Biba Bell rarely makes dances for traditional theatres. She prefers to work in the world (in the wild), in unique spaces that she gets to know, enlivens, and, in her words, “complicates” with dance.

It's been eight days since the Detroit production of Bliss, the titanic performance installation staged by Michigan Opera Theatre in the ruins of the old Michigan Theatre, and here I am still bobbing along happily in its wake.

To María, librarians carried a responsibility to stand up and be counted, to infiltrate the halls of power armed with values, strategies, and resources that would advance the connectedness and wellbeing of common people.

An important dimension to community life in Lafayette Park is the fact that the population here has long been economically and racially mixed, a phenomenon that gets remarkably close to the real objectives of modernism.

We recently ventured to Midland, two hours north of Detroit, to tour the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio, and to Flint, where we visited Lawrence Halprin's Riverbank Park.