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MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ IN CONVERSATION: PERFORMATIVE (POSTPONED)

Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present, MoMA performance, 2010 (photo by Marco Anelli / courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives)

Who: Marina Abramović, Glenn Lowry, Marco Anelli
What: Livestreamed discussions in conjunction with new gallery show, “Performative”
Where: Sean Kelly Gallery YouTube, MoMA online
When: Tuesday, March 15, free with RSVP, 6:15 [now postponed]; Thursday, March 24, free with RSVP, 7:30
Why: In 2010, MoMA staged the widely hailed immersive exhibition “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present,” a chronological career survey highlighted by the re-creation of many of the Belgrade-born artist’s performance pieces, centered by the title work, in which she and a visitor sat across from one another, staring into each other’ eyes for as long as possible as the audience watched. In conjunction with the new Sean Kelly exhibit “Marina Abramović: Performative,” which explores four key turning points in Abramović’s oeuvre, the gallery is presenting a pair of live discussions between and Abramović and special guests, sitting down together but most likely not having a staring contest.

On March 15 at 6:15, Abramović will be at Sean Kelly with Glenn Lowry, the longtime MoMA director who oversaw the 2010 show; the livestream will be available on YouTube. [ed note: This event has been postponed because of the knife attack at MoMA over the weekend.] On March 24 at 7:30, Abramović will be at MoMA for a virtual conversation with Italian photographer Marco Anelli. “Performative,” consisting of photographs, video, objects, and ephemera, is on view at Sean Kelly Gallery at 475 Tenth Ave. through April 16, featuring looks at Abramović’s Rhythm 10, The Artist Is Present, the participatory Transitory Objects, and Seven Deaths.

AN EVENING WITH CHARLES RAY: FIGURE GROUND

Charles Ray’s Boy points out Family romance at the Met (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Charles Ray, Hamza Walker, Kelly Baum, Leon Polsky
Brinda Kumar
What: Live panel discussion on exhibition “Charles Ray: Figure Ground”
Where: Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
When: Tuesday, March 15, free with RSVP, 6:30 (will be recorded for on-demand viewing)
Why: In his essay in “A Questionnaire on Materialisms,” Chicago-born, LA-based sculptor, photographer, and performance artist Charles Ray wrote of encountering an odd phenomenon every time he approached a particular rock with his flashlight during his every-day early morning walk: The flashlight would always suddenly turn off. He becomes obsessed with discovering why it keeps happening, with no success at first. “Could there be a spirit or a ghost about, some being traumatized in the vicinity of this rock, and I was disturbing it every morning with my light? And was it this specter that was turning the light off?” he ponders. When he eventually finds out why it is turning off by the same rock every day, he admits, “I had found the location of my problem, and somehow it was still just as scary as before I knew the solution.”

Detail, Charles Ray, Sarah Williams, stainless steel, 2021 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Ray’s relationship with the rock is not unlike viewers’ relationship with his art, particularly his sculptures, which range from ultrarealistic works that you will double check to make sure they’re not breathing to oversized and undersized depictions of characters in shiny metal or wood. Nineteen such objects are on display in “Charles Ray: Figure Ground,” continuing at the Met Fifth Ave. through June 5. The show opens with No, what appears to be a photograph of Ray but is actually a picture of a mold of his head and torso fitted with a wig and his glasses and shirt, letting us know from the very start that not everything we are about to see is what we think it is.

“Figure Ground” is a menagerie of sculptural objects that both confuse and delight. Boy is an adult-size mannequin-like child pointing away, questioning conventions of race, gender, and sexuality. Family romance consists of a naked mother, father, son, and daughter all the same size, holding hands, their faces not appearing to be too happy. For Tractor, Ray reconstructed an existing vintage farm vehicle part by part out of clay and wax, then cast it in aluminum, restoring a childhood memory. A vitrine containing the small sculptures Chicken, Hand Holding Egg, and Handheld Bird bring up ideas of birth and creation, nature and nurture, as well as the fragility of life; Chicken was designed to be touched but it is now too brittle.

Charles Ray’s Boy with Frog stands behind Tractor in Met exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Boy with Frog, a large-scale stainless-steel sculpture of a boy dangling a frog from his right hand, is painted white to evoke classical marble statuary. The stainless-steel Huck and Jim is left in glittering, reflective metal; both are naked, with Huck bent over, Jim’s hand almost touching Huck’s back, thoughts of monument destruction, homoeroticism, and cancel culture coming to mind. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is also the impetus for Sarah Williams, in which Jim is on his knees behind Huck, who is disguised as a woman, a scene from chapter ten. Ray references Henri Matisse and Henry Moore in Reclining woman, which is like a Renaissance painting come to life in stainless steel, machined in stunning detail. Archangel was carved out of one block of Japanese cypress, a large-scale male who is a new kind of mythological figure, wearing flip-flops and rolled-up jeans and sporting a man bun. And you’re likely going to have to look at least twice to spot Rotating circle, a slowly spinning circle cut out of the wall that is scaled to Ray’s precise height, as if we are seeing it through his eyes.

In conjunction with “Charles Ray: Figure Ground,” the Met is hosting “An Evening with Charles Ray,” a panel discussion on March 15 at 6:30 in Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium with Ray, Met curator Kelly Baum, and Met associate curator Brinda Kumar. If you can’t make it in person, it will be recorded and available for on-demand viewing afterward. Just be sure to see the show itself, which is captivating and beautifully curated, with the works spread out to give them maximum affect.

ROUND DANCE

Arthur Schnitzler’s controversial La Ronde gets a new adaptation at the IRT Theater (photo by Adrian Viruet)

ROUND DANCE
IRT Theater
154 Christopher St. between Washington & Greenwich Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through March 27, $30
irttheater.org

Arthur Schnitzler’s controversial 1897 play, Reigen, better known as La Ronde, took more than two decades to reach the stage in a professional production, then was banned. The Vienna-born writer was brought up on immorality charges, laced with anti-Semitism, in Berlin and, though cleared, refused to allow the play to be performed in German-speaking countries; it wasn’t until 1982 that his son gave permission for productions in Germany and Austria.

La Ronde is a circular tale of five men and five women rotating in scenes of sex and love in 1890s Vienna; in each episode, one of the characters moves on to another person in the next scene, then that second person continues to a third person, and so on until the story revolves back to the first. The play has been adapted into a glorious 1950 film by Max Ophüls, narrated by Anton Walbrook and featuring a lively merry-go-round; Roger Vadim made a raunchier version in 1964 set in 1914 Paris, the script adapted by Jean Anouilh.

Oldest Boys Productions and Accidental Repertory Theater are now presenting the play, with the English title Round Dance, at the IRT Theater on Christopher St., directed by H. Clark Kee from his own translation. Part of the 3B Development Series, the show takes place in a small, intimate space. All ten actors — who portray men and women from different classes, from a hooker, a count, a poet, and a young wife to a soldier, a sweet girl, a gentleman, and a chambermaid — are always onstage. The eight actors who aren’t in the scene are lined up on the right and left, sitting in folding chairs, and they leap up to rearrange the set (tables, chairs, beds) in between each encounter. The success of the play depends on the subtle chemistry among the cast and the smooth transition between scenes, but Kee can’t quite reach those goals.

The acting is uneven, and the pace is unsteady, particularly over the course of two hours without an intermission. It has its moments but cannot sustain enough intensity, and the attempts to make the tale more relevant in the #metoo era amid the much-needed reevaluation of sexual consent, power dynamics, and conventional gender roles don’t ring true, nor does the incidental and interstitial music, which includes Haddaway’s “What Is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me).”

In the twenty-first century, Round Dance, which is set in an unidentified recent past, should look more forward; for example, in 2019, Cutting Ball Theater staged a version of La Ronde performed by two women, one Black, one white, that challenged old-fashioned perceptions and stereotypes from multiple perspectives, and Canada’s Soulpepper Theatre Company went all-out in a bold, sexy adaptation by Jason Sherman in 2013.

At the end of the play the night I went, the cast beckoned to Kee (Yellow Sound, Leonce and Lena) to join them onstage and accept a bouquet of roses; he declined, perhaps out of shyness, or maybe because he knew that the play still could use some further development.

A DAYLONG CELEBRATION—BEFORE YESTERDAY WE COULD FLY: AN AFROFUTURIST PERIOD ROOM

Before Yesterday We Could Fly is the Met’s latest period room (photo © the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A DAYLONG CELEBRATION
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Sunday, March 13, free with museum admission, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

In November, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new period room, the spectacular Afrofuturist Before Yesterday We Could Fly, an homage to the nineteenth-century Seneca Village, a thriving African American community, including Black landowners, that was taken away by the city in order to build Central Park. Named after Virginia Hamilton’s 1985 children’s book, The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, the installation features more than six dozen objects, including bowls, vases, cups, plates, chairs, jars, boxes, paintings, sculpture, and more by such artists as Robert Lugo, Zizipho Poswa, Atang Tshikare, Elizabeth Catlett, William Henry Johnson, Magdalene Odundo, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The room is instilled with a spiritual energy that is intoxicating, melding past and present with the future.

“I think for a lot of us, when we were kids, our ability to envision a future that was different than some of the things that we didn’t like that we were seeing around us was to escape into a fantasy and envision a future that’s more akin to a superhero comic book than it is to actual reality — and I think that comes through in my work and a lot of the people that express visions in an Afrofuture,” Swiss industrial designer and artist Ini Archibong says in a Met video; Archibong contributed two Atlas Chairs, an Orion Table, and the Vernus 3 chandelier to the room.

“The Black imagination and manifestation of freedom is really what I was aiming at. And my feeling that roots, magic is really at the center of our strength and identity, and is something that has always helped direct us into the future and given us strength in the present,” Haitian-born, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Fabiola Jean-Louis says in another Met video; her ornately designed Justice of Ezili corset dress, a tribute to Vodou loa (spirit) Ezili Dantor, is a highlight of the room.

Also be on the lookout for Henry Taylor’s Andrea Motley Crabtree, the first, a portrait of the first woman and Black woman army deep-sea diver; Willie Cole’s Shine, a mask made of high-heeled leather shoes equating soles and souls; Tourmaline’s photographic self-portraits Summer Azure and Morning Cloak; Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s Thriving and Potential, Displaced (Again and Again and…), wallpaper that merges a Seneca Village map with images from the African diaspora; Andile Dyalvane’s Umwonyo, a pot that collapsed when he danced in his studio; Roberto Lugo’s Digable Underground, a porcelain sculpture with images of Harriet Tubman and Erykah Badu, in a place of honor on a glass plinth within an open brick tower; and Jenn Nkiru’s Out/Side of Time, a mysterious photo made specifically for the period room.

On March 13, the Met will host an all-day celebration of the installation, running from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, consisting of art workshops in which participants can make tech-y accessories and social justice pottery; gallery chats with curators and researchers Sarah Lawrence, Ian Alteveer, and Ana Matisse Donefer-Hickie; the panel discussion “In the Parlor” with Rena Anakwe, Dyalvane, Jean-Louis, and Tourmaline; storytelling; and more. All events are free with museum admission; some require advance registration.

SOCIAL ALCHEMIX (LIVE!)

Social Alchemix (Live!) is back for monthly Monday night festivities (photo by Karen May)

Who: Social Alchemix (Live!)
What: Cocktail party social experiment
Where: the Studio @ Threes Franklin, Threes Brewing Greenpoint, 113 Franklin St., Brooklyn, and Caveat NYC, 21 A Clinton St., Manhattan
When: Monthly Monday nights: March 14 and April 18, the Studio @ Threes Franklin, $18-$49, 6:30; May 16, Caveat NYC, $18, 7:00
Why: After being locked inside for much of the last two years, we are all ready to break out and party with friends, relatives, colleagues, and strangers (in safe spaces). During the pandemic, Social Alchemix held events over Zoom, an interactive game night featuring storytelling, an original card deck, and specialty drinks conceived, designed, and hosted by cocktail guru Wil Petre. The participatory event, held monthly on Monday nights, encourages everyone to come together in the spirit of fun and camaraderie. The cards features such prompts as “What rules are meant to be broken?” and “How would you like to be remembered?”

Social Alchemix (Live!) is now back in person; the March 14 and April 18 gatherings take place at the Studio @ Threes Franklin in Brooklyn, while the May 16 edition moves to Caveat NYC in Manhattan. “This game and show certainly had weight prepandemic,” Petre said in a statement. “Feelings of isolation due to this hyperconnected hustle-culture — the past two years only seemed to underline these issues. As a country we’re as divided as ever, and after months of lockdown, we’re incredibly rusty when meeting new people. If ever there was a need for an evening of permission, not only to share our stories but to deeply listen, listen longer than we are used to, that time is now.” General admission is $18; for $49, you get to take home your own copy of the game. And be prepared to hang out for the afterparty.

LET THERE BE THEATRE — A CALL TO ACTION: WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT

Who: Et Alia Theater
What: One-night-only performance of White Rabbit Red Rabbit
Where: Theater for the New City, Johnson Theater, 155 First Ave. between Ninth & Tenth Sts.
When: Sunday, March 13, $10-$18, 8:00
Why: On Friday, March 13, 2020, theaters across New York City were shuttered because of Covid-19. On March 13, 2022, at 8:00, to mark the two-year anniversary and to celebrate the reopening of venues around the globe, international companies will be performing Berlin-based Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s 2011 autobiographical hit White Rabbit Red Rabbit as part of Let There Be Theatre — A Call to Action. The event is organized by Berlin-based Aurora Nova founder Wolfgang Hoffmann, who explains: “Ten years ago, almost to the day, I performed in a show at the Fadjr Festival in Tehran. At the festival hotel I was introduced to a young unpublished playwright who did not have a passport because he had refused to do military service. In order to get his work in front of an audience, he had devised a play that had to be performed as a cold read, without the need of a director, set, or rehearsals. All it needed was for a brave performer to agree to read a text in front of a live audience, without first knowing what the play was about. I liked this young man and loved his idea and spontaneously agreed to help produce his show at the Edinburgh Fringe later that year. When I finally saw the show performed live, I realised what this playwright had achieved. Through the power of his words alone he had written himself to freedom.”

Here in New York, Et Alia Theater, a company founded and led by international women, will be staging White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Theater for the New City, performed by co-artistic director Maria Müller (On How to Be a Monster, Where Are You from Again?). During the pandemic, Et Alia made the indie film This Is Me Eating___, then performed it live at the Alchemical Studios for one day last October. Tickets are only $10–$18 to see the sixty-to-ninety-minute show, which is always just as surprising for the actor as it is for the audience. I saw Obie winner Linda Emond in Soleimanpour’s autobiographical Nassim in 2018, which also involved no rehearsals and no prior access to the script, and it was a joy from start to finish. Among those who have previously performed White Rabbit Red Rabbit are John Hurt, Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Stephen Rea, Sinead Cusack, Dominic West, Wayne Brady, Darren Criss, Kathy Najimy, Cynthia Nixon, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Urie, and Ken Loach.

Et Alia Theater will perform White Rabbit Red Rabbit on March 13 at Theater for the New City

“It is a one-time experience because the performer will have its opening and closing night of this play at the same time,” Hoffmann continues. “At 8 pm in every time zone there will be a multitude of shows starting at the same time for twenty-four hours, thus creating a massive theatrical community. On March 13 hundreds of courageous performers will face the same daring task to read a text they have not seen before to a live audience and everybody will be present at the same moment. The thought of all of us together, making theater once again — gives me boundless hope and energy.” Yes indeed, it’s great to be back.

SERGEY ANTONOV, CELLO, AND NARGIZ ALIYAROVA, PIANO, AT CARNEGIE HALL

Pianist Nargiz Aliyarova and cellist Sergey Antonov will perform an all-Chopin concert at Carnegie Hall on March 15

Who: Nargiz Aliyarova, Sergey Antonov
What: Benefit concert of Chopin music
Where: Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, 881 Seventh Ave. at West 57th St.
When: Tuesday, March 15, $30-$60, 8:00
Why: “I am so excited,” New York–based Azerbaijani pianist Nargiz Aliyarova told me recently about making her Carnegie Hall debut. “Any musician in the world would be happy to be on this stage!” Aliyarova, who is also a professor with a doctorate in art, will be joined by US-based cellist Sergey Antonov in a special all-Chopin program at Weill Recital Hall on March 15. The concert is being presented by the National Music & Global Culture Society, a nonprofit organization founded by Aliyarova “to unite our multicultural community through the advocacy of music from around the world,” focusing on providing lessons to disadvantaged youth, hosting contests and festivals, and publishing a quarterly online magazine.

Aliyarova, who began giving recitals at the age of nine and was awarded a diploma “for outstanding contribution to the legacy of Frédéric Chopin” by the Polish government in 2010, has released three albums of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Chopin in addition to two CDs of Azerbaijani music, including compositions by Jovdet Hajiyev, Gara Garayev, Franghiz Alizadeh, Vagif Mustafazadeh, and Javanshit Guliyev. The Russian-born, Grammy-nominated Antonov, a gold medal winner at the XIII International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2007, began playing the cello when he was five; he has released Elegy with pianist Ilya Kazantsev, Strauss & Rachmaninov: Sonatas for Cello & Piano, and an album of music by Robert Schumann. He is also a member of the Hermitage Piano Trio with Kazantsev and violinist Misha Keylin.

The Carnegie Hall program features an exciting mix of works by Chopin, the Polish Romantic composer and pianist who passed away in 1849 at the age of thirty-nine. Aliyarova and Antonov will be performing Polonaise Brillante for cello and piano Op. 3, Sonata for cello and piano Op. 65, Nocturne Op. post in C sharp Minor, Waltz Op. 34 N.2 in A minor, Waltz Op. 64 N.2 in C sharp Minor, Ballade in F minor, Op. 52, and the world premiere of Chopin and August Franchomme’s Grand Duo concertant in E major, B. 70, arranged for cello and piano by Lala Jafarova. Antonov and Aliyarova previously played together at the International Mugham Center in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku in September 2021, performing works by Chopin and Claude Debussy. The Carnegie Hall concert by these internationally renowned musicians is both a respite from the latest news and a reminder of how important it is “to unite our multicultural community through the advocacy of music from around the world.”