Arts & Culture

Dance Collaboration Captures Elm City Vibes

by | Apr 28, 2021 9:29 am | Comments (2)

Armando Muñoz, a.k.a. Decoy, danced at the top of East Rock, popping and locking, the city of New Haven unfurling behind and beneath him all the way to the Long Island Sound. In front of him, armed with a tiny handheld camera, cinematographer Mike Pollack moved with Muñoz, following the arcs of Muños’s steps, the bending of arms, the fluttering of fingers.

A few families were at the top of East Rock at the same time, and one of them drifted close to watch.

You’re so good!” one of the family members exclaimed.

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Sneak Peek

by | Apr 28, 2021 9:27 am | Comments (0)

The pandemic has delayed the in-person public opening of one of New Haven’s new landmarks, the $150 million Schwarzman Center encompassing the university’s Woolsey Hall, Commons, and other spaces at Grove and College streets.

But the place is ready. And it is offering the public a virtual reality” sneak peek inside.

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Oratorio Choir Stirs The Soul

by | Apr 27, 2021 8:45 am | Comments (0)

An effervescent ode to coffee. Meditations on the divine and the earthly. And a call to move into the future with greater understanding and empathy. All of it was carried on the combined voices of the New Haven Oratorio Choir, in its first virtual concert, and first since the pandemic began. It also featured all works from living composers, who, making a virtue of the virtual, were all on hand from as far away as Australia to discuss their work.

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Today’s Ted Take

by | Apr 27, 2021 8:42 am | Comments (0)

Best Video Makes Parking Lot Sing

by | Apr 26, 2021 8:39 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

Burnet.

Guitar in hand, Alex Burnet beamed at the crowd of about 70 people assembled — in a distanced yet communal way — in the parking lot of Best Video, on Whitney Avenue in Hamden. Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful Saturday,” Burnet said. If you’re vaxxed, let me be the first to say congratulations. It’s a real privilege to be able to share music with people in this time.”

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Today’s Toons

by | Apr 22, 2021 7:43 pm | Comments (0)

Ted Littleford

Reinaldo Goeyenchea/ La Voz Hispana

Mission accomplished!!! Done with poverty! (Mine) …”

Today’s Special: Jesse’s Chicken Cutlet Scarpariello

by | Apr 22, 2021 11:03 am | Comments (1)

Lisa Reisman Photo

Brazi’s head chef Jesse Melgar in the kitchen.

Over the last 28 years, Brazi’s Italian Restaurant, just down the walkway from Long Wharf Theatre, has played the role of host to such luminaries as Arthur Miller, Robert Redford, and Al Pacino, as well as Brian Dennehy and Amy Irving. 

So it’s perhaps no wonder that, on a recent morning, head chef Jesse Melgar was at the industrial stove, adding a touch of Chardonnay to a skillet popping with chicken cutlets, red bliss potatoes, and cherry peppers, before theatrically tossing its contents as a flame gushed upward.

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Long Wharf Play Club Gets Statistical

by | Apr 22, 2021 10:09 am | Comments (0)

Liz Lauren Photo

Darci Nalepa and Priya Mohanty in Queen’s world premiere at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago.

For director Aneesha Kudtarkar, two scenes from Madhuri Shekar’s play Queen stood out as scenes she was most excited to stage sometime in the future. In one, Sanam, a scientist, and Arvind, a Wall Street broker, go out on a first date in Northern California. They’re there because they’re both in their 30s, and in India, their grandfathers apparently played golf together, and while this isn’t exactly a possibility of an arranged marriage, it feels a little like it. In another, Sanam and her longtime scientific colleague Ariel are arguing over the ethical quandaries their years-long project has stumbled into, and it all comes out — the cultural and economic differences between them, the strains of being women in a male-dominated field. They’re the true heart of Queen, and in that scene, the heart perhaps beats the loudest.

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Today’s Ted Take

by | Apr 21, 2021 9:28 am | Comments (0)

Artist Reaps Harvest Of Empathy

by | Apr 21, 2021 9:06 am | Comments (0)

It’s a soft, gentle sculpture, of a woman sitting next to a body of water. But the context in which that woman sits — an Afro pick — is nearly as old as civilization itself.

For artist Yvonne Shortt, it’s a connection to her personal history and to her African heritage. It’s also a way for her to connect with the struggles of other ethnicities — and reach out to everyone.

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City Pitches $6.3M “Summer Reset”

by | Apr 20, 2021 6:01 pm | Comments (4)

Thomas Breen photo

Mayor Elicker announces$6.3M proposed “summer reset” spending.

A citywide youth ambassador program. Fixed up city playgrounds. Drop-in centers for the homeless. Street outreach workers focused on preventing summer violence.

Those are just a few of the programs the city hopes to fund this summer with $6.3 million in federal Covid relief.

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NHFPL Takes On Fractured Fairy Tales

by | Apr 20, 2021 8:44 am | Comments (0)

A drunk monk. A woman plagued by ghosts from the past. And a Sleeping Beauty much more in charge of her own story than the traditional fairy tale let on. These were a few of many ideas and arresting images swarming around the films of Kihachirō Kawamoto, a Japanese animator of puppet maker who was the subject of the latest installment of the New Haven Free Public Library’s Animation Celebration,” hosted by Library Technical Assistant Haley Grunloh.

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Exhibit Driven By Black History Data

by | Apr 19, 2021 10:00 am | Comments (1)

Maps of the United States in a patchwork of colors. A graph like a coiled spring. A diagram like a bullseye, creased with bright spikes. Hanging on the walls of Artspace’s gallery, they can read immediately as abstract art. They are, in fact, a series of data visualizations — charts, graphs, geographic and population information — that famed Black sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois and a team of researchers created to convey some of the realities of the Black experience in America over 100 years ago.

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Artist Breaks Through To Abstraction

by | Apr 16, 2021 9:14 am | Comments (3)

Brian Slattery Photos

The works in Portals and Memories” — up now at City Gallery on Upper State Street through April 25 — are, on one level, simply the latest series of paintings by artist Joyce Greenfield, done in the past two-and-a-half months. On another level, however, they represent a breakthrough, for Greenfield, to a new way of making art.

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Reinaldo’s Corner

by | Apr 15, 2021 5:08 pm | Comments (0)

I’ll punish you …”
You will pay for the damages!”

Library Doors Swing Back Open

by | Apr 15, 2021 1:47 pm | Comments (4)

Zshekinah Collier Photo

Main branch’s Sharon Lovett-Graff and Alana Delgado: Please come back! We missed you.

The doors were wide open again at the public library’s main branch — and two patrons were found browsing through the wide variety of nonfiction books in the stacks.

Staffers are trying to get the word out so more New Haveners come back inside.

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“Movies in the Plaza” Rocks Into Another Season

by | Apr 15, 2021 8:52 am | Comments (3)

Karen Ponzio Photos

School of Rock rocking.

Pitkin Plaza Wednesday evening played host to a rock n’ roll show, not live on stage, but in a film celebrating the fun and excitement of being part of that world.

School of Rock, the beloved 2003 comedy starring Jack Black, was the second of this year’s weekly Movies in the Plaza,” the free outdoor film series presented every Wednesday at 8 p.m. by the Town Green District.

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New Exhibit Judges Books By Their Covers

by | Apr 15, 2021 8:47 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

The Nympho and Other Maniacs. The Sun Is My Undoing. I Who Should Command All.

All three are book titles from the far-flung collection of the Institute Library on Chapel Street, and all three catch the eye through the sheer absurdity of their language.

In another part of the collection, the books Oil for the Lamps of China and The Ghost Book draw the gaze by virtue of their dazzling cover art. And then there are books like Never Fire First and Raising Demons that manage to do both.

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