The Theory of Rave-ativity

Few people can brag of having met while recording a “booty” track — a song made specifically for rump shaking on the dance floor or for being piped through speakers in certain car stereos. One exception is that of musicians Dan Warren and Keith Rosenberg. Four years ago, when Rosenberg…

In Good Hands

“What time is the PTA meeting?” asks the resonant voice on the other end of the phone, posing the question to someone in the same room. It’s not an unusual concern, seeing that the person being queried is Jane Thomas, schoolteacher and mother of five-year-old Spencer. The person doing the…

Night & Day

thursday october 15 Look out! Pope-rah, oops, that’s Oprah, as in Winfrey, strikes again. The preachy talk show host/producer/actress who wants to recast the world in her new image — fit, slim, spiritual, and well read — is starring in the movie version of Beloved, Toni Morrison’s powerful, haunting novel…

Artful Fright

For some people the thought of stepping into a museum full of works they may not understand is frightening enough. But try stepping into such a museum when it’s full of costume-clad artists and art lovers. Since 1995 North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art has been scaring people and stimulating…

Stalin’s Jewish Experiment

Whether we consider 40 years of trudging through the desert or 50 years of trying to establish a peaceful homeland in Israel, it seems the one state Jews have perpetually found themselves in is that of displacement. In 1928 Joseph Stalin attempted an experiment to give Jews in the Soviet…

Night & Day

thursday october 8 She’s a dignified, beautiful old broad and she’s hearty too, known for weathering her share of storms. We’re not talking about your great-grandma but the city of Charleston, South Carolina. This evening at 7:30 architect Kenneth Treister (creator of Miami Beach’s Holocaust Memorial and the Mayfair House…

Night & Day

thursday october 1 So you’re totally bummed about missing the WCW Monday Nitro at the Miami Arena a few weeks ago? Well, wrestling lover, you can still get your fill of pumped-up guys and gals with funky names and bizarro costumes jumping all over each other tonight at 7:30 when…

Night & Day

thursday september 24 Foreign correspondent Michael Z. Wise comes to the Wolfsonian-FIU (1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach) this evening at 6:30 p.m. to talk about Germany and its search for a new national identity through architecture. Wise has been studying the controversial $12 billion redesign of the newly unified Berlin…

Just Plain Folks

Say the word folklife and many people can’t help conjuring up visions of cross-eyed hillbillies who live in Appalachian hollows with their stills and slobbering hounds. No surprise there’s more to it than that. The folks at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida are trying to break through people’s stereotyped…

Night & Day

thursday september 17 Pssst, did you hear? The Miami Art Museum (101 W. Flagler St.) has cut back its evening hours to one Thursday per month. Not good — especially for us art lovers who spend countless hours chained to our desks and who enjoy the little breather that a…

A Whole World of Dance

Pedro Pablo Pena, founder and artistic director of the Miami Hispanic Ballet, likes to think of Miami as the door to the Americas. And so we might consider the three-year-old International Ballet Festival of Miami, another Pena creation, as one of the many entryways to cultural exchange. Pena, a former…

Night & Day

thursday september 10 The Bass Museum (2121 Park Ave., Miami Beach) reopens its doors after a six-week hiatus for renovations with the exhibition Crosscurrents: Contemporary Painting from Panama, 1968-1998. On display are works by fourteen Panamanian artists, including Brooke Alfaro, Isabel de Obaldia, Alfredo Sinclair, David Solis, and Haydee Victoria…

Two Turntables and a Gender Gap

In the bowels of Miami Beach’s Marlin Hotel is a small, exotic, denlike space. Narrow and dark, the room is painted a rich wine color. Strips of mirror cover the ceiling and stretch down the walls, alternating with billowing burgundy and navy batik curtains. Banquettes strewn with huge cushions line…

Music Beneath the Moon

“Unlike other parks, which are wonderful places to go and recreate, this is a place to go and contemplate. It’s more for education, preservation, and serenity than it is a place to throw a Frisbee — but if you wanted to throw a Frisbee, you could!” So says Terry Coulliette…

Night & Day

thursday september 3 Bristol, England’s trip-hoppers Massive Attack plug their latest album, the mesmerizing Mezzanine, tonight at 8:00 at the Cameo Theatre, 1445 Washington Ave., Miami Beach. Opening act is DJ Lewis Parker, who was the first act Massive Attack signed to its new Melankolic label (see “Music,” page 81)…

All That Brass

Close your eyes and listen. You could be in any jazz room in New York City. Open your eyes, take a look around, and you may still be fooled, for the venue has the ambiance of a sophisticated Big Apple jazz club. But this isn’t New York, it’s Miami Beach…

Night & Day

thursday august 27 The kings of flamenco cool, the Spanish group Ketama, led the Eighties nuevo flamenco movement with their complex mix of Gypsy rhythms, rock, and underground attitude. That Ketama has left those cutting-edge days behind is evident on their latest release, Konfusion, which is composed of mellow blues…

Part Paper, Part Celluloid, All White

Take a peek inside the gleaming silver bridge tender’s house plunked on a Miami Beach sidewalk along Washington Avenue, right outside the Wolfsonian-FIU, and what you see may confuse you. Inside is artist Gareth James’s installation called The Department of Revolutionary, Everlasting Material, made with a fragile material: white paper…

Night & Day

thursday august 20 Whew! The comedic play Making Porn gives us not just one naked man but three — and one of them is hunky gay porn star Ryan Idol! If that’s not enough to bring in the big audiences, there’s the script, which provides plenty of laughs; and the…

State Secrets

It’s a broiling 92-degree Miami day. Fish are sweating, but Grant Livingston isn’t. He’s leaning back in a white plastic chair, sipping from a vat of iced tea. Shielded from the searing sun by his Panama hat and the green-and-white-striped umbrella overhead that resembles the pattern of his short-sleeve shirt,…

The Color of Caring

In 1947, when Thelma Anderson was living in Tennessee, she applied through the mail for a job as a nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital, hoping to work in the operating room. When she arrived at Jackson, owned then by the City of Miami, to begin her job, management discovered she…

Night & Day

thursday august 13 He’s witty, charming, intelligent, and a snappy dresser. He’s also grossly indecent. No, not your ex-boyfriend but trendy it-boy Oscar Wilde. Although he’s been dead for a good number of years, people can’t stop talking about him; tales of the tart-tongued Irish playwright are everywhere these days…