The first thing you notice walking into Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory is its awesome scale.  In a city where every nook and cranny seems to be spoken for, the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall looks like it might have landed from outer space.  Completed in 1881, ...

When Yowei Shaw was in college, her parents' relationship started to change. Maybe it was empty nest syndrome, maybe it was a midlife crisis — she's not quite sure. But after taking dance lessons on board a cruise ship, her parents turned their lives upside down for the tango ...

Government budgets are slashing arts funding across the country so we asked our listeners to tell us about the cuts their communities face. Is "taxation equal to theft," as one listener wrote, or should the art funding go on?

Let us know local artist or cultural institution is ...

We're celebrating 10 years on the air by looking back at some of our favorite interviews about creative inspiration. Sculptor Richard Serra talks about falling in love with steel; choreographer Elizabeth Streb takes on gravity with 30-foot falls; and a rock legend collaborates with a young bluegrass star to make a Grammy-winning album.

We're celebrating 360's first decade on the air with the publication of the book Spark: How Creativity Works, by long-time Studio 360 executive producer Julie Burstein. This week, Julie and Kurt talk about falling in love with the stuff you work with. Featuring stories from Elizabeth Streb, Stanley Kunitz and Ben Burtt.

(To hear our original full-length interviews with those artists go here.)

Listen to full interviews with Ben Burtt, Stanley Kunitz, and Elizabeth Streb.

The frontman for Antony and the Johnsons says everything changed for him when he discovered the Japanese modern dance, butoh. Hegarty talks about the butoh master, Kazuo Ohno, and describes his growing fascination with the minimalist and sometimes grotesque art form.

Can the arts actually improve health care? Kurt gets some answers from Jill Sonke, director of the Center for the Arts in Healthcare at the University of Florida. She explains how the arts have been carving out a place in the healing process.

Broadway audiences were probably not familiar with the term “choreopoem” when “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” arrived at the Booth Theatre 1976.  But Ntozake Shange’s dynamic and revealing series of poems (set to music and movement) was a giant hit, winning a Tony and a Drama Desk Award.  “All sorts of people who might never have set foot in a Broadway house—black nationalists, feminist separatists—came to experience Shange’s firebomb of a poem,” remembers Hilton Als, now the theater critic for The New Yorker.

The first time I heard the Tom Tom Club's song 'Genius of Love' off their eponymous debut album I thought  'Hey, that’s Mariah Carey's song.' Turns out I was only half-right.  Back in 1995, when I was twelve, Mariah Carey's hit 'Fantasy' was playing on every Top 40 station and I was choreographing dance routines to it with my friends. The rhythms in Tom Tom Club's upbeat 1981 hit made 'Genius' a hip hop sampling favorite too.  Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur and T.I. have all used snippets of the track. Mariah Carey created 'Fantasy' as a remix and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five made 'It's Nasty'.

While the economy decays, there's no shortage of work for belly dancers in Detroit. The city has one of the largest Arab populations outside of the Middle East and a vast network of dancers. Martina Guzman explores the belly dance scene and the conflicts the community ...

Darci Kistler was only 15 years old when she started dancing at the School of American Ballet, and she was the last protégé of the legendary George Balanchine. That was almost 30 years ago, and this weekend marks Kistler's final performance with the New ...

Earlier this week, Darci Kistler swung by Studio 360 on her way home from rehearsal. A beloved soloist with the New York City Ballet, Kistler was the last principal chosen by ballet giant George Balanchine, before his death in 1983.  After a laudable 30-year career, she'll ...

Twyla Tharp created and choreographed the new Broadway show, "Come Fly Away," set entirely to the music of Frank Sinatra. She tells Kurt how she dismissed conventional dialogue, instead creating a narrative driven exclusively by the dancers' movement.

Earlier this year, we blogged the spectacular season opener of the Metropolitan Opera: a gorgeous (and perhaps scandalous) production of Bizet’s 'Carmen.' I was fortunate to see the final performance last weekend -- and while  I must admit that opera has never been one of my ...

On site at her dance laboratory in Brooklyn, Elizabeth Streb tells Kurt about the genesis of her "extreme choreography." She says it started in her childhood, hunting and fishing with her father. Her new book is called, Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action ...

From the pathos of "The Deer Hunter" to the silliness of "more cow bell" on "Saturday Night Live," Christopher Walken has covered about as much ground as one actor can. He's currently on Broadway starring in "A Behanding in Spokane." He tells Kurt about ...

The prize for best booty-shakin' performance of SXSW in Austin last week goes to Chicago rapper Kid Sister.  Her first single, 'Pro Nails' (featuring Kanye West), is just the tip of iceberg. Ultraviolet takes the best of high-energy 80s dance hip-hop and shoots it ...

We all know that the Internet has its drawbacks. (Why do I know that Sandra Bullock's husband cheated on her?  Why does a certain relatives think I enjoy videos of kittens?)  But its power to aggregate—pulling material from across time and around the world—can still knock your socks off.  I ...

It's Friday night, and I'm sweating on the dance floor. Am I at some chic nightclub? Not exactly. Instead of a techno beat, the sounds of fiddles, guitars, recorder, dulcimer, and banjo hang in the air.

Okay, I confess: I love Contra dancing. It's a rowdy mix ...