The beat goes on this weekend at TCC

If music is indeed the universal language, "Stomp" speaks fluently. The stage show that uses innovative music-making techniques will be the talk of the town this weekend when it trudges into Tucson with five performances at the convention center downtown.

The performers won't be doing any of the talking, though. The troupe members of "Stomp" use everything from brooms to Zippo lighters to create a beat that lasts 100 minutes in concert. It doesn't count on a complicated plotline or well-developed characters to keep the audience rapt. The wordless ÷ but far from silent ÷ show relies on the universality of rhythm to captivate the audience. [Read article]

Musical's story of rebellion remains relevant

Anyone who claims that musicals are silly has not been to a performance of "Les MisŽrables." Captivating audiences all over the world since 1987, the music and the story of "Les MisŽrables" will make its third appearance in Tucson.

"People wonder why this musical has played longer than any other. I think it is because of two reasons: The music is amazing and it is familiar, so people want to see what they have heard for 18 years," production stage manager Peter Van Dyke said. [Read article]

You are staring at an empty stage. Music softly begins tickling your ear as you watch several figures gracefully move across the platform before you. Their movements are strangely familiar, and you feel a connection with the emotion they express, not knowing exactly what that connection is, but feeling it just the same.

You are watching the 13 members of the Lim—n Dance Company, a modern dance troupe whose origins date back to 1946. The group's founder, JosŽ Lim—n, was one of the best-known male dancers of his generation; he died in 1972. Throughout his life, he and mentors Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman helped to shape modern dance. During the 1930s and '40s, they developed significant techniques of modern dance and choreographed many dance numbers for performance. [Read article]

If watching the movie "Fight Club" has inspired you to start making your own soap, well, that's scary. But if the creative pleasure of mixing your own scents and ingredients to form a bar of soap inspires you, then take a lesson from an expert, not Tyler Durden.

Charlon Bobo owns her own soap-making company in Thousand Oaks, Calif., called Utopian Garden. She is also a board member of the Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild, which is an international group of soap experts and laymen whose goal is to circulate information about making soap. The group's annual conference will be held in Tucson at the Westward Look Resort from April 3 ÷ 6, with Bobo as a key speaker. [Read article]

Students love controversy. The Arizona Repertory Theatre presents "The Cider House Rules," a two-part play that contains as much edge as the Grand Canyon. "The Cider House Rules" is all set to provide that controversy. With only two previews, it is still too early to tell just exactly how audiences will react.

"The previews went well. There is definitely some material that people might find offensive in the show. So we are kind of seeing what is happening. We don't know what we are getting ourselves into," Michael Tennant said. [Read article]

David Gale is an activist for the abolition of capitol punishment. He and his colleagues can debate the issue forever, but don't have the crucial statistic they need to win the fight: proof that an innocent man has been executed. David is now on death row. Think carefully now.

Congratulations, you just figured out "The Life of David Gale," given information you could have learned from the trailer. [Read article]

"Edge of Madness," just out on DVD, is one of those movies you've never heard of with a big, important-sounding tag line that sums up the entire movie and makes it unnecessary to actually watch the film. "A man she didn't love. A marriage she couldn't leave. A murder she couldn't explain."

There it is.

It's 1851, winter in the Red River Valley (out 'round where Fargo is nowadays). A battered, hysterical French girl named Annie stumbles into this town and tells the guys at the jail she's murdered her husband. They don't really believe her, I guess because she's a girl. So they put her in jail. The rest of the movie is cuts between flashbacks of Annie's life on the frontier homestead with her psycho husband and really, really mild scenes of Annie in jail befriending the townspeople. [Read article]

Andy Warhol once spoke of everyone having 15 minutes of fame. Little did he know, his prediction would come true in the first few years of the 21st century. Today anyone, anywhere, can become "famous," or, as normal people like to call them, "idiots."

What is causing this sudden influx of celebrity? While it seems benign, the people choose to be involved and it is an entity far more sinister, far more dangerous than you could ever imagine. [Read article]