In our busy daily lives, we don’t often have the opportunity to be immersed in anything outside of the regular stuff… I mean transported, outlook altered, mood changed. I sampled a couple of cultural experiences offering such a chance this week, Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson’s Heaven at PS 122 which closed Oct 3 and Kurt Hentschläger’s Zee at 3LD Art & Tech Center.
As the audience entered, the tightly bunched group of performers walked very slowly around the periphery of the stage, quietly demanding all attention. Everything was white—the marley, the curtains that lined the walls, the columns (with pleated skirts around their bases), the dancers’ costumes, crafted of quilted fabric with Ace bandage accents. White lace even trimmed all of the industrial audience chairs. Lenore Doxsee designed the superb lighting; Emmett Ramstad the costumes; the two with Thorson designed the visual setting. read more
I think it’s safe to say that George Steel and Peter Martins are probably two of the happiest men in New York today.
Last Thursday morning, Steel and Martins—the general director of New York City Opera and Ballet Master in Chief of the New York City Ballet—invited members of the press to a preview of the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater (a.k.a. the New York State Theater), which is finally set to re-open on November 5 with American Voices, a program of American music. The gala reopening will honor Koch, who gave a $100 million lead gift to the joint capital campaign of the two companies, which both perform at the theater. Also at this morning’s preview was New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin—the city of New York also donated $26.9 million toward the rebuilding project. Steel joked that the opening-night gala will be an opportunity to hear “ballet, opera-theater, and Rufus Wainwright—all at one low price.” Martins quipped that the theater’s 40-foot legroom space would be maintained, and the theater’s changes meant that Tchaikovsky could now be heard “as he was meant to be heard.” After the jump, you can see some pictures of the newly renovated space. read more
Brazilian Deborah Colker’s company may rarely visit New York, but going by 4 Por 4 at New York’s City Center through Oct 25, the choreographer does not lack ambition. The program features four simply-titled dances with distinctive sets by different artists whose visions lay the thematic groundwork.
Each dance’s visual environment sets parameters for the choreography, whether it be mood or physical limitation. The opening dance, Corners, is just that—six mobile cutaway room corners that constrain the dancers or challenge them to escape and enter from above. Whether by intent or not, the womens’s slick gyrating movements and stiletto heels conjure images of go-go dancers. Men replace them (not wearing stilettos), eventually climbing upon the units and jumping down from what appears to be an alarmingly high distance. The dated music adds to the pseudo-club atmosphere that quickly becomes repetitive and is distinctly lacking in irony. read more
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so they say. So it is with ABT, which instead of two weeks at City Center this fall, did a handful of performances last week at Avery Fisher Hall. Making it perhaps even worse is seeing just one show, a reminder of how special their fall seasons can be, when they perform contemporary work and the younger company has a chance to be featured. This program included three new commissions by Alex Ratmansky, Aszure Barton, and Benjamin Millepied, all set to live music played onstage.
Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas (to Scarlatti) led off. read more
This morning I received a personal note from clarinetist José Franch-Ballester to let me know about his October 13 recital at Poisson Rouge with pianist/composer Adam Neiman. I first met José during the summer of 2008; you can read the text of our conversation for SundayArts here.
The Poisson Rouge concert mixes new and old music, but it’s of particular interest to me because it will feature two movements from Cookbook, a suite for clarinet and piano by the Brooklyn-based composer Kenji Bunch, who is also a violist. Both Neiman and Bunch are very active in the new-music scene, so if you’re free, this concert is worth checking out.
José, originally from Spain but now based in Philadelphia, sounded jazzed-up about the Poisson Rouge event—which includes works by Brahms, Poulenc, Chopin, Arturo Marquez, Neiman, and Bunch—and he e-chatted with me briefly about the music. read more
As I write this, it’s 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, and I’m listening to WNYC radio host Terrance McKnight count down the last 30 minutes before New York City’s all-classical WQXR becomes part of the WNYC public radio family. The change to a new radio frequency is being celebrated with a live broadcast of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concert, which features Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks,” Webern’s Fuga from Bach’s Musical Offering, the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and the world premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Concerto with Echoes. In a few minutes I will move my Bose radio pre-sets so that there is a reserved spot at 105.9 instead of 96.3, and here’s hoping the signal makes it over the airwaves to where I live. The is the main worry that traditional radio listeners may have about the change, other than duplication of radio hosts and programs during the hours when both WNYC-FM and WQXR hosted all-classical programs. (You can view a WQXR program schedule at the WNYC website and a bunch of other FAQs about the switch can be found at here.)
Terrance McKnight sounds pretty happy and proud of the fact that an all-classical station has been preserved in any form in the city of New York. read more
It’s hard to tell since we’re in the middle of it, but while the current dance scene may not be regarded as “golden,” it is undeniably rich. Part of the impressiveness of it all is the dazzling variety of styles and approaches. In a given week—say, this one—you can choose from a tango musical (Tanguera), a dance/theater interpretation of a film (Big Dance Theater), big ballet with work by contemporary choreographers (ABT), and large-scale heady stuff from Europe (Forsythe Company). Another company, Lucinda Childs, is performing restaged older work at the Joyce Theater. The main piece on the program, DANCE, is from 1979, permitting a glimpse of history in a vehicle that seems as fresh as anything out there, even if as a result of not having seen it for awhile.
Childs was one of the major figures in New York’s dance boom that took place in the 70s and 80s. She formed a company in 1973 which performed her rigorous, dense, graceful dances. read more
I want to say that words fail to describe Miguel Gutierrez’s latest work at DTW, Last Meadow, because it is humbling to think about its sheer scope, even more so to reduce it to a bunch of words after watching one performance. And yet, even though it is foremost experiential, there is a generous amount of structure to deliberate as well. It meanders, barrels ahead, stops for breaks, flows lyrically, evolves, and devolves over the duration of its packed 90 minutes.
Gutierrez somehow creates work that you feel in your gut and your heart, and at the same time your brain works feverishly to process the layers of text, subtext, examination of the performance form itself, and endless experimentation with the powerful, often overlooked areas of sound and lighting. The loose pretexts for this show involve James Dean’s films, the father figure in America, as America, and confusion as “a potentially transformative, sensory-enlivened state,” per the program. Gutierrez has never lacked for ambition, and at first glance, these topics would seem far too large and disconnected to allow for any cohesion whatsoever.
And yet Gutierrez links the opening scene ramblings of a depressed Cal, Dean’s character in East of Eden (the amazing Michelle Boulé in a tour de force performance), with his own straight-laced father character by means of his own long, rambling monologue whispered into a mic. read more
The summer of 2009 was the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock and the end of the sixties. It was also a short summer in New York City. Storms and gray skies reigned over the city for much of the months of June, July and August; but for those still hoping to let the sun shine in a little longer (figuratively or metaphysically) there is one way to reheat the memories of summers’ past: the current Broadway revival of Hair.
Set during the infamous “Summer of Love” of 1967, Diane Paulus’ staging of the Tony-winning musical by Galt MacDermot, James Rado and Gerome Ragni, has a giant sun painted on the back of the theater wall and it is hard not to be warmed by its rays which are metaphorically brought to life by the classic songs and a young, energetic cast.
The legendary original production of Hair began at the downtown Public Theatre in 1967 and then went to Broadway the following April where it ran for four years; this production debuted last summer in Central Park before re-opening on Broadway in March. read more
The Guggenheim’s Works & Process series has evolved into a commissioning entity producing some fascinating new work. Until recent years, it was more akin to a lecture/demo format, with a casual atmosphere where the dancers wore rehearsal clothes. It often featured excerpts of works that would be seen elsewhere, on a larger stage; some events still follow this format. But as the fall season’s inaugural show featuring choreography by Peter Quanz and Larry Keigwin demonstrated, it is capable of producing some inspired new choreographic work.
The program last weekend, Steve Reich Interpreted, featured dances set to the same Reich composition, Double Sextet (2007). Peter Quanz, of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, created the ballet In Tandem that seemed to stretch the physical limits of the distinctive, if oddball, theater at the Guggenheim, which is all circles, and quite small at that. read more
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