Yearly Archives: 2011

WHATEVER . . . BLOG PRESENTS THE DIAMOND CENTER

Bruar Falls
245 Grand St. between Driggs & Robeling Sts.
Thursday, July 28, $10, 8:00
http://wwwwhatever-amy.blogspot.com
www.bruarfalls.com

For nearly two years, Amy Grimm, creator of the intellectual and rebellious Whatever . . . blog, has been hosting monthly parties in Brooklyn clubs, featuring some of the best up-and-coming bands from across the country. “You know you’re at the right show if indie music princess Amy Grimm is there,” we wrote last year in our introduction to our twi-ny talk with the charming and enthusiastic music lover. Amy has put together another great Whatever . . . Blog Party for July 28 at Bruar Falls, featuring Rumanian Buck (7:00), Libel (8:00), the Nico Blues (9:00), Wojcik (10:00), and the Diamond Center (11:00). The sparkling Diamond Center, which consists of Brandi Price, Kyle Harris, and an ever-changing roster of drummers and other accompanists, blew us away with their 2009 sophomore release, My Only Companion, and have recently put out an awesome limited-edition seven-inch of “Caraway” backed with “20Twin,” fifteen minutes of haunting experimental wanderings; the former would have sounded great over the closing credits of Cowboys & Aliens. The Diamond Center are actual wanderers; they’ve moved from Athens, Georgia, to Lubbock, Texas, and now to Richmond, Virginia, during their four-year history. Brooklyn-based duo Wojcik, featuring Geoff Lewitt on drums and the multitalented Hailey Wojcik on guitar and vocals, mix in elements of 1970s and ’80s girl-group power pop and punk, melding Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High” with Kim Gordon from Dirty/Goo–era Sonic Youth filtered through Joan Jett, as evidenced on The [VOY-chek] EP and their recent cover of LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change.” Wojcik is the group’s fearless leader; “But have I got plans when it’s my turn / I’ll be warming my hands on the bridges I burn,” she declares on “Tiny Mussels.” New Jersey’s the Nico Blues go from loud and aggressive (“Unprofessional”) to bouncy (“Exit 6”) to melodic (“Adjust Accordingly”) on its latest album, Blame the Boredom, Blame the Basements. The Brooklyn trio Libel, made up of Julie Rozansky, Jonathan Hanson, and Gavin Dunaway, delve into fear on their most recent disc, No Regrets for Our Youth, with such high points as “TLO” and “A Fatality.” On “Wasp Lane” they proclaim, “Resist, resist / all augmentation / Insist, insist / on assimilation.” And Greenpoint’s Aaron Lazar of the Giraffes is resurrecting his essentially one-man band, Rumanian Buck, responsible for such well-titled tracks as “Tineretze” and “Slippercrumble,” as a trio for this reunion show. Once again Grimm has curated what should be a great night of indie rock from bands you probably haven’t heard of but will be glad you now do.

EIKO & KOMA: WATER / RESIDUE

Eiko and Koma will perform in Lincoln Center’s Paul Milstein Pool as part of free Out of Doors Festival (photo by Robert G. Sanchez)

Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Paul Milstein Pool, Hearst Plaza
July 27-31, free, 9:30
212-875-5000
www.lcoutofdoors.org
www.eikoandkoma.org

In the spring, innovative New York-based dancers and choreographers Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma performed the powerful Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a free, haunting “living installation” in which the longtime couple moved perilously slowly in a postapocalyptic organic environment that included tantalizing drips of water coming from the ceiling. For their latest site-specific work, Eiko and Koma will perform in the Paul Milstein Pool at Hearst Plaza, July 27-31 at 9:30, as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. Native American flutist-composer Robert Mirabal will accompany the dancers in the water, playing his original score live. Also on hand will be Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure,” which has occupied the pool for years. The new piece was partly inspired by Eiko and Koma’s 1995 River, which takes place in moving water and was recently reconstructed for the 2011 American Dance Festival; water has also played a role in such previous productions as Elegy (1984), Thirst (1985), and Passage (1989). “In this most urban landscape of midtown Manhattan, we also intend to remember and imagine the ancient water all living things came from and each of us was born from,” they explain in a program note. “Finally, many recent disasters remind us that water’s seeming calm is illusory.” It is appropriate that Water is taking place in a reflecting pool, as Lincoln Center is also hosting “Residue,” a multimedia exhibition that looks back at Eiko and Koma’s long career in conjunction with their ongoing Retrospective Project, featuring video, sets, costumes, and the extraordinary structure built for Naked. The display continues at the Astor Gallery at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through October 30. On July 28 at 6:00, Dance magazine editor in chief Wendy Perron will speak with Eiko and Koma and show several of their short videos, including My Parents, The Retrospective Project, Dancing in Water: The Making of River, and The Making of Cambodian Stories. All events are free and open to the public.

TWI-NY TALK: EMILY EPSTEIN & ELON JAMES WHITE

It is a match that could only be made in New York City. Elon James White is a Brooklyn-born sociopolitical humorist who is tailor made for this postracial Obama age. Emily Epstein is a Philadelphia-born comedian and writer who moonlights in children’s publishing. He’s black. She’s white. He’s a former Southern Baptist whose grandfather was a preacher. She’s a bat mitvah’d Jewish girl whose father was in finance. They live in Crown Heights, a region not exactly known for bringing blacks and Jews together in peaceful harmony.

Both love being onstage, where Elon proposed to Emily during the July 20 live podcast of “Blacking It Up,” one of the myriad projects Elon is involved in, many with Emily. White, who founded the Brooklyn Comedy Company and also hosts the hit web series This Week in Blackness, is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and has appeared on MSNBC, VH-1, and CNN. Emily, who refers to herself as “an ethnically ambiguous little lady,” runs the Connotation Variety Comedy Show with Selena Coppock and Dan Cartwright every Wednesday at 7:00 at Luca Lounge in addition to making appearances in clubs all over the city. Just as their proposal video began to go viral, they discussed their suddenly very public relationship in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: Emily, how surprised were you when Elon began proposing? Did you feel compelled to say yes because you were onstage in front of an audience and being videotaped?

Emily Epstein: Yes, yes, I was surprised. (Not that you can necessarily tell from my face.) I did feel compelled to say yes—although it was tempting to flip over a table and run for my life.

twi-ny: If you had a dream proposal, how did this compare?

EE: I’ve actually never given it much thought. If I had my choice, I might have gone for something slightly more private, as being a comedian you put a lot of your life out there. That being said, when I watched the video it made me very happy. I think it really perfectly captures who we are both separately and together.

twi-ny: Elon, how long were you preparing for this? Did you have any fall-back plans if Emily said no or something like “I need to think about it”?

Elon James White: Well, the idea of proposing was in the ether for years now, but in the past few weeks I decided to lock it in. Admittedly, I didn’t have a real backup plan for a “No.” I’m sure crying and drinking Jameson onstage would have worked.

twi-ny: Which one of you is really blacker?

EE: Who’s blacker? People do like to weigh in. I think my musical taste errs on the darker side. Then again, every podcast, show, or project Elon starts has the word “black” in it. I’d call it a tie?

EJW: Depends. Do you mean skin color or soul?

Elon Loves Emily: White proposes to Epstein onstage during live podcast

twi-ny: Who ended up being right about the shirt you argue about in the video?

EE: It’s complicated. He bought me a shirt that I didn’t wear often enough for his liking, so he took it back. (So inappropriate!) I still think it was a women’s medium, though.

EJW: Oh, I’m right. Wait—I’m engaged now. She’s right.

twi-ny: Will the music at your wedding be more like John Mayer or Talib Kweli?

EJW: I prefer John Williams. Especially if our first dance can be to the Imperial March.

EE: I hope there’s more Talib Kweli. I’d be very happy to ban John Mayer for life. God help us if our iPod gets played—Elon has downloaded about 2,000 hours of John Williams on there. Not to mention the Spice Girls.

twi-ny: Once you are a married couple, might you plan on doing more shows together, even working up a new kind of act à la Burns & Allen, Lucy & Desi, or Stiller & Meara and taking it on the road?

EE: Once we’re a married couple? We just got engaged! We’ve talked about coordinating on stuff together before and we have in the past. I certainly wouldn’t be against it. We just have to make sure that working together doesn’t make us want to kill each other since we both have big personalities. (At least, that’s the polite way to put it.)

EJW: Once we are a couple, the act that will be my number one priority is the “Elon and Emily Love Each Other” act. You may insert your “awww”s here.

You can find Emily on Facebook and Twitter (@emeps) and Elon on Facebook and Twitter (@elonjames).

CEDAR LAKE 360º INSTALLATION

Dancers appear from everywhere in Cedar Lake 360º immersive installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SUMMER INTENSIVE
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
547 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
July 27-29, $25, 7:30 & 9:00
212-244-0015
www.cedarlakedance.com
360º slideshow

For its 2011 summer intensive, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet has invited fifty student dancers to participate — in addition to the audience itself. Led by artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer and ballet master Alexandra Damiani, the sixteen-member company and its guests (twenty-five dancers per performance, plus the standing-room-only audience) will join forces in immersive multimedia interactive forty-minute events in their Chelsea home. “At a Cedar Lake installation everyone is a collaborator and everyone will leave with something of their own,” Pouffer explained in a statement. The student dancers have been training at Cedar Lake since July 11, taking classes in numerous disciplines in preparation for the 360º installation, scheduled for July 29-31 at 7:30 & 9:00 each night. There will be no seats; instead, the audience will be able to walk around the theater as the dancers move around them.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: SOLDIER’S SONG

A New Musical
Poet’s Den Theater
309 East 108th St. between First & Second Aves.
July 28-31, August 17-21 and 24-28, $45-$55
866-811-4111
www.soldierssongmusical.com

In the new musical Soldier’s Song, J. W. Cortes, a Puerto Rican veteran of the Iraq war, stars as Jose, a Puerto Rican soldier who gets the call to go to Iraq. The poor singer-songwriter is in love with Erica (Christiana Little), a rich woman from Charleston who has promised to wait for him. Jim Cohen and Joanne Lee Drexler Cohen’s show follows their romance as Jose is sent on a dangerous mission against al-Qaeda. Directed by Angelica Torn (the daughter of Rip Torn and Geraldine Page) and also featuring Melody Berger and Noah Chase, Soldier’s Song is running July 28-31 and August 17-21 and 24-28 at the Poet’s Den Theater on East 108th St.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: We have five pairs of tickets to Soldier’s Song to give away for free. To be eligible to win, just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite war movie to contest@twi-ny.com by Friday, July 29, at 12 noon. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; five winners will be selected at random.

PHOEBE WASHBURN

Phoebe Washburn, “View into Hippie Certified Lab Kitchen,” mixed media, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Nunderwater Nort Lab
Zach Feuer Gallery, 548 West 22nd St., free, through August 12, 212-989-7700
www.zachfeuer.com
Temperatures in a Lab of Superior Specialness
Mary Boone Gallery, 745 Fifth Ave., free, through July 30, 212.752.2929
www.maryboonegallery.com
phoebe washburn slideshow

In the summer of 2008, hot, weary art lovers could stop off at the Zach Feuer Gallery and buy a cup of Gatorade as part of Phoebe Washburn’s interactive Rube Goldberg-like greenhouse installation “Tickle the Shitstem.” (They could also purchase pencils, silkscreened T-shirts, and colored urchin shells.) The native New Yorker, whose “While Enhancing a Diminishing Deep Down Thirst, the Juice Broke Loose” was included in that year’s Whitney Biennial, uses recycled materials to explore corporate branding and methods of production. Washburn is back at Zach Feuer, this time with the massive site-specific installation “Nunderwater Nort Lab,” a tall, circular wooden structure in which she serves lunch every afternoon — but only to the gallery staff, not to visitors, who are not allowed inside. Instead, they have to be satisfied with just smelling the food and peering in through viewing holes, populated by living plants, that worm through the work. People can also gaze through the meshed window in the doorway, which announces, “If you smell what the rock is cooking,” a quote from former professional wrestler and would-be actor Dwayne Johnson, better known as the Rock. Meanwhile, at Mary Boone, Washburn has repurposed materials from previous installations to create “Temperatures in a Lab of Superior Specialness,” in which she reuses such items as golf balls, tables, folding chairs, garden hoses, extension cords, dyed shells, and painted rocks to line the larger space with such pieces as “Solar Eclipse Viewing Organized by an Ambitious Hippie,” “Skills Learned from My Hippie Orthodontist,” “Table for Hippie / Athletes Who Drink Gatorade,” and “Made at Summer Camp by Children of Hippies.” In a separate room, “View into Hippie Certified Lab Kitchen” is like a bizarre meth lab, consisting of buckets of water being pumped into a glass tank that holds golf balls, with a long viewing hole composed of wooden slats and ferns that evoke “Nunderwater Nort Lab.” From a distance, the piece resembles a strange yet harmless creature. In these “ORT” works, Washburn comments on the boredom of suburban living, although we’re still trying to figure out what she has against hippies.

SEX AND TRAVEL NIGHT

A scale-model replica of King Edward VII’s sex chair will be on view during special free event at Museum of Sex

Museum of Sex
233 Fifth Ave. at 27th St.
Tuesday, July 26, free, 7:00
212-689-6337
www.museumofsex.com

“Love was immediately associated with travel,” Elisabeth Eaves writes in Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents (Seal, May 2011, $16.95), remembering a long-distance college romance. Her memoir follows her from New Guinea to Cairo and beyond. In The Sinner’s Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe (Broadway, May 2011, $15), Tony Perrottet limits his sexually inspired travels to a single continent: “The British Museum was only the first stop in a personal Grand Tour I’d planned across Europe, in search of forbidden historical fruit,” he explains. “Today, the entire continent is still littered with secret boudoirs, perverse relics, and ancient dungeons, many of which, I was convinced, could be found.” Eaves’s and Perrottet’s dual journeys will bring them together July 26 for “Sex and Travel Night” at the Museum of Sex, where they will read from their books and discuss the intersection between lust and travel in the institution’s OralFix bar, where the audience can partake in such aphrodisiac cocktails as the Aphrodite (good for potency and lust), the Golden Blossom (endurance and longevity), and the Lucky Devil (excitement and joy), as well as a specially devised elixir created for the event. Among the items on view will be a playful scale-model replica of King Edward VII’s sex chair.