twi-ny recommended events

TWI-NY TALK: GEOFF DYER

ZONA: A BOOK ABOUT A FILM ABOUT A JOURNEY TO A ROOM
Friday, March 9, 192 Books, 192 Tenth Ave., free, 7:00
Saturday, March 10, “Tarkovsky Interruptus,” the New School, Tishman Auditorium, 6 West 12th St., free, 5:00
Sunday, March 11, “Geoff Dyer on Tarkovsky, Cinema, and Life,” Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave., free with museum admission, 3:00 & 6:00
Monday, March 12, School of Visual Arts, Beatrice Theater, 333 West 23rd St., free, 7:00

“This book is an account of watching, rememberings, misrememberings, and forgettings; it is not the record of a dissection,” British author Geoff Dyer writes in Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room (Pantheon, February 21, $24). Over the course of some two hundred pages, Dyer immerses the viewer in the fantastical world of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, Stalker, in which the title character leads two men, Writer and Professor, on a dangerous trip into the Zone, a mysterious area that harbors a room where people’s most inner desires are said to come true. Dyer’s obsessively thorough scene-by-scene examination of the film includes tidbits about the making of the existential work as well as stories about his own personal life while referencing Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard, Roland Barthes and Timothy Leary, Werner Herzog and Richard Widmark, Leo Tolstoy and T. S. Eliot, Mick Jagger and Jim Jarmusch, Milan Kundera and Don DeLillo, John Berger and Alan Watts, and Robert Bresson and Ingmar Bergman, sometimes extending footnotes across several pages that dwarf the main text. Zona is a wonderful companion piece to the film, a must-read for fans of Tarkovsky and the study of cinema itself.

On March 9, Dyer will be reading from and signing copies of Zona at 192 Books in Chelsea, then will participate in the “Tarkovsky Interruptus” program being held at the New School on March 10, a screening of Stalker that will occasionally be interrupted by commentary from Dyer, Walter Murch, Phillip Lopate, Francine Prose, Michael Benson, and Dana Stevens. Dyer will continue his whirlwind adventure on March 11 at the Museum of the Moving Image when he hosts “Geoff Dyer on Tarkovsky, Cinema, and Life,” a discussion with David Schwartz at 3:00, followed by a screening of Tarkovsky’s Mirror at 6:00. And on March 12 he’ll be at the School of Visual Arts for a lecture and book signing.

Geoff Dyer will share his Tarkovsky obsession with special appearances all over the city (photo by Marzena Pogorzaly)

twi-ny: In Zona, you essentially play the part of Writer, Professor, and Stalker as you guide readers through the film and certain parts of your life. Which of the three characters do you most closely identify with?

Geoff Dyer: Well, ostensibly it would have to be Writer. He’s my embedded representative. I like his washed-up-ness, his sense of failure, his dissatisfaction with himself and the world. But ultimately it would be Stalker because he’s a believer.

twi-ny: You first saw Stalker in February 1981; how many times have you now seen it on the big screen?

Geoff Dyer: I’ve lost track. More than any film except Where Eagles Dare, which, now that I think of it, I’ve only seen on the big screen once. At this particular moment I’m not in a hurry to see it again but I’m sure I will do so again in the future. It is nothing if not inexhaustible — despite my attempts to exhaust it.

twi-ny: On March 11, you’ll be at the Museum of the Moving Image introducing Tarkovsky’s Mirror, which is mentioned often in Zona. What should a Tarkovsky virgin know about Mirror before experiencing it?

Geoff Dyer: I don’t think you need to know much about it; you just need to relax, to abandon preconceptions and expectations about how a film should proceed, and give yourself to it. It’s the same with Indian classical music; people worry that they don’t know enough to get into it when all you really need is a pair of ears. On reflection, maybe cannabis helps in both these cases. It might also be interesting to think about Terence Malick’s recent Tree of Life. He must have had Mirror in mind when he was making that.

twi-ny: In previous books, you’ve taken unique approaches in examining D. H. Lawrence, jazz, John Berger, and now Andrei Tarkovsky and Stalker. Do you see any similarities among these subjects that drove you to write about them in such detail?

Geoff Dyer: Not really, only my own fan-ness, my love for these things. I see a different continuity with some of the other books — Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, The Missing of the Somme, and the second part of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi — and that is more about an ongoing fascination with the idea of the Zone. The one in the film is a sort of invented place but I’ve been drawn to similar places in the real world — places of heightened meaning, of religious significance, places where time has stood its ground, where you have some kind of peak experience — in these books.

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: HORA

Ohad Naharin and his Batsheva company reimagine traditional Israeli group dance in HORA (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
March 7-10, $20-$70
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.batsheva.co.il

For more than thirty years, Tel Aviv-based choreographer Ohad Naharin has been creating exciting, unpredictable works that push the limits of what contemporary dance can be. His unique movement language, known as Gaga, has been a centerpiece of the Batsheva Dance Company since 1990, when he was named artistic director. Works such as Deca Dance, Three, Minus 16, and Project 5 have dazzled audiences with their wild creativity and often humorous use of music. Naharin returns to BAM this week with Hora, an hour-long piece for eleven dancers that features lighting and stage design by Avi Yona Bueno, costumes by Anna Mirkin, and a vast array of classical music arranged and performed by Isao Tomita, including snippets of Mussorgsky, Strauss, Ives, Grieg, Wagner, Debussy, Sibelius, and John Williams. You never know what’s going to happen in Naharin’s work, which always makes it fresh and inviting. On Saturday, March 10, at 12 noon ($20), you can join in the fun by taking an open class with Batsheva dancers at BAM’s Hillman Attic Studio; we recently found ourselves onstage with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater going Gaga to their production of Minus 16, a thrill that still gives us chills every time we think of it, which is rather often.

Ohad Naharin’s HORA is a dazzlingly subtle, mesmerizingly beautiful dance (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Update: In a large rectangular room bathed in an intoxicating green light, eleven dancers sit on a long bench at the back. One at a time they get up and start moving slowly to an austere silence that eventually gives way to Ryoji Ikeda’s electronic drone music. Six women, wearing various black leotards, and five men, in white and gray shorts and T-shirts, often stay in place as they bend down, stretch toward the ceiling, and twist and turn. Soon Isao Tomita’s score takes over, playfully reconfigured versions of classical music familiarized in Hollywood movies, including Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” Wagner’s “Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries,” and even John Williams’s main theme from Star Wars. Over the course of sixty minutes, the dancers (including stand-out Iyar Elezra) perform Ohad Naharin’s movement-based nonlinear, nonnarrative choreography that shifts from controlled chaos to featured solos and duets while at other times feeling like the dancers are rehearsing their own roles all at once, seldom making physical contact. The Batsheva Dance Company’s Hora — which never evolves into the title’s traditional Jewish celebratory group dance — is a mesmerizing experience, a stunning balance of light, color, sound, and movement from one of the world’s most innovative and entertaining choreographers.

BOOK OF THE DAY: THE O’BRIENS BY PETER BEHRENS

“The old priest waltzed with each of the O’Brien children while his pretty housekeeper, Mme Painchaud, operated the Victrola. She was a widow whose husband had been killed at the sawmill. Sliding the disc from its paper sleeve, she carefully placed it on the turntable and started turning the crank. As the needle settled onto the disc, a Strauss waltz began bleating from the machine’s horn, which resembled, Joe O’Brien thought, some gigantic dark flower that bees would enter to sip nectar and rub fertile dust from their legs.” So begins Peter Behrens’s second novel, The O’Briens (Pantheon, March 6, $25.95), an epic family drama about Irish immigrants that spans 1887 to 1960. A Canadian native who now lives in Maine, Behrens, whose first novel, the award-winning The Law of Dreams, dealt with the potato famine, will be at the Irish Arts Center tonight at 7:30 to launch The O’Briens in a special event cosponsored by NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House and the Consulate General of Canada. Behrens will also be at the Center for Fiction on April 9 at 7:00 for a discussion and book signing.

STEPHEN PETRONIO COMPANY

Julian De Leon and Joshua Tuason will perform in the world premiere of THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOSS (photo by Sarah Silver)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
March 6-11, $10-$69
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.stephenpetronio.com

The New York City-based Stephen Petronio Company is known for its unusual collaborations and innovative choreography that shows off the sheer strength and beauty of its dancers. Last year at the Joyce, SPC performed Underland, an evening-length piece that was set to murder ballads by Nick Cave, while in 2010, Petronio put together old and new works set to tunes by Elvis Presley, Wire, Radiohead, and the Wordless Music Orchestra. This year SPC will present the world premiere of The Architecture of Loss, a coproduction with the Nordic House of the Faroe Islands that investigates formation and disintegration in an ever-morphing global society. The work features a score by Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson with contributions from Nico Muhly, costumes by Guðrun & Guðrun, lighting by Ken Tabachnick, and visual design by Rannvá Kunoy, with Sigurdsson, Nadia Sirota, and Shahzad Ismaily performing the score live. The program also includes the first-ever revival of Steve Paxton’s 1970 Intravenous Lecture, which examines censorship and will be performed by Petronio; 2002’s City of Twist, which pays homage to post-9/11 New York with music by Laurie Anderson and costumes by Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ; and an updated version of 2003’s Ethersketch I (March 6-9 only), a solo from Underland that has been reimagined for New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan. (Note: There will be a Dance Chat following the March 7 performance.)

THINKSWISS: GENÈVE MEETS NEW YORK

Foofwa d’Imobilité will pay tribute to Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, and Michael Jackson as part of ThinkSwiss festival

A FESTIVAL OF GLOBAL IDEAS BORN IN GENEVA: JEAN CALVIN, JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, ALBERT GALLATIN, HENRY DUNANT
Multiple locations
March 6-12, free – $35
212-599-5700, ext 1061
www.thinkswissny.org

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless,” Geneva philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote nearly three centuries ago. The Social Contract author’s native country is celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of the master thinker’s birth with a series of events around the world, including this month’s ThinkSwiss Festival of Global Ideas Born in Geneva. Examining issues that impact both America and Switzerland, the week-long festival includes live music and dance, panel discussions, literary readings, film screenings, and art exhibits, most of which are free but require advance RSVP. Things get under way on March 6 ($10) with a screening of Swiss director Jacob Berger’s 2002 feature film Loving Father (Aime Ton Père) and his 2002 short I Think About Alain Tanner (Je pense à Alain Tanner) as part of FIAF’s weekly CinémaTuesdays series, with Berger on hand to participate in a Q&A at 7:00. On March 7, the American Red Cross will host “Can the Geneva Conventions Still Protect Civilians and Non-Combatants in Contemporary Warfare?” a roundtable with Philip Gourevitch, Colonel (ret.) Dick Jackson, Roger Mayou, and Gabor Rona, moderated by Walter A. Füllemann. On March 8, the exhibition “L’Esprit de Genève by Its Posters” will open at Posters Please, and the NYU Presidential Medal Ceremony will include a conversation between honoree Michel Butor and Lois Oppenheim examining “L’Esprit de Genève: From Albert Gallatin to Michel Butor.” On March 9 ($35, lunch included), Adam Gopnik will moderate the discussion “A la Table de Rousseau: What Is Progressive About Education Today?” at FIAF with Butor, Megan Laverty, Jean-Michel Olivier, and Shimon Waronker, followed by “How to Read Rousseau in the 21st Century,” led by François Jacob. Also on March 9 ($25), Pascal Couchepin, Thomas Kean, Eliot Spitzer, Benjamin Barber, Guillaume Chenevière, Victor Gourevitch, Amin Husain, Laura Flanders, Nannerl Keohane, Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and Simon Schama will occupy the Celeste Bartos Forum at the New York Public Library for “Occupy Rousseau: Inequality & Social Justice,” which seeks to answer the question “What would Jean-Jacques Rousseau say about our democracies if he were among us today?” On March 10, pianist Louis Schwizgebel, cellist Lionel Cottet, and violinist François Sochard will perform the U.S. premiere of “Variations on a Theme by J.J. Rousseau” by Friedrich W. Kalkbrenner and André-François Marescotti, Ravel’s “Ondine,” Brahms’s “Scherzo in C Minor” and “Hungarian Dances Nos. 1, 2, 6 and 7,” Mendelssohn’s “Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 49,” and Liszt’s “Les Cloches de Genève” in the program “Soloists from L’Orchestre International de Genève” at Merkin Concert Hall. On March 11 at 4:00, Foofwa d’Imobilité will pay tribute to dance legends Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, and Michael Jackson in “Pina Jackson in Mercemoriam” at the Kitchen, and the Marc Perrenoud Trio will perform at 7:00 at the Allen Room. And on March 12, Rebecca MacKinnon will moderate “Breaking Through Internet Censorship” at the Cooper Union with Stéphane Koch, Ebtihal Mubarak, Thérèse Obrecht, Anas Qtiesh, and a surprise guest, and journalist and writer Jean-Michel Olivier will give a lecture in French at the Haskell Library at FIAF.

TICKET ALERT: NEW YORK METS 2012 SEASON

The Mets are looking for David Wright to get back in the swing of things this season (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Citi Field
123-01 Roosevelt Ave. at 126th St.
Monday, March 5, 10:00 am
718-507-TIXX
www.newyorkmetscom

Fifty years ago, Casey Stengel’s Mets were not quite so amazin’, famously going 40-120 in their inaugural season, still a record of futility for America’s pastime. They’re currently in the doldrums again, finishing 70-92, 79-83, and 77-85 the last three years, a lot closer to last place than to first each season. Mired in a financial crisis, they let their best player go to a division rival and brought in the fences at Citi Field, hoping to increase the power numbers of such players as David Wright, Ike Davis, and Jason Bay. But much of the 2012 season will depend on the ability of lefty ace Johan Santana to pitch at the high level he’s accustomed to — as well as his ability to take the mound at all. And even with ten of the thirty Major League teams now making the playoffs, it’s still highly unlikely that the Amazin’s will be playing past the October 3 finale against the Marlins. Single-game tickets for the Mets’ hopefully celebratory fiftieth anniversary season go on sale this morning, but don’t expect the servers to crash like Kraftwerk playing MoMA. Among this year’s giveaways and promotions are texting gloves on April 7, a Tom Seaver bobblehead on April 22, a Rusty Staub bobblehead on May 26, the return of Banner Day on May 27, a Keith Hernandez bobblehead on June 17, fireworks on July 3, a Mr. Met poster on July 8, Merengue Night on August 24, and a Mike Piazza bobblehead on August 25. In addition, the Friday-night concert series includes postgame shows by REO Speedwagon on June 15, Cheap Trick on July 20, and MercyMe on August 10

BJORK: BIOPHILIA LIVE

Björk brings together music, nature, and technology in captivating ways in multimedia BIOPHILIA Live

Roseland Ballroom
239 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Monday, March 5, $75-$150
212-247-0200
www.roselandballroom.com
www.bjork.com

On Monday, March 5, Björk Guðmundsdóttir concludes a monthlong New York City residency that began with five shows at the New York Hall of Science, along with an educational program for children, followed by five more at the Roseland Ballroom. Melding together music, nature, and technology, Björk’s latest project, Biophilia, is a fascinating journey into art and science, a thrilling multimedia trip that travels from deep inside the human body into the vast cosmos and beyond. “The reason why Biophilia is on such a grand scale is that I can’t even attempt to explain sound and the world of rhythm and scales without looking into the solar system and atoms,” the forty-six-year-old former leader of the Icelandic band the Sugarcubes explains in the concert program. “For me that’s sort of the same world.” “Biophilia Live” is a captivating ninety-minute production that features all of the new album in addition to some older Björk favorites. Each of the Biophilia songs is introduced by the recorded voice of Sir David Attenborough and accompanied by animated videos projected from the innovative app onto eight two-sided screens hanging in a circle above the performers: Björk, percussionist Manu Delago, electronics master Matt Robertson, harpist Zeena Parkins, and the twenty-woman Icelandic chorus Graduale Nobili.

At Roseland, the stage has been moved to the center of the dance floor, and fans either sit or stand on all four sides, making for an involving and intimate experience. “My romantic genes is dominant / And it hungers for union / Universal intimacy / All embracing,” Björk sings on “Thunderbolt,” the opening track from Biophilia, and that’s exactly what she achieves in the show, an embracing intimacy that features a bevy of offbeat and unusual instruments, some adapted and/or invented specifically for Biophilia, from a gravity harp and a gameleste to a hang and a Tesla coil that turns electric bolts into sound. “To risk all is the end all and the beginning all,” she adds on “Moon,” as the show moves from the Big Bang far out into the future. Wearing a freaky reddish orange wig, elevator shoes, and a deep blue polyester sheath wildly padded at chest and hips, Björk uses all four sides of the stage, and the obvious fun she’s having spreads throughout the energized crowd. She playfully tosses in a few older songs, including Vespertine’s “Hidden Place” and its B-side, “Generous Palmstroke,” before going full-out for the encores, which on February 28 began with 1995’s dreamlike “Possibly Maybe,” then turned Roseland into a dance rave, closing the show with rollicking versions of 2008’s “Náttúra” and “Declare Independence” that had everyone up and grooving. If you can, grab the general admission side-stage seating and arrive early to get in the first row, which offers a spectacular view, the best seats we have ever had for a concert.