Yearly Archives: 2012

j-CATION 2012: SAKURA

Riot grrl group the Suzan are part of second annual j-CATION celebration at Japan Society on April 14

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, April 14, $10, 11:00 am – 11:00 pm
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s “Sakura — Spring Renews, Beauty Blooms” series comes to a close on Saturday with the second annual j-CATION, a twelve-hour program of special events celebrating the season and more. The New York Suwa Taiko Association gets things going at 11:00 am with a Taiko Kick-Off, followed by traditional Kamishibai storytelling at 11:20, 12 noon, 12:40 and Simply Stunning Shodo calligraphy classes taught by Masako Inkyo starting every forty-five minutes from 11:30 to 5:30. At 1:00 you can participate in the Japanese adult game show You’re on Standby!, which challenges the mind and the body and will earn one audience member free round-trip airfare to Japan. Adrienne Wong will give cherry blossom block printing demonstrations from 3:00 to 5:00, the same time that Sakura Cinema presents Tomu Uchida’s 1960 classic Killing in Yoshiwara (Heroes of the Red-Light District). There will also be Japanese for Beginners classes at 3:15, 4:00, 4:45, and 5:30. All day long you can hang out in the Hana-mi Lounge, which will be serving Japanese snacks and drinks and will host afternoon karaoke; pick up some wagashi in the foyer; learn origami and add paper cherry blossoms to a wall installation; read brand-new sakura-related haiku from around the world; play hanafuda, wanage, and kendama in the game room; check out the exhibition “Deco Japan: Shaping Art & Culture, 1920-1945” (and win a prize for being among the first three hundred people to complete the “Decoration Exploration”); and visit “Memory: Things We Should Never Forget,” a photography display about the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan. The festivities conclude with the Yozakura Nights concert at 8:00 with the bilingual Alex York and riot-grrl garage punks the Suzan, followed by a dance party with DJ Aki.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS: THE GREAT DICTATOR

Paulette Goddard and Charlie Chaplin take on the Third Reich in his first talkie, THE GREAT DICTATOR

THE GREAT DICTATOR (Charles Chaplin, 1940)
Cabaret Cinema, Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, April 13, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

Learning of many of the horrible things the Third Reich was doing, Charlie Chaplin could not hold his tongue anymore, finally making his first talking picture in 1940. In The Great Dictator, writer-director-producer Chaplin unrelentingly mocks Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazis in Germany, albeit with a very serious edge, as WWII threatens. Chaplin plays the dual roles of a simple Jewish barber living in the ghetto (who has elements of the Little Tramp) and Adenoid Hinkle, the rather Hitler-esque Fascist leader of the country of Tomania. Just as he named the nation after a foodborne illness (ptomaine poisoning), Chaplin does not go for subtlety in the film; his right-hand man is Herr Garbitsch (Henry Daniel spoofing Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels), and his military mastermind is Field Marshal Herring (Billy Gilbert making fun of Heinrich Himmler). Chaplin plays Hinkle like a cartoon character, with pratfalls galore, and when he speaks in German, especially when he gives a major speech, he spits out fake German words with a smattering of funny English ones. When he learns that Benzino Napaloni (Jack Oakie as a melding of Benito Mussolini and Napoleon Bonaparte) has gathered his troops on the Osterlitz border (think Anschluss), Hinkle invites the Bacteria dictator to his Tomanian palace, where they engage in numerous hysterical bouts of one-upmanship, including a riotous battle involving barber chairs. Meanwhile, Chaplin performs another of the film’s most memorable scenes, the shave of an old man set to Brahms’s “Hungarian Dance No. 5.” But when Commander Schultz (Reginald Gardiner) leaves the Nazi regime and decides to help the Jewish people in the ghetto, Hinkle sends his stormtroopers out to find the traitor, leading to a major case of mistaken identity and a heartfelt, if overly melodramatic, finale. In addition, Chaplin’s lover at the time, Paulette Goddard, plays Hannah (named for Chaplin’s mother), a young Jewish woman living in the ghetto, and Bowery Boys fans will recognize Bernard Gorcey, who played sweet-shop owner Louie Dombrowski in the goofy film series, as Mr. Mann.The Great Dictator is filled with marvelous moments, from Hinkle dancing with a balloon globe to several of the Jews in the ghetto trying to hide in the same chest, but the film does suffer from pedagoguery in making its political points, and some of the slapstick is too lowbrow. Nominated for five Oscars, it falls somewhere between the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup (1933) and the Three Stooges’ You Nazty Spy! (1940) while also referencing the 1921 silent film King, Queen, Joker, in which Chaplin’s older half-brother, Sidney (who also directed), played the dual role of a modest barber and the king of the fictional Coronia. A seminal achievement that was supposedly seen by Hitler twice, The Great Dictator is screening April 13 at 9:30 as part of the Rubin Museum series “You Must Remember This,” focusing on memory in conjunction with its current Brainwave series and will be introduced by nonprofit collective the New Inquiry. Admission to the Rubin is free on Friday nights, so you should also check out the exhibitions “Illuminated,” “Hero, Villain, Yeti,” “Modernist Art from India,” and the outstanding “Casting the Divine.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY — AMY RAY: “FROM HAITI”

Since 1985, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been making records as the Indigo Girls, the popular, politically active indie folk duo from Decatur, Georgia, that has had such hits as “Closer to Fine,” “Shed Your Skin,” and “Peace Tonight.” But for much of that time, Ray has been carving out quite a side career, having founded Daemon Records in 1990 and releasing a string of solo records over the last decade. Her latest, Lung of Love (Daemon, February 2012), is a lively collection of well-crafted songs that aren’t afraid to rock out. The follow-up to such discs as Stag (2001), Prom (2004), and Didn’t It Feel Kinder (2008), Lung of Love opens with the country-tinged “When You’re Gone, You’re Gone,” in which Ray sings, “I stood up at your wedding / I couldn’t hold my peace / I had a feeling you wanted me to / But you couldn’t let me see.” Ray then kicks into higher gear with “Glow,” an infectious blast of indie pop. “It felt good to be bad / It’s the best day I ever had,” she declares. The record also includes such tracks as the bluegrass “The Rock Is My Foundation,” the rave-up “Give It a Go,” and the harder-edged “From Haiti.” Ray and her band — Kaia Wilson on guitar, Melissa York on drums, Julie Wolf on keyboards, and Benjamin Williams on bass — will be at the Bell House on April 14 with Wilson opening up and at City Winery on April 15 at a special WFUV live broadcast for WFUV Marquee & City Winery VinoFile Members only.

TWI-NY TALK: LEIMAY (XIMENA GARNICA AND SHIGE MORIYA)

Ximena Garnica reflects on the return of FLOATING POINT WAVES to HERE (photo by Piotr Redliński)

FLOATING POINT WAVES
HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
April 10-14, 8:30, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Artistic directors of LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival, dancer-choreographer Ximena Garnica and video installation artist Shige Moriya collaborate on works that beautifully integrate sound, movement, and image. In such pieces as Furnace, Trace of Purple Sadness, and Becoming, they’ve created immersive, meditative environments that subtly dazzle the mind. They’re currently in the midst of a two-week run of Floating Point Waves, an evening-length show they first presented in January 2011 at HERE’s Culturemart festival as part of the downtown institution’s Artist Residency Program. In between working on Floating Point Waves and preparing for the inaugural SOAK Festival, which begins April 25, they answered some questions for our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: We saw Floating Point Waves when it was presented as a work-in-progress at HERE’s Culturemart festival last year. How has it evolved since then?

LEIMAY: The Floating Point Waves process has been a bit like the formation of those things inside a limestone cave called stalagmites. That kind of formation rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions over long periods of time. Last year the piece itself needed more time for the dripping to carve new forms and uncover new colors. Last year we had found new elements, such as two new kinetic systems — the point sculpture and the tulle tubes — but had not fully integrated them to the level of the other two (pool & string sculpture). The pool and the string sculpture had been worked longer. In the creative process and especially in Floating Point Waves, time is very important. There is something about cooking on a small flame, no?

twi-ny: Indeed. The two of you have been collaborating now as LEIMAY for many years. What is the best thing about working together?

LEIMAY: We were born in very different places, Japan [Moriya] and Colombia [Garnica]. We speak very different languages and communicate in a third language. We were educated very differently, and growing up we studied different things, but somehow we share similar values. So the best thing is when through the work we make together, despite all our differences, somehow we can connect and find the essence of whatever it is we are creating. This might sound vague, but think about those so called “aha moments”; if you have them alone it is great, but when you have them together it is beyond words! However, sometimes those “aha moments” don’t come and one of us is stuck but the other can keep going — that is great too; there is some generosity involved and lots of love.

twi-ny: What is the worst thing about working together?

LEIMAY: When we are totally disagreeing about something and the more we talk the more we disagree but then suddenly we realize that we actually agree but our English is so off that it all seems like a disagreement . . . but in fact it was a lost-in-translation moment. It is awful.

twi-ny: Much of what you do is rooted in the butoh discipline. What is the most misunderstood aspect of butoh?

LEIMAY: Well, we like to say that our work ranges from photography to video art, art installations, interdisciplinary performances, and training projects. And although it is true that Ximena has been training with butoh artists and masters for the past twelve years, our performances and training projects are rooted in the body. What is really at stake is the body. Our contact with butoh has opened our mind to thinking about and questioning the meaning of the dancing body and its possible relationships with space and time.

For audiences, perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of butoh is the expectation of white body-painted people moving slow with grotesque faces and a bit of drooling. For performers, perhaps the most misunderstood aspects are 1.) the mystification of master teachers and of butoh itself and 2.) the view of butoh as a codified form.

FLOATING POINT WAVES is another subtly dazzling collaboration between Ximena Garnica and Shige Moirya (photo by Piotr Redliński)

twi-ny: You’ve been organizing the New York Butoh Festival since 2003, and this year you’re staging the first SOAK Festival. What can people expect to see in this new festival?

LEIMAY: Actually, the SOAK Festival is taking over the New York Butoh Festival. In the spirit of the interdisciplinary nature of our creations and of the ecology from which our work sprouts, we are launching the first annual SOAK Festival. People can expect nothing. Yes, it is true: We want people to come without expectation. They are invited to our home to meet our friends. We have a good sense for assembling acts and we have an eclectic group of friends and colleagues and, most importantly, we want to share their work with those who make it out to Williamsburg.

This year we will have a deluge of acts and workshops from April 25 to May 13. Opening the festival are an experimental guitarist from Sicily, Ninni Morgia, and his partner, vocalist Silvia Kastel. Next is an unplugged version of a collaboration between butoh legend Ko Murobushi and San Francisco’s Shinichi Iova-Koga of inkBoat. The festival will continue with work from CAVE resident artists such as Russian theater innovator and international master teacher Polina Klimovitskaya and choreographer Rachel Cohen. Former Fulbright Fellow and Movement Research resident Ben Spatz and his theater partner Maximilian Balduzzi are also among those performing. The SOAK Festival workshops are equally eclectic, such as a drawing mural narrative workshop by Tijuana-born, Brooklyn-based draftsman artist Hugo Crosthwaite, an augmented reality lecture/demonstration by NYU teacher and activist Mark Skwarek, a sonoric voice workshop by Uruguayan vocal virtuoso Sabrina Lastman, as well as our own workshop led by Ximena on our training and performance technique called Ludus.

It seems to us like we all see life and performances and things with our own frame. Through our work and the production of the SOAK Festival we challenge ourselves and our audiences to make these frames as malleable as possible so we can expand our understanding of the body and our experience and understanding of daily life. Consequently, we enlarge the realms of perception and creation and discover the possibilities for interaction therein. We hope all of you reading this will make it out to CAVE for the first SOAK Festival.

NEW YORK RANGERS BEARD-A-THON

Brandon Prust is among those Rangers participating in the Beard-A-Thon fundraiser for the Garden of Dreams

Last year, New York Rangers center Brandon Dubinsky famously grew a ’70s-style porn mustache as the Broadway Blueshirts fought for a playoff spot. This year, as the Rangers finished atop the Eastern Conference and prepare to face off against the Ottawa Senators in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, fans are encouraged to grow some facial hair of their own for the team’s first-ever Beard-A-Thon. To participate, stop shaving and register online, accumulating pledges from friends, relatives, and everyone else you know, with proceeds benefiting the Garden of Dreams Foundation. The leading fundraiser will win four tickets to next year’s home opener and get their picture taken with Adam Graves at center ice. If you can’t grow a beard of your own, you can contribute to others’ shagginess, including such current players as Steve Eminger, Mike Rupp, Michael Del Zotto, John Mitchell, Carl Hagelin, Brandon Prust, and Artem Anisimov or such former stars as Vic Hadfield, Ron Duguay, Dave Maloney, and Graves.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. VONNEGUT

The life and career of Kurt Vonnegut will be celebrated at Housing Works on April 11

A CELEBRATION OF KURT VONNEGUT’S LIFE AND WORK
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby St.
Wednesday, April 11, 7:00
212-334-3324
www.housingworks.org

On April 11, 2007, Kurt Vonnegut died at the age of eighty-four. The life and career of the WWII veteran — who surprisingly never won the Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer for such literary masterpieces as Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five,, and The Sirens of Titan — will be celebrated at a Housing Works gathering on April 11, the fifth anniversary of his passing. The evening will be hosted by Brendan Jay Sullivan, who is at work on a manuscript about a kid who’s studying Vonnegut’s “Eight Rules of Creative Writing” from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction. The evening will feature readings by Joe Garden, David Goodwillie, Dave Hill, Cat Marnell, and others, along with Bushwick Book Club songs based on Vonnegut books. In addition, there will be a silent auction including a watercolor donated by Kurt’s son Mark.

GHETT’OUT FILM FESTIVAL: KILLER OF SHEEP

KILLER OF SHEEP is part of Ghett’Out Film Festival at BAM

KILLER OF SHEEP (Charles Burnett, 1977)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tuesday, April 10, 6:50
Series runs April 10-12
212-415-5500
bam.org
www.killerofsheep.com

In 2007, Milestone Films restored and released Charles Burnett’s low-budget feature-length debut, Killer of Sheep, with the original soundtrack intact; the film had not been available on VHS or DVD for decades because of music rights problems that were finally cleared. (The soundtrack includes such seminal black artists as Etta James, Dinah Washington, Little Walter, and Paul Robeson.) Shot on weekends for less than $10,000, Killer of Sheep took four years to put together and another four years to get noticed, when it won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival. Reminiscent of the work of Jean Renoir and the Italian neo-Realists, the film tells a simple story about a family just trying to get by, struggling to survive in their tough Watts neighborhood in the mid-1970s. The slice-of-life scenes are sometimes very funny, sometimes scary, but always poignant, as Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) trudges to his dirty job in a slaughterhouse in order to provide for his wife (Kaycee Moore) and children (Jack Drummond and Angela Burnett). Every day he is faced with new choices, from participating in a murder to buying a used car engine, but he takes it all in stride. The motley cast of characters, including Charles Bracy and Eugene Cherry, is primarily made up of nonprofessional actors with a limited range of talent, but that is all part of what makes it all feel so real. Killer of Sheep was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1989, the second year of the program, making it among the first fifty to be selected, in the same group as Rebel Without a Cause, The Godfather, Duck Soup, All About Eve, and It’s a Wonderful Life, which certainly puts its place in history in context. Killer of Sheep will be screening on April 10 as part of the Ghett’Out Film Festival at BAM and will be followed by a Q&A with Charles Burnett. The series, which focuses on contemporary low-budget indie French cinema — Killer of Sheep was a major influence on this new French New Wave — continues through April 12 with such films as Jean-Charles Hue’s La BM du seigneur (The Lord’s Ride), Sylvain George’s May They Rest in Revolt (Figures of War) (Qu’ils reposent en révolte), Djinn Carrenard’s $200 Donoma, and Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance.