In Angelin Preljocaj’s contemporary ballet Snow White, the arresting psychological situation is a romantic rivalry between Snow White, the Prince—and Snow White’s dominatrix stepmother, the Queen. The choreography rises well above pantomime. The acute, intelligent images are extremely alluring. And the fairy tale’s most important scenes—Snow White’s apparent demise and her resurrection—register as exhilarating jolts. Based on the original by the Brothers Grimm, this Snow White departs from the narrative most of us know....

Picture it: Iowa City, March 2014. Laughter fills the women’s bathroom at Brothers, a huge sports bar that squats next to the University of Iowa. As undergrads line the mirror, fiddling with their lipstick and offering each other sloppy affirmations, my friend Annie and I stand in a stall, pulling ski masks over our faces. I think it’s perfectly fine to spend hours sniffing bath bombs at Lush, and most folks I know could benefit from some solo time with a coloring book....

This year just past—in which tens of millions of people whipsawed by facts and fake facts and tribal memes delivered a surprise ending we might have seen coming if we’d spotted all the clues—constitutes a powerful argument for a kind of journalism in short supply: stories that spend respectful time with individual people and listen closely to what they have to say. This is the kind of journalism the Anne Keegan Award was created in 2012 to honor—”stories of ordinary people” that “give voice to the voiceless” and reflect the “dignity and spirit of the common man....

Lucy Hewett Tune-Yards Philip Montoro: In Saturday morning’s recap, I declared that “The festival’s first day belongs to the women,” based on the Reader team’s enthusiasm for Neneh Cherry and Sharon Van Etten. For me the second day was about women too: Tune-Yards and St. Vincent. Mindful of my role as Beer and Metal columnist, I made sure to try both of Goose Island’s Pitchfork collaborations—a Kölsch called SVE brewed with input from Sharon Van Etten and a pilsner called Recommended brewed with Pitchfork staff....

It’s the audience who first performs in Stephen Webb’s The Sister Twins, a new play about self-discovery through the breaking of routine. The show begins with a tea party, the actors serving audience members their cuppa, sugar lumps, and cucumber sandwiches. Social etiquette and self-awareness go hand in hand, and the vehicle of tea perfectly launches us into the lives of two sisters whose very world depends on rigid adherence to ritual....

Q: I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about myself and my sexuality and my romantic self. I can log on and easily find someone to fuck. I’m a bear-built top guy. There are ladies in my life who choose to share their beds with me. I can find subs to tie up and torture. (I’m kinky and bi.) What I can’t find is a long-term partner. The problem is that after I fuck/sleep with/torture someone, my brain stops seeing them as sexual and moves them into the friend category....

A couple of weeks ago “Merce Cunningham: Common Time,” a major exhibition devoted to the work and associates of the relentlessly experimental choreographer, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The show incorporates sets, costumes, video, and photographs along with other ephemera reflecting Cunningham’s deep connections with visual artists like Bruce Nauman, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. His most famous collaborator in art and life was composer and thinker John Cage, who helped foster Cunningham’s fertile partnerships with some of the most important experimental composers of the 20th century—Maryanne Amacher, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Gordon Mumma, Jim O’Rourke, and Yasunao Tone among them....

There’s only one thing better than a long car ride late at night, and that’s a nice long walk. Everything looks different in the dark. Things smell better. Your thoughts start moving in unexpected directions—and conversations, too. Have you ever been able to say you don’t know someone better after a late-night stroll? City streets are OK for aimless meditative wandering, but on the busy stretches there’s too much light and noise....

Every time I’ve seen Devonté Hynes perform as Blood Orange—including sets at Pitchfork festivals in 2013 and 2016, an intimate show at the Empty Bottle in 2014, and a fantastic headlining concert at the Vic in 2016—I’ve walked away shaking my head that he isn’t a global superstar. In a better universe, his albums Cupid Deluxe (2013) and Freetown Sound (2016) would be considered world-beating touchstones by now. Since I first heard them, their depth has only become more apparent to me....

The weather was gorgeous last Thursday around sunset, and there were plenty of people with bikes on Roosevelt near Pulaski in North Lawndale. Johnny Harris, 60, was cycling home on a Gitane road bike, while Thomas Chatman, 56, wore a straw fedora as he stood on the sidewalk with his hybrid, which had unfortunately caught a flat. (Story continues below) “An officer has to have probable cause in order to conduct a search,” Brooks said....

The whopping success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out has demonstrated that general audiences can appreciate horror movies for their subtext. A thinly veiled commentary on American race relations, Get Out uses the horror genre to dramatize fears about the persecution of African-Americans and the suppression of black identity. Audiences seem to get this (given the film’s courageous forthrightness, it would be surprising if they didn’t), as evidenced by the serious discussions of race that the film has provoked across media and social media alike....

Never mind the polar vortex—you can buy tickets for this summer’s Pitchfork Music Festival right now. It’s the weekend of Fri 7/18, and though the lineup hasn’t been announced, this wolf has some predictions: Massachusetts rockers Speedy Ortiz, Mark Kozelek’s Sun Kil Moon, Baton Rouge rapper Kevin Gates, Syracuse noise punks Perfect Pussy, and Los Angeles R&B singer Kelela. In the slots for locals? Doom nihilists Indian, R&B group Jody, emo troupe Into It....

Reckless Records buyer (and Chicago Thrash Ensemble member) Dave Hofer is the go-to guy when Gossip Wolf is looking for recommendations for the meanest metal in the galaxy, so it makes cosmic sense that he’s authored a book on metal’s most prolific bassist, Dan Lilker—who’s held down the low end in Anthrax, S.O.D., Brutal Truth, and about a bazillion others for more than three decades. A fanzine-style book chock-full of show flyers, photos, and interviews with compatriots like Scott Ian, Gene Hogaln, and Kevin Sharp, Perpetual Conversion: 30 Years & Counting in the Life of Metal Veteran Dan Lilker is available for preorder via publisher Handshake Inc....

Scotland Yard Gospel Choir singer Elia Einhorn moved to Brooklyn in 2012, but we’ll consider him a Chicago homie forever (even though he was born in Wales). Einhorn tells Gossip Wolf he has a new bedroom band called Fashion Brigade—really a solo project enhanced by “collaborations with amazing musicians on almost every song,” in his words. Last week on Bandcamp he posted Fashion Brigade’s first track, a duet with Exene Cervenka, whose part he recorded backstage at an X show....

Nick Murway Freddy the Beard last Good Friday at Chris’s Billiards in Portage Park Late last fall, a rumor began circulating through the pool world that Freddy “the Beard” Bentivegna, the great bank shooter and one of the last of the old hustlers, had passed away; or, rather, that he’d been killed in a terrible car accident on the south side en route to visit friends in the Cook County Jail....

A whole book could be written on what happened in the Chicago comedy scene in 2015. And it wouldn’t be a short book—it’d be, like, the seventh Harry Potter book. Alas, the Reader has only so many pages. Goodrich Gevaart The trio known as Gnar Gnar Shredtown—Zach Bartz, Kevin Gerrity, and musical director Dan Wilcop—have turned the rules of improv on their head. Forget the three-beat structure that informs Chicago long-form improv—these guys take a suggestion and run with it until they’ve squeezed it dry, then move on....

Random House !!! The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon is the new One Book, One Chicago for 2014-15, Brian Bannon, the Chicago Public Library commissioner, announced at the Harold Washington Library earlier this afternoon. There was applause and also a whoop, which OK, came from me. And I tried to feel guilty about it because it was the library, but I didn’t really, because Kavalier & Clay is one of the most joyous reading experiences I have ever had, and the more people who experience that joy, the better our city will be....

Chicago rapper Vic Mensa opens his new EP, The Manuscript, by confronting his audience’s expectations: the ambling soul track “Almost There” begins with the lines “This for all my fans that say they want that old Vic / I’ve grown too much to ever be that old Vic.” Mensa has been a known name in Chicago hip-hop for nearly a decade, which is all the more impressive when you remember that he just turned 24 this Tuesday—Fake Shore Drive founder Andrew Barber talked with Mensa last week to preview his as-yet-untitled forthcoming album, fondly recalling a 15-year-old Mensa flaunting his freestyle skills to MCs twice his age....

Dream Theatre Company, 5026 N. Lincoln, 773-552-8616, dreamtheatrecompany.com Already known for thoroughly immersive theater experiences, Dream Theatre sealed its standing with Jeremy Menekseoglu’s Halloween show Audience Annihilated Part Two: Gold Star Sticker, the most chillingly horrific 15 minutes I’ve endured in recent memory. As in Audience Annihilated Part One: Women Only Train, staged back in 2011, audience members play the part of the lead, in this case six-year-old Princess, who’s subjected to a junkie amputee careening a bit too close for comfort, a cold hard bitch of a mother whispering beer-soaked expletives (the unflinching Nicole Roberts), and Bear, a cruel teddy whose catchphrase “I don’t like things the way they are” still pops up in my mind quite unsettlingly....

One American’s promised land is another’s Egypt. Unless you’re a Native American (in which case you’ve got problems all your own), you and yours came here either to get free or to be sold into slavery. No wonder there’s so little commonality between this country’s white and black people, quite aside from the horrors of racism: Even if it were possible to wave a magic equity wand over the nation, so that everybody suddenly had a fair chance, our narratives would still be diametrically opposed....