Pia Catton is a journalist and arts critic who contributed cultural commentary and reviews to The Weekly Standard over two decades, from 1996 to 2017. Her writing for the magazine focused extensively on the performing arts, including ballet, dance, and theater. She has also served as an arts and culture editor at The Wall Street Journal.
In 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the aim was to protect the animals from “capture, branding, harassment, or death.” The law hailed wild horses as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.”
Of all the unanswerable questions in the universe, there’s one that brings the brightest minds of Broadway and Hollywood to their knees: What makes one musical or movie musical a hit and another a flop? A veritable ocean of cocktails flows over this question. But during the 1940s, the Hollywood…
Of all the unanswerable questions in the universe, there’s one that brings the brightest minds of Broadway and Hollywood to their knees: What makes one musical or movie musical a hit and another a flop? A veritable ocean of cocktails flows over this question. But during the 1940s, the Hollywood…
As if America isn't going through enough already, here's a news flash: Our nation is to blame for propagating the story that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy from China. This "persistent" whopper was, in no uncertain terms, "conjured up by the Americans," writes Kantha Shelke. In 1929, an…
As if America isn’t going through enough already, here's a news flash: Our nation is to blame for propagating the story that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy from China. This "persistent" whopper was, in no uncertain terms, "conjured up by the Americans," writes Kantha Shelke. In 1929, an…
Marie-France Pochna
New York
There are reasons enough to take a swing through the French Riviera, but for the art lover, here's one more. The palm-tree-lined town of Le Cannet, just north of Cannes, has established the first and only museum devoted to the painter Pierre Bonnard. Located in a classic villa, the museum will be…
The marriage of Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady may look like an even celebrity match: two beautiful, talented millionaires who will be photographed in good times and bad, till death (or the ill effects of mega-fame) do them part. But in terms of cultural relevance, she is by far the bigger star.
When a choreographer's centennial year rolls around, the public can count on a few sure things. There will be at least one celebratory video montage, plus one earnest, yet chummy panel discussion. A few rarely seen ballets will be performed throughout a year that will culminate in a blowout evening…
Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?
Paris
Nureyev
Narrative ballets aren't really designed to make you think. They're more about delivering the works--from dazzling pointe work onstage to waterworks pouring from the eyes of sentimental fans. Even when a choreographer transposes a piece of literature to the stage, any grappling with the text tends…
I DO NOT APPROVE OF fantasy football as a topic of conversation: With all the real-life sports out there, why noodle over make-believe match-ups? But now, I sort of get it. And it's because of American Ballet Theatre's fall season at New York's City Center. These days, the company is so loaded with…
THE BOLSHOI BALLET'S RECENT TWO-week engagement at New York's Metropolitan Opera House was like a marvelous party. There were good stories, feisty politics, funny jokes (albeit, ballet jokes), and lots of dancing. Oh, and there was an orgy--a proper Roman one, with satyrs and red-haired courtesans.…
WHAT A SUMMER OF LOVE this has been. Tom Cruise fell for the nubile actress Katie Holmes, just in time for the premiere of War of the Worlds. Brad Pitt became smitten with his costar Angelina Jolie, conveniently prior to their film Mr. & Mrs. Smith. And in light of such calculated coupling, it's a…
CULTURAL CRITICS PRONOUNCE, almost daily, that America is going to hell in a handbasket. But no one has done so as memorably, or as successfully, as Allan Bloom did in 1987 with The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom told America that her professors and parents had been so corrupted that the young…
STIRRED BY THE DISCOVERY of soccer moms, feminists are now on the lookout for minivan madonnas. "Family feminism," a new twist in America's most malleable social movement, seeks to enlist women who want to listen to their maternal urges rather than ignore them. Yes, with a PTA card in one hand and…
Judy Chicago has written her second autobiography, Beyond the Flower (Viking, 282 pages, $ 27.95). If you missed the first, don't worry; Beyond the Flower has everything you could possibly want to know about her. Chicago (nee Cohen) is best known for The Dinner Party, an "installation" that made…