Who:Martha Graham Dance Company,Neil Baldwin, Janet Eilber What:GrahamDeconstructed Where: Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune St., eleventh floor When: November 8-9, in person $20-$30 (livestream $25), 7:00 Why: “For me, growing up in the Manhattan neighborhood where Lincoln Center would someday be built, the name ‘Martha Graham’ conjured a distant image: A goddess-like, athletic personage in a tight, shirred bodice extended at the hips into a flowing gown, her bare right foot weighted and planted as if holding to the floor, left leg poised aloft at an impossible angle revealing a long, muscular thigh emerging from the play of fabric in the eloquent garment. Her right arm is bent, her hand half-crooked at the wrist, fingers contracted and crowning a smooth brow while she gazes, angular-featured, luminous half-closed eyes fixed downward and focused inward, seeking an undefined, urgent answer.” That’s how Neil Baldwin describes his subject at the beginning of his new biography, Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern (Knopf, October 2022, $40).
On November 8 and 9 at 7:00, the Martha Graham Dance Company will present a special program as part of its continuing “GrahamDeconstructed” series. Baldwin, who has also written such books as The American Revelation,Man Ray: American Artist,Edison: Inventing the Century, and Henry Ford and the Jews, will be at the Martha Graham Studio Theater on Bethune St. to launch the book, reading sections — joined by MGDC company members who will perform excerpts from dances he mentions — signing copies, and participating in a discussion with MGDC artistic director Janet Eilber, followed by a wine reception. The event will be livestreamed as well.
UPLOAD
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
March 22-30, $45-$150, 7:30 / 8:00 www.armoryonpark.org www.vanderaa.net
Dutch composer Michel van der Aa returns to Park Ave. Armory this month with the North American premiere of Upload, a multimedia opera running March 22-30 in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall. The hybrid work uses film and motion capture technology to tell the story of a father and daughter seeking digital consciousness, an exciting follow-up to Rashaad Newsome’s recently concluded Assembly installation at the armory, which was hosted by the AI known as Being the Digital Griot.
Previously presented at the Dutch National Opera and the Bregenz Festival in Austria, the eighty-five-minute Upload features soprano Julia Bullock as the daughter and baritone Roderick Williams as the father in person, with Katja Herbers as a psychiatrist and Ashley Zukerman as a CEO in prerecorded flashbacks shot by cinematographer Joost Rietdijk. The score is performed by the Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik under the direction of Otto Tausk; the set and lighting are by Theun Mosk, with motion capture and graphics by Darien Brito and special effects by Julius Horsthuis.
Composer, director, and librettist van der Aa was last at the armory with 2017’s Blank Out, in which Williams appeared onscreen in a story loosely based on the life and career of bilingual South African poet Ingrid Jonker. “Park Ave. Armory is one of my favorite performance spaces in the world,” van der Aa said in a statement. “When it presented Blank Out, I was inspired by the response from the armory’s open-minded and diverse audiences. Upload was developed with the Armory in mind.” There will be an artist talk with van der Aa, moderated by performance artist Marina Abramović, on March 22 at 6:00 ($15).
John Cale and Lou Reed reunite to honor Andy Warhol in Songs for ’Drella
SONGS FOR ’DRELLA (Ed Lachman, 1990)
New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center
Francesca Beale Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, October 5, 4:30 www.filmlinc.org
In December 1989, Velvet Underground cofounders John Cale and Lou Reed took the stage at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House and performed a song cycle in honor of Andy Warhol, who had played a pivotal role in the group’s success. The Pittsburgh-born Pop artist had died in February 1987 at the age of fifty-eight; although Cale and Reed had had a long falling-out, they reunited at Warhol’s funeral at the suggestion of artist Julian Schnabel. Commissioned by BAM and St. Ann’s, Songs for ’Drella — named after one of Warhol’s nicknames, a combination of Dracula and Cinderella — was released as a concert film and recorded for an album. The work is filled with factual details and anecdotes of Warhol’s life and career, from his relationship with his mother to his years at the Factory, from his 1967 shooting at the hands of Valerie Solanis to his dedication to his craft.
Directed, photographed, and produced by Ed Lachman, the two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer of such films as Desperately Seeking Susan,Mississippi Masala,Far from Heaven, and Carol — Lachman also supervised the 4K restoration being shown at the New York Film Festival this week — Songs for ’Drella is an intimate portrait not only of Warhol but of Cale and Reed, who sit across from each other onstage, Cale on the left, playing keyboards and violin, Reed on the right on guitars. There is no between-song patter or introductions; they just play the music as Robert Wierzel’s lighting shifts from black-and-white to splashes of blue and red. Photos of Warhol and some of his works (Electric Chair,Mona Lisa,Gun) are occasionally projected onto a screen on the back wall.
“When you’re growing up in a small town / Bad skin, bad eyes — gay and fatty / People look at you funny / When you’re in a small town / My father worked in construction / It’s not something for which I’m suited / Oh — what is something for which you are suited? / Getting out of here,” Reed sings on the opener, “Smalltown.” Cale and Reed share an infectious smile before “Style It Takes,” in which Cale sings, “I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art / It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket / ’Cause I’ve got the style it takes / And you’ve got the people it takes / This is a rock group called the Velvet Underground / I show movies of them / Do you like their sound / ’Cause they have a style that grates and I have art to make.”
Songs for ’Drella is screening at NYFF59 in new 4K restoration
Cale and Reed reflect more on their association with Warhol in “A Dream.” Cale sings as Warhol, “And seeing John made me think of the Velvets / And I had been thinking about them / when I was on St. Marks Place / going to that new gallery those sweet new kids have opened / But they thought I was old / And then I saw the old DOM / the old club where we did our first shows / It was so great / And I don’t understand about that Velvets first album / I mean, I did the cover / and I was the producer / and I always see it repackaged / and I’ve never gotten a penny from it / How could that be / I should call Henry / But it was good seeing John / I did a cover for him / but I did it in black and white and he changed it to color / It would have been worth more if he’d left it my way / But you can never tell anybody anything / I’ve learned that.”
The song later turns the focus on Reed, recalling, “And then I saw Lou / I’m so mad at him / Lou Reed got married and didn’t invite me / I mean, is it because he thought I’d bring too many people? / I don’t get it / He could have at least called / I mean, he’s doing so great / Why doesn’t he call me? / I saw him at the MTV show / and he was one row away and he didn’t even say hello / I don’t get it / You know I hate Lou / I really do / He won’t even hire us for his videos / And I was so proud of him.”
Reed does say hello — and goodbye — on the closer, “Hello It’s Me.” With Cale on violin, Reed stands up with his guitar and fondly sings, “Oh well, now, Andy — I guess we’ve got to go / I wish some way somehow you like this little show / I know it’s late in coming / But it’s the only way I know / Hello, it’s me / Goodnight, Andy / Goodbye, Andy.”
It’s a tender way to end a beautiful performance, but Lachman has added a special treat after the credits, with one final anecdote and the original trailer he made for Reed’s 1974 song cycle, Berlin.Songs for ’Drella is screening October 5 at 4:30 at the Francesca Beale Theater; it is also being shown October 2 prior to the free outdoor presentation of Todd Haynes’s new documentary, The Velvet Underground, in Damrosch Park, which will be followed by a Q&A with Lachman and Haynes. Lachman and Haynes will also be part of a Q&A with producers Christine Vachon and Julie Goldman and editors Affonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz at the September 30 screening of The Velvet Underground at Alice Tully Hall; Cale was supposed to attend but has had to cancel.
Todd Haynes documents the history of the Velvet Underground in new film
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes, 2021)
Thursday, September 30, Alice Tully Hall, 6:00
Saturday, October 2, Damrosch Park, 7:00
Film Comment Live: The Velvet Underground & the New York Avant-Garde, Sunday, October 3, Damrosch Park, free, 4:00 www.filmlinc.org
Much of Haynes’s documentary, which will have its theatrical premiere October 14–21 at the Walter Reade (and streaming on Apple+ beginning October 15), focuses on Warhol’s position in helping develop and promote the Velvets. “Andy was extraordinary, and I honestly don’t think these things could have occurred without Andy,” Reed, who died in 2013, says. “I don’t know if we would have gotten the contract if he hadn’t said he’d do the cover or if Nico wasn’t so beautiful.”
Haynes details the history of the group by delving into Cale and Reed’s initial meeting, the formation of the Primitives with conceptual artists Tony Conrad and Walter DeMaria, and the transformation into the seminal VU lineup at the Factory under Warhol’s guidance — singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed, Welsh experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and German vocalist Nico.
Haynes and editors Gonçalves and Kurnitz pace the film like VU’s songs and overall career, as they cut between new and old interviews and dazzling archival photographs and video, frantic and chaotic at first, then slowing down as things change drastically for the band They employ split screens, usually two but up to twelve boxes at a time, to deluge the viewer with a barrage of sound and image. Among the talking heads in the film are composer and Dream Syndicate founder La Monte Young, actress and film critic Amy Taubin, actress and author Mary Woronov, Reed’s sister Merrill Reed-Weiner, early Reed bandmates and school friends Allan Hyman and Richard Mishkin, filmmaker and author John Waters, manager and publicist Danny Fields, composer and philosopher Henry Flynt, and avant-garde filmmaker and poet Jonas Mekas. “We are not part really of the subculture or counterculture. We are the culture!” Mekas, who passed away in 2019 at the age of ninety-six, declares.
Haynes, who has made such previous music-related films as Velvet Goldmine, set in the 1970s glam-rock era, and I’m Not There, a fictionalized musical inspired by the life and career of Bob Dylan, also speaks extensively with Cale and Tucker, who hold nothing back, in addition to Sterling Morrison’s widow, Martha Morrison; singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, who opened up for the Velvets; and big-time fan Jonathan Richman (of Modern Lovers fame). While everyone shares their thoughts about Warhol, the Factory, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows, and the eventual dissolution of the band, Haynes bombards us with clips from Warhol’s Sleep,Kiss,Empire, and Screen Tests (many opposite the people who appear in the film) as well as works by such artists as Maya Deren, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Barbara Rubin, Tony Oursler, Stan Brakhage, and Mekas and paintings by Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko. It’s a dizzying array that aligns with such VU classics as “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Heroin,” “White Light / White Heat,” “Sister Ray,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” and “Sweet Jane.”
Several speakers disparage the Flower Power era, Bill Graham, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, with Tucker admitting, “This love-peace crap, we hated that. Get real.” They’re also honest about the group’s own success, or lack thereof. Tucker remembers at their first shows, “We used to joke around and say, ‘Well, how many people left?’ ‘About half.’ ‘Oh, we must have been good tonight.’” And there is no love lost for Reed, who was not the warmest and most considerate of colleagues.
The Velvets continue to have a remarkable influence on music and art today despite having recorded only two albums with Cale (The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light / White Heat) and two with Doug Yule replacing Cale (The Velvet Underground and Loaded) in a span of only three years. Haynes (Far from Heaven,Safe) sucks us right into their extraordinary world and keeps us swirling in it for two glorious hours of music, gossip, art, celebrity, and backstabbing. If you end up watching the film at home, turn it up loud. No, louder than that. Even louder. . . .
Developed during the pandemic, the curatorial platform four/four presents continues its monthly site-specific “Open Air” performance series with a new piece about mourning, healing, rebirth, and renewal, taking place July 14-15 in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Founded by dancer and choreographer Loni Landon and producer Rachael Pazdan, four/four has brought us “Tethered,” a ten-part multidisciplinary video project featuring collaborations with Kassa Overall, slowdanger, Gus Solomons, Zoey Anderson, Rafiq Bhatia, Ian Chang, Jacqueline Green, Jon Batiste, Lloyd Knight, and many others, which can be watched here.
For Green-Wood, Landon has choreographed a work for seven dancers, with live music by experimental harpist Mary Lattimore, performed in Cedar Dell, the one-acre bowl-shaped natural amphitheater with graves dating back to the eighteenth century. The evening will conclude with a participatory meditative sound bath. “Open Air” began June 9 with Madison McFerrin, Samantha Figgins, and Jessica Pinkett teaming up at the Jackie Robinson Park Bandshell; up next are Melanie Charles and Kayla Farrish at the Bushwick Playground Basketball Court on August 8, followed by Moor Mother and Rena Butler at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 on September 21.
Who: Joyce Carol Oates, Zibby Owens What: Livestreamed conversation Where:The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center When: Tuesday, March 9, free with RSVP, $25 with book, 11:00 am Why: On February 16, mother of four and creator and host of the podcast “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books”Zibby Owens was introduced as the moderator for the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center’s new virtual conversation series, “Women on the Move.” Owens, whose Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology (Skyhorse, February 2021, $24.99) was published last month, spoke with Jeanine Cummins on February 23 and Nicole Krauss on March 3. On March 9 at 11:00 in the morning, Owens will Zoom in with eighty-two-year-old living legend Joyce Carol Oates, the New York State native who has written more than a hundred novels, novellas, short stories, essays, and plays. The latest collection from the winner of two O. Henry Awards, the National Book Award, the Jerusalem Prize, and the National Humanities Medal is The (Other) You: Stories (HarperCollins, February 2021, $26.99), which, among other things, is about the act of reading itself. “Bought a bookstore. Mostly secondhand books,” the title story begins. Admission to the live webinar is free with RSVP, although you can receive a copy of the book for a $25 fee.
Since May 2001, twi-ny has been recommending cool things to do throughout the five boroughs, popular and under-the-radar events that draw people out of their homes to experience film, theater, dance, art, literature, music, food, comedy, and more as part of a live audience in the most vibrant community on Earth.
With the spread of Covid-19 and the closing of all cultural institutions, sports venues, bars, and restaurants (for dining in), we feel it is our duty to prioritize the health and well-being of our loyal readers. So, for the next several weeks at least, we won’t be covering any public events in which men, women, and children must congregate in groups, a more unlikely scenario day by day anyway.
That said, as George Bernard Shaw once noted, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”
Some parks are still open, great places to breathe in fresh air, feel the sunshine, and watch the changing of winter into spring. We will occasionally be pointing out various statues, sculptures, and installations, but check them out only if you are already going outside and will happen to be nearby.
You don’t have to shut yourself away completely for the next weeks and months — for now, you can still go grocery shopping and pick up takeout — but do think of others as you go about your daily life, which is going to be very different for a while. We want each and every one of you to take care of yourselves and your families, follow the guidelines for social distancing, and consider the health and well-being of those around you.
We look forward to seeing you indoors and at festivals and major outdoor events as soon as possible, once New York, America, and the rest of the planet are ready to get back to business. Until then, you can find us every so often under the sun, moon, clouds, and stars, finding respite in this amazing city now in crisis.
Javier Muñoz asks audiences to slow down, stop, and take a look at the world in A Sign of the Times (photo by Russ Rowland)
A SIGN OF THE TIMES
Theater 511
511 West 54th St.
Thursday – Tuesday through April 4, $51-$71 asignofthetimesplay.com
Writer-director Stephen Lloyd Helper’s A Sign of the Times was inspired by a twenty-second interaction with a road worker whose job was flipping a sign that said “Slow” on one side and “Stop” on the other. Helper (Smokey Joe’s Café, Syncopation) turned that into a poignant one-man comedy about depression and the state of the planet that is currently in previews at Theater 511. The ninety-five-minute play stars Brooklyn-born actor and activist Javier Muñoz, who brings his unique personal experiences to the show; Muñoz, who took over for Lin-Manuel Miranda first as Usnavi in In the Heights, then in the title role of Hamilton, was raised in East New York, is HIV-positive, and has battled cancer. “1st yr of conservatory I was asked why I chose this profession. I said cuz I wanted to help both light meet dark in us all. We exist w/in 1 another w/ every breath. Stand in defiance. Never stop listening to why you stand in defiance. There lay truth,” he recently posted on Twitter. In A Sign of the Times, his character references Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Greek mythology, theater, literature, and more as he searches for hope in a pain-filled world. The play features costumes by Soule Golden, lighting by Caitlin Rapoport, projections by Kristen Ferguson, and sound and original music by David Van Tieghem.
Hamilton alum Javier Muñoz stars in one-man show A Sign of the Times (photo by Russ Rowland)
TICKET GIVEAWAY: A Sign of the Times runs through April 4 (with a February 27 opening) at Theater 511, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. (At the March 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9 performances, the role usually played by Javier Muñoz will be played by Greg Brostrom.) Just send your name, phone number, and favorite play, television show, or movie with a star from Hamilton in it to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, February 26, at 3:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.
