Five years ago an event known as the Winter Party was staged for the express purpose of raising funds for SAVE (Safeguarding American Values for Everyone). The mission: to defeat an anti-gay amendment to the Florida constitution that would allow discrimination based on sexual orientation. At that fete close to…

thursday march 11 Glorifying the influence of the mass market, the machine, violence, global communication, and war were all tenets of the ahead-of-its-time Italian movement known as Futurism. As the name implies, it was an attempt to propel the then-underdeveloped country into the future. Founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso…

We live in a funny place. Watching eccentric and corrupt politicians stumble through their daily duties is a major form of amusement around here, but that only goes so far. Sometimes it’s nice to know that the folks making you howl are not juicing your tax dollars, too. You’d almost…

thursday march 4 We’ve all heard that drivel about not judging a book by its cover. Face it, an attractive cover makes a difference. As good-looking books go, Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence is one of the prettiest. Author/illustrator Nick Bantock’s colorful and lushly illustrated 1991 volume told the…

“It all started with me trying to get a gig for the Afro Polyphonic Space Orchestra,” recalls Jose Elias Mateo, referring to the genesis of the first-ever Afro Roots World Music Festival taking place this Friday at Tobacco Road. Mateo, a local multi-instrumentalist who performs with a variety of acts…

thursday february 25 The New World Symphony’s tribute to Finland’s most famous composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), ends tonight as conductor Michael Tilson Thomas leads a rehearsal of Sibelius’s Symphonies no. 4 and 5. The conductor will also deliver “live” program notes from the stage. A key figure in promoting Finnish…

Choreographer and teacher Karen Stewart: “Black is my favorite color. If you open my closet, you’d swear I was married to an undertaker.” Stewart laughs at her reason for naming her dance troupe the Black Door Dance Ensemble. Another obvious reason: Her dancers are black. “I wanted to have my…

“Architecture reflects the way humans live in different time periods. The time for this building expired.” Architect Norman Giller is dryly referring to the former eight-story Singapore hotel in Bal Harbour, which he designed and which was recently torn down in favor of a towering new condominium development. Still vital…

thursday february 18 Curious about the complex roots of Santeria and the colorful beads employed in rituals? Then attend this event sponsored by the Tribal Arts Society at the Lowe Art Museum (1301 Stanford Dr., Coral Gables). John Mason, student of Yoruba culture in the Americas and West Africa, diviner…

Lounging around the lobby of London’s Art Deco-inspired Savoy Hotel soaking up the 1920s atmosphere fit for a Fred Astaire movie isn’t part of most ordinary jobs. But for Mary Cleere Haran that kind of drudge work goes along with the glamorous territory of being one of New York City’s…

thursday february 11 In the real world, erstwhile supermodel Kate Moss (for those of you living in a cave, hello, the whole supermodel thing is over) spent a month recuperating from exhaustion in a London clinic. In the imaginary world of author Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, American Psycho)…

Don’t get an American Brahma bull pissed off. Brahmas may have smaller horns than your average Latin bullring toro, but they’re much bigger and definitely meaner. Unlike their counterparts they keep their eyes wide open when they charge, so it’s rare that they miss their target. How do they get…

thursday february 4 We’ll forgive rockers Eve 6 for bellowing lyrics such as “Satan’s in the living room choking me with apathy” because the members of this Los Angeles-area trio, which recalls Green Day, are young — really young. In fact no one in the band is older than age…

thursday january 28 Fans of offbeat independent cinema take note. John Waters, the man who brought you the wonderfully heartwarming flicks Ping Flamingos, Polyester, Lust in the Dust, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, and most recently, Pecker, is the subject of a documentary to be broadcast on cable’s Independent Film Channel…

thursday january 21 You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate klezmer music. The bleating, high-energy sound that was once the province of Eastern European Jews is now being embraced by a variety of listeners. Witness the popularity of bands such as the Klezmatics, the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars, and…

A philosopher/scholar named Jelaluddin Rumi has a chance encounter with an itinerant dervish named Shams of Tabriz. They form an abiding friendship, a profound bond that transcends their meeting in a thirteenth-century Turkish marketplace and extends to the world at the end of the millennium. How do we know this?…

“If you don’t have a sense of humor, get off the stage!” So declares performance poet Taylor Mali in the movie SlamNation, opening this Thursday at the Alliance Cinema. The charismatic Mali is one of many memorable stars of the film, which generally chronicles the fierce competition between the colorful…

Six stages, more than 50 performers, and a fiercely competitive songwriting contest. Yes, there’s a bit more to the South Florida Folk Festival than a bunch of aging hippies sitting around the campfire in their sandals, strumming “Kum Ba Ya” on their guitars. Now in its eighth year, the two-day…

thursday january 14 Once an arena for lively debate (and the occasional amusing verbal slugfest), America’s oldest liberal political periodical, the Nation, has been suffering from a clipped left wing the past few years. At fault: catering to the mainstream in a push for profits. And what to do if…

“Sometimes you go into the studio and it works well. The first seven times it didn’t work,” says mixed-media artist Annie Wharton about the eventually successful project she made from cement, wood, pigments, and photo transfers for the exhibition, The Art of Work, the Work of Art, which goes on…