Artist Nick Cave watches a rehearsal of “Heard•NY” (sans horse costumes) in Vanderbilt Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Grand Central Terminal, Vanderbilt Hall
89 East 42nd St.between Lexington and Vanderbilt
March 25-31, free
Daily crossings at 11:00 and 2:00, daily tours at 3:30
www.creativetime.org
heard•ny rehearsal slideshow
Grand Central Terminal is famous for its cattle-like crowds — hence the overused cliché “It’s like Grand Central Station in here!” — but it’s about to take in a whole new kind of herd this week. Starting on Monday, March 25, and continuing through Sunday March 31, Nick Cave’s “Heard•NY” will add to all the hustle and bustle. The Missouri-born multidisciplinary artist, whose dual exhibits “Ever-After” at Jack Shainman and “For Now” at Mary Boone ran in Chelsea in the fall of 2011, is installing thirty of his life-size horse Soundsuits in Vanderbilt Hall, where they will be on view all week. But every day at 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, student dancers from the Ailey School will get inside the colorful suits and perform what are being called “Crossings,” making their through the world’s most famous train terminal in intricate movements developed by Cave and Chicago-based choreographer William Gill, with live music by harpists Shelley Burgon and Mary Lattimore and percussionists Robert Levin and Junior Wedderburn. (There will also be daily guided tours of the installation at 3:30.) The performances harken back to the days when horse-drawn carts were prevalent in the city, prior to the coming of the railways and automobiles. A collaboration between Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit as part of Grand Central Terminal’s ongoing centennial celebration, “Heard•NY” continues Cave’s exploration of human and animal ritual behavior and social and cultural identity, using found and recycled materials to create sculpture, video, and combinations of the two. The artist will discuss his latest work in relation to masquerade, performance, and dreaming in public at a special presentation, “A Conversation with Nick Cave,” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall on March 29 at 6:00 (free with museum admission), with Cave, Creative Time curator Nato Thompson, and Met curator Alisa LaGamma. “A herd of horses has been unleashed in Grand Central Terminal,” Thompson poetically explains in a statement. “Grazing in Vanderbilt Hall, they move at a pace perhaps too slow for the needs of a commuter, seeming to ask us to slow down. To take a second. To look. . . . In the frantic pace of our contemporary age, in the monumental machine that is Grand Central Terminal, we are temporarily placed outside ourselves by crossing paths with Cave’s creations. We can observe these horses in the same way that we look upon our fellow travelers in the Main Concourse, sensing the texture of time and the dizzying visual seduction that is the pleasure and bewilderment of our contemporary moment.” People are always rushing through train stations, which primarily serve as weigh stations at the beginning, middle, or end of a journey, but “Heard•NY” should make everyone stop for a few minutes, take a deep breath, and enjoy the surrounding fun, taking advantage of where they are rather than hurrying to get where they are going. (Coincidentally, madman Australian musician Nick Cave is also in New York City this week, playing the Beacon Theatre March 28-30 with his longtime band, the Bad Seeds.)