As GALA director José Luis Arellano sees it, Cervantes invented the modern world.

The Shakespeare in Washington festival continues this week with the visit of the Kirov Ballet to the Kennedy Center Opera House. This year, the resident troupe of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater has brought its traveling production of Leonid Lavrovsky’s choreography of Romeo and Juliet. Sergei Prokofiev wanted to premiere the sublime music of this ballet (op. 64) at the Mariinsky in the 1930s, but the theater ultimately balked. The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow also accepted…

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, Volver, was screened in a few suburban locations last month, but it has just opened on two screens at the E Street Cinema. Fans of the legendary Spanish director do not need a review to tell them to see this film. However, those who do not know Almodóvar’s work, or who have had a bad experience with it, should give this excellent movie a chance. It has all of the positive…

Even though he didn’t make the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cut, Rembrandt has an entire line of art supplies and even a toothpaste to his name. Though criticized in his time for his technique of scraping into still-wet paint, Rembrandt has evolved to become one of today’s most widely-known artists. Rembrandt’s work is the subject of the show Strokes of Genius: Rembrandt’s Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery. The exhibit contains 190 pieces by…

This DCist has tried to push dance on you people before, and since we apparently never learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to push dance on you again. Yes, this week you have a chance to see some unusual and beautiful forms of dancing, and we recommend that you take advantage of it. We frankly don’t understand the aversion of some people to ballet: what is not enjoyable about watching beautiful people with toned…