The performance group Fluid Movement revels in an ongoing dance with life.
It's a Saturday afternoon, and the performance space at Saint John's United Methodist Church in Charles Village is filled with brightly dressed people. The crowd of 60 or so includes young girls with hair dyed unnatural shades of red and blue, a group of women done up like little Dutch girls, and a flamenco dancer.
The ultimate hep cat swings into the 21st Century, with honors.
If Cab Calloway were still alive, he'd be 100 now. He'd be able to celebrate his centennial at this month's Artscape Festival during the second annual Cab Calloway Vocal Competition, created as a male counterpart to the long-running Billie Holiday contest. He'd be able to explain that, like Holiday, he got his start in music as a teenager in Baltimore and went on to sell many more records and concert tickets than she ever did. So why is she better known today? Why should we still care about Cab Calloway?
How the birth of a baby and an online site helped a mom deliver.
It was the thought of juggling a baby and an upholstery career that lead Allison Fomich to jewelry. After studying sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Fomich, a Highlandtown resident, apprenticed with an upholsterer with every intention of making that her career. But once her daughter Ada was born, she had to find another creative outlet, and jewelry seemed like something she could do from home. "It blossomed out of necessity," Fomich says. It just so happened that right around the time Ada was born, Etsy was born, too.
East Baltimore and Eastern philosophy transformed Afaa Michael Weaver into the poet he is.
This house opens its eyes/reaches to me with hands held/together in silent prayer/begging me to take every lesson/and go on with life peacefully—"An Improbable Mecca"
The poet Afaa Michael Weaver parks in front of 2824 Federal Street in East Baltimore, his childhood home. The street, which could be straight out of The Wire, has changed a great deal over the years. "It's a shame how impoverished things have become," says Weaver.
The T-shirt has become a viable medium for an increasing number of Baltimore artists.
In the summer of 2004, Jean-Baptiste Regnard wanted to splurge on some clothes, but he didn't want anything as formal as what he wore as a real-estate agent. He was just 24, after all, and he wanted something comfortable and casual for hanging out with his friends. He stumbled upon the emblematic fashion of young Americans since the 1950s: the T-shirt.
To paraphrase the philosophers Travolta and Newton-John: summer livin' is a blast, but it happens so fast. So, to help you make the most of your Charm City summer, we present our 2008 City Guide. So, go ahead. Have a blast.
Parkville's Brandon Hardesty takes his acting from YouTube to Hollywood.
Even though Brandon Hardesty is hysterically funny, the success he has garnered from his homemade videos is no joke.
The 21-year-old Parkville resident, known for his uncanny movie reenactments that he uploads onto the video sharing website YouTube, is now meeting with big-time agents and getting scripts sent his way.
"It's all very surreal because it happened so fast," Hardesty says. "People spend years trying to get where I am, so I feel like I took a shortcut or something."
For nearly a century, Baltimoreans have been painting window screens, a tradition that is alive and well.
John Oktavec likes to say that he leaves his body when he paints pictures on window screens. In the after-dinner quiet of his Pasadena home, Oktavec brushes color on a wire screen. "Painting takes you away, at least for awhile," he says. "I have a way to escape, and, when I'm done, I have something beautiful."
As Oktavec paints, he also sails back in time, to the foot of Broadway and a lost planet known as the Summer of 1978.
Video Americain is about to celebrate its 20th year on Cold Spring Lane. Take that, Netflix!
Video Americain. Even the name sounds like a relic from a previous generation, like having a store called Polaroids R Us or the Atari Superstore. Of course, Video Americain rents DVDs now, too-have done so for almost 10 years. But while the whole world has gone digital, they still stock plenty of titles on good old-fashioned VHS (no, not Betamax).
"A lot of really good films aren't available yet on DVD," explains Scott Wallace Brown, 44, who manages the small chain's Cold Spring Lane location.
Jack Carneal's field recordings of Malian musicians have made him a reluctant world music entrepreneur.
Amid the agreeable mix of spirited ngoni plucking and syncopated karignan scraping on the second track of Bougouni Yaalali—a compilation of indigenous musicians recorded by Jack Carneal in the West African nation of Mali—comes a sudden and incongruous blap-blap-blap that sounds like a muffled handgun. "That's just some guys playing checkers," Carneal recalls with a smile. "If you listen really closely, you can also hear a donkey braying."
