Bei Dao is a dangerous man. After long days working his state-assigned construction job outside Beijing, he would spend his nights writing poetry. While other citizens slept, he and his friends would secretly meet to discuss poetry and then sneak out to paste up their poems throughout the city. Bei h
"If you'll gather 'round me, children, a story I will tell." So began many a Woody Guthrie ballad, invoking the huddle around the campfire, the community of the road, the generation that rode the rails during the Depression. Guthrie's songs gave a voice to that uprooted generation and to the struggle
Butoh is always intense. It is the dance of darkness after all. But in the work of the second-generation Butoh company, Sankai Juku, there is a peaceful element, more otherworldly than visceral. Even their name, which means "studio by the mountain and the sea," implies serenity and calm. Their wor
As the paradoxical name suggests, the dance troupe Urban Bush Women combines the spiritual elements of traditional African and Caribbean dance, song, and music with contemporary, Western dance forms. Artistic director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar describes UBW as "an ensemble dedicated to using cultural ex