Four teen girls explore their lives through music in world premiere play by Eisa Davis (photo by Carol Rosegg)
||: GIRLS :||: CHANCE :||: MUSIC :||
Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 21, $37.80-$106.92 www.vineyardtheatre.org
Eisa Davis’s ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| unfolds like an improvisatory jazz theatrical piece, transforming the concept of the creation and playing of music into subtle and not-so-subtle metaphors about growing up and making choices. It explores chaos and empathy, education and impermanence, and building — or not building — family and community, with time jumps and forays into alternate realities.
If you’re one of the first twelve people entering the Vineyard Theatre, you’ll be offered the opportunity of selecting a note on a keyboard chart that will, when done, form a unique tone row for that night’s performance, serving as the underlying musical theme. The cast will develop it at the start of the play, asking the audience to participate, and the tune will make appearances later on as well.
The show follows four teenagers of color as they prepare for their final project at a girls summer music program in Berkeley. Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) is a straightforward flutist who mostly stays in the background; Fax (Hillary Fisher) is a vocalist who always prefers to have a plan; Margot (Naomi Latta) is a wildly unpredictable drummer; and Rile (Yeena Sung) is a pianist who enjoys experimenting.
Early on, Rile is playing the end of “Una Voce Poco Fa” from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville when she makes a mistake and improvises around it, completely throwing Fax off. “I mean it’s about being intentional with your juxtaposition,” Fax says, clearly unhappy. Rile responds, “Putting things together that don’t seem like they’ll fit.” Soon after, Fax declares, “Don’t do random shit onstage that’s different from what we practiced.”
Over the course of 105 minutes, the four characters face such issues as race, class, gender, and sexuality as they try to find their place not only in music but in the world itself, one filled with trouble and danger. “I love getting up in the morning to come here — when the world feels like one disaster after another,” Fax says.
Margot later explains, “Quake wasn’t random and it wasn’t planned / just cause and effect from billions of years ago to now / we’re given an effect and we get to make a new cause with it / which makes a new effect and / it’s a chain / a network of exchange.”
Margot (Naomi Latta) and Fax (Hillary Fisher) form a unique bond in ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Nina Ball’s set consists of four small platformed music sections, one for each character, surrounded by angled columns that harken back to Greek tragedy; it evokes how the girls are four distinct individuals who can benefit from working together as a kind of band instead of on their own, like in life. Loneliness is a leitmotif. When Margot and Fax art talking about being artists — and human beings — Margot advises, “We’re supposed to do things we’re not supposed to do . . . you have to go out on a limb to do anything crucial,” but Fax replies, “But then you’re like lonely.” Fax has a home to go back to, one that seems to be growing by the day, while Margot is much more on her own.
Mel Ng’s costumes change often, with cool little touches that at first define the characters by specific color schemes. Russell H. Champa’s lighting gives each of the girls their personal moment to take center stage. It’s a strong, talented ensemble, like a tight-knit jazz quartet, although the narrative does occasionally meander off track, becoming too abstract, but it always finds its way back to the melody. Fisher (The Notebook,Between the Lines) and Latta, in her impressive off-Broadway debut, play off each other with a gorgeous rhythm, with Sung (Mary V,Comfort Women: A New Musical) riling things up just enough as Rile, and Rivera, in her off-Broadway debut, providing the right elements as the ending approaches.
Produced by the Vineyard in conjunction with American Conservatory Theater, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is conducted — er, directed — with an understanding, guiding hand by Tony winner Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park,Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), who turns Davis’s (Bulrusher,The Essentialist) complex script into a mini-symphony.
It is both a perplexing and rewarding play, weaving in and out of time and reality, expectations and desires, as four teenagers contemplate — or don’t — what’s waiting for them around the corner, and what their role in taking those next steps might be.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
RACHAEL SAGE AND CASSANDRA KUBINSKI
DROM
85 Ave. A between Fifth & Sixth Sts.
Saturday, June 20, $23.49 (plus $20 table minimum per person), VIP $46.97, 7:00 dromnyc.com rachaelsage.com cassandrakubinski.com
“Every time that you touch my hand I feel love / Every time you look in my eyes I feel love / Every time that you touch my cheek I feel love / Every time you give me a squeeze I feel love,” Rachael Sage sings on “Just Enough,” the lead track on her beautiful 2025 album, Canopy. It’s hard not to feel love when listening to the Port Chester native’s music, either across more than twenty LPs and EPs or live with her band, the Sequins.
“I wished and I waited / So quiet, so patient / I thought I would never hear it come / But here it comes now / I want it to thrill me / Cut through me, come fill me up / I’m ready, so let me / Sing it out, sing it out,” Cassandra Kubinski sings out on “This Is the Sound,” the lead track on her alluring 2023 EP, The Saratoga Sessions: Songs + Stories. It’s hard not to feel the thrill when listening to the Connecticut-born, NYC-based artist’s music, either across more than a half dozen LPs and EPs, as bandleader on The Never Settle Show, or as a featured songwriter on Dance Moms (as is Sage).
On June 20, the two singer-songwriters will team up for a special concert at DROM, playing separately and together. Joined by the Sequins, Sage will highlight tunes from her upcoming record, Under My Canopy, an acoustic reimagining of Canopy. Kubinski will focus on tunes from her upcoming record, Dance Moms Acoustic & Lyrical Solos, which includes such tracks as “Timeless,” “Save You Tonight,” and “There Is Only Love.”
“I am bursting with excitement to finally share the stage with Cassandra after so many years of knowing one another and having both had our music so heavily featured on the TV show Dance Moms,” says Sage, the founder, president, and art director of MPress Records and winner of three Great American Song Contests, the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, the Billboard Songwriting Contest, four OUTmusic Awards, and five Independent Music Awards. “What makes this upcoming show so special isn’t only that we’re both unveiling new material and unique acoustic arrangements — along with a video premiere — but that we are and have long been two fiercely independent, strong female artists who’ve advocated for and enjoyed intense community with the NYC music scene for decades. That shared sensibility of wanting to show up for and lift up other women while pursuing our creative bliss has always been something that’s bound us within the New York scene . . . and now we’ll finally get a chance to sing together — and about what it means to be resilient and inspired by one another’s journeys. Plus, I just adore her songwriting and vocal abilities, so there’s a ton of respect and admiration right now, which will make this night especially fun.”
Kubinski agrees wholeheartedly.
“I’m so excited to premiere songs from my forthcoming album. I’m also looking forward to sharing the stage with Rachael Sage for the first time,” adds Kubinski, who is also a voice actress, the former global co-chair of membership for the international nonprofit Women in Music, and winner of a Women in Sync Award. “It’s a unique connection, as our music has been central to the world of dance competitions. It’s gratifying when these different creative threads combine to form something memorably distinctive. I so respect Rachael’s songwriting and work ethic. Playing in NYC, the heartland of the arts, is a very special honor, and it’s a city I’ve loved performing in over the years.”
Tickets for the DROM show are $23.49 with a $20 table minimum per person; the VIP package is $46.97 and comes with priority seating, a signed, personalized commemorative poster, and autographed CDs from both Sage and Kubinski.
On “Nexus (Acoustic),” the first single from Under My Canopy — originally written about nonbinary high school student Nex Benedict, who died by suicide after being bullied and whose death became a national incident — Sage sings, “We can lift each other up with our resolve instead of doing nothing / We can lift each other up with our resolve instead of giving up.”
There should be a lot of lifting up at DROM on June 20 when these two extraordinary women take the stage.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
“The stories behind our smiling family are complicated and sometimes painful to tell,” Karla Murthy says in her new documentary, The Gas Station Attendant. “But isn’t everyone’s? It reminds me of the saying my cousin recently told me, while we were cooking, about all families having problems: ‘Everybody’s dosas have holes in them.’”
The Gas Station Attendant is a poignant, intimate tale of a family whose dosas have more than their share of holes. It’s about the immigrant experience and the search for the American dream, told by the daughter of a gentle man, H. N. Shantha Murthy, who spends his entire life trying to make things better for everyone around him despite meeting obstacles nearly every step of the way.
Murthy started recording her family on video when she was a little girl; later, as an adult, she began taping phone conversations with her father when he was forced to take a late-night job as a gas station attendant to pay the bills. During those talks, he shares details of the complicated, painful life he led, anchored by his deep love for his family.
He ran away from his home in India when he was ten, escaping horrific poverty, only to soon consider suicide. “I can still see myself as a boy,” he tells Karla. “I’m hiding here and there, not having food to eat for weeks. I used to sleep on the street, looking at the stars and moon, and always prayed: Someday, somehow, my life will change.” His life did change when, as a teen working at a hotel, he served a white couple from Texas who decided to sponsor him in America, paying for his education, and he became an engineer.
Following a mass layoff at Boeing, he struggled to earn a living, taking on a series of odd jobs, not wanting his family to experience any hardship. His first wife died too young, and he got remarried to a caring woman; both were Filipino, and he had two kids with each. Through it all, he grits his teeth and smiles, making friends wherever he goes — he and his second wife sold small gift items at trade shows around the country, something Karla sees for herself when she accompanies her father on one of those trips and he falls ill.
“Dad, how did you get up and keep going?” she thinks to herself.
The Emmy-nominated Murthy (The Place That Makes Us,Love, Jamie) wrote, directed, edited, and produced the eighty-three-minute film, incorporating archival footage, family photos and home movies, and numerous shots of empty gas stations, concerned for her father’s safety in what is a very dangerous job.
“And so here I am, reliving the past while trying to live in the present, wondering what it means to be a good father, a good daughter, a good mother,” Karla says.
Named Best Documentary Feature at the Nashville and San Diego Asian Film Festivals, The Gas Station Attendant will run June 12–18 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with Murthy participating in four postscreening Q&As: June 12 at 7:00 with writer Mira Jacob, June 13 at 6:00 with composer and podcaster Jad Abumrad, June 14 at 5:00 with New York Taxi Workers Alliance founder Bhairavi Desai, moderated by executive producer and Basement Bhangra founder DJ Rekha (who makes a cameo in the film), and June 18 at 6:30 with Economic Hardship Reporting Project executive director Alissa Quart.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
THE ART OF SOCCER
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
June 12 – July 5 metrograph.com
It may take a few days for World Cup fever to take over New York City, which is currently owned by the Knicks, but the international game of soccer is being celebrated just about everywhere you look. At Metrograph, “The Art of Soccer” consists of a half dozen fútbol classics, beginning June 12 with Wim Wenders’s 1972 The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and continuing with a new restoration of José Antonio Garcia and Ícaro Martins’s once-banned 1983 Onda Nova, Jafar Panahi’s 2006 Offside, Alexandre Koberidze’s 2021 What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, Abbas Kiarostami’s 1974 The Traveler, and Daniel Schmidt and Gabriel Abrantes’s 2018 Diamantino.
Giant fluffy puppies get in the way of a Portuguese soccer star’s dreams in Diamantino
At the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival in 2018, you could catch a documentary, foreign-language picture, political thriller, high-tech crime chiller, comedy, romantic melodrama, fantasy and sci-fi, and more — all in one wildly entertaining film. Diamantino, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s full-length feature debut, is an absurdist multigenre mashup that is as tense as it is funny, an unpredictable romp that evokes Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Michel Gondry, Philip K. Dick, South Park, Cinderella, James Bond, Being There,Minority Report, and Au Hasard Balthazar while feeling wholly original. Carloto Cotta stars as the title character, Diamantino Matamouros, a Portuguese soccer star à la Cristiano Ronaldo (pre-sexual assault allegations) who sees giant fluffy puppies when he is on the field. After botching a penalty kick in the World Cup Final, the stupendously beautiful star learns that his beloved father and mentor (Chico Chapas) has died. His evil twin sisters, Sónia (Anabela Moreira) and Natasha (Margarida Moreira), become his agents and make a secret deal with the mysterious Dr. Lamborghini (Carla Maciel) and a government minister (Silva Joana). Meanwhile, investigators Aisha Brito (Cleo Tavares) and Lucia (Vargas Maria Leite) — lovers who are soon to be married — are looking into Diamantino’s finances and devise a plan to get close to him by having Aisha pose as a male refugee named Rahim who Diamantino adopts as his son.
Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta) is surrounded by images of himself in Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s dazzling feature debut
Everyone except his sisters, who know better, thinks he is some kind of genius mastermind, but Diamantino is actually an addled simpleton who understands very little about life. He enjoyed playing soccer, likes eating Nutella and whipped cream sandwiches, and, following his tearful retirement, hangs out with his cat, Mittens, and dedicates himself to raising Rahim, who he does not realize is actually a grown woman. He’s reminiscent of Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) in Being There, but his airheaded statements — which are outrageously funny — are seldom mistaken for brilliance, except when he’s manipulated into making fascistic political statements he doesn’t understand. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week, Diamantino is stunningly photographed by Charles Ackley Anderson, who quickly adapts the film’s visual style as it switches from fantasy to love story to futuristic thriller, with numerous memorable shots, including Lucia in a white nun’s habit on a motorbike, Diamantino and Rahim sleeping on pillows with large images of the soccer star’s head, and a huge fluffy puppy playing goal in the championship game. American-born directors and longtime collaborators Abrantes and Schmidt, who edited the film with Raphaëlle Martin-Holger, show a deep love and respect for movies, infusing Diamantino with charm and energy, humor and compassion, honoring, in their own way, the history of cinema. The rest of the cast and crew do their part as well, from art director Bruno Duarte and composers Ulysse Klotz and Adriana Holtz to the Moreira sisters and multidisciplinary Portuguese star Manuela Moura Guedes as television interviewer Gisele.
A group of women risk their freedom to watch a soccer match in Jafar Panahi’s Offside
Filmed on location in and around Tehran’s Azadi Stadium and featuring a talented cast of nonprofessional actors, Jafar Panahi’s Offside is a brilliant look at gender disparity in modern-day Iran. Although it was illegal at the time for girls to go to soccer games in Iran — because, among other reasons, the government did not think it was appropriate for females to be in the company of screaming men who might be cursing and saying other nasty things (the regulations have been somewhat loosened recently) — many try to get in, facing arrest if they get caught. Offside is set during an actual match between Iran and Bahrain; a win will put Iran in the 2006 World Cup. High up in the stadium, a small group of girls, dressed in various types of disguises, have been captured and are cordoned off, guarded closely by some soldiers who would rather be watching the match themselves or back home tending to their sheep. The girls, who can hear the crowd noise, beg for one of the men to narrate the game for them.
Meanwhile, an old man is desperately trying to find his daughter to save her from some very real punishment that her brothers would dish out to her for shaming them by trying to get into the stadium. Despite its timely and poignant subject matter, Offside is a very funny film, with fine performances by Sima Mobarak Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ida Sadeghi, Golnaz Farmani, Mahnaz Zabihi, and Nazanin Sedighzadeh as the girls and M. Kheymeh Kabood as one of the soldiers. The film was selected for the 2006 New York Film Festival, but Panahi, who was supposed to attend the opening, experienced visa problems when trying to come to America and was later arrested by the Iranian government for his support of the opposition Green movement; he was sentenced to six years in prison and given a twenty-year ban on making new films, something he comments on ingeniously in This Is Not a Film.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City features numerous events tied to the World Cup
SUMMER FOR THE CITY: TOGETHER, WE MOVE
Lincoln Center
June 10 – August 8, free or choose-what-you-pay www.lincolncenter.org
The fifth iteration of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City features art, film, music, comedy, workshops, discussions, meditation, silent discos, and more, but its focus is on dance — along with World Cup–related soccer programs.
Describing the series, which features an outdoor installation by Clint Ramos, Chief Artistic Director Shanta Thake explains, “Lincoln Center becomes a celebration of bodies in motion — dancing, gathering, and connecting people from all walks of life.” There are hundreds of events, with performers from around the globe.
All presentations are free or choose-what-you-pay, and some require advance RSVP; below are twi-ny’s don’t-miss highlights.
Reg Bloor will conduct her late husband Glenn Branca’s symphony for one hundred guitars at Lincoln Center on June 12 (photo by Maria Jose Govia)
Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 Guitars
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall
Friday, June 12, choose-what-you-pay, 7:30 www.lincolncenter.org
On June 13, 2001, avant-garde composer Glenn Branca premiered Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 Guitars on the plaza at the World Trade Center. Writing about the piece for Sound American, Reg Bloor, guitarist Reg Bloor, Branca’s wife, explained, “This is the first time Glenn had done anything like this with volunteers, so we had no idea if anyone was going to show up. I’ll never forget walking around the corner of the North Tower onto the World Trade Center Plaza for the first rehearsal and seeing people sitting there on their amps waiting for us. This was really going to work. . . . The piece was a swirling cauldron of consonance and dissonance, like a giant swarm of bees trapped in a cyclone, the single movement a long, gradual build of dynamics, pitch, and tempo to a crescendo bouncing off the towers and ringing through the plaza, spilling out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan. It’s a sound that stays with you for the rest of the day after the piece is over. You hear it coming out of the subway tunnel or in the air conditioning. You can’t get it out of your ear until whole world starts to sound like Glenn.” Bloor will conduct the symphony at David Geffen Hall on June 12 at 7:30, with one hundred guitarists along with drummer Greg Fox.
Lincoln Center honors Juneteenth with three special performances that, unfortunately, overlap one another: Carl Hancock Rux’s Oh Sankofa at Hearst Plaza at 7:00, boasting a talented cast exploring the importance of folklore during the Transatlantic Slave Trade; Jeremy Nedd’s from rock to rock . . . aka how magnolia was taken for granite at Alice Tully Hall at 7:30, which looks at the Milly Rock; and Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s The Tune Up at the David Rubenstein Atrium at 7:30, directed by the Flea’s Niegel Smith.
The music of Labelle is celebrated by original member Nona Hendryx at David Geffen Hall
Nightbirds, the Music of Labelle
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall
Sunday, June 28, choose-what-you-pay, 7:30 www.lincolncenter.org
In 1974, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash, known as LaBelle, took the country by storm with the monster hit “Lady Marmalade.” The trio had been together in other forms since 1961, broke up in lurid circumstances in 1976, the re-formed from 2005 to 2009. On June 28, Dream Machine Studio is presenting “Nightbirds, the Music of Labelle” at David Geffen Hall, led by Hendryx, joined by the original Labelle backing trio of guitarist Eddie Martinez, bassist Carmine Rojas, and percussionist Jose Rossy, along with Tony winner Adrienne Warren, Kimberly Nichole, Ledisi, and Sandra St. Victor.
Shen Wei Dance Arts and Guangdong Modern Dance Company team up for site-specific MindScape on Hearst Plaza (photo by Gabe Palacio)
Shen Wei Dance Arts | Guangdong Modern Dance Company: MindScape
Hearst Plaza
July 1-3, free, 5:00 www.lincolncenter.org
Chinese-born, NYC-based choreographer, director, and painter Shen Wei brings together Shen Wei Dance Arts (SWDA) and Guangdong Modern Dance Company for MindScape, a forty-five-minute piece that incorporates poetry, calligraphy, painting, and movement on Hearst Plaza. SWDA has presented dazzling dances in the Park Ave. Armory Drill Hall, at the Prospect Park Bandshell, in the Met’s Charles Engelhard Court, and other unique locations, so it should be fascinating to see what they’ll be doing outdoors at Lincoln Center. MindScape is part of Lincoln Center’s Dance Encounters series, which also has performances by Omari Wiles / Les Ballet Afrik (New York Is Burning), Ogemdi Ude (Major), Anna Sperber (Bow Echo), Benjamin Akio Kimitch (Tiger Hands), and Vangeline (Naiad Metal), which takes place in and around the Milstein Reflecting Pool, as well as Chinese Arts Week, which also includes Chinese-born, NYC-based Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun’s family-friendly The Ocean Etched in the Forest.
Akram Khan’s Thikra is part of Summer for the City at Lincoln Center
Akram Khan Company: Thikra: Night of Remembering
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway
Thursday, July 2, 7:30; Friday, July 3, 7:30; Sunday, July 5, 2:00, choose-what-you-pay www.lincolncenter.org
English choreographer Akram Khan, who melds the Indian kathak form with contemporary dance, collaborates with visual director Manal AlDowayan on Thikra: Night of Remembering, a piece for between nine and eleven women set to “Gyura Beli Belo Platno” by the London Bulgarian Choir and “The Elephant’s Funeral” by Sushma Soma with Aditya Prakash. “As I stand humbled within the vastness of this epic desert known as AlUla, I feel the urge to unearth the many cultures that have passed through here,” Khan says about the work, which explores the ancient Saudi Arabia desert civilization. Thikra: Night of Remembering is part of the Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival, which also features Jeremy Nedd, Yinka Esi Graves, Sung Im Her / Her Project, Rachid Ouramdane / Compagnie de Chaillot, and others.
Documentary reveals how Elizabeth Streb and her Extreme Action Company (including Jackie Carlson, seen here) take dance to a whole new level
For more than fifteen years, New Yorkers have gotten the chance to see Elizabeth Streb’s Extreme Action Company perform such dazzling works as Ascension at Gansevoort Plaza, Kiss the Air! at the Park Avenue Armory, and Human Fountain at World Financial Center Plaza as her team of gymnast-dancer-acrobats risk their physical well-being in daring feats of strength, stamina, durability, and grace. In addition, Streb herself walked down the outside wall of the Whitney as part of a tribute to one of her mentors, Trisha Brown. Catherine Gund takes viewers behind the scenes in the exhilarating documentary Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, going deep into the mind of the endlessly inventive and adventurous extreme action architect and the courage and fearlessness of her company. Gund follows Streb as she discusses her childhood, her dance studies, the formation of STREB in 1985, and her carefully thought out views on space, line, and movement as her work stretches the limits of what the human body can do. “I think my original belief and desire is to see a human being fly,” Streb says near the beginning of the film, which includes archival footage of early performances, family photos, and a warm scene in which the Rochester-born Streb and her partner, Laura Flanders, host a dinner party in their apartment, cooking for Bill T. Jones, Bjorn Amelan, Anne Bogart, Catharine Stimpson, and A. M. Homes. Gund also speaks with current and past members of the talented, ever-enthusiastic company — associate artistic director Fabio Tavares, Sarah Callan, Jackie Carlson, Leonardo Giron, Felix Hess, Samantha Jakus, Cassandre Joseph, John Kasten, and Daniel Rysak — who talk about their dedication to Streb’s vision while using such words as “challenge,” “velocity,” “endurance,” “magic,” “invincibility,” and “risk” to describe what they do and how they feel about it. The film is screening on Hearst Plaza on July 10 at 6:00 as part of Lincoln Center’s Dance Encounters series, which also includes “Movement on Film: Athletic Shorts” July 15–17.
Double Dutch Fusion Freestyle & Open Jump
The Dance Floor, Josie Robertson Plaza
Thursday, July 16, free, 5:00 www.lincolncenter.org
One of the most exciting events of every summer at Lincoln Center is the National Double Dutch League strutting its stuff with breathtaking displays of athleticism. It’s three hours of exhilarating movement, including an open jump where visitors are encouraged to participate.
Five troupes come together for annual BAAND Festival (Francesca Levita by Rachel Neville, Christopher R. Wilson by Andrew Eccles, Fangqi Li by Karolina Kuras, Taylor Stanley by Paul Kolnik, DTH Company Artist Kamala Saara by Nir Arieli)
BAAND Together Dance Festival
David H. Koch Theater
Tuesday, July 28, through Sunday, August 1, choose-what-you-pay www.lincolncenter.org
The sixth BAAND Together Dance Festival takes place July 28 thorugh August 1, with five exciting troupes performing in the David H. Koch Theater: Ballet Hispánico New York, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem. It doesn’t get much better than that. Each company will also host a family-friendly dance workshop every day.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The life and career of Billy Preston held many surprises revealed in documentary
BILLY PRESTON: THAT’S THE WAY GOD PLANNED IT (Paris Barclay, 2024)
Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
June 12, 7:00, June 13, 7:00, June 14, $15 (reduced price $7), 4:30 maysles.org www.billyprestonfilm.com
“Will it go ’round in circles? / Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?” Billy Preston sang in his 1973 smash hit. He might not have realized it then, but that line foretold his career, which had a seemingly endless series of ups until it all came crashing down.
The rise and fall of one of popular music’s most talented and beloved figures is intimately detailed in Paris Barclay’s revelatory documentary, Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It.
Born in 1946 and raised in the church by his mother, gospel singer Robbie Lee Williams, Preston began playing the piano at age three, appeared on The Nat “King” Cole Show in 1957, accompanied Mahalia Jackson and Pearl Bailey on keyboards in the 1958 film St. Louis Blues, played with the gospel group the Cogics (Church of God in Christ), and as a teenager toured with Little Richard and the Rolling Stones. An enthusiastic man with an infectious gap-toothed smile and a collection of impressive wigs, Preston was soon recording with the Stones, Sam Cooke, Sly Stone, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.
He singlehandedly rescued the Beatles when the Fab Four was preparing the Let It Be album and concert, just dropping by to say hello but then taking a seat at the organ and starting to improvise with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, infusing them with the energy they had been previous lacking as rumors swirled that the band was breaking up. The tabloids nicknamed him the Fifth Beatle and the Black Beatle. “He never put his hands in the wrong place,” Starr says in the film.
Preston might have been the ultimate sideman, but when performing he couldn’t help himself, often getting up and dancing wildly, joy emanating out of every pore. He couldn’t read music and never used charts but just felt the music blaze through him, even when playing backup. “He would steal the record without you even knowing until later, and you’d go, ‘He’s done it again,’” Eric Clapton explains.
When Preston brought an original song to George Harrison for a potential solo LP, the Quiet Beatle quickly assembled an all-star roster to back him up: Harrison, Clapton, Keith Richards, and Ginger Baker.
In the 1970s, he hit the charts with such songs as “Outa-Space,” “Will It Go Round in Circles,” “Nothing from Nothing,” and “With You I’m Born Again,” all of which are featured prominently in the film. He was a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. Most people don’t realize that Preston wrote and originally recorded “You Are So Beautiful,” made famous by Joe Cocker; one of the highlights of the documentary is Preston’s performance of the song at the Apollo 50 celebration, joined by Cocker and Patti LaBelle on vocals. We also learn that it is a love song — to his mother, who he also plays it with in the film.
But his life started falling apart as he got lost in a haze of drugs and alcohol (Courvoisier, coke, eventually crack), starred as Sgt. Pepper in the ill-fated movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and continued to hide his sexuality, even though his friends, family, and musical colleagues knew he was gay going back to his youth. He was often seen with young men he referred to as cousins, but he was overcome with loneliness.
In their debut documentary, three-time Emmy winner Barclay (NYPD Blue,Glee) and cowriter Cheo Hodari Coker (Ray Donovan,Luke Cage) also delve into the sexual abuse Preston suffered as a child, which added to his problems as an adult. In the 1990s, he was arrested for DUI, charged with assault and child molestation, and spent time in prison, but he kept on playing music until his death in 2006 at the age of fifty-nine.
“He couldn’t move on,” soul and gospel singer Merry Clayton says. “No one knew what had transpired but us, the inner circle, family people. He’d have that smile, but his heart would be broken.”
Producer Suzanne de Passe notes, “Billy Preston was a gifted, genius, wonderful, talented human being, and he had a very, very self-destructed aspect to who he was. I wish I could have been more of a help in the parts that weren’t any of my business.”
Similarly, engineer Bob Margouleff says wistfully, “I don’t think anyone, including me, knew how to help him.”
The film has a bevy of revelatory archival material, from photographs and home movies to rare clips of Preston from childhood through his entire career, including key segments from a 2004 live appearance. Barclay also speaks with Billy Porter, producer Tony Jones, recording artists Gloria Jones and Blinky Williams, Pastor Sandra Crouch, musician Cory Henry, A&M publicist Don Mizell, biographer David Ritz, Preston’s cowriter Bruce Fisher, his nephew Derrick Preston, his managers Bob Ellis and Joyce McRae Moore, and numerous members of his bands, who all share poignant stories of Preston as a performer and a human being, a man bursting with life but hiding so much inside.
“I just want to be free, to play the music that God’s given to me,” Preston says.
It’s a tragic, if not unfamiliar, story, in this case happening to a cherished person who could not conquer his demons. But as he sang in his first big hit: “Let not your heart be troubled / Let mourning sobbing cease / Learn to help one another / And live in perfect peace.”
If you missed the theatrical release of Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It earlier this year at Film Forum, you can catch it at Maysles Documentary Center from June 12 to 14.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Kenita R. Miller dazzles in Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom at the Signature (photo by Ben Arons)
ANIMAL WISDOM
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 14, $49-$207 signaturetheatre.org
One of my favorite online productions created during the pandemic was Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom, a remarkably intimate show that I regetted missing when it had originated in 2017 at the Bushwick Starr. But now it’s back live and in person at the Signature, with some key changes.
As I noted in my review of the filmed version, Animal Wisdom is an intimate and rapturous confessional of music and storytelling, an ingenious journey into the personal and communal nature of ritual and superstition, of grief and loss, of ghosts and, most intently, the fear of death, a melding of public séance and stirring revival meeting. Introducing the streaming presentation, Christian noted, “This performance was never supposed to happen on film. I guess that’s obvious. But contrary to what it looks like, it wasn’t supposed to happen in a theater either. It was supposed to happen in a defunct church or holy space, but houses of any kind are deconsecrated and reconsecrated all the time, so I guess we’re not so far off. Anyways, maybe at least yours is already haunted.”
Scenic designer Emmie Finckel has transformed the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre into a welcoming holy space, filled to the brim with hundreds of ritual objects, gravelike plantings, draped green chains, mysterious elements hanging from the ceiling, and a Coke machine, which is integral to the proceedings. Masha Tsimring’s lighting and Nick Kourtides’s sound enhance the supernatural feeling of this collective Requiem Mass.
Tony nominee Kenita R. Miller is phenomenal as H., telling Christian’s story. (Heather played the role in previous iterations.) It starts out beautifully, with H. singing, “We stand here fixed in time / Guarding our houses till they fall / And maybe eighty-seven years we spend unravelling the ball / As it goes spinning wild / As it careens into the night / We take our temperature / Longing for first love and the fight / That we first felt / At first sight, oh / Love may be in the garden but you won’t find peace.” She quickly establishes the relationship and connection between humans and such other living beings as fish, birds, and, later, butterflies, coyotes, cicadas, and elephants.
She introduces us to the ghosts of H.’s past, including her piano teacher Doris, who “sent me a piano from the afterlife. I named that piano Doris, after her because, well, pianos are animals.” We hear about H.’s first love, Johanna, and Victor the poltergeist, who “loves that I fear him. So I do what any little girl would do. I turn into an animal.”
H. leads a group singalong and shares cups of Coke like they are drinkable holy water.
H. (Kenita R. Miller) shares the things that haunt her in Animal Wisdom (photo by Ben Arons)
Throughout, she is accompanied by music director Alexandra Crosby on piano, El Beh on cello, Francesca Dawis on violin, Caro Moore on percussion, Kris Saint-Louis on bass, and Zack Zaromatidis on guitar, who also portray various characters and chat with H. about love and death, comfort and joy. Among the songs they perform are “Well Made Fish,” “Sick with a Beat,” and “Back Pocket” in sections the script refers to as “Introit,” “Tract,” and “Sanctus.”
The middle section of the two-hour intermissionless show meanders a bit, getting caught up in overly religious piety, but it comes back around with a glorious finale, a choral symphony that lifts your soul, much the way Christian did with her sensational Oratorio for Living Things and majestic Terce: A Practical Breviary.
In another program note, Christian writes, “In short, this ‘Play’ is my love letter to the parts of us we cannot diagnose — to remedies we cannot explain, to the pains we can’t escape much less articulate enough to craft a treatment. It is to the parts of me that suffer still, despite my lifetime’s worth of fighting with blood in my teeth, determined to live. I hold these parts in me every day — it is unending and extremely hard, but I know for goddamn certain that I’m not alone.”
Animal Wisdom lets us know we are never alone, inside a theater or not.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]
