Cirque du Soleil’s latest production, Crystal, brings the expected acrobatics and aerial tricks of previous shows, but this time on ice. Think a mashup of the grace of Olympic ice skaters, adrenaline of Crashed Ice (the winter extreme sport where skaters downhill race), and circus performers that leave you mesmerized. This season’s production brings 43 cast members, including three musicians…
Every so often — and often late at night — when I’m writing about a performance, words fail me, and I helplessly explain to my imagined reader: “Dude, you just had to be there.” It wouldn’t necessarily make my writing easier if more of you were actually there — I’d still have to write the damn piece — but in that general spirit, I’ve…
“It’s hard to believe this used to be an internment camp,” Marge Simpson said, years ago, sitting inside Springfield’s new soccer stadium. Marge’s observation — a darkly funny joke — reflected the fine line that separates democratic from authoritarian rule in a free and civil society. It was, almost certainly, an allusion to what happened in Chile in 1973, shortly after Gen. Augusto Pinochet…
When she moved to Los Angeles from Kansas City five years ago, Anna St. Louis wasn’t some starry-eyed striver with dreams of becoming a famous musician. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of making music as a profession. She just wanted a change, and she had some family out there. “I wasn’t tapped into a scene or community, so I had…
Monday, January 14KC Restaurant Week soldiers on through Sunday. For our list of recommendations at restaurants that still have availability, click here. (And remember to be kind to your servers and bartenders — as fun as the event is for you, this week can be quite a slog for those serving you.)Out in Blue Springs, East Forty Brewing (1201 West…
Dear Dan: I’m a 40-year-old guy with a 30-year-old girlfriend. We’ve been together a year, and I can see a future with her. But there are problems. This girl comes after two minutes of stimulation, be it manual, oral, or penile. As someone who takes pride in my foreplay/pussy-eating abilities, this is a bummer. She gets wet to the point…
Chef Carlos Mortera — he of the wonderful Mexican-Korean sandwich spot The Bite, in the City Market — has opened a new restaurant on the Westside, with his father, Carlos Mortera, Sr. Poi-õ (1000 W. 25th Street) sells whole and half chickens grilled over wood fire, along with adobo-glazed ribs and a range of sides: kimchi fried rice, wood-fired carrots, and creamy…
Ricardo Flores arrived in Kansas City a few years ago for a job with the Mexican consulate. He came from Orlando, and before that Mexico City, and before that Chiapas, one of Mexico’s southernmost states, where he was born and raised. Flores is 30 and came of age in the early days of the internet, where his first glimpse of punk…
For the last eleven (11) years, the Church of Scientology has owned a large building in the center of the Crossroads and paid almost no property taxes on it.As The Pitch reported in 2015, Scientology bought the City National Bank Building, at 1801 Grand, in 2007, with plans to move its midtown operations (at the intersection of 39th Street and…
From scripting to casting to production and editing, movies take a long time to produce. So it makes sense that 2018 was the first year we’ve seen films really reacting to the growing sense of global anger and alienation that set it sometime around the second week of November 2016. Many of the year’s best films had a sense of…
Musician Chris Thile is only 37 years old, but he has been playing music in public for 30 years. Thile was part of the wunderkind bluegrass trio Nickel Creek, formed Punch Brothers as Nickel Creek was winding down, and is now the host of the public radio program Live From Here.That show — formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion —…
Students enrolling at Johnson County Community College will have to dig a little deeper to pay for classes next fall. JCCC trustees recently gave their blessing to the first tuition increase in three years. The trustees listed concern about the next economic downturn as their reason for giving the OK to an increase that student leaders said would be hardest on…
Now in its tenth year, and with over 200 restaurants participating, KC Restaurant Week — January 11-20 — becomes more of a monster every year. If you’re not familiar with the drill, here’s how it goes: for lunch and dinner, diners choose from coursed options at many of the city’s best restaurants ($15 for a two-course lunch and $33 for a…
Dear Dan: I’m a thirtysomething straight woman married for 16 years. Eighteen months ago, I met a man and there was an immediate attraction. For the first 15 months of our relationship, I was his primary sexual and intimate partner, as both sex and intimacy were lacking in his marriage. (My husband knew of the relationship from the start and…
American Aquarium, with Jamie Lin WilsonThe Granada Thursday, January 3 An advertisement for American Aquarium kept popping up on my Instagram feed ahead of the band’s show last night at the Granada. In it, the North Carolina-based act made mention of the fact that the last time it came to town, it competed with a Jayhawks basketball game and lost. This…
Love art. Really, it’s not so much art that I love as it is being adjacent to art. Makes me feel funky and vibrant. That’s why I’m moving into the ARTerra apartments, which opened yesterday in the vibrant Kansas City Crossroads Arts District, at 2100 Wyandotte (right next to the new Crossroads Hotel). About ARTerra, per its website (bolds mine): At Arterra, you’ll…
Missouri voters who overwhelmingly rejected their state legislature’s anti-union “right to work” law in August should know that Eric Burlison is not impressed.“Democracy is not freedom,” the soon-to-be GOP state senator opined on Twitter, right after he filed legislation to reinstate the law that voters had just nullified by a two to one margin. “Democracy is two wolves and a…
A new year has arrived; time to reflect on the passage of time and the possibility of the future here at your monthly installment of Cine Local. In this spirit, we kick things off with a look at the history of an (in)famous Kansas City musician, hit some hip-hop and hard rock highlights of the past month, and end with…
