Arts & Culture

When the topic of dancing comes up, most people think of clubs, weddings, or prom. But if you’re blessed with two left feet, then the only kind of dancing you look forward to is the kind you can observe and applaud.Regardless of your skills, you’ll have the chance to cheer…

There are reasons enough to grab a cold beer. With summer’s heat already beating down, that one’s a gimme. A new beer festival is another. From 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, May 11, the inaugural Scottsdale Beer Festival brings together several dozen breweries from near and far for an evening…

Last month beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert passed away. While the prolific writer never shied away from intellectual debates, it’s fair to say that he took quite a clobbering online in 2010 when he declared that video games could never be art. Bookmans Mesa sidesteps the semantics and…

Classical music fans often care who’s conducting the orchestra. This is why Phoenix Symphony’s current season featured Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald on baton for our national anthem just that one time.Generally, over the past eight years, the stick-man (and Virginia G. Piper Music Director) has been Michael Christie,…

Everyone who has tried it knows the feeling of that first lick of salt, followed by a shot of liquid that warms all the way down to the belly, and then the sour quench of lime to chase away the aftertaste. The ritual repeats and before you know it you’re…

Raves are awesome. Lights flashing to the sounds of music; colorful glow sticks spinning shapes in the dark; blacklights making everyone look like photo-negative versions of themselves. But you know what there’s not enough of at a rave? Running.The Neon Splash Dash solves this little dilemma. Throughout the fun-run’s 5K…

Tommy Grady is in a slump. A year ago, the Utah Blaze quarterback posted the greatest season of any passer in Arena League history. Grady shattered the records for passing touchdowns and yards and almost single-handedly dragged a mediocre Blaze team to a conference championship game against the Arizona Rattlers…

Mothers put up with more crap than anyone you know. Just think back to the rager you threw while your parents were out of town, your “secret” tattoo, your goth phase — everything. No matter how much you mess up, your mom will probably always love you ,even if she…

Whenever prolific local musicians Andrew Jemsek and Ryan Avery collaborate on some project, the results tend to be fascinating and often unusual. In 2006, they formed chaotic dance/noise duo Nightwolf, followed three years later by The Quest, a “sloppy and weird” two-piece cover act that gigged in eateries. The pair’s…

Giddy with Gatsby fever, are we? Yes, indeed. That’s thanks to this week’s release of Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of the classic, starring Leonardo DiCapio as the dandy Jay and Carey Mulligan in the role of Daisy Buchanan. Instead of confining yourself to the movie theater to take in 1920s…

Not long after Sunset Boulevard showed how dangerous it is to orbit a declining film diva, Tennessee Williams wrote Sweet Bird of Youth, a play about another gigolo type, Chance Wayne, hitching his wagon to a fading star in pursuit of his old girlfriend, Heavenly Finley. Very Gatsby-esque, as well…

Snark will get you everywhere, provided your brand of it is actually funny. Without snark, how would we know which white dress at the Emmys looks like a trash bag and which one makes the celebrity look like an ethereal goddess? On Chelsea Lately, Chelsea Handler keeps a crew of…

When Justin Upton visits Phoenix’s Chase Field, 401 East Jefferson Street, on May 13, it will mark the first time in his young career that he does so as an Arizona Diamondbacks opponent. And what an opponent he’s shaping up to be. Heading into May, Upton leads the Majors in…

This month Arizona Science Center and ASU’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies team up to up your I.Q. In conjunction with the Science Center’s exhibit “Da Vinci – The Genius,” the organizations present a weekly Leonardo-centric lecture series that will touch on different aspects of the brainiac-artist-inventor’s life and…

When nature plays the muse of the artist, the results are often stunning. We’ve seen landscapes captured by photographer Ansel Adams and botanicals portrayed by painter Georgia O’Keefe that are iconic images in the art world.This summer, nature inspires Topia, a ballet created by Ballet Arizona’s artistic director Ib Andersen…

Like many artists, Wayne Higby is inspired by his surrounding landscape. Higby works in ceramics — sculptural, tile, and vessel forms — that test the boundaries of the medium as well as space and time.Higby’s inspiration may be common, but his work is unique and celebrated worldwide by art fans,…

Much as we wish that the bounty of talented artists who find fame in Arizona would stay in Arizona, we’ve come to terms with our state’s status as a launchpad for up-and-comers. Seems like Mesa Contemporary Arts recognizes it, too, as it presents the multi-media group exhibition “Arizona Catalyst: Artists…

There’s nothing quite like a bird’s eye view. Before humans had the ability to see their own environment from an elevated perspective, we drew maps to the best of our ability, navigated tough terrain with little warning, and had a single perspective on the world around us.The aerial view was…

Arizona State University’s mascot has had a rough couple of months. In March, the university announced that had called in the brain trust at Disney to help imagine a Sparky that would “appeal to younger audiences.” The cartoon-ified Sparky was poorly received and widely ridiculed by ASU supporters and rivals…

If you see the world in visuals and aren’t afraid of interviewing, recording, cropping, color adjusting, and rendering, we have good news. This summer, Voice Media Group is kicking off a multimedia internship in each of its papers (including Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times, Westword, New Times Broward Palm…