Arts & Culture
Turn up the Music
Totem Star's new home expands its footprint by tenfold
“The studio was usually full,” says Totem cofounder, star singer, songwriter, and producer Daniel Pak. “And then we’d have a duo playing guitar out on the stairs, folks rapping in the hallway or practicing in the dance studios. It was a beautiful thing, but we needed more room.”
‘The Buddhist Bug’ and ‘The Red Chador’
Artist Anida Yoeu Ali’s work looks to absurdity and humor for deeper understanding
Anida Yoeu Ali draws inspiration from her personal experience as a first-generation American of mixed Malay, Cham, Khmer, and Thai ancestries. Born in 1974 in Battambang, Cambodia, she fled with her family to the U.S. and was raised in Chicago. Now, she serves as a senior artist-in-residence at University of Washington Bothell and is the co-founder of Studio Revolt, an independent media lab. Her show, on view through June at Seattle Asian Art Museum, is the first solo exhibition for an artist since the museum reopened in 2020.
Teatro ZinZanni is Seattle’s Moulin Rouge
The cabaret is celebrating 25 years
The real star of the show, though, was the tent itself. Known as “Palais Nostalgie,” the 285-seat spiegeltent is an antique cabaret tent decked out in red-velvet curtains, mirrored walls, and carved wooden booths. Originally used as a traveling pavilion in the early 1900s, it is one of the few surviving such tents in existence. Norm Langill, the creator of Teatro ZinZanni, first encountered one during a trip to the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. He was instantly transformed by the spiegeltent’s mystique, and after learning about their history and how they were being used for dinner cabarets throughout Europe, he deftly managed to acquire one and have it shipped here to Seattle.
Celebrating Seattle
Honoring the driving forces creating change in our community
Seattle magazine has consistently posited that “what happens in Seattle impacts the rest of the world.” This issue’s cover subject is one such example of the outsized influence Seattle’s thought leaders can have on our culture and shared history.
Author Daniel James Brown was someone whom I fondly remember knowing while at Microsoft during the pre-internet era. He was a quiet and contemplative thinker with a reputation for humility and hard work, and such is the very ethos that has come to define how we see ourselves in the Pacific Northwest. When very few tech retirees could reboot to wholly non-tech careers, Daniel thrived as an author of multiple best sellers.
‘We Are Groot’
Guardians of the Galaxy tops superhero genre
Imagine hanging out with Bruce Wayne. Or talking photography with Peter Parker. Perhaps brash adventurer Peter Quill is more to your taste. We love the action and spectacle of superhero movies. In Washington state, we particularly enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy — the state’s top superhero movie of all time. A recent study combed through…
When Bad Meat is a Good Thing
Choreographer Alice Gosti’s work dives deep
For those watching, it quickly became clear that the group wasn’t a sports team but rather some kind of performance troupe dancing along the footpaths, under the white arches of the Pacific Science Center, and in Memorial Stadium’s concrete breezeways. The bright red jerseys were all emblazoned, front and back, with the same word: MALACARNE.
Seattle’s Guide to New Year’s Eve
A full slate of events to welcome 2024
The center of Seattle’s New Year’s Eve festivities is at the Seattle Center. More specifically, the T-Mobile New Year’s at the Needle. This year’s expanded 18-minute show will begin at 11:53 p.m. with a performance of 500 drones produced for the second year by Sky Elements. The fireworks show by Pyro Spectacular by Souza, recognized as “the largest structurally launched firework show in North America” according to a statement from the Space Needle, kicks off 2024 at the stroke of midnight.
The Queen of Neon
Bea Haverfield’s colorful signage helped define Seattle
It all started when I randomly stumbled upon a reference to a female artist who reportedly designed some of Seattle’s most iconic signs back in the 1940s and ’50s. Nothing substantial had been written about this person, but after some preliminary detective work, I was able to contact her surviving daughter, Kathleen Wolff, who was thrilled that someone had finally taken notice of her late mother’s work.
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