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Performing Arts

Mikhail Baryshnikov as Benedict XVI and Kaspars Znotiņš as Georg Gänswein in The White Helicopter at the New Riga Theater

Joan Acocella

The Red Shoes

Mikhail Baryshnikov has never played so undashing a hero.

May 14, 2020 issue

Sonia Delaunay: Danseuse, deuxieme version, 1916

Clair Wills

Stepping Out

I hold hands with strangers. I do it quite often, and for long minutes at a time.

August 20, 2020 issue

Scenography by Osbert Lancaster for a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff at the Edinburgh Festival, 1955

Matthew Aucoin

Making Shakespeare Sing

On Verdi’s last two operas, Otello and Falstaff

December 19, 2019 issue

Geoffrey O’Brien

Back on Catfish Row

‘Porgy and Bess’ at the Met

November 21, 2019 issue

James Romm

The Happy Tragedian

October 24, 2019 issue

George Balanchine and Mikhail Baryshnikov rehearsing Prodigal Son at the New York City Ballet, 1979

Jennifer Homans

Balanchine at the Crossroads

January 17, 2019 issue

George Bernard Shaw, Whitehall Court, London, October 1946

Simon Callow

Superman in Tweeds

April 19, 2018 issue

A scene from the Handspring Puppet Company’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses, directed by William Kentridge

Larry Wolff

All the World’s a Stage

December 7, 2017 issue

The Latest

Maggie Doherty

Bella Abzug’s Fight for a Broader Feminism

On the feisty congresswoman’s posthumous return to the spotlight.

November 5, 2020 issue

Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik performing John Cage’s 26'1.1499'' for a String Player, 1965; photograph by Peter Moore

Brian Dillon

Chaos and Cathode Rays

October 22, 2020 issue

Mike Nichols on the set of Catch-22, Guaymas, Mexico, 1969

Simon Callow

Charm Defensive

Mike Nichols was charismatic, witty, invariably quotable. But do I feel I knew him? Not at all.

September 24, 2020 issue

The choreographers Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, Erick Hawkins, Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer, José Limón, and Don Redlich, on the terrace of Graham’s Manhattan home, New York City, 1968

Christopher Benfey

Missed Steps

So many steps! So many turns! A leap. A landing. And done. The other dancers had no trouble remembering the steps. I had trouble.

August 26, 2020

Caryl Phillips

Derek Walcott in New York

Derek Walcott had many New Yorks, and all of them played a part in his life and in his evolution as a writer. But perhaps the most important of all his New York sojourns was the one from the Fifties.

July 29, 2020

Marisa Mazria Katz

An Interview with David Adjmi

David Adjmi’s newly published memoir, Lot Six, as well as his play Stunning, are testament to a rapturous ability to capture the cadence and idiosyncrasies of a group never previously brought to dramatic life in mainstream culture.

July 23, 2020