CoolCleveland has spent the last 20 years putting our readers in touch with cool things to do, cool artists and entrepreneurs, and cool venues. And as always, we hope you spend a moment or two reviewing our curated recommendations below, then put your phone down, and get out there and experience our region.Verb Ballets pulls together two new premieres and a re-think of an older piece. Money and the arts go hand in hand at the Cuyahoga Arts & Culture board meeting at Trinity Cathedral, which is open to you, the public. Pizza, pop, pivo & polka all coexist at a pre-Kurentovanje party.
Soul, jazz, electronic and spoken word all combine at a free show featuring Mourning [A] BLKStar. Eat, drink & socialize at Bike Cleveland’s winter social in Shaker Hts. Linda Hochevar and Frank Moravcik join forces on accordion at the Polka Hall of Fame’s Sweetheart Ball in Willoughby. What can we pair you up with?
Cleveland’s BorderLight Theatre + Fringe Festival, taking place August 3-5 in the Playhouse Square area, will be strictly a Fringe Festival this year, featuring cutting-edge and independent performers and ensembles in all disciplines. Artists can apply now through February 28. Read more
For decades, Chagrin Falls has kicked off the summer with its Memorial Day weekend Blossomtime Festival. For the last four years it’s had a contest for artists to design its poster. Applications are open now through April 1 and yes, there’s a cash prize too.Read more
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History invites you to join them for a family-friendly event featuring crafts, cocktails, and Caudata Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology Roberta Muehlheim will give a presentation on the disease ecology, evolutionary ecology, and adaptations of one of Ohio’s smallest native amphibians—the salamander.
Muehlheim will also discuss biodiversity loss and how you can play a role in helping to preserve and protect biodiversity at this exciting event on Wed 2/22 at 6PM. Tickets are available now. Read more.
Cleveland dance ensemble Verb Ballets has been hard at work preparing for their next concert at the Breen Center on Saturday February 18: it’s never performed two of the dances it will present and the third re-thinks an older repertoire piece.
Rising choreographer Levi Marsman is creating a brand-new work on the Verb dancers, and our dance writers, Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas, attended a rehearsal to learn how that piece is shaping up. They also talked to Cameron Basden of the Arpino Foundation, which oversees the legacy of the late Gerald Arpino of the Joffrey Ballet. It’s granted Verb permission to stage his Celebration, the first company other than the Joffrey to perform it. And Richard Dickinson has re-choreographed his Four Last Songs, set to music by Strauss, and last performed in 2013, for the current company. Read more
According to some media accounts, Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII was the Blackest Super Bowl ever. It was sufficiently Black to cause many on the right to complain about its “wokeness” — a word meaning “too many Black folks.” But the 500-pound gorilla in the corner is the legacy of Colin Kaepernick.
Like all the Civil Rights activists who stand on the shoulders of Rosa Parks, whose 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus sparked a movement that changed America, every minority performer on the Super Bowl stage, along with the starting quarterbacks, coaches and assistant coaches and NFL officials of color, should recognize that they stand on Kaepernick’s shoulders or perhaps more appropriately, on the knee that he took back in 2016.Read more
