Ballet Arizona: The Nutcracker

I’m quite the novice when it comes to ballet, much like musical theater. Given the holiday season, I decided to take the plunge with my wife and go see The Nutcracker, as performed by Phoenix Ballet (Ballet Arizona), at the incredibly beautiful Orpheum theater in Downtown Phoenix. I went into the performance knowing next to […]

Puppet Show

Running about the auditorium holding puppets that shroud the hands and create shadowy pulses across felt and marble, the puppeteers writhe their fingers in rhythmic trance to bewitch our senses and convince us of their mastery in the arts of language and perception but what if that suspension, that agreed upon deception were to shatter […]

Parent Teacher Extravaganza

When my supervisor told me about the parent/teacher conference that was going to happen at my school, I mistakingly thought it would just be a large meeting of parents and teachers. I should have known that I can’t expect things like that out here. She informed me that because we have so many students and […]

Gymnastics

With Mongolia’s relatively small population, you wonder sometimes if certain aspects of performance, culture, and art matriculate into modern Mongolian consciousness. While you may not get much of it in the villages, due to lack of people who know how to coach or train athletes and performers, you tend to get a fairly healthy sampling […]