Yearly Archives: 2012

POST PLASTICA

POST PLASTICA is a multimedia collaboration between PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio

El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
May 31 – June 3, $20, 7:30
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org

PS 122 and El Museo del Barrio have joined forces to present the multimedia performance Post Plastica, a virtual fantasy that imagines the future of art as well as the world itself. Created by sisters Ela Troyano and Alina Troyano, who is also known as Carmelita Tropicana, Post Plastica stars Tropicana as a woman who gets a Botox injection that puts her in a coma, sending her off on an adventure that includes a woman-bear scientist played by Becca Blackwell (Untitled Feminist Show) and the title character, played by Erin Markey (Green Eyes). A mix of video and live performance, Post Plastica features production design by Aliza Shvarts, costumes by Yail Romagoza, lighting by Chris Hudacs, and projections by Uzi Parnes. Each evening will be preceded by a special event at El Museo beginning at 6:00, including an exhibit of stereoscopic imagery by Richard Pell on May 31, the lecture/demonstration “Meet the Celebrity” with Fufurufu and Nao Bustamente on June 1, an “Urban Beekeeping” discussion with Guillermo Fernandez and Jennifer Monson on June 2, and the “Normal Is Good” interview between Shvars and Romagoza on June 3.

GOTHAM DANCE FESTIVAL

Gallim Dance will present the world premiere of SIT, KNEEL, STAND at the Joyce’s annual Gotham Dance Festival (photo by Franziska Strauss)

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
May 30 – June 10, $10-$39, 2:00
212-242-0800
www.joyce.org

Organized by the Gotham Arts Exchange, whose motto is “Think • Innovate • Promote • Develop • Produce • Dance,” this year’s Gotham Dance Festival features five programs by emerging, cutting-edge, and established choreographers at the Joyce. The Brian Brooks Moving Company, which made its Joyce debut at the festival last year, returns with the New York premiere of Big City, about destruction and reconstruction, set within a dynamic aluminum installation. On June 2-3, Canadian choreographer Peter Quanz’s Q Dance makes its Joyce debut with the Hong Kong Ballet commission Luminous and the Guggenheim commission In Tandem, set to music by Steve Reich, on a shared bill with two works by Jodie Gates, Embellish performed by Colorado Ballet and Delicate Balance danced by BalletX. On June 5, the Gotham Arts Exchange benefit “Working Women” will celebrate American choreographers Pam Tanowitz, Camille A. Brown, Carolyn Dorfman, Loni Landon, Jane Comfort, Monica Bill Barnes, and Gates with an evening of solos, duets, excerpts, and world premieres. L.A’s BODYTRAFFIC will take over June 6-7 with new works by Barak Marshall and Richard Siegal as well as Stijn Celis’s Fragile Dwellings. The festival concludes June 8-10 with Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance performing the world premiere of the evening-length Sit, Kneel, Stand, which explores artistic barriers and borders, set to original music by Jerome Begin and Christopher Lancaster.

END OF THE RAINBOW

Peter Quilter’ss END OF THE RAINBOW tells the poignant story of Judy Garland’s last stand

Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through November 11, $31.50 – $126.50
www.endoftherainbowbroadway.com

In 2005, British playwright Peter Quilter scored big with a pair of Olivier Award-nominated musical dramas based on real performers. Glorious! told the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, the worst singer in the world. The other, End of the Rainbow, delved into what essentially turned out to be Judy Garland’s last stand as she tried to regain her status as one of the best, most beloved entertainers on the planet. Tony and Drama Desk-nominated Tracie Bennett makes an electrifying Broadway debut as Garland, who arrives at the Ritz Hotel in London to prepare for a five-week engagement at the Talk of the Town in December 1968. She’s joined by her much younger manager and fiancé, Mickey Deans (Tom Pelphrey), and her pianist, Anthony (Tony nominee Michael Cumpsty), who makes reference to a previous disaster five years earlier in Sidney. As she battles her addictions to pills and alcohol, Garland refuses to see just how desperate her financial situation is, playing diva to the full as everything threatens to fall apart around her. Bennett is sensational as Garland, effortlessly shifting between poignant scenes in the hotel room and dazzling ― and purposefully not-so-dazzling ― performances of such standards as “The Man That Got Away,” “Come Rain or Shine,” “The Trolley Song,” “Just in Time,” and “When You’re Smiling.” The back wall of William Dudley’s elegant hotel room set occasionally rises, revealing a live band and converting the space into a nightclub, with Garland playing to the audience as she sings the classic tunes, sometimes grasping the microphone like it’s her lover, at other times getting tangled in it like it’s trying to strangle her. Although only forty-seven at the time, Garland looked twenty years older at the end of her life, ravaged by childhood stardom, a series of failed marriages she constantly refers to, and her various addictions, and the fifty-year-old Bennett embodies that telling discrepancy with both grace and humility. Quilter and director Terry Johnson (La Cage au Folles) explore whether Deans was a money-hungry enabler or a truly caring husband-to-be, while the fictional character of Anthony just might be Garland’s only true friend. End of the Rainbow is a deliciously dishy yet ultimately intimate and painful look at the end of an American legend.

DAN COLEN: CRACKS IN THE CLOUDS

Dan Colen’s motorcycles glitter and shine in front of the Seagram Building in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Seagram Building
375 Park Ave. between 52nd & 53rd Sts.
www.gagosian.com
cracks in the clouds slideshow

We were among the many who thought that art bad-boy Dan Colen’s inaugural solo show at the Gagosian, fall 2010’s “Poetry,” stank. But don’t lump us in with all the haters. It literally stank, with several canvases containing chewed bubblegum, sending a sticky aroma into the air. The mixed-media display also included a wooden skateboard ramp, a brick wall supported by a beam, and a baker’s dozen of Harley-Davidsons that had been kicked over, as if the artist were looking for a fight outside a bar. The thirtysomething New Jersey native has now re-created that motorcycle piece, “Cracks in the Clouds,” in front of the Seagram Building on Park Ave., where fellow bad boy Urs Fischer’s “Untitled (Lamp/Bear)” lit up the night last year while fetching nearly seven million at a Christie’s auction. Colen got the idea for “Cracks in the Clouds” after seeing a lineup of bikes outside the Hells Angels headquarters in the East Village. He meticulously went about finding the exact makes and models, incorporated every little detail he could, brought the bikes first to Gagosian and now to the Seagram Building’s plaza, and kicked them over so they fell like fancy, glittering dominoes. Situated between two fountains, “Cracks in the Clouds” recalls the Guggenheim’s controversial 1998 exhibit, “The Art of the Motorcycle,” which drew criticism for installing brand-name bikes in the hallowed institution dedicated to contemporary art. A trained painter, Colen is no stranger to controversy and criticism for his market-savvy use of found objects and ready-mades. But in taking his art outside, away from the high-profile Chelsea galleries, he is gaining a very different audience, one that doesn’t know or care about his art-world celebrity image and reputation and instead just likes looking at a bunch of shiny motorcycles while grabbing a smoke or picking up a sandwich before having to return to the daily grind. [ed. note: Although the display was supposed to stay up through September 30, it suddenly disappeared in early June….]

THE FESTIVAL OF RUSSIAN ARTS

Yuri Kara’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA is part of Russian festival examining literature, film, and more

Multiple locations throughout Manhattan
Through June 6
Admission: free
causaartium.org

The inaugural Festival of Russian Arts is under way, comprising special events around the city through June 6. Officially subtitled “New York’s Entry into the Rich and Dynamic World of Russian Art and Culture,” the festival includes film screenings, literary readings, panel discussions, and receptions. On Saturday, May 26, at 4:00, playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich, translator John Freedman, and director Tamilla Woodard will participate in “I Won! A Staged Reading and Open Discussion” at the Little Times Square Theatre, featuring a pair of one-act, one-woman shows, I Won! and Natasha’s Dream. On May 29 at 5:30, Pulinovich will join Irina Bogatyreva, Polina Klyukina, and moderator Jenny Lyn Bader for the talk “Shattered Icons: The Demise of Heroes in America and Russia” at the New York Public Library’s Berger Forum. On May 31, Cathy Nepomnyashchy will lead the discussion “Writers at the Flashpoint: New Russian Writing & the Riddle of the Caucasus” at the Connor Room at the Mid-Manhattan Library with Arslan Khasavov, Alisa Ganieva, and Sergei Shargunov. From June 1 to June 6, “Diverging Perspectives: Filming Russian Literature in Russia and in the West” will screen various versions of such literary classics as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (by Richard Brooks, Petr Zelenka, and Ivan Pyryev), Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat (by Alberto Lattuada, Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, Aleksey Batalov, and Michael McCarthy), and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (by Yuri Kara, Paul Bryers, and Andrzej Wajda) at the Tribeca Grand Cinema and the NYU Cantor Film Center, with talks before and after most presentations. On June 2, Martin Amis and Olga Slavnikova will discuss “Side by Side: A Conversation with Writers from Different Worlds” in the NYPL’s South Court Auditorium, moderated by Leonard Lopate. All events are free and open to the public.

SHEILA BERNARD: HAPPY FEET

Port Authority Bus Terminal
South Terminal
Daily through May 31, free
www.sheilabernard.smugmug.com

Every year, we look forward to local photographer Sheila Bernard’s new show, often held in unusual locations and featuring very different kinds of work. In past years she has displayed her “Urban Times” series, focusing on the reflections of buildings in other buildings; “Windows & Doors,” comprising pictures of the title subjects framed like works of art themselves; and “Graphsicals in Italy,” shots of Venice digitally enhanced with bursts of color. Her latest exhibit, “Happy Feet,” consists of nine photographs of clown feet on a boardwalk, displayed in the narrow glassed-in gallery in the Port Authority’s South Terminal. Even if you’re one of the many who are terrified of clowns, “Happy Feet” provides a playful counterpart to the types of shoes worn by men and women making their way through Port Authority every day, either going home or heading for work, often in a hurry trying to catch the next bus or train. A rainbow of bright yellows, reds, blues, greens, purples, and pinks explode like a candy starburst, also providing a stark contrast to George Segal’s nearby sculpture of a trio of all-white plastered people. Tourists and New Yorkers are always rushing through Port Authority; Bernard’s photographs once again offer the opportunity to take a little break and add some fun to the journey.

MIQUEL BARCELÓ: GRAN ELEFANDRET

Don’t forget to see Miquel Barceló’s “Gran Elefandret” before it leaves Union Square on May 20 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Union Square Triangle
Median, Park Ave. at 15th St.
Through May 29
www.marlboroughgallery.com
gran elefandret slideshow

Union Square Park can be a bit of a crazy circus at times, filled with musicians, street performers, activists, tourists, poets, vendors, and, well, its fare share of downright crazy people. Mallorca-born artist Miquel Barceló pays tribute to the park’s unpredictability with the playful bronze statue “Gran Elefandret.” The monumental sculpture features an enormous elephant balancing on its trunk, rising up more than twenty-five feet on the Union Square Triangle between the park and the nearby Daryl Roth Theatre, where a circus of a different kind, Fuerza Bruta, has been attracting visitors for several years now. The elephant’s ears droop toward the ground as its legs spread apart toward the heavens; be sure to walk all the way around it to get its full wrinkly grandeur as the background changes from tall buildings to green trees to clear blue sky. Although the 2008 work was not created for this specific location, it wonderfully captures the hectic but fun aspect of the historic Union Square neighborhood, especially with cars, taxis, and buses zooming by. Part of the Union Square Art in the Park program, “Gran Elefandret” will keep up its improbable balancing act through May 29.