twi-ny recommended events

HANUKKAH AT THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE

Husband-and-wife-team Aaron Hartman and Alicia Jo Rabins, the leaders of Girls in Trouble, will give a special Hanukkah concert at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on December 21

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
36 Battery Pl.
646-437-4202
www.mjhnyc.org

The Museum of Jewish Heritage will be celebrating the Festival of Lights with two special presentations this week. On December 21 at 7:00 ($15), Brooklyn’s Girls in Trouble, led by singer-violinist Alicia Jo Rabins and her husband, bassist Aaron Hartman, will play dark tales of biblical women featured on their two JDub albums, their eponymous 2009 debut and this year’s Half You Half Me, which include such songs as “I Was a Desert,” “I Fell Off My Camel,” “We Are Androgynous,” “Bethesda,” and “Waltz for a Beheading.” (Sadly, JDub Records, which focused on music by Jewish artists, recently announced it is closing because of financial difficulties.) The concert is being held in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibit “Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles.” On Christmas Day, MJH will be hosting “I Lift My Lamp: A Statue-esque Hanukkah,” with arts and crafts for children ages three to ten, family-friendly tours, and a trio of film screenings, beginning at 11:00 with An American Tail (Don Bluth, 1986) and continuing at 1:00 with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 espionage thriller Sabaoteur and at 3:00 with Ghostbusters II (Ivan Reitman, 1989). In addition to the Emma Lazarus exhibition, also on view are “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” “Voices of Liberty,” and “Let My People Go! The Soviet Jewry Movement, 1967-1989.”

BIAN DANG TAIWANESE LUNCH BOX

This is the last week to get the amazing Taiwanese fried chicken over rice with minced pork sauce at Bian Dang food truck (photo by twi-ny/Del-Ann Henry)

Multiple locations
Through Friday, December 23, 11:30 am – 2:00 pm
212-695-5995
www.biandangnyc.com

Every Thursday, we make the short trip from our office to Park & 53rd, where we anxiously get on the increasingly long line at the Bian Dang Taiwanese Lunch Box food truck. As we get closer to the blue truck, which is covered in cheerful, colorful flowers and was previously known as Cravings (the old name is still on their license plate), we keep praying that none of the three people inside, including the great Diana Yang, Nick Lin, and Ronald Chu, comes out with the dreaded black tape and places it on the menu over the chicken and rice, signaling that they have run out of one of the best truck lunches in the city. We spend much of our week dreaming about this dish, a connected leg and thigh marinated in Taiwanese flavoring and then flash fried, served over white rice topped with a tangy minced pork sauce. Part of the reason the line is so long is because we can’t stop telling everyone how awesome the fried chicken is, so it’s our own damn fault when they do run out before we get to order. In those cases, the pork chops are excellent as well, although we’ve yet to try the fried tianbula fish cake. The steamed pork dumplings are fairly standard, but we can also heartily recommend the zongzi sticky rice, filled with peanuts and vegetables and available in meat or nonmeat options. One thing they do run out of quickly is the tea egg, so you better get there early if you want one of these dark delights. We were crushed earlier this month when Diana told us that this will be their last week out on the street; the truck will be hibernating for the winter after lunch on December 23. Fortunately, Bian Dang does have a small shop located in Food Gallery 32 at 11 West 32nd St. that’s open year-round; in the meantime, here’s the schedule for the truck’s last week of the season: Monday on 50th St. between Sixth & Seventh, Tuesday on 24th between Park & Madison, Wednesday at Coenties Slip at Water St., Thursday on 53rd between Park & Lex, and Friday at 47th & Park.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD: EPITAPH

The Acorn Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday, December 20, $51.25 – $71.25, 7:00
www.hdcny.com

The Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory Repertory Company is presenting a very different take on the classic fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” on December 20 with Epitaph. Artistic director Safi A. Thomas has created a brutal, violent version of Charles Perrault’s story of the girl in red who meets the big bad wolf, incorporating elements from tales by such other masters as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen (“The Little Match Girl”). The thirty-minute piece, which explores issues of gender, sexuality, patriarchy, and female empowerment, will be followed by a thirty-minute Q&A with the cast and creative team and a forty-five-minute reception. Premium tickets include a commemorative booklet, with part of the proceeds benefiting the Crime Victims Treatment Center of St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital.

AN EVENING IN MEMORY OF MICHAL THE GIRL

Friends, fans, and strangers will gather together and reach out to help at 12/19 benefit for Micahl the Girl

The Canal Room
285 West Broadway at Canal St.
Monday, December 19, donations accepted at the door, 8:00
212-941-8100
www.canalroom.com
www.thesnydertwins.com
www.michalthegirl.com

On November 25, 2011, forty-four-year-old Michal Lura Friedman died after giving birth to twins. She and her husband, Jay Snyder, had been trying to have children for seven years. “She wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world,” Snyder told the Daily News shortly after his wife died following complications from a C-section. The tragic story of Friedman, Snyder, and twins Jackson and Reverie has captured the heart of the city. On December 19, friends, family, colleagues, fans, and others will come together to celebrate the life of Friedman, a Buddhist who recorded under the name Michal the Girl, and to raise much-needed funds for Snyder and the babies, at a benefit being held at the Canal Room. Among the performers will be Tiff Randol, Drew Blood, Cresta Kruger and Briana Winter of Kisser, Chris Goerke, Mike Beans Benigno, Todd Rengal, Mike Manza, Steve Dawson, Ben Toro, Shannon Conley, Dave Doobinin, Sarah Greenwood, and Joe McGinty. A local favorite, Michal the Girl released two albums, 2001’s Tongue Tied and 2005’s Strung Out, featuring such songs as “Blanket,” “Bittersweet,” “Transmission,” “Do Over,” and “Eyes Wide Open.” Sadly, Michal the Girl’s official website still lists what would have been her most recent performance, December 6 at Symphony Space.

NEW YORK CITY GAY MEN’S CHORUS: HOLIDAY HOUSE OF LOVE

The Town Hall
123 West 43rd St. between Sixth Ave. & Broadway
Sunday, December 18, $40-$75, 3:00 & 8:00
212-840-2824
www.the-townhall-nyc.org
www.nycgmc.org

The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, consisting of more than two hundred gay men, will dish out plenty of seasonal spirit on Sunday at two “Holiday House of Love” concerts at the Town Hall. Celebrating peace, love, and unity, the chorus will present original songs and familiar classics, albeit with jazz and gospel twists. Special guests include Broadway star Lillias White, who won a Tony for The Life, and the first openly gay Anglican bishop, V. Gene Robinson. Chorus member Ryan Scobie has been actively promoting the shows, which take place at 3:00 and 8:00, on Facebook, promising, “You get to see me be a church lady, a lion, a sexy elf, and sing a solo. What more could you ask for?!” We couldn’t agree more.

WALTON FORD: I DON’T LIKE TO LOOK AT HIM, JACK. IT MAKES ME THINK OF THAT AWFUL DAY ON THE ISLAND.

Walton Ford imbues King Kong with strong emotions in current exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Paul Kasmin Gallery
293 Tenth Ave. at 27th St.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 23, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-563-4474
www.paulkasmingallery.com

When King Kong is brought to New York City and put onstage in the original 1933 film, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) says to Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), “I don’t like to look at him, Jack. It makes me think of that awful day on the island.” Walton Ford uses that line as a jumping-off point, as well as the title, for his latest exhibition, continuing at Paul Kasmin Gallery through December 23. In the first room of the 293 Tenth Ave. space, a trio of large-scale watercolors breathes powerful emotion into the beast, as he goes from worried (“I don’t like to look at him, Jack”) to angry (“It makes me think of that awful day”) to sad (“On the Island”). Measuring nine feet high and twelve feet wide, the three works focus in on King Kong’s expressive face, presenting him with humanist qualities that dominate the room. “These paintings are about Kong’s heartbreak,” Ford explains in the press release. “I wanted to reveal the monster’s grief, his enormous sadness, the sorrow that the original Kong kept hidden from view.” In the back gallery, Ford references an excerpt from John James Audubon’s memoirs, in which the ornithologist relates a dark tale of having witnessed one of his mother’s monkeys kill “Pretty Polly,” to create six natural-history-style paintings that detail smaller monkeys terrorizing beautiful parrots, including “Unnatural Composure,” in which a bird’s head has just been ripped off and held out to be admired. “The sensations of my infant heart at this cruel sight were agony to me,” Audubon writes. Thus, Ford, who was born in Larchmont and lives and works in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, has infused the paintings of Kong, a fictional character, with deep emotion, while the smaller watercolors of the monkeys and birds, inspired by actual events, are much colder, as if taken from a textbook, and they require extra attention to pick up on some of their more gruesome aspects, free of “enormous sadness.”

XYZ:NYC 10 DOWNING

Visitors get an altered perspective on reality at No Longer Empty interactive exhibition (twi-ny/mdr)

No Longer Empty
10 Downing St. at Bleecker St. & Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 23, free, 1:00 – 8:00
December 27-30, 1:00 – 5:00
www.nolongerempty.org
xyz:nyc slideshow

Australian artists Leslie Eastman and Natasha Johns-Messenger play with light and space in illuminating, entertaining ways in the phenomenological — and extremely fun — exhibition “XYZ:NYC 10 Downing.” Using both natural and electric light, mirrors, and stretched mirror film and employing Cartesian geometry, Eastman, who lives and works in Melbourne, and the New York City-based Johns-Messenger create a unique experience for each visitor through a series of site-responsive areas. Referencing Matisse, Magritte, and Vermeer as well as Eliasson, Graham, and even Höller, “XYZ:NYC” consists of five architectural works that literally turn perception upside down and inside out. In Johns-Messenger’s “Vertical Neon,” a narrow, angled passageway contains numerous mirrors that confuse and delight on the way to the source of a glowing light. Eastman’s “Event Horizon Far” is a live video stream of the beautiful view from the artist’s Melbourne studio projected onto a small screen hanging from the ceiling, while “Event Horizon Near” is a camera obscura presentation of the traffic passing by on Sixth Ave., lighting up a rectangular frame in the shape of a Vermeer painting. Eastman and Johns-Messenger, who have been collaborating since 2004, team up on “Pointform,” a pair of triangular corner spaces that alter reality and perception, one seemingly cutting the body out in the middle, the other, “Synoptic 3,” including a headset worn by two people that, well, to say any more would be giving it away, so make sure to RSVP for a specific time as soon as you can. “XYZ:NYC” is not merely a group of optical illusions and gimmicky tricks; instead it is a carefully constructed interventionist installation that subverts and disrupts classical perspective, depending on viewer engagement to bring it all together. The show is an excellent example of the work done by No Longer Empty, a nonprofit organization that curates site-specific exhibitions in temporary public spaces, working with the community through education and cultural programming to help promote new ways of looking at and experiencing art. This child-friendly installation also includes a “No Longer Bored” scavenger hunt for kids, featuring art activities and interesting facts and questions.