I’m not entirely sure why the performing arts take such a long summer break in New York. If you’re a sports fan, there’s something for each season, and summer is very busy for rock and pop tours. But if you like theater, dance, opera (and even the visual arts, as museums don’t open big shows), you’re out of luck in the hot months. There’s very little from late June to August, then suddenly everybody’s trying to open something or other between mid-September and November. It’s crazy, I tell ya! So what do we have to look forward to this fall? read more
There’s something special about seeing shows in the round, as opposed to facing performers the way you would in a regular theater or at the opera. The arrangement seems to add a 3-D effect, as if providing extra depth to our sense of vision. Suddenly we’re not mere spectators anymore, but potential participants. This is particularly acute at the seasonal spiegeltent that, for the past three years, has been erected right next to South Street Seaport (and the old Fulton Street fish market) in downtown Manhattan. The venue’s name comes from the Flemish term for “tent of mirrors”—and that’s exactly what it is. The hard-shell venue looks like a transplant from the 1920s (when its kind became popular in continental Europe, particularly the Netherlands and Belgium), which helps enhance the feeling of the audience being cut off from its pedestrian 2008 reality. Booths ring the outer perimeter, but clearly the place to be is on one of the chairs that surround the tiny stage. When the performers strut their stuff, you’re so close that you can see every little drop of perspiration on their brows, and almost feel their breath. And in the case of roller-skating duo the Willers, spinning at high velocity a mere inches from your head, it’s hard not to recoil in fear of getting hit by an errand wheel. Sorry, but you just can’t get that kind of physical thrill on YouTube. read more
Most of us don’t have the opportunity to be in Beijing for the Olympics, but Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s new work – The Copier, by Jill Johnson – might satisfy the interests of at least a few fans. The company’s dancers are essentially world-class athletes, capable of doing things most of us can’t even dream of. Like Olympians, they train and perform at an unbelievable level, their technique and musculature superb. These are easily observed as you can sit or stand very close as they hurtle at you or lock a pose mere inches away.
The Copier is part of Cedar Lake’s Installation Series, an innovative (for New York), less formal type of performance where the audience members are not seated in fixed positions, but may roam around the T-shaped platform stage, or sit on the floor or small risers. read more
Walking over to the shimmering New Museum to see the exhibition After Nature, I stepped over a dead baby bird on Prince Street, and then some oily treacle running down the Bowery. It was a suitable overture to the show, which “surveys a landscape… darkened by uncertain catastrophe.” This clever and terrifying collection of work from a broad timeframe is organized by Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions at the New Museum. (See this special online version of the exhibition; click on the underlined words to move organically through the artworks.)
An anchor for the show is Werner Herzog’s film, And A Smoke Arose—Lessons of Darkness, about the burning of the Kuwaiti old fields by retreating Iraqi troops after the 1991 Gulf War. Many of the other artworks seem to record the aftermath or precedence of some traumatic event. read more
I’m not sure at what point in Manhattan’s past the term “uptown” became interchangeable with “upscale,” and “downtown” was joined at the hip with “hip.”
But one thing that has happened as cross-cultural borders get fuzzier is that we are seeing so-called “uptown” performers—musicians you’d have expected in the past to see only at places like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center—now appearing in club settings where food and liquor are served. One new such event is the Monteverdi Coronation of Poppea being staged by Opera Omnia from August 21 to 27 at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street. Opera Omnia’s Wesley Chinn has chosen this more casual pub venue, where perhaps younger concertgoers will go with a group of friends in place of a standard bar night.
Also this week, the renowned Emerson String Quartet is performing—literally and figuratively—both uptown AND downtown. The quartet’s members are violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist David Finckel. Their downtown evening at Joe’s Pub on Wednesday, August 20, features a … read more
What’s real minimalism? It’s not there at all. And that’s exactly what happened to Rhys Chatham’s eagerly awaited piece for 200 electric guitars, A Crimson Grail, on Friday night: The performance (part of a Lincoln Center Out of Doors evening titled “Wordless Music: 800 Years of Minimalism—The Spiritual Transcendent”) was canceled at the last minute because of thunderstormy weather that made it dangerous to plug in all these axes. And boy the fans are angry! Not only are they upset the show was canceled, but they seem really mad that they had to endure the other two acts on the bill—Beata Viscera and Manuel Göttsching—before being told A Crimson Grail wouldn’t happen. (Typically, instead of causing a healthy ruckus on the scene of the crime, they bravely left in silence then took to the blogs.) read more
This week, SundayArts looked at Lincoln Center’s Out-of-Doors, which on Sunday 24 celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Roots of American Music series with a bill that’s nothing short of killer. “Roots music,” just like “world music,” has become a catch-all term that often means more in the marketing realm than in musical or aesthetic ones, so the bill in question is particularly exciting because it makes us reconsider what exactly we mean by “roots”: The bill is shared by Charlie Haden Family and Friends, starring the famous jazz bassist, Patti Smith, the Knitters, featuring John Doe, Exene Cervenka and DJ Bonebrake, and the Music Makers Blues Revue. All of them draw inspiration from the past, but then they put it through their personal musical food processors, and come up with music that’s everything but frozen in amber. read more
Spending an afternoon at the Sports Museum of America may not yet be on your list alongside the Met Museum or MoMA, but consider adding it. This new museum is located on the second floor of the Beaver Street side of 26 Broadway in lower Manhattan (adjacent to a massive gift shop), a location near ground zero chosen by Philip Schwalb (the museum’s founder and CEO) in part to symbolize resilience and strength. For the opening of this new museum, SundayArts recently sent Thirteen/WNET president Neal Shapiro to interview Philip Schwalb about the its creation collection.
The museum snakes through many galleries, each showcasing a different sport. The breadth of the material can be dizzying, but it’s well organized and edited. And if you don’t get that Wide World of Sports “thrill of victory, agony of defeat” (mainly the former) feeling by the time you leave, you’re a robot. read more
MoMA’s new exhibition, Home Delivery, is satisfying but kind of perverse for New Yorkers. They’ve installed five pre-fab, temporary homes in the parking lot adjacent to the main museum, between 53rd and 54th Streets. The lot has been used to accommodate queues of people waiting to enter, though that was primarily when the renovated museum opened a few years ago. But the irony for Gothamites is that open lots like this are largely distant fantasies, putting any realistic local application firmly out of reach.
But it’s fun to dream. The houses range in size from tiny to multi-story. One of the most successful designs is the “micro compact home,” not much bigger and just as functional as a railway sleeper car (from what I’ve seen in the movies!) or small trailer home. It’s well detailed, sleek, and looks completely ready to move into. And amazingly, it took just two hours to install, according to the exhibition’s blog. The architects are Richard Horden, Lydia Haack, and John Höpfner. read more
Recently, the Theater Development Fund (TDF) opened a third TKTS discount booth, its first in Brooklyn. The booths are beloved of New Yorkers and tourists for offering tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows at deep discounts. (The Brooklyn outpost will also offer tickets to Brooklyn events. Hmmmm, wonder if BAM and St. Ann’s Warehouse will pop up there…)
Anyway, the thing with the booths is that you’re never entirely sure as to what will be on offer, and you have to see the performance that very evening—though you can buy matinee tickets the previous day. In other words, the booths encourage spontaneity. And spontaneity is seriously endangered these days. read more
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