Ultra turned out to be a fantastic weekend of electronic music and although I was exhausted upon my return, a part of me was very excited to keep the dancing going by going to this show.

Cut Copy are touring on their third album “Zonoscope” and Holy Ghost! are about to release their self-titled debut. Both bands have their new albums on the line, but also Holy Ghost! are trying to make the transition from openers to headliners and Cut Copy are trying to dis-spell rumblings of a band identity crisis. I expected this show to be a high-energy, home-run from both bands. Instead it was an average showing from both that made me suspect that perhaps I wasn’t the only one feeling the post-Ultra hangover.

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Adventures, Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Ultra Music Festival 2011 @ Bicentennial Park (Miami), 3/25 – 3/27

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all photos by author.

Last weekend I made a quick getaway to Miami to attend the Ultra Music Festival, otherwise known as the biggest electronic music festival in the world. This was the thirteenth installment of this Miami institution and the first time that it was expanded to a three day event. I along with 150,000 devoted dance music fans* sampled some of the world’s best DJs, producers, and electronic-leaning bands at what amounted to a three-day orgy of drugs, sweat, booze, bikinis, concrete, and ultra-heavy bass. I have been to some huge festivals in my day and some mighty big parties, but I don’t think I have ever been to something that combined the two quite like Ultra Music Festival did.

I thought that the readers who follow my musical adventures on We Love DC might like to hear about my field trip down south. The organizers are already planning UMF 2012 and if you dig what you see and read about here, you might want to consider making the trip yourself next year.

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