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STEPHANIE SKURA AND COMPANY But Skura is the only one I know of who has the wit and imagination to pair the monumental Fifth Symphony with a farcical and wildly athletic dance–Cranky Destroyers–and make that pairing work in a fascinatingly bizarre way. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Classical purists might complain that Skura’s choreographic treatment of Beethoven’s masterpiece, whose portentous opening notes have been described as “Fate knocking at the door,” is sacrilege....

Can I make a citizen’s arrest? The Illinois Clean Public Elevator Act–effective New Year’s Day–sets a fine of $45 to $250 for the crime of smoking in elevators that are open to the public. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now put it back together. “Planners traditionally describe the Loop in terms of functional areas,” writes James Krohe Jr. in Chicago Enterprise (October 1989): “retail zones on State Street and upper Michigan Avenue; office zones in the West Loop and Illinois Center; an emerging entertainment zone in River North; residential zone in the South Loop; the cultural zone along the lakefront....

PETER PAN Center Theater Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Barrie’s obsession was more than a little unhealthy–but its intensity is what gives Peter Pan a power lacking in most other children’s entertainment, of Barrie’s era and our own. It’s the reason the play became an annual holiday attraction in England after its Christmastime premiere 89 years ago. Of course, the less tidy aspects of the story are often swept under the rug–certainly in America, where audiences like their children’s stories light and simple....

WORK Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cantwell’s own pieces, which are some of the most labor-intensive and poignant in the show, are environmentally conscious in subtle, startling ways. The Holy Spirit is a suspended sphere the size of an average globe that’s black and white with areas of gray. It’s wrapped with layers of cloth, and the beads that are stitched into it are almost camouflaged by pigeon feathers, a number of which also hang from the bottom like fringe; the feathers are “environmental garbage” that the artist collected on daily walks....

At some point we all stopped caring about the rockin’ enchilada that makes the best eating in rock ‘n’ roll–good drumming, killer guitar riffing, shimmery melodies, hooks galore. These things were all just stock-in-trade for some bands, bands like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Hollies, the Rolling Stones. There are still groups like that out there, but the music business has evolved so that we don’t hear them in the same way–sure people listen to a lot of classic rock, but the way we hear pop music has grown more sophisticated and demanding with the times....

To the editors. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The question remains: what did Washington actually accomplish? Certainly he showed blacks, as Jane Byrne showed women, that one no longer has to be a white man to become Mayor of Chicago. In that sense his position in and of itself was inspirational to many. However, what few want to admit is that as a mayor, Washington was completely ordinary....

As a kid I hated circuses. The ringmaster was always making a lot of noise about nothing. The animal acts always looked like exercises in sadism. And the clowns, that band of bozos, never seemed funny. My attitude changed last fall when I checked out the eye-pleasing, mind-blowing Cirque du Soleil from Montreal. Now, part of the International Theatre Festival, Australia’s Circus Oz is coming to town. Like Cirque du Soleil, Circus Oz has gotten rid of all the tiresome circus cliches–the hokey music, the sad-looking costumes, and the cruel animal tricks....

City Arts Cutbacks Hit Big-Budget Groups Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The total City Arts funding program was cut approximately 20 percent this year, to $821,631 from $1.042 million in 1991, pitifully small change in the city’s massive $3.245-billion operating budget. Weisberg wiped out approximately $100,000 in level-four funding and took the remainder out of grants to smaller organizations. The department’s operating budget was also hit, dropping to $3....

Recession jitters abound. As the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression drags on, there’s growing popular unease, not simply with President Bush’s economic stewardship, but also with the long-term economic prospects for America. Yet while polls indicate the public wants action from the national government, the president and many prominent “mainstream” economists have adopted a cautious wait-and-see strategy. Despite the assumption by numerous elite opinion makers, from conservative to liberal, that government borrowing and federal deficits will have hideous consequences, Eisner’s arguments have little by little won some grudging respect....

Tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman gained his greatest recognition from his mid-70s stints with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett, and the fact that he could shine in both those contexts simultaneously says a lot about him. But the issue here goes deeper than stylistic versatility; in fact, Redman’s tightly wound but nonetheless labyrinthine solos sounded strikingly similar whether they occurred within the romantic eclecticism of Jarrett’s group or next to Ornette’s abstract expressionism....

The great thing about Chicago’s weather is the drama. Of course standing on an icy corner in a howling gale waiting endlessly for a bus from the ZTA (“Zeno’s Transit Authority: We’re always almost there”), you might be pardoned for thinking “Drama, schmama, I’m moving to San Diego.” We need to run all those names by slowly to get a feel for the significance of this. The three gulls, for example, range in rarity from the Franklin’s, a bird of the prairie potholes that shows up here every fall in small numbers, to the Sabine’s, a bird that nests around ponds and marshes along the shores of the Bering Sea....

As you may have read elsewhere in this issue, you can get to Ludington over water, on the last of the Lake Michigan ferries, but to make that trip you have to drive to Kewaunee, Wisconsin, first, and from that point on the scenery, though rare, is rather predictable. (The ferry will take your car. See page 7 for details.) The more conventional route goes around the lake via I-94, I-196, and U....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In my letter to him, I listed examples of crucial stories the dailies have either ignored or effectively buried in sidebar “news roundups” or at the end of unrelated articles. These stories are potentially scandalous for the Bush administration. They would also go a long way toward illuminating why many people feel the war in the Persian Gulf is unnecessary and unjust....

Lead Story Randall Marlow, 20, escaping in January from California highway patrolmen who wanted to ticket him for deficiencies in his motorcycle, commandeered a golf cart at the nearby Valencia Golf Course and led officers on a five-mile-an-hour chase across the links before being captured. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Three criminal-justice majors from Prairie View A & M University in Houston wearing stocking masks were arrested in February and charged with the armed robbery of a restaurant....

The Spanic Boys are roots rock’s amusing answer to the Judds–they’re a crack rockabilly foursome fronted by a father-son pair named Tom and Ian Spanic. Neither of the two are what you’d call svelte, and sometimes from the back of the club they look like a pair of bespectacled hillocks with Telecasters. The kicker is that they play those Telecasters just fine, thank you, and Spanic fils is comfortable beyond his years in the tarted-up C and W idiom he wanders in....

Dept. of limited options. From a Chicago commercial dating-service questionnaire: “My friends consider me to be: _ Very Attractive _ Somewhat Attractive _ Above Average _ Average _ Fairly Plain” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thank you, Ms. Social Worker; now leave us alone. “Jane Addams and her nutrition-conscious associates were appalled at the reliance on pasta in the diets of Italian families,” writes Richard Bjorklund in One City (May/June 1989)....

Next week I’ll be defending my doctoral thesis down at Willie’s Pool Hall. According to a recent press release, U. of I. chemistry professor Peter G. Wolynes “likens a chemical reaction to a pool table shaped like a figure 8. The molecules in the reaction can be compared to pool balls that bounce off the walls of one circle of the table until they can travel to the other circle. The problem puzzling chemists for decades is how the pool balls travel through the bottleneck at the middle of the figure 8....

THE SPEED OF DARKNESS In Darkness the secret is literally buried. Joe, the one who buried it, is a self-made man living in a sprawling house he built himself. A respected citizen who endows playgrounds and helps kids find summer jobs, Joe shares his success with his adoring wife, Anne, and his bubbly daughter, Mary, a glowingly well-adjusted high school senior. Joe is even a contender for South Dakota’s “Man of the Year....

Has anyone vanished in the Bermuda Triangle lately? There were many reports of mysterious incidents back in the 70s, but since then the whole subject has simply dropped out of sight (grin). Is the mystery any closer to being solved? I’m thinking of sending my in-laws on a permanent vacation. –K.T., Saint Louis, Missouri Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In December 1945, five Navy planes took off from Fort Lauderdale on a routine training mission....

TWO ROOMS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Playwright Lee Blessing criticizes the detached high-mindedness typical of Americans in Two Rooms, an engaging drama about a hostage situation. Each of Blessing’s four characters represents a different point of view. Michael is an American being held hostage in Lebanon, and he’s just trying to survive, holding onto his humanity day by day. His wife, Lainie, is another victim who refuses to give in to discouragement....