A timeless holiday classic is set to get an immersive and unforgettable makeover at Davenport's Outing Club from December 4 through 13, with the professional talents of Ballet Quad Cities delivering their brand-new yuletide offering The Nutcracker in a Round – a series of holiday dance vignettes that employ Tchaikovsky's legendary The Nutcracker as inspiration, but pay tribute to that ballet in never-before seen, or heard, ways.
This feature lists all headlines with links to the articles by date/time published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
A special, holiday-themed presentation in the Davenport and Rock Island Public Libraries' World War I lecture series, the virtual program The Christmas Truce of 1914 will, on December 16, invite viewers to learn more about the inspiring event that found roughly 100,000 British and German troops involved in informal cease-fires along the Western Front.
Delivered as part of the Davenport Public Library's virtual 3rd Thursday at Hoover's Presidential Library & Museum programming, the museum's archivist Craig Wright will present the December 17 Zoom webinar The 1929 Christmas Eve White House Fire, telling of the four-alarm emergency that led to dozens of engines and ladder companies working to extinguish the inferno.
Lars Rehnberg, vice-president for Davenport's seasonal tavern Miracle at the Freight House, discussed the pop-up venue's origins, operations, and challenges in this pandemic year, along with the yuletide décor that might make Disneyland only the second-happiest place on Earth. We spoke on Wednesday, December 2.
Last month (issue #979), the Reader published 11 questions relative to COVID-19 for the Scott County and Rock Island County Health Departments. Both departments deferred to Scott County Medical Director Dr. Louis Katz for responses and we are pleased to share his unedited responses, along with the original questions, below. (For my responses to these answers with additional supporting documentation, see "Questioning Unreliable PCR Testing Is Hardly Trivial.")
We are very appreciative of Scott and Rock Island Counties' Health Departments' participation. I disagree with Dr. Katz referring to our questions concerning cycle thresholds in PCR testing as “trivial.”
This precise controversy is quickly gaining in prominence and urgency. (For responses to all eleven questions we posed, see "Dr. Katz Answers 11 COVID-19 Questions.")
Illinois House Democratic Caucus Chair Kathleen Willis (D-Addison) told me last week that her decision to oppose Speaker Michael Madigan’s reelection was a process that she’s been struggling with since the summer. Willis became the 19th House Democrat to declare opposition to Madigan, putting him six votes shy of the 60 he needs to win.
On page nine of last week’s federal indictment of four people accused of conspiring to bribe House Speaker Michael Madigan with favors from ComEd is this heading: “Defendants and Relevant Individuals. ”But the first person listed is not one of the defendants. “Public Official A was the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” the list begins.
With the announcement by Representative Bob Morgan (D-Deerfield) earlier this month that he will not vote to reelect Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan in January, the opposition numbered eight House Democrats, with at least a few more privately leaning their way. They’ll need 13 or 14 Democrats, depending on final general-election results, to deprive Madigan of the speaker’s gavel. So, they may need some help to get over the hump. And there’s one person outside the House who may have enough votes to tip the balance either way.
Taking the Antoinette Perrys as our inspiration, we theatre lovers at the Reader have decided that Our Show Must Go On, too. So even though we've been given far fewer titles to choose from than usual, with our own categories and the excellent work within abbreviated out of necessity, we happily welcome you, ladies and gentlemen, to the Fifth-Annual Reader Tony Awards!
Described by DC Theatre Theatre as “a magical experience” and by Goldstar magazine as “a fresh spin on Charles Dickens' beloved holiday tale,” playwright Paul Morella's one-man adaptation of the yuletime classic A Christmas Carol will be viewable from November 27 through December 13 in a virtual presentation hosted by Iowa City's Riverside Theatre, a production directed by the venue's co-founder Ron Clark and starring popular Iowa performer John William Watkins.
A lauded performer and playwright serves as the latest guest in the University of Dubuque's Live(stream) with Heritage Center series, with the virtual December 17 program boasting an interview with Patrick Dewane, who will also performs scenes from his forthcoming, holiday-themed sequel to his critically acclaimed one-man muli-media show The Accidental Hero.
Reviews by Jeff Ashcraft, Patricia Baugh-Riechers, Audra Beals, Pamela Briggs, Dee Canfield, Kim Eastland, Emily Heninger, Heather Herkelman, Paula Jolly, Victoria Navarro, Mark Ruebling, Mike Schulz, Joy Thompson, Oz Torres, Brent Tubbs, Jill (Pearson) Walsh, and Thom White.
It feels gauche to compile a year-end list of music in 2020, a year in which the daily conditions of the music industry suffered a pandemic-borne cataclysm and the future of live music was subsumed
2020's best local release is an apocalyptic album for an apocalyptic year. Condor & Jaybird have distilled their end-time vision in a sweeping, prog-tinged psych-rock masterpiece, coating a heavy pill with pop hooks, dancing guitars, and infectious rhythms. The Glory is an aptly-named document of Condor & Jaybird's maturation as musicians and songwriters, and the closing third of a trilogy begun by The Power and The Kingdom.
Audiences are invited to enjoy a beautiful and memorable seasonal celebration from the comfort of their homes when Davenport's Adler Theatre, on December 15, presents A Virtually Celtic Christmas, a festive holiday concert filmed at the National Opera House of Ireland and featuring the ethereal voice of top Irish tenor Michael Londra as backed by the Irish Concert Orchestra.
Forty-four years after its release, the album that turned Styx into rock superstars – 1977's The Grand Illusion – will enjoy a thrilling live performance when the band's co-founder and his touring outfit Dennis DeYoung & the Music of Styx bring The Grand Illusion 40th Anniversary Tour to Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on March 13, an event boasting iconic, chart-topping songs such as “Come Sail Away,” “Fooling Yourself,” and the unforgettable title track.
An American Idol champion and Iowa native returns to her home state on December 19 in Maddie Poppe's Acoustic Christmas, a festive holiday concert featuring seasonal tunes and songs from the artist's albums Songs from the Basement and Whirlwind, the latter described by Guitar Girl magazine as boasting “unforgettable melodies and cultivated songcraft.”
You kind of have to feel bad these days for David Fincher fanatics who genuflect at the brutal, testosterone-fueled altars of Seven and Fight Club and, to a lesser degree, Zodiac. They finally get their first new Fincher feature since 2014's Gone Girl, and it turns out that in order to even slightly enjoy the director's Mank (which premiered on Netflix this past Friday), they're required to have a pretty healthy working knowledge of Citizen Kane.
The animated-comedy sequel The Croods: A New Age is like an elongated, best-ever episode of The Flintstones, and I mean that as a compliment even though I never really cared for The Flintstones.
This morning, a New York Times article stated that eBay has seen a 215-percent increase in the sales of chess sets and accessories since the October debut of Netflix's limited series. If it's indeed true that The Queen's Gambit is responsible for the uptick, I wouldn't be surprised if similar sales spikes are soon reported for mod mini-dresses, digital compilations of '60s pop hits, and boyfriends who look like Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter movies.
Now playing at area theaters.
Presented by the area nonprofit Living Proof Exhibit, an organization that celebrates the creative spirit of those impacted by cancer, the eagerly awaited annual exhibition A Visualization of Hope will bring messages of strength and resilience to Davenport's Figge Art Museum October 3 through December 13 (with the exhibit's virtual programming beginning September 24), with Living Proof Exhibit's collection boasting beautiful and evocative works by cancer survivors living within a 200-mile radius of the Quad Cities.
Watercolors and landscapes and rocks (oh my!) will all be on display in the latest Quad City Arts International Airport Gallery exhibits, with the gallery, from November 4 through January 4, showcasing landscape paintings by Nancy Lindsay, botanical watercolors by Marcia Whitmore, and a selection of fossils and minerals courtesy of Augustana College's Fryxell Geology Museum.
Rarely considered pieces of furniture will be made fascinating in a new Figge Art Museum exhibit, with the Davenport venue, from September 12 through January 17, showcasing fully functional artworks in Seating by Design – an exhibition the museum's executive director Michelle Hargrave says should “inspire ideas and new ways to consider the things that we are sitting on so much. Particularly nowadays while we're spending so much time in our homes.”
As home to one of the largest collections of Haitian art in the United States, the Figge Art Museum is set to celebrate its vast assemblage of beautiful, evocative, fascinating pieces in Haitian Masterworks, a new exhibition, on display from November 7 through January 24, that will focus on prevalent themes in Haitian art including spirituality, transformation, the natural world, everyday life, and Haitian history.
What part of yourself must you hide or bury for another to survive? This question is at the core of the Figge Art Museum's new exhibition T.J. Dedeaux-Norris Presents the Estate of Tameka Jenean Norris, an October 24 through January 31 showcase of the (living) University of Iowa assistant professor's work, and an exhibit designed to explore the complex legacy of an artist’s identity after their passing.
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