Shen Yun: choreography, artistry, dance and color share the stage in this touring Chinese production
Highly acrobatic, Shen Yun performs classic Chinese legends through dance and music, delighting audiences with scenes from ancient epics like Mulan, Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Outlaws of the Marsh. Created by exiled Chinese Falun Gong practitioners in New York,...
A new adaptation of Stephen King's signature novel once again proves that parents and clowns are children's worst nightmare
Traumatizing children and ruining the circus since 1986, Stephen King’s It remains one of the bestselling author’s most recognizable works, thanks in no small part to a memorable performance by Tim Curry as the titular monster in a 1990 television adaptation....
Vienna’s English Theatre puts on a charming and wistful comedy, Shirley Valentine
There must be something about actors talking to inanimate objects that can make an audience laugh (remember Clint Eastwood berating an empty chair during the 2012 Republican National Convention?). In British playwright Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine, the heroine talks to a rock. Unfortunately, it’s a Greek rock, so...
The Vienna Songwriting Association puts indie music on center stage
Giving artists the chance to wow an audience hungry for newcomers, the Blue Bird Festival beckons with an eclectic line-up of rock, folk, blues, electric and country, showcasing the versatility of contemporary folk and singer/songwriting.
Organized by the not-for-profit Vienna Songwriting Association, the three-day festival is now in its 12th edition,...
This Sunday, filmmaker Fredrick Baker and historian Heidemarie Uhl launch the multimedia project Zeituhr 1938 reenacting the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Anschluss – the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany that ended the First Republic and crushed any political autonomy until the end of World War II. To help...
Eric Weiner traces how time, place, background and clutter figure into the settings where genius is born.
What happens when former National Public Radio correspondent and journalist Eric Weiner sets out to determine how and where genius develops? The answer is surprising and told compellingly in The Geography of Genius.
As Weiner notes, “Today, we suffer from a serious case of...
The Weltmuseum revises our approach to ethnology while celebrating our diversity
As the world changes, so do our perspectives; nothing seems as archaic as yesterday’s attitudes. In our increasingly globalized world, this goes doubly for our perception of different cultures: So when the venerable Völkerkundemuseum (Museum of Ethnology) temporarily closed its doors at the Hofburg three years ago, the intention...
Contemporary music is center stage again for the 30th year running
Loud, emotional, noisy or sublime – contemporary music has many faces, some of them challenging for laypeople to understand. Fortunately, for the last 30 years Wien Modern has committed to making the cutting edge more accessible by adding art installations, performances and video into the mix, creating an audibly...
At the Kunsthalle, The Promise of Total Automation imagines the shape of things to come
An intriguing attempt to parse the possible futures headed our way, The Promise of Total Automation at the Kunsthalle examines the implications of our age of change. It’s what the curators call “the allure of an automated life” that is renegotiating the terms of what...
