SARAH BRUMGART Her dances remind me of experiments in which almost all the variables have been eliminated, or of a musician’s exercises or an artist’s doodles. Over the last two or three years, Brumgart has created a whole series of Silent White Dances; at MoMing she danced Silent White Dance XVII and Silent White Dance XVIII (a premiere) as well as excerpts from Silent White Dances I and XV. It was obvious, even without the lengthy question-and-answer period that followed the performance, that in each Brumgart had set herself a certain task or tasks; a program note let us know that, although each piece had a basic choreographic structure, the specific movements were improvised during each performance....

HIDDEN GEMS Rufus Thomas REMEMBER ME East McLemore was a thoroughfare in an economically deteriorating neighborhood going from white to black. Here the straitlaced, enterprising white bank clerk and his sister gathered around them an unprecedented mix of musicians both black (Booker T. Jones, Lewis Steinberg, Curtis Green) and white (Chips Moman, Steve Cropper, Estelle Axton’s son Packy) to make records. Such a thing was unheard of in Memphis in 1960....

The issue of schooling is exercising my fellow baby-boomers as they settle somewhat tardily into the task of perpetuating the race — the rat race, that is. And during most discussions of the topic someone will sing out, in counterpoint to the general, tone of complaint, “The public schools were good enough for me.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I left 12 years in public school able to read and write and do simple calculations without embarrassment....

Drummer/vocalist Robert Covington is best known as the rhythmic anchor of the Sunnyland Slim Blues Band, but anyone who’s ever seen Robert sing his two or three songs per set with that group knows that he’s a fine entertainer in his own right. Covington’s gifts include a well-crafted sense of showmanship, a rich, melodious voice, and a musical sophistication that allows him to bring equal amounts of sincerity and flamboyance to traditional Chicago blues standards, driving R & B, and even the odd country-and-western number....

I didn’t expect to find peace at the neighborhood Walgreens, but it didn’t hurt to ask. The gulf war was still raging, and like everyone, I wanted it to end. Nor did I really think I’d find peace at Venture, especially when I noticed Snoopy and Woodstock emblazoned on T-shirts above the slogan “U.S.A. Number 1.” Yet I couldn’t resist asking. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I did, however, expect to find peace at the University of Illinois Circle Center Bookstore, but instead I found a floor-to-ceiling display of American flags, “Support Our Troops” yellow ribbon ($8....

Even this minor film from Max Ophuls has so much energy it makes the major work of figures like Spielberg and De Palma shrink to virtual nothingness. Ophuls was effectively imported to the Netherlands to make this 1936 feature to help beef up the lackluster Dutch film industry. Based on an original Ophuls story (and coscripted by Walter Schlee, Alex de Haan, and Christine van Meeteren) and featuring songs and commentary from a neo-Brechtian clown who stands outside the plot, the film describes the misadventures of a bank courier (Herman Bouber) who is robbed of bank funds and fired, only to be appointed as head of a finance company by crooked businessmen who believes that he has the stolen money....

Newsweek’s Jack Kroll called The Gospel at Colonus “one of the most marvelous shows of the decade based on one of the most inspired ideas of any time, a triumph of reconciliation bringing together black and white, pagan and Christian, ancient and modern in a sunburst of joy that seems to touch the secret heart of civilization itself.” The word-of-mouth message was electric. The musical played to 97 percent capacity and was extended for four weeks....

THE GREAT GATSBY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ignorant as I am, I can’t talk very specifically about how John Carlile’s new stage adaptation compares with Fitzgerald’s original tale about a poor midwestern boy who reinvents himself as a free-spending New York bon vivant. Little hints–something vague and arbitrary, for instance, in Carlile’s treatment of the romance between narrator Nick Carraway and a lady athlete named Jordan Baker–suggest that Fitzgerald probably had a better handle on things like motivation....

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA Spinoza called ambition a “species of madness.” In his early comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona and his late tragedy Macbeth, William Shakespeare dramatized the maddening effects of ambition upon two men who suddenly become discontented with the satisfactory circumstances of their lives. Both plays are currently being performed by small off-Loop theater companies whose own ambitions to grapple with the Bard are less than entirely successful....

The point of director Jimmy Murakami and screenwriter Raymond Briggs’s rather original English animated feature is to get us to think the unthinkable–to imagine the aftereffects of a nuclear holocaust. But rather than force this bitter pill on us, they create a very funny and believable elderly English couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs. These two are still mired in memories of World War II, but when nuclear war hits they are eager to do all the proper things and to follow the instructions in the government booklets correctly....

In keeping with the spirit of this special issue, here are highlights of 11 stories that didn’t make it into Our Town in 1991: Young urban single professionals gathered at Spertus College to meet one another and hear a lecture on ways they could unwittingly be breaking the law. Prominent criminal-defense attorney Harvey Silets told them, among other things, not to use their answering machines to record conversations, not to threaten anyone over international telephone lines, not to be too savvy at sales because they might be sued for misrepresentation, not to mail letters in furtherance of kooky business schemes because they could be committing mail fraud....

Art Expo Loses Its Front Man, Chicago Gains Another Art Fair Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When word of Blackman’s sudden exit from Lakeside hit the River North gallery district, some prominent local dealers indicated that his departure from Wilson’s increasingly troubled organization was long overdue. Roberta Lieberman, co-owner of Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, said, “I sort of wondered why he had not done it before now, but Tom was an intensely loyal person....

Reopening briefly after a four-week hiatus, Club Date is a rich music/theater offering by the Free Street Theater that fuses live jazz with oral history. A hit with audiences who prize it both as living history and solid entertainment, it features a quintet of veteran jazz musicians headed by singer Toni Mathis who not only play vintage standards by, among other, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie, but also reminisce about the glory days of Chicago jazz....

CUSTER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Custer was a brave, shrewd soldier who demonstrated such valor during the Civil War that he was named a brigadier general at the age of 23, the youngest U.S. soldier ever to achieve that rank; yet he was also prone to reckless misjudgments on the battlefield, inspired, it seems, by a belief in his own invincibility. He was a vain man with a taste for flamboyant dress who dreamed of running for president, yet he was also devoted to his wife Libbie and deeply respected by his men....

They didn’t set out to be rebels. Most of them assumed they’d eventually meet nice guys, get married, have children–all in the standard progression they were brought up to expect. Then, usually at some point in their 30s, the realization set in: they were unmarried, and by the time they could conceivably meet their special someones, get married, and be ready to have children, they’d be too old to have them....

Lead Story Undercover Oakland, California, police officer Derrick Norfleet, 28, was awarded $60,000 in damages by a jury in November for police brutality. Fellow officers had tried to arrest Norfleet in a 1988 drug incident, believing him to be a civilian suspect. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With many of its leaders still in jail from their 1980s fund-raising effort–robbing armored cars–the white supremacist Aryan Nations recently began a new money-making operation....

Last year, with the Chicago International Theatre Festival running at about the same time, there was an aura of the underdog to this event. This year, they’ve got a nice logo and the field more or less to themselves. Still, the specifics are the same: ten plucky non-Equity companies displaying their wares in a series of double bills, culminating with a Sunday Marathon (see below). All shows at the Theatre Building, through April 12 (1225 W....

Twenty years ago I got hooked on Mozart and Schubert listening to Paul Badura-Skoda’s recordings on the (now defunct) Westminster label. Since then other, better pianists have introduced me to more interesting vistas, but Badura-Skoda’s thoughtful, always proper interpretations have stayed in my mind. During the 70s the Austrian pianist cultivated a loyal following while in residence at the University of Chicago; now he’s back for a brief visit to help celebrate the U....

PIANO BAR Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The story is the songs themselves. Mellow, tart, and supple numbers by composer Rob Fremont and lyricist Doris Willens help to connect the couples, sometimes mechanically, often seemingly inevitably. The other denizens of Sweet Sue’s are Joe the bartender (Tom Colby); Julie (Lucinda Johnston), a lady with man trouble; Walt (Michael Maraz), a commodities trader down on funds and separated from his wife; Debbie (Kristin Finger), a greeting-card writer who’s sick of sentiment; and Ned (David G....

Reverend B. Herbert Martin Sr. was Mayor Harold Washington’s pastor. And he is still Dorothy Tillman’s. But things have been a little dull for the pastor since Mayor Washington died–that is, until glasnost kindled Reverend Martin’s interest in the international political scene. So on Sunday, as Mikhail and Raisa visited farmers in Minnesota, Nikita and Oksana visited the Progressive Community Church at 48th and Wabash. Best of Chicago voting is live now....