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Darcy DuRuz created Girl Circus in 2001, an all-age, almost all-female circus that performs every year at the Oregon Country Fair. Featuring performers in a variety of abilities from ballet to aerial silk, Girl Circus offers high-quality family entertainment. “I really wanted a show that features more girls and women,” DuRuz says. “There’s a lot of underused female talent.” Continue reading
f you wanted to carve a dugout canoe from a log, is it better to chip out the inside first? Or should you first shape the outside and then scoop out the inside? The answer at the end may surprise you. Continue reading
Anybody out there in this youth-obsessed USA who wants to read yet another word about aging? Or, if we really are youth-obsessed, maybe we want to learn everything we can to slow the march away from youngness? That was Lauren Kessler’s gamble when she wrote Counterclockwise: One Midlife Woman’s Quest to Turn Back the Hands of Time (Rodale, 256 pages. $24.99). At the same time her seventh book of narrative nonfiction hit the market in the spring, Parade magazine, that popular panderer, featured a “Special Report on the Youth Hormone.” Yet another! Continue reading
Rarely has a film begun with a more perfect quote than the one that opens Stories We Tell. Borrowing a line from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, Michael Polley says, “When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion … It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all.” Continue reading
It’s easy to overlook some of the hidden — and often less expensive — gems amid the many choral and orchestral treasures the Oregon Bach Festival offers each summer. Continue reading
Matt Bishop, the lead singer of Hey Marseilles, likes to keep things free-flowing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the content found on the band’s latest release, Lines We Trace, which expands on the folk and orchestral elements found on their debut album, To Travels & Trunks, and incorporates heavy doses of dreamy pop-rock aesthetics a la Death Cab for Cutie. Continue reading
Way to go, Eugene-area musicians. EW’s Next Big Thing racked up 113 submissions by 75 artists and bands. On to phase two: On an undisclosed day this week in an undisclosed location, NBT judges will gather to pick which 16 acts will move on to the semi-finals at the Lane County Fair July 26-28. Look for smoke signals and announcements in our July 11 issue. Continue reading
Imagine what a band called Diarrhea Planet sounds like. If you’re guessing juvenile pop-punk — an auditory equivalent of a Seth Rogen movie — you’re pretty spot-on. The Nashville, Tenn.-based group’s 2013 release Loose Jewels (out now on fellow Nashville garage-rockers JEFF The Brotherhood’s label Infinity Cat Recordings) is 10 blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em nuggets of Ramones-esque punk; each track on the record clocks in at 2 minutes or under, with shouted choruses and breakneck guitar solos delivered at breathless speed. Continue reading
Whether you revere the red, white and blue, or just love a day off to drink a beer and eat a hot dog (real or tofu) — July 4 is a time to celebrate independence. And this year Eugene-based troublemakers PORK Magazine are putting the indie back in Independence Day with an all-day lineup of rock ‘n’ roll bands in The Whit. Continue reading