Sara Krulwich/The New York Times “Fela!,” with Sahr Ngaujah sharing the title role as the revolutionary singer....

From Ben Brantly in the New York Times.

There should be dancing in the streets. When you leave the Eugene O’Neill Theater after a performance of “Fela!,” it comes as a shock that the people on the sidewalks are merely walking. Why aren’t they gyrating, swaying, vibrating, in thrall to the force field that you have been living in so ecstatically for the past couple of hours?

The hot (and seriously cool) energy that comes from the musical gospel preached by the title character of “Fela!,” which opened on Monday night, feels as if it could stretch easily to the borders of Manhattan and then across a river or two. Anyone who worried that Bill T. Jones’s singular, sensational show might lose its mojo in transferring to Broadway can relax.

True, this kinetic portrait of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, a Nigerian revolutionary of song, has taken on some starry producers — including Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith — and shed 15 or 20 minutes since it was staged Off Broadway last year. But it has also acquired greater focus, clarity and intensity. In a season dominated by musical retreads and revivals, “Fela!,” which stars the excellent Sahr Ngaujah and Kevin Mambo (alternating in the title role), throbs with a stirring newness that is not to be confused with novelty.

For more…

The third issue of Volume 4 of The International Journal of the Arts in Society has now been published.

Volume 4, Number 3 contains:

• Confronting (Inter) Subjectivities through Arts-based Research: A Socio-critical Perspective to a Community-based Art Educational Research Project by Mira Helena Kallio.
• Aesthetic Considerations in Community Dance: A Practitioner’s Perspective by Mary Fitzgerald.
• Lake Macquarie Pavilions: Connecting the Community with Artists, Places and Spaces by Paola Favaro.
• Resilience and the Creative Soul: A Look at an Extraordinary Process by Pamela Braverman Schmidt and Debra Sheets.
• Reflections on Graffiti by Luz del Carmen Vilchis Esquivel.
• Arts in the City and Global Changes: The Demographical Challenge by Daniele Ietri and Peter Karl Kresl.
• The Issue of the Representation of the ‘Margins’ in Contemporary Art Exhibitions: The Case of the Thessaloniki Biennale by Aikaterini Karavida.
• “Brincas of Évora” Rituals of Carnival and Performance in the South of Portugal: Rural and Traditional Festivities in the Contemporary World by Isabel Bezelga and Lucilia Valente.
• Leaving the Safety Zone: Trans-cultural Encounters in Arts Education by David Bell and Tracy Rohan.
• Stencilled Collective Memories in the Cityscapes of Buenos Aires and Rosario in Argentina by Emilse B. Hidalgo.

• Engaging Visuality: Developing a University Course on Visual Culture by Kevin Tavin.
• Using the Arts to Impact Society: How the Art of Memoir Preserves the Legacy of Women Religious by Dan Vaillancourt.
• Disrupting a Regressive Cycle of Creativity by Kenneth R. Austin.
• Tolerating Art in a Liberal Society by Kathryn Brown.
• The Breakaway Seventies: Harald Szeemann and the Exhibition as Medium by Sarah Mills.
• Redefining the Notion of the Museum in the Digital Age: Web 2.0 Technologies and Contemporary Museum Theory by Seth Thompson.
• Cultural and Transcultural Transgression at the Border: “Art is about Misunderstandings that Happen at the Borderzone”, Guillermo Gómez-Peña by Shahrzad Mahootian and Dana Cole.
• New Design Technologies and Cultural Predispositions in International Engineering Posters by Linda P. Driskill.
• Semiotics and Pedagogy: Teaching Visual Thinking to Studio, Graphic Design and Art History Students by Liliana Leopardi.
• Models of Site-Related Art Practice: Critical Potential and Mobility in the Phenomenological Model of Site-Specific Art by Margaret Roberts.
• The Olympic Dream: Reconfiguring ‘Place’ and ‘Space’ Through Growth Machine Politics by Kimberly Baker.
• What is History for? by Terry Haydn.
• From Participatory Art Forms to Interactive Culture: Towards a Critique of the Aesthetic Economy by Teresa Cruz.
• Head First Slide: Creative Collaboration with a Homeless Community by Kurt Gohde.
• Teaching Shakespeare through the Arts: New Possibilities from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (London) by Linzy Brady.
• Reimagining Identity in the Design Classroom by Jan Fairbairn.
• Integrated Teaching and Learning by Lou Rizzolo and Peter Middleton.
• Visualisation and Globalisation in the Asia-Pacific Region: The Taipei Biennial 1996-2008 by Ming Turner.
• Visual Poetics: The Critical Impulse in Contemporary Street Art from Paris to Melbourne by Jacqueline Millner.
• The Bigger Picture: Digital Graffiti Transnationally by Kimberly Baker.
• Questioning Performing Arts Iconographic Research Methodology by Anna Mouat.
• The Importance of Open Ended Creative Materials in Teacher Education: Applications of the Reggio Emilia Approach by Polly Ashelman.
• The Young Child and the Masterpiece: A Review of the Literature on Aesthetic Experiences in Early Childhood by Lea Mai and Robyn Gibson.
• Expanded Painting in the Work of Helio Oiticica and Jessica Stockholder by Francesca Mataraga.
• Dangerous Edge: Culture and Contradiction in Graham Greene by Thomas O’Connor.
• Development of Critical Visual Literacy and Aesthetic Experience in Visual Communication: A Vision of Appreciation and Care for the Environment by Anahit Falihi and Linda Wason-Ellam.
• At the Intersection of Medicine and Art: Reflections on Anatomical Illustration by Nina Czegledy and Kim Sawchuk.
• The Communicative Dynamics of Painting: Art as Activism by Joan Marie Kelly.
• Artspeak: Articulating Artistic Process Across Cultural Boundaries through Digital Theatre by Yoni Prior, Manon van der Laaken and Rose van der Zwaard.
• From Immigration to Art Appreciation: The Extraordinary Case of the Morikami Museum in Florida by Ilaria Serra.

Volume 4, Number 2 contains:

• Elementary Students and Shakespeare: Inspiring Community and Learning by George Belliveau.
• The Social Function of Museums in the Digital Age by Susana Smith Bautista.
• Digital Explorations for Knowledge Building and Extending the Creative Capacities of Students by Nicola Yelland and Wai Man Vivienne Leung.
• Using Arts-Informed Inquiry as a Research Approach by Denise Stanley.
• From Passive White Cube Viewer to Active Black Cube User: Tracking Changes in Museum Environments via “Interactive” Installation Art (Analogue to Digital 1968-2008) by Cyrus Manasseh.
• Understanding Malaysia’s Political Scenario through Royce’s Concepts of Loyalty: An Interpretation from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens and Pericles by Arbaayah Ali Termizi and Florence Toh Haw Ching.
• The Plastic Analysis of Rembrandt’s “The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq” Also Known as “The Night Watch” by Leyla Varlik Senturk.

• Transcending Boundaries: “The Arts of Islam” Exhibition, Nasser Khalili Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, 2007 by Louise Ryan.
• Not a Person’s First Name Art Is: The Kavouras/Tracy Project by Robert Tracy.
• The Research and Development of Natural Color Batik Product in Community: Case Study in Namo Batik Group, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand by Saowanit Kanchanarat and Nuanchawee Sangchai.
• Toioho ki Apiti the Awakening of Creativity: A Pedagogy for Trans-national Art by Robert Hans George Jahnke.
• From the City of Bits to e-Topia: Taking the Thesis on Digitally-inclusive Regeneration Platforms of Information Society Full Circle by Mark Deakin and Sam Allwinkle.
• Cultural Trauma and Urban Performance: Ground Zero, ‘Tribute in Light’ and the Spectacle of Memory by Russell Rodrigo.
• Sensitive Skin: Exploring the Inter-activity of Street Art Through a Reading of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics by Court Williams.
• Dance and Social Inclusion: Facilitating the Process, Developing Graduate Employability by Victoria Hunter and Pauline Gladstone.
• Games at the Crossroads of Art and Technology: Pervasive Games as Laboratories for Understanding the Possible Impact of Pervasive Technologies on Agency and Narrative by Astrid Vicas.
• The Traces of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism) in Contemporary Turkish Art by Aygul Aykut.
• Colour Consoles My Soul, My Mind, My Heart, and Yours by Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja.
• The Value of Arts in Higher Education by Barbara Sellers-Young.
• Ways of Making, Seeing and Thinking about Art: Art Expression and Art Education by Alexandra Mouriki – Zervou and Antonis Vaos.
• Engaging Educated Islands: An Examination of the Collaborative Process of Creating the 2009 Venice Biennale Art Education Resource for Australian School Students by Margaret Mary Baguley, Kim Snepvangers and Gay McDonald.
• Israeli New-towns and Propaganda Films in the 1950s by Keren Filman and Iris Aravot.
• The Text Selection Process in the English Classroom: Factors Guiding, Influencing, and Limiting Teacher Selection by Giovanni Piccolo.
• Community Art as a Transformative Experience: Reflective Explorations of an Artist-in-Residence by Celia Reissig-Vasile.
• The Vampire and the Pirate: Art and Archetype in the Political Imagination by Kerric Harvey.
• The Intellectual and Inspiration: Sounds of Sense and Sensuality in Aschenbach’s Venice by Shersten Johnson.
• Landscapes of Everyday Aesthetics: Reflective Arts Performance and Special Needs by Lorna Ramsay.
• Exploration of Graphical Characteristics and Automatic Stylization in Chinese Painting by Zhang Jing and Wong Kam-Wah.
• The Fabric of Architecture: Constructed Garments by Jane Lawrence and Rachel Hurst.
• Performing Migration: Art and Site-Specificity at the U.S.-Mexico Border by Ila Sheren.
• Replicas for the Rest of Us by Sondra Bacharach and David Eng.
• Designed to Last: Striving toward an Indigenous American Aesthetic by Heather Ahtone.
• Leadership in the Theatre: A Study of the Views of Practitioners on Effective and Ineffective Styles by Anthony Rhine.
• Resonance of the Republic: England 1660 and France 1831: The Relationship of Research to the Construction of the Exhibition, Tête-à-Tête, Musée des Beaux Art, Nîmes, Nov 2007 – Feb 2008 by Peter Seddon.
• Techno Trans-nationalism by Pauline de Souza.
• Skeletons Unmasked: Exotica in the Work of James Ensor by Ola Charlotte Robbins.
• The Orange Revolution: Children’s Self-Expressions through their Artworks by Joanna Black and Orest Cap.
• ‘When Correctly Viewed, Everything is Lewd’-Art and Censorship in New Zealand by Ursula Cheer.
• Bringing Digital Media into the Classroom: A Case Study Investigating Artists Working with Teachers by Anna Goulding.
• Plato’s Republic: The Relationship between Imitation in Art and in Actual Conduct by Uchenna Onuzulike.