Yearly Archives: 2011

FAB! FESTIVAL

Dan Fishback will be at the Fab! Festival performing songs that did not make it into his upcoming Dixon Place show, THIRTYNOTHING

East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Saturday, September 24, free, 1:00 – 5:00
www.fabnyc.org

The FAB! Festival, sponsored by the nonprofit Fourth Arts Block, which supports arts and culture in the East Village, features a host of free live performances, site-specific installations, arts and crafts booths, film screenings, theater previews, yoga classes, writing workshops, and food vendors this afternoon from 1:00 to 5:00 on East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave. Among the highlights are a double feature of Celia Rowlson-Hall’s Three of a Feather, a short film with choreography by Monica Bill Barnes, and Marc Kirsch’s TenduTV; WOW! Wow Cabaret with JZ Bich, Micia Mosely, and Kim Howard; dance presentations by Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Theater, Classical Contemporary Ballet Theatre, Suzanne Beahrs and Dancers, Theater in Asylum (Frankenstein), Sobers & Godley (The Lesser of Two Sobers & Godley), Maia Ramnath and Constellation Moving Company, Li Chiao-Ping Dance, JT Lotus Dance Company Beyond, Rod Rodgers Dance Company, and others; cabaret and poetry from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Dixon Place, the New York Neo-Futurists, La MaMa E.T.C., and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, including a sneak peek at Dan Fischback’s thirtynothing; and much, much more.

SUNSHINE AT MIDNIGHT: THE WARRIORS

The Warriors will be making their was to the Lower East Side for a pair of midnight screenings at the Landmark Sunshine

THE WARRIORS (Walter Hill, 1979)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Friday, September 23, and Saturday, September 24, 12 midnight
212-330-8182
www.landmarktheatres.com
www.warriorsmovie.co.uk

At a huge gang meeting in the Bronx (actually shot in Riverside Park), the Warriors are wrongly accused of having killed Cyrus (Roger Hill), an outspoken leader trying to band all the warring factions together to form one huge force that can take over the New York City borough by borough. The Warriors then must make it back to their home turf, Coney Island, with every gang in New York lying in wait for them to pass through their territory. This iconic New York City gang movie is based on Sol Yurick’s novel, which in turn is loosely based on Xenophon’s Anabasis, which told of the ancient Greeks’ retreat from Persia. Michael Beck stars as Swan, who becomes the de-facto leader of the Warriors after Cleon (Dorsey Wright) gets taken down early. Battling Swan for control is Ajax (Sex and the City’s James Remar) and tough-talking Mercy (Too Close for Comfort’s Deborah Van Valkenburgh). Serving as a Greek chorus is Lynne (Law & Order) Thigpen as a radio DJ, and, yes, that young woman out too late in Central Park is eventual Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl. Among the cartoony gangs of New York who try to stop the Warriors are the roller-skating Punks, the pathetic Orphans, the militaristic Gramercy Riffs, the all-girl Lizzies, the ragtag Rogues, and the inimitable Baseball Furies. Another main character is the New York City subway system. There’s nothing quite like The Warriors; be sure to come out and play at these midnight screenings — especially before Tony Scott’s upcoming remake sours us all.

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL

Sean Boggs’s “Blue Monster” is among the many multimedia projects at this year’s DUMBO Arts Festival

Multiple venues in DUMBO
September 23-25, free
www.dumboartsfestival.com

The fifteenth annual DUMBO Arts Festival begins today, kicking off a weekend of live performances, art exhibitions, site-specific projections and installations, and just about anything else you can think of inside and outside of the thriving neighborhood Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Such locations as St. Ann’s Warehouse, Tobacco Warehouse, Smack Mellon, Superfine, and Brooklyn Bridge Park will host Tajna Tanovic, the Great Small Works Procession, the Jack Grace Band, a panel discussion on immersive surfaces, the White Wave Dance Company, the “Runaway Cape-Cart,” Janet Biggs’s “Wet Exit” multimedia presentation on the East River, “Kafkaesque Hammock,” the “Samsara” scroll, arm wrestling, a Mobile Tea Garden, “The Dumpster Project,” a series of virtual pavilions, Sean Boggs’s “Blue Monster,” the Fisher Ensemble’s Kocho, a steel cage Battle Royal, “Foop,” Carl Skelton and Luke DuBois’s interactive “Sweet Stream Love’s River,” readings by Sapphire and Samantha Thornhill, Bubby’s Pie Social, the newly moved and reopened Jane’s Carousel, and art projects just about everywhere you look, in stores, on street corners, in lobbies, and up in the sky.

WILCO / NICK LOWE

Rumsey Playfield, Central Park
Enter at 72nd St. & Fifth Ave.
Thursday, September 22, and Friday, September 23, $45, 6:00
www.bowerypresents.com

Jeff Tweedy and Wilco opened a two-show stand in Central Park last night with a twenty-five-song set that included eight tracks from their latest album, The Whole Love (dBpm/ANTI, September 27, 2011), kicking things off with the record’s double shot of “Art of Almost” and “I Might” and reaching deep into their extensive, impressive catalog all night long. The great Nick Lowe opens the shows, highlighting songs from his brand-new disc, The Old Magic (Yep Roc, September 13, 2011), a poignant, brutally honest collection of songs that celebrate the influential singer-songwriter’s maturity. It’s the kind of record Buddy Holly might have made if he had reached his early sixties. Lowe, now sixty-two, no longer rocks out to such memorable tunage as “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” “Cruel to Be Kind,” “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock ‘n’ Roll),” and “Teacher, Teacher” and instead examines his life in such acoustic-based songs as “Stoplight Roses,” “Sensitive Man,” and “Til’ the Real Thing Comes Along.” Hopefully he won’t have to sing “Shame on the Rain” in the midst of a downpour at tonight’s show, which, surprisingly, still has tickets available.

ALL ABOARD! TRAINS ON FILM

Jack Lemmon doesn’t mind being a bit squeezed in with Marilyn Monroe aboard a train in SOME LIKE IT HOT

The High Line
14th St. Passage
Friday, September 23 & 30, free, 7:00
www.thehighline.org

The beautiful design of the spectacular park along the High Line pays tribute to its history as a an elevated railway. That history is also being honored by “All Aboard! Trains on Film,” a screening series that began last week and continues tonight with the Billy Wilder comedy classic Some Like It Hot, in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress up as women and join a band to escape the mob and wind up falling for singer Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately for Lemmon, Joe E. Brown falls for him. The film will be shown in the 14th St. Passage at 7:00, while next Friday night features Alfred Hitchcock’s tense psychological thriller Strangers on a Train, in which Robert Walker hatches a crazy plot in which he will kill someone for Farley Granger in exchange for Granger killing someone for him. Little does Granger realize that Walker is dead serious.

SHIZUOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: MEDEA

The Shizuoka Performing Arts Center’s reimagining of Euripides’ MEDEA comes to Japan Society this weekend (photo © Takuma Uchida)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 23-25, $32
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

For his reimagining of Euripides’ classic Greek tragedy Medea, Satoshi Miyagi, artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, has moved the powerful story of an embattled wife and mother seeking revenge to the Meiji era, incorporating unique costumes, a play-within-a-play story line, live music and singing, and two actors playing each role, set on a colorful stage centered by a large red circle. The sold-out production runs Friday through Sunday at Japan Society, but a limited amount of wait-list tickets will be available one hour before showtime, so you still have a chance to see this highly acclaimed spectacle that has traveled the world.

TOOL IS LOOT

Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey combine their yearlong collaborations in TOOL IS LOOT (image design by Adam Shecter)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
September 22-24, September 29 – October 1, $15, 8:00
212-255-5793 ext11
www.thekitchen.org

Over the course of the last year, dancers and choreographers Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey held week-long collaborations with experts from outside the dance world to create unique pieces incorporating a range of disciplines, from science and architecture to social activism and wine, each of which began with an “empty solo.” The Brooklyn-based Cardona and the Paris-based Lacey will present the results of their experimental year — Cardona’s “Interventions” and Lacey’s “My First Time with a Dramaturg” — in TOOL IS LOOT, a duet running September 22-24 and September 29 – October 1 at the Kitchen. Curated by Yasuko Yokoshi and featuring original music by Jonathan Bepler (The Cremaster Cycle) and lighting by Thomas Dunn, TOOL IS LOOT explores artistic identity through a “performance-based process of aesthetic disorientation.” (To read our February 2011 twi-ny talk with Cardona about the project, please click here.)

Jennifer Lacey has an onstage fling with a chair in TOOL IS LOOT

Update: In putting together TOOL IS LOOT, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey spent a year apart, the former holding Interventions with experts from non-dance fields in upstate Troy, Washington, DC, Florida, and New York City, while the latter did her research, “My First Time with a Dramaturg,” overseas. That physical separation continues through much of TOOL IS LOOT, which begins with Lacey performing a duet with a folding chair, representing not only the body as object but referring to the no-longer-present collaborators Cardona and Lacey worked with over the past twelve months. Later, Cardona comes out to have his own private rendezvous with another chair, in the guise of a prince who has fallen in love with a sailor. During the seventy-five-minute production, the two performers move alternately to Jonathan Bepler’s ever-changing score, to silence, or to offstage narration dictated by the other. And yes, eventually, they do meet, leading to a beautiful if somewhat baffling conclusion. Continuing at the Kitchen Thursday through Saturday, TOOL IS LOOT is a humorous, subtly charming meditation on sexuality, style, and storytelling as well as the art of collaboration itself.