At first glance Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer might not seem an obvious choice for a novel on which to base a full-length ballet, and I confess that I approached William Whitener’s and Maury Yeston’s Tom Sawyer: […]

The New York Times’ prickly dance critic Alistair Macaulay seemed to have liked the Kansas City Ballet’s Tom Sawyeralmost as much as I did – though at times for different reasons. See my review here, […]

In what promises to be one of the most significant musical events of the Kansas City season, this week the Boston Early Music Festival brings Handel’s Acis and Galatea to […]

Legendary and iconic dancer Jacques D’Amboise was in Our Town on April 1st to promote his new memoir, I Was a Dancer (Borzoi Books: Alfred A. Knopf, $35). Born Joseph Aheard in Massachusetts, D’Amboise would become […]

There are extremes of misery in the world that defy comprehension. In the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, violence and sexual brutality against women and girls have remained at […]

The Lyric Opera’s new production of The Marriage of Figaro is well-sung, confidently acted and executed with a deft comic touch. Whether or not you buy into its conceit of setting the […]

Concluding the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s 2010-2011 season is Henryk Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, in an adaptation by David Schweizer, who also directs it. The production is already in previews and opens April […]

It’s often said that choreography begins with music, but the Kansas City Ballet’s upcoming spring season suggests that the situation is a bit more complex than that. In fact the […]

Richard Harriman, the William Jewell College professor who spent a half century building the Harriman-Jewell Series into one of the nation’s premier performing arts presenters, died July 15 at Liberty […]

George Harter has a message for all who will listen: Just as jazz, blues and rock ‘n’ roll are indigenous American musical genres, musical theater was born here, too. And just as those […]

n the early years of the 17th century, at Nipe Bay in northeastern Cuba, three fishermen weathered a tumultuous storm and prayed for deliverance. When the skies cleared, they found a […]

Nobody knows for sure why the Basques came to Idaho, but come they did: The state boasts one of the largest Basque populations in the world. Even the mayor of […]

It began with a circle. R. Keith Brumley’s scenic design for the Lyric Opera’s new production of Carmen took as its point of departure the circular shape of the bullfight ring of Act 4, […]

Kansas City lost one of its greatest artists in November, when pianist and UMKC Conservatory professor Richard Cass died after a brief illness, aged 78. It was quite a blow […]

On October the 9th there will be two world-renowned musicians performing on the stage of the Folly Theater. The fellow seated at the piano will be Bradley Moore, who studied with legendary teachers […]

A year from now, Kansas City audiences will be taking in opera, symphony, ballet, country music, jazz, rock, Broadway and all manner of things in one of the finest performing […]

They are an elite group: the dancers and choreographers who worked and trained under George Balanchine, the greatest choreographer of modern times, over the course of a half century. After […]

“It’s show business, my dears, we’re entertainers!” George Balanchine used to tell his dancers, and in few of his ballets is this notion more overt than in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which […]

Australian-born Stanton Welch, artistic director of the Houston Ballet, has established himself as one of the world’s most inventive choreographers. Dance fans in Our Town have had ample opportunity to see Stanton’s […]

Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov has always been an anomaly among operas. In addition to hovering, like much Russian opera, on the periphery of our Italian- and German-dominated repertoire, it has for most of […]

When men flake out, women just have to look after themselves — and each other. That’s a primary lesson in Norma, Vincenzo Bellini’s 1831 opera about love, betrayal, heroism and female friendship, […]