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Equal Footing/Earing Carter goes through the same movements as before until she seems to realize that no one else is dancing. Her movements become dispirited and halfhearted, and finally she slows to a stop. She isn’t exactly still, yet she doesn’t seem to be waiting or listening. Instead, she’s frozen. She gazes at a rear corner; her gaze is blank rather than pensive. The other three women bounce out from the sides and sweep her up in their activity; each of the four dancers touches the others constantly, as they quickly form and reform tiny tableaux....

EDtv With Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Sally Kirkland, Martin Landau, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Reiner, Dennis Hopper, and Elizabeth Hurley. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This snobbish double standard has become such an industry staple that we’re encouraged not to notice it, but to my mind it’s central to the various alibis for why studios and distributors offer us so few choices. We’re told, for instance, that we don’t see more subtitled movies because American audiences hate subtitles and that filmmakers can no longer shoot in black and white because American audiences hate black and white–which doesn’t explain why Dances With Wolves and Schindler’s List, both with subtitles and the latter in black and white, didn’t scare off anyone, nor does it account for the frequent use of black and white in music videos....

By Jill Riddell Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The exhibit begins with the pretense that you’re about to be shrunk to the size of a bug. As you walk through the corridor of the “shrink chamber,” the tiles on the floor grow larger while a mirror makes you appear smaller. By the time you walk into the simulated-soil-environment portion of the exhibit, you are one-hundredth your normal size....

DJ VADIM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » From the title of his new album, U.S.S.R.: Life From the Other Side (Ninja Tune), and its faux Russian constructivist artwork, DJ Vadim might seem to be a poster child for the global reach of hip-hop–but though he was born in Russia, he’s lived in London since he was three. Just the same, the turntablist’s earlier work did speak the international language, sticking primarily to abstract and wiggy instrumental workouts....

Dumped Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hirsch is credited with handling the school’s finances as it grew from a $250,000-a-year operation in the late 1980s to one with a budget of more than $5 million; last fall the school opened the Chicago Folk Center south of Lincoln and Wilson, raising nearly $8 million to renovate the former Hild Library building and increasing its operating budget by more than a third....

Lead Stories Freddy Krueger, DDS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In July the Tennessee Supreme Court reinstated patient Frances Blanchard’s lawsuit against Memphis dentist Arlene Kellum for allegedly committing battery by attempting to pull out all 32 of Blanchard’s teeth in one sitting. Blanchard, who has a gum disease, said she thought it would be done over several visits. Kellum was half done when Blanchard fainted and had to be hospitalized for six days....

PAULINE OLIVEROS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though she’s a product of the ravenously experimental late 60s–she cofounded the famous Tape Music Center at Mills College in Oakland–the music Pauline Oliveros has forged over the last few decades is decidedly timeless. It rolls into your consciousness like thick banks of fog: gorgeous, amorphous, ethereal, enveloping. In her best-known vehicle, the ten-year-old Deep Listening Band, she, trombonist Stuart Dempster, keyboardist David Gamper, vocalist Panaiotis, and a parade of prominent guests have severely yet unobtrusively manipulated sound beyond recognition, cranking the reverb to 11–you’d hardly guess Oliveros’s main ax was the accordion....

Ray Yoshida By Fred Camper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the most compelling of Yoshida’s early paintings here, the 1974 Questionable Structures, gains some of its power from the title’s comment on the imagery. None of the forms arranged in five lines is recognizable, though they suggest buildings, roadways, hills, part of a figure, perhaps a penis. Each is bordered by heavy black lines, but not on all sides; one feels the absence of line as a tear, as if these forms were damaged or incomplete....

Seeing Red Hugh is proud to see China emerge as a strong, independent, and prosperous nation after years of Japanese and European control: in July 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to the People’s Republic of China after 100 years of British colonial rule, Hugh helped organize a parade along Michigan Avenue, which he says attracted 10,000 participants. “It was a great success. For the first time we walked proudly on the main thoroughfare of Chicago....

The Skin of Our Teeth It’s hugely ironic that Wilder is considered a relic of an ossified American theater full of quaint charm and folksy wisdom when his writings, like Brecht’s, emphasize the need for theater to jar its audiences out of their middle-class slumber and, like Pirandello’s, experiment with theatrical form. Innumerable high school and grammar school productions of Wilder’s Our Town have undoubtedly played a role, connecting him not with his philosophy or the avant-garde style for which he was lambasted when that play premiered but with soda fountains, church choirs, Grover’s Corners, and a voice warbling “Pepperidge Farm remembers....

SHERMAN IRBY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “You don’t want everything to be perfect,” Sherman Irby has said. “That’s the purpose of dissonance.” Unfortunately, we’ve come to expect anything but that kind of statement from musicians like Irby–he’s a thirtysomething mainstream alto man, raised in the south, whose formative years coincided with the rise of Wynton Marsalis’s reactionary vision of jazz. But Irby’s iconoclasm is more than just talk: he has the technical fluency, emotional ballast, and venturesome spirit to challenge the party line....

CRICKET RUMOR MILL 7/21, HIDEOUT A lot of instrumental albums aim to conjure wide-open spaces, but this local trio’s second self-released CD, Molto, brings to my mind’s eye a cozy room full of recording equipment. The five glistening, melodic tracks, built from layers of percussion, guitar, bass, keyboards, and the occasional trumpet or chimes, unfold gently, carefully, and predictably in an aural equivalent of aromatherapy–sometimes refreshing or relaxing, but sometimes sickly sweet, like the dime-store version of the expensive stuff....

TRIBUTE TO HAL RUSSELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like almost everyone who worked with drummer, vibist, saxist, and trumpeter Hal Russell, bassist Mike Staron came away from the experience a changed man. Russell was the wild-eyed but surprisingly amiable soul at the heart of the NRG Ensemble, and Staron played in that musical maelstrom on and off from the mid-80s until Russell’s death in 1992, mostly as a substitute....

CHICAGO SINFONIETTA WITH ORBERT DAVIS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Classical composers have raided jazz for inspiration for generations, even as innovative scores by the likes of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis have been largely overlooked in snobbish classical circles–where to be “serious,” music has to be written by pedigreed composers, premiered in established orchestral venues, and performed by conservatory graduates. But some jazz musicians still feel compelled to tackle classical forms, and local trumpeter Orbert Davis is the latest: his brand-new Concerto for Jazz Quartet and Orchestra will be given its world premiere this week by the Chicago Sinfonietta....

Chicago Underground Film Festival Filmmaker Jeff Krulik directed the cult film Heavy Metal Parking Lot, in which he interviews rock fans in a parking lot before a show; this program of shorts includes recently recovered footage from that project as well as Krulik and John Heyn’s Neil Diamond Parking Lot. Heyne and Seth Morris document a mid-80s “yippie smoke-in” in We Need a Staple Gun. The Langley Punks cite the Three Stooges and Hal Roach as inspiration for their 16-millimeter short Hyattsville Holiday....

“If you want the Catholic faith to tame your kids, don’t let them read stories of the saints,” warns Cathy O’Connell-Cahill in the Chicago-based newsletter “Bringing Religion Home” (November). “They might end up doing outrageous things that will turn your hair white–like my friend whose son, brought upon the best of Catholic tradition, chose to stay in the middle of the Rwandan bloodbath to help refugees.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

DIE LIKE A DOG QUARTET FEATURING ROY CAMPBELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thirty years ago Cleveland-born free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler’s body was found floating in New York’s East River, and since then everyone from David Murray (who named an album Flowers for Albert) to the local repertory ensemble Witches & Devils (see separate Critic’s Choice) has lined up to pay tribute to his legacy....

FREESTYLERS SOUNDSYSTEM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Big beat is already the most kinetic branch of the house diaspora, but London’s Freestylers pride themselves on kicking it up a notch or two onstage. Their dedication to the good-time ethic has earned them props even outside the big-beat camp: before releasing their debut full-length, We Rock Hard (Mammoth), they were named live act of the year by the trance-leaning British dance magazine Muzik....

By Ben Joravsky The fight that united residents of different races and incomes and on both sides of the city’s southern border was the result of a proposal unveiled in 1990. According to its original operators, the Reading Energy Company of Philadelphia, the incinerator would divert tons of garbage from overflowing landfills, generate energy by burning waste, create well-paid jobs, and deliver tax revenues to cash-starved Robbins. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

JERRY GONZALEZ & THE FORT APACHE BAND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One could easily overlook the accomplishments of trumpeter, percussionist, and bandleader Jerry Gonzalez in Latin jazz’s current bull market, but Gonzalez was capitalizing on commonalities between jazz and various Latin musics long before the category was on every jazz journalist’s lips. As far back as 1980, on Ya Yo Me Cure (American Clave), there among the Afro-Caribbean percussion tracks and an obvious take on “Caravan” Gonzalez slipped in a version of Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence,” showing how Monk’s tricky rhythms could be viewed through the sensitive lenses of salsa and Afro-Cuban music....