By Paul Horsley One of the challenges of the Kauffman Center these days is for the resident companies to prove that the brilliant successes of the first two seasons were not a fluke. The Kansas City Ballet’s first 2013-2014 program that opened October 11th augurs well for the company’s attempts at constant renewal: Its generous […]

By Paul Horsley Jodie Gates has danced, choreographed, staged ballets, created festivals, served as mentor for young dancers. But few things excite the California native more than creating new choreography, not only for its invitation to creative expression but for its potential for passing on the huge amount of knowledge she’s gained over a 30-year […]

By Paul Horsley The operatic version of the Romeo and Juliet legend that Bellini and his librettist Felice Romani created from Italian sources predating Shakespeare is at least as action-packed as the bard’s telling, perhaps even more so. The Lyric Opera has devoted considerable resources to its production of this gripping bel canto opera, The […]

By Paul Horsley Always look both ways before crossing, because sometimes the car that hits you comes from the place you least expect. The season-opening productions by the KC Actors Theatre and the KC Rep offered meaty subjects and impressive performances, but the show that I’ll most remember is the Unicorn Theatre’s Venus in Fur, […]

By Paul Horsley Not every child prodigy makes it through adolescence to emerge as an extraordinary adult artist. One such musician to arrive recently at the “other side” is pianist Ji-Yong, who is quietly gaining attention as a brilliant pianist on the rise who has been willing to take some alternative roads toward his goal. […]

By Paul Horsley Opera is such a collaborative art form that it cannot succeed unless music, acting, stage direction and design all work together to form a sort of magical fusion. The Lyric Opera has built an exceptional production of Bellini’s The Capulets and the Montagues for its season opener, with a team headlined by […]

By Paul Horsley Eugene O’Neill’s dark-hued Long Day’s Journey into Night is a classic whose infrequency on the stage belies its importance in theater history. The great Irish American playwright created what has become a sort of prototype for the modern chronicle of the “dysfunctional family.” This week the Kansas City Actors Theatre follows up […]

A Conversation with Angela Lee Gieras Angela Lee Gieras is a financial whiz whose fundraising savvy is driven by a lifelong passion for theater, so she was in many ways the ideal choice for the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s new executive director post. The Florida native, who as development director for the Florida Theatre in […]

By Paul Horsley Part of the fun of watching William Inge’s Picnic just a stone’s throw from its setting, the small-town Kansas milieu in which the playwright was raised, is that its characters and themes seem so familiar. “Alan’s not like most boys, he doesn’t wanta do anything he’d be sorry for,” says Madge of […]

By Paul Horsley To be sure, one could start by looking at the sheer empirical data on Deborah Sandler’s first season as general director and CEO of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City: 92 percent of Kauffman Center seats filled, critical acclaim, a fiscal year ending in the black, an earlier casting schedule that has […]

British playwrights have figured heavily into the Kansas City Actors Theatre seasons of late, so this year the nine-year-old company found material for its late-summer shows closer to home. KCAT’s “A Classic American Summer” features two landmark plays by our own countrymen – one by a Kansan with a flair for the iconoclastic and the […]

BOLD NEW DANCE: In an era of change, Carney steps in as Kansas City Ballet’s new leader By Paul Horsley It must be an exciting time to be Devon Carney. After a long career that included distinguished stints as principal dancer for Boston Ballet and as associate artistic director at Cincinnati Ballet, the 53-year-old dancer/choreographer […]

  If you want to build a dance festival from scratch, the key is collaboration. When veteran Kansas City Ballet dancers Logan Pachciarz and Anthony Krutzkamp determined to create an off-season dance performance, their goals were twofold: to provide work for dancers and choreographers from various companies during the lean summer months, and to present […]

Summer in Kansas City used to be a pretty sleepy affair for classical music, theater and dance, but no longer. The Summer Solstice is not even upon us yet, and we’ve already had the Symphony in the Flint Hills, the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers, the MET’s Ragtime, the Starlight’s Catch Me if You Can, and […]

NO LIMITS   –    Stern on the Kansas City Symphony: We’re just getting started! One of the exciting things about living in Kansas City through the last decade has been the chance to see the Kansas City Symphony claim its place in the community as a world-class institution alongside the Nelson-Atkins and Kemper Museums, the […]

The stars came out on May 12th, as the Kansas City Ballet bid farewell to its longtime artistic director, William Whitener. He departs this June 30th after 17 years at the company’s helm. A reception was held in the Kauffman Center’s Brandmeyer Hall after the Ballet’s season finale: Among the several hundred attendees were board […]

NINE FOR THE NINE THAT DRESSED SO FINE: Harriman-Jewell Series presents Cantus Cantus is an all-male a cappella ensemble consisting of nine singers who perform a most eclectic mix of music from all eras and genres. The group’s Harriman-Jewell Series debut on May 16th – bumped from its February date because of mounds of snow […]

Unicorn’s production of Potok adaptation is golden My Name is Asher Lev became a classic work of American fiction virtually from the day it came out in 1972, and Aaron Posner’s theatrical adaptation of it is every bit as potent. I can remember reading Chaim Potok’s novel as a Baptist kid in Kansas and feeling […]

To be a serious ballet company these days you can’t just do an endless series of Swan Lakes: You’ve got to push things forward. The Kansas City Ballet in its current form has rarely flinched from risky artistic choices, works that might have left us scratching our heads at times. At the season finale that […]

You’d be hard-pressed to find an American artist in any field as interesting and engaging as Karole Armitage. The Wisconsin native, who grew up partly in Lawrence, learned classical ballet initially and absorbed the work of George Balanchine at the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève before becoming a dancer with the legendary Merce Cunningham. […]

Almost every singer has a “breakthrough” moment, when he or she lands the right role at the right time and scores a deep impression with public and press. For Irish-born mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught that moment came in March 2011, when she was called upon at the last minute to fill in for an ailing Vesselina Kasarova in the role […]