The April 14 opening of Miss Saigon at the White Plains Performing Arts Center reminds us of how wars bring tragic displacement to noncombatants. This musical begins in the former Saigon, and it tells a doomed love story about a bargirl named Kim who falls in love with a U.S. serviceman. Abandoned by her lover […]
My granddaughter, as a child, always loved to go for dance lessons at Steffi Nossen School of Dance (SNSD). Not for the lessons necessarily, but she loved to laugh at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I always wondered why dance studios had so much “look/see“ space. Shelley Grantham, Executive Director at Steffi Nossen, explained to […]
Did you ever stumble on an intimate conversation between two people that you felt you weren’t supposed to hear but couldn’t stop listening to? That’s how I felt watching the play Constellations, now on stage at the Whippoorwill Hall Theater. In this production by the Hudson Stage Company, two awkward […]
There was love in the room. Hannah Shmerler was being honored for her voice by the Taconic Opera. Though operatically, she had sung Gilda in Rigoletto, Violetta in La Traviata, and Michaela in Carmen, it was another voice for which she was being honored this week. For years, Hannah has been the voice for the Conservatory […]
What a weekend there is coming up. It’s a veritable feast of arts happening in the county. Every Tuesday morning at 8:20am, I get on the phone with T.J.McCormack at WVOX (1460AM) for a five minute chat about the arts. There was so much on the docket for this weekend that I couldn’t get it […]
There’s something about choral music that strikes a chord. Yes, the TV show “Glee” has made it popular, but beyond that, Broadway actress LaChanze says it teaches kids how to listen. LaChanze (pictured above) won a Tony Award in 2006 for her lead role in The Color Purple and has appeared in The Wiz, Dessa […]
Sandra Mallah believes the arts can change lives. She would know. For 40 years, she was a special educator for troubled youth at the Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry where she rose to become school superintendent of the Greenburgh School District. Children’s Village is a residential treatment center that also provides community-based services to adolescents average ages […]
The ancient art of shadow puppetry is something most of us as kids have tried. With a white sheet on the wall, and a flashlight, it’s fun to conjure up wolves, dogs and ominous people. The folklore surrounding this 2,000-year-old practice tells of an Emperor who was able to cure his grief by viewing the […]
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