Yearly Archives: 2012

YANIRA CASTRO | A CANARY TORSI: PARADIS

Yanira Castro’s beautiful PARADIS returns to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden July 8-10 (photo by Kevin Kwan)

Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Desert House in the Steinhardt Conservatory and the Cherry Esplanade
1000 Washington Ave.
July 8-10, $30, 8:00
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.acanarytorsi.org

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is already one of New York City’s paradises, but on July 8-10, choreographer Yanira Castro will make it even more so. The Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based Castro, who specializes in site-adaptable dance installations, is bringing her a canary torsi “organism” back for Paradis, the first site-specific dance project to ever be held at the century-old botanic garden. If you missed its debut last summer, get your tickets now for this beautiful piece of paradise. Presented by New York Live Arts, Paradis is the follow-up to 2010’s Wilderness, a performance and audio installation that took place at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn. For Paradis, the audience of approximately sixty people first meets in the visitor center (be sure to go to the 1000 Washington St. entrance), then is led to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Steinhardt Conservatory, where they surround the outside of the Desert House. Inside, Peter Schmitz, dressed all in white with white face paint, stands still before slowly making his way around the cactus plants and trees, using herky-jerky motion, then moving faster, stopping to mime eating an apple, then erupting in off-key song, dancing and singing to tinny, lo-fi, scratchy piano music that pipes out of security guards’ walkie-talkies.

Expanding his work with Castro on Wilderness, Schmitz evokes Adam in the Garden of Eden as well as Frankenstein’s monster and the Supreme Being as he learns to walk, talk, and eat. At the end of the solo, the audience is led in the dark to the wide expanse of the resplendently green Cherry Esplanade, where they come upon Michael Dauphinais on the piano (sounding much better in person than over the walkie-talkies), playing an evolving score that is impacted by the presence of the crowd. Four huge spotlights illuminate the lawn as Peggy Cheng, Simon Courchel, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Luke Miller, Daniel Clifton, Darrin Wright, Pamela Vail, and Kimberly Young emerge in the distance, frolicking across the grass and eventually weaving through the crowd, who can sit or stand wherever they want. After being selected to follow a particular dancer, the audience segments into groups that end up watching a deeply intimate, thrillingly erotic duet. Inspired very directly by the “Paradis” section of Jean-Luc Godard’s Notre Musique, Castro’s Paradis feels like it grew organically out of the ground (or descended from the heavens), like the lovely trees and flowers that cover the garden’s fifty-two lush acres. No mere spectacle, the piece invites the viewer to become part of a magical experience, a fitting tribute to the beauty of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the endless imagination of Castro and her company.

CBGB FESTIVAL: AMERICAN HARDCORE

AMERICAN HARDCORE is screening as part of the inaugural CBGB Festival

AMERICAN HARDCORE (Paul Rachman, 2006)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Thursday, July 5, $10, 4:00
212-260-7289
www.cbgb.com
www.landmarktheatres.com

A must-see for fans of loud, fast, angry music circa 1980-86, American Hardcore looks at one of the smaller but nonetheless influential movements in American music. A basic doc in the classic do-it-yourself sensibility that informed so much of the music scene it chronicles, American Hardcore features interviews with Henry Rollins, lead singer of Black Flag; H.R., the mercurial, difficult, but brilliant lead singer for the Bad Brains; Mike Watt of the Minutemen; and various personnel from the Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, and 7 Seconds. Tommy Stinson of the Replacements and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers weigh in as well. The abundance of old concert footage is fabulous, but director Paul Rachman and writer Steve Blush discovered much of it in shoeboxes in basements during their low-budget cross-country trip while making the movie, so the overall production quality is not high ― which in some ways works better overall. The film does a good job of lovingly showing just how home-grown and amateurish the scene was and debating the importance of the scenes in Houston, Minneapolis, DC, Boston, and Southern California. The finale with a graphic artist and cover designer calling for the next generation of hardcore is a riot. American Hardcore is screening July 5 at 4:00 at Landmark Sunshine Cinema as part of the inaugural CBGB Festival and will be followed by a Q&A with Rachman and Blush. The festival runs July 5-8 at venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn and includes a bevy of concerts, film screenings, panel discussions, and other special events being held in honor of the classic Bowery club that hosted cutting-edge, alternative, punk, and indie bands from 1973 to 2006. Among the groups participating in the festival are the Dirty Pearls, Agnostic Front, Richard Llloyd, Tuff Darts, David Johansen, Glen Matlock, Tommy Ramone, Sic F*cks, Eric Ambel, Xylos, Popa Chubby, Dayna Kurtz, and Mike Peters of the Alarm, and that’s just on Thursday.

THE FOURTH OF JULY IN NEW YORK CITY

The Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks will be exploding over the West Side again this year (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

With the Fourth of July landing on a Wednesday this year, there seem to be fewer special events than usual, but there are still a bunch of ways for people to celebrate America’s 236th birthday. First and foremost is Macy’s thirty-sixth annual fireworks display, which will once again hail over the West Side; “Ignite the Night” will feature more than forty thousand fireworks set to a score selected by online voting, with music by Ray Charles, Madonna, Lee Greenwood, Neil Diamond, Taylor Swift, Whitney Houston, and Star-Spangled Sing-Off winner Kory Glattman as well as live performances by Katy Perry and Kenny Chesney. Four barges will be located between 18th & 43rd Sts. along the Hudson River. Rooftop Films will be honoring the United States with a free program in Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City; “The American Experience” consists of eight shorts that take a serious and/or humorous look at elections and politics, including Patrick Désilets’s Mulvar Is Correct Candidate!, Matt Bockelman’s You Have the Right to an Attorney, and Sara Zia Ebrahimi’s Norman Schwarzkopf Made Me Gay, preceded by live music by Dustin Wong and Arturo en el Barco. July 4 is usually a big day for large, outdoor free concerts under the sun, but the only park show this year is part of the Madison Square Park Oval Lawn Series, with Noam Pikelny and Friends, the Sweetback Sisters, and Spuyten Duyvil, beginning at 3:00. The New York Philharmonic will be at Avery Fisher Hall on July 3, 4, and 5 ($40-$50) for “Summertime Classics: A New York Fourth,” playing compositions by Leonard Bernstein, George Gerswhin, and others, with the Hellcats and Jazz Knights from the West Point Band and Tracy Dahl, conducted by Bramwell Tovey. Back in the day, the Mets used to play double headers on July 4; this Wednesday you can head to the Bushwick music club Shea Stadium for Summerjam IV ($10, 4:20), which boasts quite a lineup: Afu Ra featuring Shea Stadium All-Stars, Dope Body, Roomrunner, Fuckton, Alan Watts, Ami Dang, Eleven Swords, Smhoak & Pals, and the Jazz Massagers. If it’s baseball you want, you can catch the Brooklyn Cyclones taking on the Williamsport Crosscutters at MCU Park in Coney Island ($9-$16, 6:00); after the game, there will be fireworks, and everyone is invited to run around the bases. The surprising Mets will be in town as well, taking on the division rival Philadelphia Phillies at 1:00 at Citi Field, with Chris Young scheduled to go up against Kyle Kendrick. And over at the Stone, the Spy Music Festival will have John Blum at 8:00 and the Trevor Watts + Veryan Weston duo at 10:00 ($10 per set; festival continues July 1-15).

CLYBOURNE PARK

In 1959, a community is at odds when a black couple is about to move in (photo by Nathan Johnson)

Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th St.
Extended through September 2, $30 – $220
clybournepark.com

The best plays stay with you long after you leave the theater, making you think and encouraging an ongoing dialogue. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park is one such play. As we exited the theater, my guest and I got into a heated discussion about several of the issues the complex story raises, for nothing about Clybourne Park is black and white, yet everything about Clybourne Park is black and white. Winner of the Tony and the Olivier for Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize, Clybourne Park is divided into two distinct halves that are cleverly linked in both obvious and subtle ways by writer Norris (The Infidel, Purple Heart) and director Pam MacKinnon (Completeness, The Four of Us). Inspired by A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the first black playwright to have her work produced on Broadway, Clybourne Park opens in 1959, as Russ (Frank Wood) and Bev Stoller (Christina Kirk) are preparing to leave their lily-white neighborhood shortly after a family tragedy. When Karl Lindner (Jeremy Shamos) finds out that their house is being sold to a black couple, he tries to convince Russ not to go through with the deal, worried about what will happen to property values and afraid of potential white flight. Meanwhile, Albert (Damon Gupton) comes to the house to pick up his wife, Francine (Crystal A. Dickinson), who works as the Stollers’ maid, and he is not afraid to throw in his own two cents. As things threaten to explode, Karl’s wife, Betsy (Annie Parisse), a deaf woman who is pregnant, can’t quite understand why everyone is getting so mad at one another, and Rev. Jim (Brendan Griffin) finds that church doctrine is not going to help solve this problem either.

In 2009, a community is at odds when a white couple is about to move in (photo by Nathan Johnson)

The second act takes place fifty years later, in 2009, as a white couple, Steve (Shamos) and his pregnant wife, Lindsey (Parisse), have bought the very same house, now dilapidated, from a black couple, Lena (Dickinson) and Kevin (Gupton). As ditzy real estate agent Kathy (Kirk) shares some interesting tidbits about the changing nature of her business, the two couples are soon involved in a nasty battle that centers on the one word nobody wants to say: race. Clybourne Park is an extremely cleverly written play, tackling long-standing racial issues with intelligence, sensitivity, and humor. Having the actors play dual roles furthers direct comparison between the past and the present. Early in the second act, Steve is asked whether Lindsey is pregnant with a boy or a girl; while Steve knows the answer, Lindsey still wants to be surprised, so she puts her fingers in her ears and makes silly noises so as not to hear, echoing the deaf Betsy portrayed by Parisse in the first act. In the 1959 section, Russ is not ready to bring down a sentimental object from the attic; in 2009, hired hand Dan (Wood) is digging up the backyard, getting ready to potentially raze the house, much to the consternation of Lena, Kevin, and local resident Tom (Griffin), who is trying to address community rules. There are other fascinating, well-plotted similarities between the characters that the actors play in the first act with those they portray in the second act, giving the production a continuity that also shows how difficult it is for people to accept and adapt to change, no matter their race or religion. Clybourne Park is a smartly told story that clearly points out how far we truly are from a so-called post-racial society, a play that will stay with you for a very long time. (As an added bonus, the Lincoln Center Theater Review has dedicated its entire spring issue to the play, with pieces written by Paul Clemens, Beryl Satter, Bill Savage, and Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, an interview between Norris and John Guare, an interview with an anonymous real estate broker, and more; you can pick up a copy at the Walter Kerr Theatre for a dollar or download it for free here.)

HARLEM ARTS FESTIVAL 2012

Queen Esther will close the 2012 Harlem Arts Festival with dancer-choreographer Francesca Harper tonight

Richard Rodgers Amphitheater
Marcus Garvey Park
Madison Ave. between 120th & 124th Sts.
Saturday, June 30, free, 1:00 – 8:00
www.harlemartsfestival.com

The second day of the free Harlem Art Festival, held in Marcus Garvey Park, features another fine lineup of live music, dance, and theater, emceed by DJ Stormin’ Norman. The party gets started at 1:00 with Gary Samuels & the Prayz’N Hymn Ensemble on the main stage and Isaac Katalay on the second stage at 1:30. Other performers include the Mighty Third Rail, Gwen Laster, Illstyle & Peace Productions, James Browning Kepple, Benjamin Barson, Guerilla Dance Collective, Shelah Marie, and Vernard J. Gilmore / La Verdad, with Queen Esther & the Francesca Harper Project closing the show at 7:00. There is also a kids’ corner with children’s activities in addition to local food vendors, a market, special programs in the Harlem Library, and a gallery walk with work by such artists as Leon Barber, Laura Gadson, Judy Levy, Bryce R. Zackery, and Maxine DeSeta.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: ZEROBRIDGE REHEARSAL

Brooklyn-based Zerobridge, who hail originally from Potomac, Maryland, and have roots in Kashmir, have spent more than a decade experimenting with different sounds on such releases as the 2001 EP No Epiphany, their 2003 eponymous full-length debut, and 2007’s Havre de Grace, ranging from Stonesy swagger to Replacements abandon to jangling guitar rockers and even a dose of gloompop. Led by singer, songwriter, and guitarist Mubashir Mohi-ud-Din (Din) and featuring Greg Eckelman on bass, Din’s brother Mohsin (Mo) on drums, and producer JP Bowersock on guitar, the band has been working away on their next EP, Big Songs for Small Spaces, including the tantalizing trio of “Waiting in the Sun,” “Dirty Apple,” and “All Places from Here”; that last song can be seen in the above rehearsal video, when it still was untitled. Zerobridge will be playing a free show at Rockwood Music Hall on June 30 at 11:00, preceded by Niall Connolly at 9:00 and followed by the Hipstones at midnight.

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL: SHOW

Maria Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas have taken SHOW outside for the River to River Festival (photo by Francis Coy)

Broad & Wall St.
Saturday, June 30, and Sunday, July 1, free, 5:00
rivertorivernyc.com
www.mariahassabi.com
show slideshow

Back in November, Maria Hassabi presented SHOW at the Kitchen, where she and longtime collaborator Hristoula Harakas slowly weaved, wiggled, and wound their way across the floor amid the audience, which was allowed to go wherever they wanted, whether standing in the back or sitting right next to the performers. Hassabi and Harakas are now taking the fab gathering outdoors as part of the free River to River Festival, where they will be interacting not only with an audience specifically there to see them but by passersby who are bound to wonder just what is going on. Featuring sound design by Alex Waterman that incorporates freshly recorded noise and voices, the performance is an intimate experience that is sure to have renewed life from being out in the sun, compared to the more cramped and dark black-box room at the Kitchen. Hassabi and Harakas can do amazing things with their bodies, displaying elegance and strength, in what we called back in November “a brilliant, often erotically charged evening-length piece performed by two dynamic, brave dancers unafraid to take risks, involving the audience in unique and, at times, demanding ways.”

Maria Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas put on quite a SHOW at River to River Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: As it turns out, SHOW does indeed offer a very different kind of experience in its new incarnation outdoors as part of the River to River Festival. On a cobblestone path on Broad St., Maria Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas move incredibly slowly, staring deep into each other’s eyes, crawling over each other’s bodies, and lifting their legs high into the air in breathtaking positions. Depending on which angle you are watching from ― you can sit on sidewalk benches, move around the area, or spread out on the street itself, where you might have to get out of the dancers’ way as they approach you ― you can see the large American flag on the Stock Exchange building or the George Washington statue in front of Federal Hall in the background. Alex Waterman’s score mixes in noises recorded earlier around Wall St., including construction work and sirens, layered with live sound. Despite the intense heat, Hassabi and Harakas soldier on as tourists gawk, shutterbugs surround them, food deliverers speed by on their bicycles, and dogs on leashes amble past them. Yet the two extraordinary dancers manage to maintain the piece’s inherent intimacy, especially when they make extended eye contact with people in the crowd.