Travel

Ballet: Where Have all the Tutus Gone?

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By Glenda Rice Collins

Oklahoma City, Okla., USA – Oklahoma City Ballet’s recent Future Voices choreographic showcase world premieres responded to familiar pop music history, as well as the classics, for inspiration.

The short, dramatic works were inspired by such themes as: sudden death, Analog Form, and jukebox memories, all in contemporary mode, up-close and personal in the same studio where they rehearse – the Inasmuch Foundation Theater at their home base. –Has spare costuming created a ‘tutu dilemma?’ 

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Oklahoma City Ballet, at 50, spins ‘Future Voices’ this week at Inasmuch Theatre

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By Glenda Rice Collins

Oklahoma City, Okla., USA — Oklahoma City Ballet’s upcoming Future Voices public performances, March 17-20, 2022, will showcase inspired new work from talented young choreographers, “up close” in the 190-seat Inasmuch Foundation Theater at the Susan E. Brackett Dance Center, the company’s architecturally-noteworthy Classen Blvd. headquarters.

The showcased new works provide a transitional program in which to reflect on recent contemporary ballet premieres, current company progress, and preparations to contrast and celebrate a few iconic classics soon across Oklahoma this spring. —A Unique Opportunity for Choreographic Study continues! Continue reading →

Broadway Star Kennedy Caughell, on tour, shares her ‘Beautiful…’ views

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By Glenda Rice Collins, For Bartlesville Magazine, Spring 2020*  Updated 3-18-20

Bartlesville, Okla., USA — Last September, musical theatre ‘triple-threat’ performer Kennedy Caughell stepped into a major leading role as the star of the current Broadway North American touring production of the “Tony,” “Grammy” and Olivier Award-winning production, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.  Next came hometown ovations! Continue reading →

Children’s Musical Theatre of Bartlesville celebrates 20th Year

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By Glenda Rice Collins, For Bartlesville Magazine, Winter 2020.*  Updated 3-18-20.

Bartlesville, Okla., USA– “Part of the worldwide availability of service that comes with being a diplomat is being able to adapt to new scenarios, to quickly learn new skills, and to work with all kinds of people. These are all things I first learned from CMT.” —Clint Shoemake, foreign service officer at U. S. Department of State. Continue reading →

Madama Butterfly soars; Debuts & Premieres continue for Tulsa Opera

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By Glenda Rice Collins

Tulsa, Okla. USA–Contemporary updates to set designs and lighting brought enhanced relevance to the timeless story of commitment and deceit contained within the 1904 Giacomo Puccini opera classic, Madama Butterfly, and its sumptuous score.  A stellar cast, with several Tulsa Opera debuts, prevailed at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center last weekend. 

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Crystal Bridges debuts The Momentary, Part I: Political Themes Anew

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By Glenda Rice Collins       (Updated February 28, 2020)

Bentonville, Arkansas, USA — While a continuing celebration of community and diversity Lauren with artswirled around Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (CB) last weekend, as The Momentary, a new satellite museum venue for contemporary art debuted, –political themes loomed large within State of the Art 2020, the new venue’s inaugural exhibition, currently housed within both CB museum locations.  Time Being named the theme for diverse performances at the newly re-purposed Kraft cheese factory, located near the popular 8th Street Market food hub, hangout destination. The synergy now expands!

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Courting Death: From Lorca’s Blood Wedding drama to Mills’ Romeo & Juliet ballet

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By Glenda Rice Collins      (Updated 2-20-20)

Oklahoma City, Okla. USA — From the recent production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Spanish classic, Blood Wedding, at the University of Oklahoma (OU) arts district in Norman –(see a related 2-13-20 article, Renegades…, on this website) –to last weekend’s Oklahoma City Ballet staging of William Shakespeare’s tragic Romeo & Juliet love story at Civic Center Music Hall, reminders loom forth of the fragility of life, and how frequently death is courted as the permanent solution to a temporary situation. Continue reading →

Renegades: From Bruce Goff to Sondheim & Lorca 2020

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Renegades 2020

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman

By Glenda Rice Collins    (Updated 2-16-20)

Norman, Okla. — Definitions of ‘renegade’ run the gamut from rebel, traitor, and betrayer to the more appropriate concepts for my recent University of Oklahoma arts district observations: revolutionary, radical, and runaway, to define artists, architects, and dramatists, along with musical theater themes and characters.  Continue reading →

Dance in 2020: Consider the Culture; The medium is the massage

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By Glenda Rice Collins, Updated 1-3-20

Bartlesville, Okla., USA — As media and culture analyst, author Marshall McLuhan said decades ago, “The medium is the massage…it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were…The poet, the artist, the sleuth – whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely “well-adjusted,” he cannot go along with currents and trends…There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”  Continue reading →

The Art of Recovery, Part II: Inspiration from Frida Kahlo’s Garden Path

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By Glenda Rice Collins   (Updated October 13, 2019)

Bartlesville, Okla., USA — The journey back from illness,  physical injuries, and any of life’s temporary setbacks, can be overwhelming with new demands and limitations; or at times, uplifting, if we remember to ‘stop and smell (and perhaps re-arrange) the roses,’ despite the thorns! Frida Kahlo’s Garden, on view at the Price Tower Arts Center through October 20, 2019, provides new inspiration for a life well-lived with nature, and focus beyond pain.   Continue reading →