live performance

THE ALARM: NEW YORK GATHERING 2023

THE ALARM
Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd St. at Lexington Ave.
Friday, June 23, and Saturday, June 24, $53-$120
Free special events June 22 and June 25
www.livenation.com
thealarm.com

During the pandemic and continuing to today, one of my favorite social media messages has been “The Alarm Is Live,” referring to the Welsh rock band that goes back to the early 1980s. Most recently, the pop-up came with a second meaning, as, for decades, group cofounder and lead vocalist Mike Peters has been battling cancer, including lymph cancer in 1996 and chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2005, which came back this past September.

As he explained on the band’s website, “I am writing today to let you all know that my leukemia (CLL) has relapsed and I have been admitted to the North Wales Cancer Centre for immediate treatment. I have already started on a brand new chemotherapy regime and so I wanted you to know, personally, that my life living with cancer is about to change for the foreseeable future. My immediate aim is to get fit and well for the Gathering. . . . This coming January will commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Gathering, an event that has come to represent all that we stand for — thirty years of Love Hope and Strength, thirty years of friendship and celebration and, through music, helping each other to live life and stay strong. I want you to know that I am going to beat this disease once more and be ready, willing, and able to hit the stage. . . . Since being diagnosed with pneumonia (after the last British tour), the post-recovery period provided far greater challenges for me than I could ever have envisaged (although somehow I managed to find the strength to record the backing tracks for a new Alarm album. I’ve even got my guitar with me on the ward just in case inspiration strikes!)”

Inspiration did strike, as Peters, joined by his wife, keyboardist Jules Jones Peters, kept going live on Facebook, sharing music and stories, even from his hospital bed, while continuing their series “The Big Night In.” Late last month, Peters took off on a solo acoustic tour of England, playing thirty-song sets of Alarm tunes, from the anthemic ’80s hits “Sixty Eight Guns” (“And now they are trying to take my life away / Forever young I cannot stay”), “Blaze of Glory” (“Going out in a blaze of glory / My heart is open wide / You can take anything that you want from me / There is nothing left to hide”), and “The Stand” (“Come on down and meet your maker / Come on down and make the stand / Come on down, come on down / Come on down and make the stand”) to tracks from their brand-new album, Forwards, written from the perspective of an older, wiser man who has looked death in the face — “Forwards” (“In the cities all deserted / In the streets of emptiness / In the church of nonbelievers / I’ve been searching for the way to find new faith . . . I’ve been trying to get myself back home to you / I’m living for today / Trying to find the way forwards”), “Next” (“All the clocks are set to zero, now’s the time to run / I hear the crack of the starting gun and I’m ready for what’s next / All is possible / All is understood / Whatever is trying to kill me makes me feel alive”), and “Transition” (“There’s a line I have to cross tonight / If I want to stay alive and live for a second time / Knowing time / The way it’s passing by / I can’t afford to wait / To see the light of day”).

Peters, who is sixty-four, and the Alarm return to New York City this week for the Gathering, a four-day celebration that begins June 22 at 6:00 with a solo acoustic set and record signing at Rough Trade in Rockefeller Plaza. On Friday and Saturday, Peters and his bandmates — James Stevenson on guitar and bass, Mark Taylor on keyboards and guitar, Steve “Smiley” Barnard on drums, and Jules on keyboards — will be performing at the Gramercy Theatre, with each night offering unique surprises, including acoustic sets, film screenings, and a Q&A for two-day-pass holders. The festivities conclude with a ninety-minute hike around the Central Park lake on Sunday at 11:30 am beginning at Bethesda Fountain in support of Peters’s charity, the Love Hope Strength Foundation, whose mission is “to save lives, one concert at a time”; you can register in advance here.

On the Alarm’s “Diary of a Rock & Roll Life” Facebook posts, Jules wrote on May 9, after Mike got good news from the North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre, “Just being healthy is the greatest gift of all.” Another great gift is Mike Peters and the Alarm back onstage in NYC for these special shows. “The Alarm Is Live,” and this time in person.

REMEMBERING A DANCE: PARTS OF SOME SEXTETS, 1965/2019

Who: Yvonne Rainer, Brittany Bailey, more
What: Book launch and performance
Where: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South
When: Tuesday, June 20, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: In March 1965, Yvonne Rainer presented Parts of Some Sextets at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, a new piece for ten dancers and twelve mattresses, with text by the Rev. William Bentley (1759-1819). The work, which changed every thirty seconds, featured Rainer, Lucinda Childs, Judith Dunn, Sally Gross, Deborah Hay, Tony Holder, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Schlichter.

In 2019, Rainer and longtime collaborator Emily Coates revived Parts of Some Sextets at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center in DUMBO for the Performa Biennial, with a cast of Coates, Rachel Bernsen, Brittany Engel-Adams, Patrick Gallagher, Shayla Vie Jenkins, Jon Kinzel, Liz Magic Laser, Nick Mauss, Mary Kate Sheehan, David Hamilton Thomson, and Timothy Ward. Performa, Lenz, and the Wadsworth Atheneum have now teamed up to publish the new book Remembering a Dance: Parts of Some Sextets, 1965/2019 (September 2023, $30), which does a deep dive into the origins of the work, its revival, and its legacy, complete with photographs, letters, notes, drawings, and other paraphernalia. Edited by Rainer and Coates and designed by Mauss, the book includes contributions from Rainer, Thomson, Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg, Performa senior curator Kathy Noble, novelist Lynne Tillman, violinist Soyoung Yoon, and the late cultural critic Jill Johnston in addition to a conversation with Rainer, Coates, and Mauss.

On June 20, the eighty-eight-year-old Rainer, who stayed extremely busy during the pandemic, will be at Judson Memorial Church for the launch of Remembering a Dance: Parts of Some Sextets, 1965/2019, discussing the project and signing advance copies of the book. There will also be a special performance of Rainer’s seminal Trio A by Brittany Bailey, who performed the duet “Remembering and Dismembering Trio A” with Rainer in 2020, adding excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me” (aka “The Art of Dying”) essay. Admission is free; advance RSVP is recommended in order to meet this towering figure of dance, film, feminist theory, and humanity.

PRIMARY TRUST

Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) has difficulty facing reality in Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust (photo by Joan Marcus)

PRIMARY TRUST
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $56-$147
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Eboni Booth’s sensational Primary Trust is an Our Town — or, more accurately, a My Town — for this very moment in time, in the twenty-first century. It beautifully captures the feelings of longing and loneliness so many of us experience in this digital age, especially coming out of a global pandemic permeated by isolation. Instantly a Best Play of the Year favorite, the ninety-five-minute show is anchored by a gorgeous performance by William Jackson Harper as Kenneth, our thirty-eight-year-old unreliable narrator and protagonist.

Primary Trust unfolds in the fictional community of Cranberry, New York, forty miles east of Rochester. Marsha Ginsberg’s lovely set is a miniature version of the town, with a bank, a tiki bar, a vacant shoe store, and a church; it is essentially Anywhere, USA. As the audience enters the theater, Chicago-born singer-songwriter and actor Luke Wygodny, is onstage, playing guitar. He later moves to keyboards off stage left, where he serves as the piano player at Wally’s and adds incidental music throughout.

The play begins with Kenneth addressing the audience. “This is what happened,” he says tentatively but with immense charm. “This is the story of how if you had asked me six months ago if I was lonely, I would have said . . . This is the story of a friendship. Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time. And the smallest of chances.”

It’s clear from the start that Kenneth has social issues and is not well educated. He is haunted by the death of his mother, who died when he was only ten years old; he was raised in an orphanage and several foster homes. But instead of being angry or looking for excuses for his relative lack of success — he doesn’t see himself as a failure, seemingly enjoying his simple life — he is a gentle soul with a tender view of the world, or at least Cranberry, which is his entire world.

He’s been working as a clerk at a bookshop on Main St. for twenty years; his boss, Sam (Jay O. Sanders), treats him well. Every night, Kenneth goes to Wally’s, a tiki hut where he drinks mai tai after mai tai until the bar closes. He orders for two; he is always there with Bert (Eric Berryman), a married man with two daughters. Kenneth is not religious, but he explains, “I don’t really believe in God or heaven or hell, but I do believe in friends, and Bert is the best friend around.” They do just about everything together, but there’s one problem.

Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) spends most of his nights in a tiki bar with his best friend, Bert (Eric Berryman) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Bert is imaginary, and Kenneth knows it.

“He exists only in my head,” Kenneth reveals. “But that doesn’t make him any less real. He has arms and legs. A face, a heart — a good heart.”

Kenneth is generally an easygoing guy, but he becomes distressed when Sam tells him that he and his wife have sold the bookstore and are moving to Arizona. Desperate to find a job, he learns from Corinna (April Matthis), a waitress at Wally’s, that there’s an open position at the Primary Trust bank; Kenneth is interested because his mother used to work at Mutual Loan. Kenneth has trouble making important decisions without Bert, so he brings him along on the interview with Clay (Sanders), a good-natured bear of a man who takes a shine to Kenneth, as we all do, wanting him to succeed. “I have a brother,” Clay tells him. “Got into a car accident in high school, hit his head pretty bad. You remind me of him.”

Kenneth gets the job, but when he has one awful day, he’s not sure he’ll ever get over it as the careful life he’s created in his head is suddenly thrown off-kilter.

Kenneth’s (William Jackson Harper) life takes a new turn when he meets Corinna (April Matthis) (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Bronx-born Booth, who worked in bars and restaurants and has spoken about having a drinking problem, appeared in the terrific Dance Nation and Fulfillment Center, and her previous play, Paris, was set in a superstore in the fictional Paris, Vermont; she writes in a clear, familiar style that sucks you right in, offering a sweet affection for small-town living. In Primary Trust, she takes great care in every detail; even the names of the banks offer insight into Kenneth’s situation: His mother worked at Mutual Loan, evoking his need to be with her and not be alone, while he gets a job at Primary Trust, where he has to build confidence that he can handle life on his own and trust others.

Director Knud Adams, who helmed Paris and such other ensemble pieces as Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning English and Gracie Gardner’s hard-hitting I’m Revolting, guides the narrative with a touching and warmhearted hand that will have even the most cynical city dwellers feel sentimental about small town life, at least for an hour and a half. Qween Jean’s costumes, Isabella Byrd’s lighting, and Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound further immerse you into the bittersweet ups and downs of Cranberry.

Berryman (Toni Stone, The B-Side: Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons) plays the kind of imaginary friend anyone would be lucky to have, even as we learn about where he came from. The always stalwart Sanders (Uncle Vanya, King Lear) is superb as Sam and Clay, two understanding father figures to Kenneth, as well as a funny garçon. Matthis (Help, Toni Stone) is a whirlwind playing multiple Wally’s waitresses and bank customers. Wygodny gets bonus time by occasionally interacting with Kenneth.

Harper (After the Blast, All the Way) is unforgettable as Kenneth, instilling in him a childlike sense of wonder and innocence; in many ways Kenneth is still that ten-year-old boy even as he realizes that he needs to start becoming an adult and accept his own responsibilities. Harper was nominated for an Emmy for his role on The Good Place portraying Chidi Anagonye, a moral philosopher and bundle of neuroses unable to make a decision; Kenneth feels like a natural progression for him. Kenneth is such a nice, well-meaning guy that you’ll want to be by his side, go with him to Wally’s and gulp a few mai tais, then comfort him when his loneliness overtakes him. You don’t have to have lost a parent, a job, or a best friend in order to relate to the isolation that envelops him. You just have to have empathy and compassion for other human beings, as well as yourself. There’s a reason why this town’s motto is “Welcome, Friend, You’re Right on Time!”

GREY HOUSE

Max (Tatiana Maslany, second from right) meets a creepy family in Grey House (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

GREY HOUSE
Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45ht St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 30, $74-$278
greyhousebroadway.com

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with 1970s horror movies set in houses. I couldn’t get enough of Bad Ronald, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Burnt Offerings, The Legend of Hell House, and the scariest of them all, the “Amelia” section of Trilogy of Terror, in which Karen Black portrays a woman who is terrorized by a Zuni doll. I saw all of them on television, with commercials, but they still terrified me.

I got the same chills watching Levi Holloway’s thrilling Grey House, live and in person on Broadway.

It’s a classic setup: A young couple, Max (Tatiana Maslany, but I saw understudy Claire Karpen) and Henry (Paul Sparks), crash their car during a snowstorm and seek refuge in a strange house in the woods. The creepy, creaky, cluttered structure is run by Raleigh (Laurie Metcalf), “mama” to five children, each of whom has their own proclivities: Marlow (Sophia Anne Caruso), Bernie (Millicent Simmonds), A1656 (Alyssa Emily Marvin), Squirrel (Colby Kipnes), and the Boy (Eamon Patrick O’Connell). They wear gothic dressing gowns and pajamas, speak in mysteries, and occasionally break out into ritualistic songs.

“It’s a call coming from your house / She’s yelling from the window frame / You want to ignore it but there’s nothing else / No one, no one, no one, no one left to play,” A1656 sings early on. It’s a 2018 tune by Mountain Man, “Stella,” that references horror-movie tropes.

The kids scatter when they hear a knock at the door; Max enters the living room and picks up the phone, but the cord has been cut. Henry sits on a couch, worrying about his ankle, which might be broken. “I’ve seen this. All this. I’ve seen this movie,” he says. “What happens?” Max asks. “We don’t make it,” Henry replies. For added effect, there’s a ghoulish doll leaning against a small television on the floor.

Max (Tatiana Maslany) and Henry (Paul Sparks) find themselves trapped in a cabin in the woods in Grey House (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

When she meets the children, Max tells them, “You don’t need to be afraid.” Marlow responds, “Neither do you,” as she pulls a knife on Max.

To help him heal, the kids offer Henry “the Nectar of Dead Men,” which Raleigh explains is one of the types of moonshine they make and sell.

Impressed by the children’s general efficiency, Max tells Raleigh, “Your daughters are very independent.” Raleigh answers, “They are willful creatures.” They soon show just how willful they can be.

Over the course of one hundred intermissionless minutes, the wind howls. Blood drips. The lights go off and then on again. A devilish glow and smoke seep out of the basement. Characters suddenly appear and disappear. A rocking chair rocks. A game called Show and Hell involves a demonic chalk circle. What’s in the refrigerator changes every time it’s opened. The entire house lets out ghastly groans as if it might collapse at any moment. An old woman (Cyndi Coyne) sings. Every move anyone makes is filled with possibility: trepidation, fear, dread, conjuring, and, perhaps, care and love. Even when you think something bad is coming, you’ll still jump in your seat when it happens.

Successful and original scary plays are extremely rare on Broadway; there have been plenty of frightful musicals — Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Young Frankenstein — but at their heart they are often romances filled with dark humor.

Grey House contains references to numerous horror classics (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

Grey House is pure, unadulterated horror. Two-time Tony-winning director Joe Mantello (The Humans, The Boys in the Band) masterfully maintains a constant state of foreboding as the plot unfolds. Like most 1970s horror movies, not everything makes sense; several loose knots are left untied, but more than enough answers are supplied. Holloway and Mantello also expertly sprinkle references to such other frightening classics as Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beguiled, Misery (a great book and film but failed play, starring Metcalf), and Ju-On.

Scott Pask’s set is a character unto itself, stuffed to the gills with endless objects and secrets; the rafters seem to be closing in on everyone, ready to collapse at the next drop of blood. Rudy Mance’s costumes capture the feel of people trapped in a cabin in the woods, while Natasha Katz’s lighting and Tom Gibbons’s sound honor the genre well.

The cast is exceptional, their perfomances perfectly modulated to prey on the audience’s fears, led by two-time Tony winner Metcalf (Three Tall Women, A Doll’s House, Part 2), who plays Raleigh with just the right amount of perplexity. Karpen (Sylvia, Into the Woods) and Emmy nominee Sparks (At Home at the Zoo, The Killer) are terrific as the couple who have no idea what they have gotten themselves into, their lives changed forever by one harrowing event.

Caruso, who at twenty-one has already excelled in such shows as Lazarus, Beetlejuice, The Nether, and Blackbird, all of which contain some level of terror, is again outstanding as a girl who knows much more than she is letting on, playing Marlow with a cool and eerie self-confidence.

While I can imagine watching Grey House on television on a snowy Saturday night, the place to catch it now is on Broadway; it is scheduled to occupy the Lyceum Theatre through September 3.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here. Ed. note: Grey House closed early, on July 30.]

DAVID BOWIE WORLD FAN CONVENTION: DERYCK TODD’S BOWIEBALL

DAVID BOWIE WORLD FAN CONVENTION: DERYCK TODD’S BOWIEBALL
Racket
431 West Sixteenth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Saturday, June 17, 8:00, $96.83
Sold-out convention runs June 16-18
bowieconvention.com
www.bowerypresents.com

In the introduction to his revised and updated 2016 book The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg writes, “If you want to enjoy David Bowie’s work to the full, keep an open mind. What makes Bowie such a supremely fascinating artist is that his career presents an implicit challenge to conventional notions of creative continuity. He has repeatedly confounded attempts to pigeonhole him as this or that kind of artist, and the result has been one of rock music’s longest and most successful careers.”

While his career came to an end in January 2016 when the man born David Jones in Brixton died at the age of sixty-nine, the fascination with the Thin White Duke continues unabated, with museum exhibitions such as the spectacular “David Bowie Is” at the Brooklyn Museum, the pandemic livestream benefits “A Bowie Celebration” featuring a multitude of music stars, and the release of a series of posthumous live albums and box sets.

Pegg will serve as compère for the 2023 David Bowie World Fan Convention, taking place June 17 and 18 at Racket, the Chelsea club formerly known as the High Line Ballroom, where Bowie curated the inaugural High Line Festival in 2007, putting together a lineup that included Ricky Gervais, Arcade Fire, Air, Laurie Anderson, Deerhoof, the Polyphonic Spree, Daniel Johnston, Bang on a Can All Stars, and others. The convention, which has a bonus VIP day on June 16, features panel discussions, live performances, and a trivia evening; tickets are still available for Deryck Todd’s “BowieBall” Saturday night, with a “Best Dressed Bowie” costume contest, drag and burlesque, dancing, and live performances by vocalist Ava Cherry, musician and writer Jeff Slate, and Bowie DJs TheMenWhoFell2Earth. This year’s convention honors the fortieth anniversary of Let’s Dance and the fiftieth anniversary of Aladdin Sane, two of Bowie’s most popular records.

Below is the full schedule. In addition, Modern Rocks Gallery is hosting a photography exhibit at the Maker’s Studio in Chelsea Market, with pictures by Sukita, Terry O’Neill, Dennis O’Regan, Kevin Cummins, Brian Aris, and Duffy and an exclusive limited edition print of John Rowlands’s “The Archer.” And you can’t go wrong by starting the weekend with Raquel Cion’s one-woman show, Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie, at the Cutting Room on Friday night; held in association with the convention, it is a personal and poignant exploration of fandom and the impact Bowie has had on people’s lives.

BowieBall features a costume contest, live performances, lots of dancing, and more (photo by Sam McMahon)

Saturday, June 17
Heroes, Zeroes, and Absolute Beginners, with bassist Carmine Rojas and guitarist Kevin Armstrong, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 10:00 am

Planet Earth Is Blue, with singer and multi-instrumentalist Emm Gryner and producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Plati, on “Space Oddity” performance aboard the International Space Station, Toy, the Hours Tour, and more, 11:00

Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion, with fashion designer Keanan Duffty and musicians Ava Cherry and Joey Arias, 12:15

Fantastic Voyage, with producer, arranger, bassist, and vocalist Tony Visconti and studio engineer and backing vocalist Erin Tonkon, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 2:00

Golden Years, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, singer Robin Clark, and bassist George Murray, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 3:00

BowieBall, live performances by vocalist Ava Cherry, musician and writer Jeff Slate, and Bowie DJs TheMenWhoFell2Earth, a “Best Dressed Bowie” costume contest, drag and burlesque, and more, hosted by Michael T, 8:00

Sunday, June 18
Red Shoes, Blue Jeans, and Glass Spiders, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, singer Robin Clark, and bassist Carmine Rojas, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 11:00

I’ve Got to Write It Down, with Nacho; Chris O’Leary, author of Pushing Ahead of the Dame; Stephen Pitalo, author of Bohemian Rhapsodies, Thrillers & November Rains; and Nicholas Pegg, author of The Complete David Bowie, moderated by Nacho, 12:15

You Belong in Rock’n’Roll, with guitarist Kevin Armstrong and producer Tim Palmer, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 2:00

Brilliant Adventure, with producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Plati, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 3:00

Everyone Says “Hi”: Tony Visconti and Friends, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, singer Robin Clark, studio engineer and backing vocalist Erin Tonkon, bassist George Murray, and producer Tony Visconti, moderated by Nicholas Pegg, 4:00

Nacho’s Videos Presents, with Nacho, Ava Cherry, Michael T, TheMenWhoFell2Earth, and more 5:45

Nicholas Pegg’s David Bowie Quiz, the Cutting Room, 7:30

Closing Party, with TheMenWhoFell2Earth DJs, Bowery Electric, 8:00 pm – 2:00 am

FRESH TRACKS 2022/23 COHORT

FRESH TRACKS
New York Live Arts
219 West Nineteenth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Friday, June 16, and Saturday, June 17, $16-$30, 7:30
newyorklivearts.org

The fifty-eighth iteration of New York Live Arts’ Fresh Tracks takes place this weekend, with five emerging creators debuting pieces developed over the last year in the Residency & Performance program, working with artistic advisor, choreographer, dancer, activist, mother, grandmother, warrior, and educator nia love. Each artist received a fifty-hour studio residency and $3000 fee to develop a new piece through development workshops and access to staff from multiple NYLA departments.

Inspired by Anne Anlin Cheng’s idea of ornamentalism, California-born Filipina American artist Kristel Baldoz will be using dance, ceramics, and indictment to explore female Asian identity, objecthood, and personhood in Yellow Fever. “I mix materials and movement to reframe the way we view colonial relations and how the laborious body, the dancing body, creates tension to release objects from their colonial meaning,” she explains in her artist statement. Black visual and performance artist Malcolm-x Betts is premiering Niggas at Sundown, collaborating with performer Nile Harris and performer and sound designer Admanda Kobilka. The piece is the third in the “Kinfolk” series, which began with Midnight Glow and Butch Queen, and explores white supremacy and sundown towns, with Betts’s jumpsuits serving as performance scores encouraging improvisation.

In Loud and Clear, Venezuelan interdisciplinary choreographer, director, installation artist, educator, and performer Miguel Alejandro Castillo, who was one of the ten dancers in Faye Driscoll’s remarkable Weathering at NYLA in April, looks at folklore and the Venezuelan diaspora, joined by musician Daniella Barbarito and visual artist Lexy Ho-Tai. Milwaukee-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, filmmaker, and dance educator Jade Charon teams up with visual designer and technician Ker Chen and musician and composer Farai Malianga for Gold Pylon, the latest in her “Gold” series, which has included a children’s book and a superhero dance film. In this solo, Charon uses a grandmother’s prayer to reach the gateway of the higher self. And New Jersey–born, New York City–based performer, choreographer, theater maker, and musician Orlando Hernández delves into colonialism and the Caribbean diaspora in Too soon to discover planets, too late to discover islands, incorporating tap dance, masks, and sacred music.

KAGAMI

Ryuichi Sakamoto extends his legacy with jaw-dropping Kagami at the Shed (photo courtesy Tin Drum)

KAGAMI
The Griffin Theater at the Shed
The Bloomberg Building at Hudson Yards
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 9, $33-$38
646-455-3494
theshed.org

“I honestly don’t know how many years I have left,” composer, musician, producer, and environmental activist Ryuichi Sakamoto says in the 2017 documentary Coda. “But I know that I want to make more music. Music that I won’t be ashamed to leave behind. Meaningful work.”

The Tokyo-born Oscar and Grammy winner died this past March 28 at the age of seventy-one, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to see him perform live — sort of — ever again. Over the last nine years of his life, Sakamoto battled various types of cancer. Knowing his time on Earth was limited, he continued working, releasing the album async in 2017 and 12 just before his death, composing the scores for such films as The Revenant, Rage, The Fortress, and Love After Love, and preparing the cutting-edge project Kagami, which opens today at the Shed in Hudson Yards.

On the wall outside the theater, Sakamoto writes:

There is, in reality, a virtual me.
This virtual me will not age, and will continue to play the piano for years, decades, centuries.
Will there be humans then?
Will the squids that will conquer the earth after humanity listen to me?
What will pianos be to them?
What about music?
Will there be empathy there?

Empathy that spans hundreds of thousands of years.
Ah, but the batteries won’t last that long.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, director Todd Eckert, and Rhizomatiks work behind the scenes on Kagami (photo courtesy Tin Drum)

Kagami is a spectacular, breathtaking mixed-reality concert experienced with specially designed optically transparent devices, making it appear that Sakamoto is playing live piano, enveloped in augmented reality art. Visitors are first led into a room in the repurposed Griffin Theater with large-scale posters of Sakamoto and a screening of clips from Coda, in which he wanders through a lush forest and the Arctic, searching for the harmonies and melodies of nature. Sitting by a hole in the ice, he dips a microphone into the water and says, “I’m fishing with sound.”

The group of no more than eighty next enter another space, where chairs are set up in one row around a central area with cubic markings on the floor. Each person receives tight-fitting goggle-like glasses and, suddenly, a hologram of Sakamoto appears in the middle of the room, seated at his Yamaha grand piano; he was volumetrically captured in December 2020, during the height of Covid, by director Todd Eckert and his Tin Drum collective, which previously made the mixed-reality installation The Life with Marina Abramović.

The audience is warned before the show starts that the technology is not perfect — it turns out that the hologram is not very sharp, and it’s difficult to understand what Sakamoto says in brief introductions to two of the songs — but it’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous nonetheless. The fifty-minute concert begins with the jazzy “Before Long” from the 1987 album New Geo; as the white-haired Sakamoto tickles the ivories, smoky clouds rise from the floor and float in the air. Near the end of the number, one audience member got up and walked over to the image of Sakamoto at the piano. A few others, including me, soon joined him, and more followed. As Sakamoto played the ethereal, New Agey “Aoneko no Torso” from 1995’s Smoochy, I approached Sakamoto and slowly sauntered around the piano, seeing the maestro from all different angles, close enough to determine the length of his fingernails and follow his eye movement. Even though he’s slightly out of focus, it’s hard to believe he’s not really right there, questioning reality itself as a construct. Although you could walk through him, no one did, as if out of respect.

Over the next several songs, ranging from “The Seed and the Sower” and the title track from the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, “Andata” from async, “Energy Flow” and “Aqua” from 1999’s BTTB, and “MUJI2020” from the “Pleasant, somehow” campaign about humanity’s responsibility to the environment, raindrops created ripples in a pond at our feet; diagonal neon lights hovered ominously over our heads; snowflakes fluttered by; multiple screens projected archival black-and-white footage of old cities and a snowstorm; and a tree grew out of the piano, its roots then digging far into the ground, mimicking the circulatory system. The highlight was when the Griffin became like the Hayden Planetarium, with stars and constellations everywhere and the spinning earth underneath, making me feel like I was floating in the air, a wee bit dizzy until I let the music bring me back.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the technology is its ability to essentially allow you to see right through anyone standing in front of you. At a concert with a real pianist, if a tall person gets in your way, you can’t see the performer. But here, they are like ghosts; you can make out their outlines but still have a clear path to Sakamoto. Of course, the other people are actually there, so you have to avoid bumping into them by using your peripheral vision.

Kagami means “mirror” in Japanese, and the show certainly makes you look at who you are both as an individual and as part of the greater environment. The special effects cause sensations reminiscent of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s thrilling Infinity Rooms, which use lights and mirrors to extend visions of our universe. The presentation is no mere money grab by an estate trying to resurrect their dead cash cow with posthumous holographic tours. Kagami is an intricately designed multimedia installation that the artist was deeply involved in; Sakamoto fashioned his own unique legacy, pushing the boundaries yet again, playing one last concert that can last forever, or at least as long as the planet he so loved and protected is still here and the batteries last.