Amy Alt, one of Jan Bartoszek’s dancers, said during an open rehearsal that she had some misgivings when she first heard about the choreographer’s new piece: since it was about midlife and focused on the cha-cha, Alt imagined anguished married couples dancing around suburban living rooms. But as one observer at the rehearsal remarked, “If this is middle age, I can’t wait!” In fact Bartoszek’s Viva is far from depressing or stodgy: it features some of the most exuberant yet natural partnering I’ve seen in a long time–and Bartoszek doesn’t stop at duets....

No visit to Jim Morrow’s All-Steel Historic Home would be complete without a swing past the Century of Progress Architectural District in nearby Beverly Shores, where you can see four model homes from the 1933 World’s Fair. It’s a trip back to the future and a glimpse of Lustron’s inspiration. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The four houses were part of a group of homes built to showcase advanced technology and design....

** SPANKING THE MONKEY In Spanking the Monkey, writer-director David O. Russell has pulled off no small feat–he’s made a film about incest that shifts nimbly back and forth between comedy and drama. Raymond Aibelli (Jeremy Davies) has just finished his first year at MIT and is anticipating going off on a highly desirable summer internship. But after returning home for what he thinks will be a brief visit, his father informs him that he’ll have to stay there and care for his bedridden mother (played with frowzy insouciance by Alberta Watson), who’s been laid up with a leg injury....

It’s Curtains for the International Theatre Festival Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The decision to end the theater festival appears to have resulted from a growing realization that repaying existing debts while trying to raise funds for future festivals would be nearly impossible. Foundations and corporate sponsors had generously supported the festival to the tune of more than $1 million per fest. At one point prior to last year’s event, festival cofounder and executive director Jane Nicholl Sahlins characterized organizations such as the John D....

West-side bluesman Johnny B. Moore was off the scene for so long that some wondered if he’d quit music entirely, but now he seems determined to reassert his presence in a big way. He has an upcoming CD on the Wolf label, and in his live performances he’s again showing the creativity and imagination his admirers have raved about for years. Moore’s command of genres is nothing short of astounding: on any given night he’ll move effortlessly from modern funk-blues to a Delta classic, then fire off a spine-chilling slide piece a la Elmore James and conclude with a hard-grinding west-side lope, all the while chording behind his own leads as if he were playing two guitars at once....

On a recent Friday afternoon, David “the Rock” Nelson takes to the backyard of his parents’ house in DesPlaines, carrying a camcorder and a plastic bag containing a ripped flannel shirt, a six-inch plastic ant, rubber werewolf’s hands, and a werewolf mask. Nelson’s getting ready to shoot his latest movies–Devil Ant and Werewolf’s Revenge. Since I’m on hand he’s asked me to play a bit part. It’s difficult to say when they will be completed....

With all the bad news that’s been hanging over the blues world lately–deaths, sickness, untimely departures–the return of guitarist Lefty Dizz is nothing short of a godsend. Dizz, who spent the better part of last year battling cancer, is known around the world for his antic fusion of inspiration and impishness, but what makes him truly special is the gut-level commitment he brings to his art. Beneath his outrageous mugging beats the heart of a true bluesman: those distorted licks he grinds out would sound at home in a Mississippi juke, and Dizz’s lyrics are street-level signifying in the great tradition (think of Bo Diddley minus the beat and with a dollop of childlike whimsy)....

Paul Kass: New Sculpture By Fred Camper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » An edgy, obsessive repetition distinguishes White Pine, with its six pillars and its sets of 27 disks, two sets on each pillar unaccountably larger than the other two. But most interesting is the fact that Kass uses his hands to try to efface the natural variations of the human touch–the disks are evenly spaced, and the white is a flat laminate–while retaining the variations that are the results of the materials and the room: the natural grain of the wood and the different lengths to which the connecting screws are adjusted....

IMPERIAL DRAG Imperial Drag (Work/Sony) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sure, vintage synths are plenty hip in indie-rock circles in these days, with everyone from Stereolab to Sabalon Glitz singing their praises. But I’m not just talkin’ cool Krautrock minimalist synths. I even like big, pompous, overblown dinosaur synth like those favored by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rick Wakeman, the Japanese genius Tomita, and the godfather/godmother of ’em all, Walter/Wendy Carlos, the poineer behind 1968’s Switched-On Bach and pop music’s first transsexual superstar, which makes him/her a trailblazer any way you cut it....

Ralf Gothoni is an all-purpose musician who’s been celebrated in Germany and his native Finland but is little known elsewhere. Now that he’s won the Gilmore award–the richest prize in classical music–he’s finally getting the exposure he deserves. Given every four years to a keyboardist, the Gilmore is doubly valuable for the North American concert gigs–like this one at Ravinia–that come with it. Also a composer, teacher, and conductor, Gothoni, who was in town last November to accompany baritone Jorma Hynninen, is a thoughtful performer who can show plenty of spark and spontaneity....

The leaves are beginning to turn, the holiday buying season is approaching, and the fancy of a strapping young international record conglomerate is turning to–raising record prices. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » These releases will certainly be joined by others as the Christmas season looms. Price-increase cycles in the industry have always worked this way: so-called “superstar” releases soften up retailers and consumers, and then most new releases up their prices to the new standard, and then catalog titles continue the trend....

Blues pianist Sid Wingfield can usually be found holding down the stage at Dick’s Last Resort, which helps explain why he’s often associated with raucous, no-holds-barred boogie-and-barrelhouse flamboyance. But beneath the flashy surface is an unusually varied assortment of emotional and stylistic colorations that sacrifice neither Wingfield’s own intensity nor the audience’s interest. His strongest suit may be his dexterity: he tears off boogies and more complex contrapuntal arrangements with an ambidextrous flair that recalls James Booker....

Nicholas Sistler: Still Life With Pink Beads gains in impact and meaning as it’s examined, its mystery deepening. On a round yellow table, pink beads sit opposite a skull, while under them is a drawing or print of what looks like a schematic skull. Behind these objects is a tall, solid purple cone. What seems to be a cord snakes across the floor, at one point passing through a little tunnel in an abstract shape, a pinkish half-sphere....

SNAPSHOTS AND REFLECTIONS: A LAST AFFAIR WITH MONTGOMERY CLIFT AND JAMES DEAN Seductive and inscrutable, Clift and Dean continue to fascinate, an allure that fuels the two one-acts developed and performed by Scott Denny and Rob Benedict in Snapshots and Reflections: A Last Affair With Montgomery Clift and James Dean, Roadworks’ 115-minute late-night offering. Easily handsome enough to recall their subjects, these actors establish the parallels between the two instinctual, intense screen stars....

The Quay brothers, American identical twins who live in London, have created some of the most visually stunning animation I’ve ever seen. Miniature sets and dolls create a fantasy world with a not easily predictable set of rules. There are no smooth surfaces or naturalistic rhythms in these films: their jagged stop-start animation points to animation’s–and cinema’s–essential nature as a series of stills. This effect is enhanced by an irregular visual surface: we cut to extreme closeups of tiny objects that enhance their smallness....

No thanks, I’m not hungry anymore. Recent publicity for a cooking magazine: “Making pie crust that isn’t soggy, hard, flavorless, under-salted, under-baked, or totally unworkable can be a home cook’s worst nightmare.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Since 1980, spending by the [Illinois] legislative branch has nearly doubled from $40 million to $75 million,” report Karen Nagel and Max Ragozzo in Illinois Politics (July)....

The Pink Caress, Keyhole Productions, Organic Theater Company Greenhouse, Lab Theater. Sex and our hypocritical attitudes about it have always been fertile sources for comedy–but only when the writer has something to say and the craft to say it. Chuck Bila has neither, and proves it in his abysmal play about “a politically correct sex shop.” In scene after scene he tries to wring laughs out of the mere mention or display of the sex toys that line the walls of the Pink Caress: cock rings, dildos, vibrators, inflatable male and female dolls....

According to the latest findings of modern science–or at least that portion of modern science employed by the California-based consulting firm SRI Research–I’m an Achiever. Frankly, I’m flattered, if a little bewildered, by the assessment. According to SRI’s Values and Lifestyles Survey (or VALS), I’m a proud member of a group of “successful career and work-oriented people who like to, and generally do, feel in control of their lives.” If I’m a typical Achiever, the researchers concluded, I live on a diet of rice cakes, frozen yogurt, low-fat cheese, and liquid nutritional supplements....

Safe I know that Americans are supposed to hate whatever they can’t understand, and certainly current Hollywood filmmaking is predicated to the point of tedium on this truism. But part of what makes Todd Haynes’s Safe the most provocative American art film of the year so far–fascinating, troubling, scary, indelible–is that it can’t be entirely understood. The mystery and ambiguity missing from mainstream movies are all the more precious, magical, even sexy here, in a 35-millimeter feature employing professional actors set partly in the plusher suburban reaches of the San Fernando Valley....

Without sacrificing quality, you could put together a pretty good band of jazz octogenarians; saxist Benny Carter, violinist Stephane Grappelli, trumpeter Doc Cheatham, and bassist Milt Hinton come immediately to mind. But even in this company drummer Barrett Deems–old as dirt (and just as gritty)–would stand out. No instrument places a greater physical demand on its practitioners, yet the irrepressible Deems has lost only a few beats from his glory years, spent anchoring the all-star combos of Louis Armstrong....