Shen Wei Dance Arts will perform RITE OF SPRING at Fall for Dance Festival at City Center (photo by Stephanie Berger)
City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tickets go on sale September 9 at 11:00 am
Festival runs September 27 – October 13, $15
212-581-1212
www.nycitycenter.org
On your mark, get set . . . Tickets for the ninth annual Fall for Dance Festival at City Center, which runs September 27 through October 13, go on sale September 9 at 11:00 am, but you better not delay if you want to go, because this hotly anticipated event sells out quickly. All seats are only fifteen dollars, with each program featuring multiple works in various disciplines from established and up-and-coming international companies. For example, the first two nights bring together Jared Grimes’s Dancing the Tap (choreographed by Grimes), Fang-Yi Sheu & Artists’ Five Movements, Three Repeats (Christopher Wheeldon), Nederlands Dans Theater’s Shutters Shut (Sol León and Paul Lightfoot), and BalletBoyz’ Void (Jack Cemerek), while September 29-30 consists of Juilliard Dance’s Fortune (Pam Tanowitz), American Ballet Theatre’s Sinatra Suite (Twyla Tharp), the Hong Kong Ballet’s Luminous (Peter Quanz), and Martha Graham Dance Company’s Chronicle (Graham). Among the other groups participating in the festival are the Moiseyev Dance Company, Shantala Shivalingappa, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Jodi Melnick, Shen Wei Dance Arts (Rite of Spring, which they performed last fall at the Park Avenue Armory), and Ballet West. Before and after each show, audience members can relax in Lounge FFD, where they can grab a drink and meet some of the dancers and choreographers. And there will be three special free DanceTalk panel discussions at the City Center Studios during the festival: “Dance and Live Music: How Do Choreographers Work with Composers?” on September 30 at 5:30 with Jodi Melnick, Steven Reker, Pam Tanowitz, and Charles Wuorinen, moderated by Maura Keefe; “For Public Consumption: Shaping Social and Cultural Dance for the Stage” on October 3 at 6:30 with Kumu Kaleo, Eri Mefri, Carlota Santana, and Elena Shcherbakova, moderated by Wendy Perron; and a lecture/demonstration on October 5 with Ka Leo O Laka I Ka Hikina O Ka La.
Al Pacino burst onto the cinematic landscape in The Panic in Needle Park, his first starring role. Pacino is fabulously unsettling as Bobby, a junkie always looking to score around Sherman Square at 72nd St. and Broadway, known then as Needle Park. Bobby hooks up with Helen (Kitty Winn, who was named Best Actress at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival for her performance), and the two of them do whatever is necessary to stay high as they wander the streets of the city. Director Jerry Schatzberg (Scarecrow, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Street Smart) uses natural sound and light to give the film a more realistic feel, as if you are walking through the streets with Bobby and Helen. Several scenes will break your heart, including the one on the Staten Island Ferry; the powerful screenplay was the first written by novelist Joan Didion. The film launched Pacino’s stellar film career; his next five movies were The Godfather, Scarecrow, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, and Dog Day Afternoon, arguably the best start to an acting career ever. Gritty, realistic, and surprisingly tender, The Panic in Needle Park will be screening September 9, 13, and 17 as part of Anthology Film Archives’ ongoing series From the Pen of . . ., paying tribute to the often underrecognized writers behind some great films, this time around focusing on screenplays written by novelists, including Donald Westlake (Cops and Robbers, The Stepfather), Elmore Leonard (Joe Kidd, Mr. Majestyk), James Salter (Downhill Racer), Richard Matheson (House of Usher), Truman Capote (The Innocents), and others.
One of the grandest epics ever made, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur was shown in a new digital restoration last fall as part of the New York Film Festival’s Masterworks sidebar, and now it’s coming to the Museum of the Moving Image, where it will screen September 8-9 in the “See It Big!” series. The DCP restoration of Wyler’s remake of Fred Niblo’s 1925 silent version, which starred Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman (there was also a fifteen-minute Ben Hur made in 1907, all adapted from Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel), celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the eleven-time Oscar winner, which garnered Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur), Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith as Sheik Ilderim), Best Score (Miklós Rózsa), Best Cinematography, Best Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Special Effects, among other trophies. The $15 million blockbuster tells the story of two childhood friends, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala (Stephen Boyd), who get caught up in religion, politics, and slavery in first-century Rome and eventually have a magnificent showdown on the chariot course. As cinema spectacles go, they don’t get much bigger or better than this.
