twi-ny recommended events

DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT: I WISH I KNEW

Zhao Tao wanders through modern-day China in Jia Zhang-ke’s elegiac documentary

I WISH I KNEW (Jia Zhang-ke, 2010)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, February 24, 7:00
Series continues through February 28
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with full museum admission ($20), available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Throughout his professional career, which began with the 1997 underground hit Pickpocket, Sixth Generation Chinese writer-director Jia Zhang-ke has shuttled easily between documentaries (Useless, 24 City) and narrative features (The World, Still Life) — and it’s not always obvious which is which, as his steady, poetic style is built on subtlety, slow rhythms, and an innate sense of realism (and he freely mixes fantasy and reality as well). His latest documentary, the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard selection I Wish I Knew, adds elements of fiction to its compelling examination of the intimately personal side effects that resulted from the Chinese civil war and Cultural Revolution, as many people left Shanghai for Taipei and Hong Kong. Jia and interviewer Lin Xudong meet with elderly men and women who tell tragic stories of family and friends being murdered and executed by the government; an especially poignant scene is set at a community gathering where senior citizens dance to Dick Haymes’s version of the old standard “I Wish I Knew”; one of the interviewees sings into the camera, “I wish I knew someone like you could love me / I wish I knew you place no one above me / Did I mistake this for a real romance? / I wish I knew, but only you can answer,” which could be as much about a personal relationship as the revolution itself. Jia also talks with several filmmakers and actresses, from Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wang Toon to Huang Baomei, Rebecca Pan, and Wei Wei, illustrating how Shanghai has been depicted on film with clips from such movies as Hou’s Flowers of Shanghai, Xie Jin’s Huang Baomie, Wang’s Red Persimmon, Lou Ye’s Suzhou River, Wang Bing’s To Liberate Shanghai, Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Cina. As the nearly two-hour documentary reaches its conclusion, they interview younger people, including bestselling writer, blogger, and race-car champion Han Han, who don’t share the same conflicted memories of communism and the Cultural Revolution, instead praising an evolving modern-day capitalistic Shanghai that has brought them vast wealth, with no interest in the past of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, and Chiang Kai-shek. Throughout the film, Jia’s onscreen muse, Zhao Tao, who has appeared in six of his previous works, walks through contemporary Shanghai, pausing as she languidly looks out over the ever-changing city, where intensely poor neighborhoods are being torn down right around the corner from massive construction projects. Commissioned for the 2010 World Expo held in Shanghai, I Wish I Knew might not have been quite what the expo folk expected, but then again, they did give carte blanche to Jia, who never takes the easy way out, creating yet another complex, confusing, and controversial cinematic experience. I Wish I Knew, which is scheduled to open in New York on April 29, is screening as part of MoMA’s “Documentary Fortnight” series, which continues through February 28 with such international nonfiction films as Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlich’s The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Linda Hoaglund’s ANPO: Art X War, Helena Trestíková’s Katka, Marcus Lindeen’s Regretters, and Clio Barnard’s The Arbor.

ADG PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL 2011

Jane Dudley’s HARMONICA BREAKDOWN will be featured at ADG Festival (photo by Irven Lewis)

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center
248 West 60th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
February 24-27, $22 (Festival Pass $50, Thursday gala $30)
646-385-8493
www.americandanceguild.org
www.manhattanmovement.com

Founded in 1956 at the 92nd St. Y, the American Dance Guild, originally called the Dance Teachers Guild, has been supporting the art of dance for more than fifty years. This week the organization will be holding its annual ADG Performance Festival at the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, consisting of works by more than three dozen emerging and established choreographers. The festivities begin on Thursday night with the opening-night gala “Past to Present,” honoring dancer Jane Dudley, choreographer Paul Sanasardo, and writer and professor Linda Tarnay with an all-star presentation of Tina Croll and Jamie Cunningham’s From the Horse’s Mouth, featuring such special guests as Mary Anthony, Janis Brenner, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Diana Byer, Christine Dakin, Carmen deLavallade, Douglas Dunn, Deborah Jowitt, Don Redlich, Gus Solomons jr, and Martine van Hamel. Friday night includes pieces by Michele Cuccaro, Mariah Maloney, Amy Cova, Judith Moss, Bill Evans, and others in addition to a tribute to Dudley with performances of her Time Is Money and Harmonica Breakdown solos and a new work by Sanasardo, who will participate in a postperformance discussion with writer Mark Franko. Saturday and Sunday’s programs include works by Andrew Jannetti, Sally Hess, Hyonok Kim Dance Art, Claire Porter, Linda Lehovec, Kathy Diehl, Einy Am, Rebecca McArthur, and others, with Betsy Fisher performing Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz, Verb Ballet taking on Sophie Maslow’s Dust Bowl Ballads, and encores of Time Is Money and Harmonica Breakdown.

RAW SHOWCASE

Dawn Toledo Walsh will feed RAW artists to a hungry city on February 24 at 3Ten lounge on Bowery

RAW:natural born artists
3Ten lounge
310 Bowery
Thursday, February 24, $10, 8:00
www.rawartists.org
www.3tenlounge.com

Based in Southern California, independent nonprofit DIY organization RAW:natural born artists was founded in March 2009 by Heidi Luerra “to provide up-and-coming artists of all creative realms with the tools, resources, and exposure needed to inspire and cultivate creativity so that they might be seen, heard, and loved.” The grassroots collective travels across the country holding showcases, workshops, seminars, and other special events with handpicked local artists in the fields of film, fashion, music, art, photography, performing arts, hair and makeup, and design accessories. On February 24, Raw comes to the 3Ten lounge on Bowery for a multidisciplinary evening featuring film, live music and dance, a fashion show, and more, with such artists as JT Lotus Dance Company, Jessica Noe, Sarah Valeri, Ness Ros-Zeppelin, Aljosa Daumerie, Crayongirl, Brian DePinto, Lyle Thomas, Jon Epstein, Fabylosa, and others. Cocktail attire is suggested. “The city is hungry,” notes RAW New York City location director Dawn Toledo Walsh. “I intend to give it all it can eat.”

ARTPROJX CINEMA

Jesper Just’s SIRENS OF CHROME is one of the many free screenings at the SVA Theatre being held in conjunction with Armory Week

SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
March 1-6, 10:00 am – late
Admssion: free, RSVP strongly suggested
www.artprojx.com/cinema

In conjunction with VOLTA and the Armory Show, Artprojx, which defines itself as “a marketing, event production, virtual space, fundraising, and audience development and creative strategic consulting agency,” will be presenting six days of free screenings of works by artists and galleries associated with the two fairs. More than sixty screenings are scheduled, and advance RSVP is strongly suggested, especially considering some of the names involved. Among the presentations likely to fill up quickly are Marie Losier’s Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist, Terry Smith’s Broken Voices, Jessica Voorsanger’s The Woody Allen Show, Simon Pope’s Memory Marathon, Matthew Day Jackson’s In Search Of, Alfred Leslie’s The Cedar Bar, Jesper Just’s Sirens of Chrome, and George Kuchar’s “Legendary Potboilers & Melodramas.”

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS is part of annual Paul Taylor season at City Center (photo by Paul B. Goode)

City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
February 22 – March 6, $10-$150
www.ptdc.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Called the “naughty boy” of dance by Martha Graham more than fifty years ago, Paul Taylor has been pushing the envelope for some six decades. The Washington, DC, native has taken his company to more than five hundred cities in sixty-two countries, and today the Paul Taylor Dance Company kicks off its annual season at City Center with a gala performance and dinner at Cipriani 42nd St. with a bill that includes Esplanade, the New York premiere of Three Dubious Memories, and Oh, You Kid!, with live music by Rick Benjamin’s Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The season continues through March 6 with another New York premiere, Phantasmagoria, in addition to such repertory pieces as The Word, Brief Encounters, Cloven Kingdom, Promethean Fire, Company B, Orbs, Also Playing, and Dust. On March 1, they will present a Great Depression Special, pairing Black Tuesday with Speaking in Tongues; tickets are still available in the $5 and $19.29 seats. While most of the post-1987 works feature costumes by longtime Woody Allen set designer Santo Loquasto, Alex Katz designed the set and costumes for 1966’s Orbs, while John Rawlings handled the costumes for 1975’s Esplanade, Rawlings and Scott Barrie were responsible for 1976’s Cloven Kingdom, and Gene Moore took care of Dust. The lighting is by the inimitable Jennifer Tipton, with the pieces set to a wide range of music, from Beethoven, Bach, and Donizetti to Poulenc, Debussy, and the Andrews Sisters.

DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO IS AN OVERPROTECTIVE PARENT? (MAYBE EVEN YOU? OR YOUR SPOUSE?)

Last April, we conducted a twi-ny talk with Lenore Skenazy, the longtime New York City columnist and creator of Free-Range Kids, a book and website that she considers “a commonsense approach to parenting in these overprotective times.” She was staging the controversial Take Our Children to the Park . . . and Leave Them There Day, meant to “start giving our kids the freedom and fun that helps them grow up happy, healthy, and maybe even a little sunburnt,” she explained. Then, in July, she offered free Free-Range tutorials in which she’d come into families’ homes to give advice on how to not be such overprotective helicopter parents. Now Skenazy, a frequent guest on television news programs, is putting together her own reality show “for a popular TV network,” and she’s seeking anxious, overprotective parents in New York City and Toronto to participate. Here’s the criteria: “Do you know someone who is constantly worried about their child? Worried about whether their child is safe and/or whether they are doing well enough academically, socially, or athletically? Do you know any helicopter parents who hover over their child constantly, ready to swoop in if anything remotely ‘bad’ happens? Most parents do worry, but is it so severe that it is affecting their relationship with their children or with their family? If so, we can help them! Or you!” Just send your — or their — name, phone number, and brief description to slee@cineflix.com or call Sylvia Lee at 1-416-504-7317 ext 618. Good luck!

RED DOT ART FAIR 2011

Red Dot will move into SoHo this year and will host benefit for West Harlem Art Fund (photo courtesy of Kyle Dean Reinford)

82Mercer
82 Mercer St. between Spring & Broome Sts.
March 3-6, Day Pass $10, Week Pass $20
917-273-8621
www.reddotfair.com

Armory Week is heading to New York for its annual visit, paving the way for all kinds of art fairs all over town March 3-6. Over the course of the next ten days, we’ll be featuring every one of them, beginning with Red Dot New York, which this year moves into 82Mercer in SoHo, where approximately fifty international exhibitors will be presenting works, including Art Charlotte, Chung Jark, Galerie Edel, Gana Art, Independent Press, Brenda Taylor, and Wellside. Founded by George Billis, who has galleries on La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles and West 26th St. in Chelsea, Red Dot’s mission is to “create a venue for art galleries seeking to present work of lasting value and beyond current trends.” The opening reception on March 3 ($20) will benefit the West Harlem Art Fund; on March 4, Red Dot will host a cocktail party at the Strand Hotel, and on Saturday it will unveil Patrick Singh’s “Bridging Stone Figures,” which will be digitally projected onto the Manhattan Bridge. Red Dot also hosts the Korean Art Show, which made an impressive debut last year, at no extra admission charge.