It’s 1983 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and I didn’t go to class much. I took Theater 101 as an elective because I thought it would be easy (it wasn’t). One Tuesday in October, the professor ditched the day’s syllabus and spent the next 75 minutes...
It finally feels like spring in Richmond--the city went from a clammy winter chill to a dry heat in the span of a week--which means even a simple walk down the block is enough to get you sweating. It would almost be easier to stay inside. But if you, like us, suffer from a crippling case of FOMO, here are six of RVA Mag’s top picks for this...
As The Richmond Dance Festival enters its fifth year, organizer and dance artist Jess Burgess took a quick break from her preparations to sit down with RVA Mag and highlight some of the best national and local artists performing in this year’s edition of the annual event. The project of Manchester-based Dogtown Dance Theatre is a celebration of...
Richmond-based photographer Chris Smart clearly has a unique aesthetic. From the surface, it looks dystopian and reminiscent of films such as 28 Days Later, Ghost in the Shell, and anything that Phillip K. Dick ever thought to put his cyberpunk hands on. However, upon further investigation, this is not necessarily the case. Smart, from the...
This evening, celebrate women with an art show at The HofGarden, a benefit event for Safe Harbor, a Henrico County-based nonprofit that serves survivors of human trafficking and sexual assault. The show centers around the theme of Intersectional Wonder Women, creating a space that stresses inclusivity and the diversity of experience and identity....
Like Alice down the rabbit hole, it’s easy to get sucked into the fantastical world that Richmond-based painter Wingchow creates in her abstract paintings and illustrations. Her superb use of color and value create a hypnotic sense of dimension, drawing the eye to lines and shapes around the canvas. Wingchow has been drawing as long as she can...
Shopping malls were once the most popular social spaces in America, from their rise in the late 1950s to the golden age in the 1990s, up until their ever-rapid decay as online shopping began to take its place, malls played a major role in shaping our culture. Teenagers spent their days, not on their phones, but roaming the sticky floors and...
The darker side of children’s fairy tales come to life in a VCU Theater department production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, showing now until the end of April, at VCU’s Raymond Hodges Theatre. Director Kikau Alvaro described the source material, by Sondheim and James Lapine, as a mash-up musical featuring characters from “the Grimm’s...
The grand reveal of the Institute for Contemporary Art last Thursday was a celebration of art at its most powerful. The inaugural show, Declaration, is a bold collection of works that confront and transform the viewer, delivering on the promise of the ICA as a place to have difficult conversations and build connections between the city and the...
In today’s world, people are constantly bombarded with visual representations in all aspects of their everyday lives. In the hyper contextualized world of Instagram and Facebook, it can be easy for a person to forget the refined authority of a trained photographer’s eye - one that can tell a comprehensive story. And given the ease in which a...
