twi-ny recommended events

THE WORLD IN 2011 FESTIVAL

Skylight Soho, 275 Hudson St.
92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St.
December 2-4, $75-$350
www.facebook.com/ideaseconomy
www.worldin2011.economist.com

The Economist is the best world affairs weekly being published today. In print. Digitally. Anywhere. Finance and investing professionals have known it for years, but in the past twenty-four months, a marketing blitz and increased availability — combined with Americans’ desperate need for real news — has gained the esteemed mag tens of thousands of grateful new readers. For the last quarter-century, The Economist has been publishing a special issue, “The World In,” in which they gather together journalists, celebrities, politicians, religious leaders, and others who make predictions about what will happen in the worlds of business, government, science, technology, art, pop culture, and more in the year ahead. In conjunction with the publication of “The World in 2011,” the magazine is hosting its second annual World In Festival, three days of insight and optimism from a stellar collection of thinkers. On Thursday night, the gala dinner at Skylight Soho ($350) will include former president Bill Clinton, U.S. secretary of energy Dr. Steven Chu, and THINKfoodGROUP chef and owner José Andrés and live performances by K’NAAN and Loudon Wainwright III. On Friday night, MoMA director Glenn Lowry will host performances by Wainwright and comedian Jeff Kreisler at 92YTribeca ($150). And on Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, an illustrious group of speakers will descend on 92YTribeca ($75) for a full day of lectures, discussions, and interactive debates; among those who will be sharing their views on 2011 and beyond are Majora Carter, James Diener, Anita Dunn, Andrew Excum, Andrew Freear, Jace Hall, Dr. David Kessler, Andres Lepik, Mu Socha, Alex Pollock, Karen Finney, Admiral Gary Roughead, Benn Steil, Nich Shore, Kah Walla, Dr. Nathan Wolfe, and numerous editors and writers from The Economist.

BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE SOUFFLE)

BREATHLESS is back for a return engagement at Film Forum (courtesy Rialto Pictures/StudioCanal)

BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE SOUFFLE) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through December 7, 1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20, 10:10
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

The fiftieth-anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic, BREATHLESS, will leave audiences, well, breathless. Godard’s first feature-length film, buoyed by an original treatment by François Truffaut and with Claude Chabrol serving as technical adviser, is as much about the cinema itself as it is about would-be small-time gangster Michel Poiccard (an iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ultra-cool dude wandering from girl to girl in Paris, looking for extra helpings of sex and money and having trouble getting either. Along the way he steals a car and shoots a cop as if shooing away a fly before teaming up with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and heading out on the run. Godard references William Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and Sam Fuller as Michel and Patricia make faces at each other, discuss death, and are chased by the police. Anarchy prevails, both in Belmondo’s character and the film as a whole, which can go off in any direction at any time. Godard himself shows up as the man who identifies Michel, and there are also cameos by New Wave directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Rivette. The beautiful restoration, supervised by the film’s director of photography, Raoul Coutard, also includes a brand-new translation and subtitles that breathe new life into one of cinema’s greatest treasures. Although many of the restored movies that play at Film Forum do so immediately prior to DVD release, no DVD is currently planned for this version of BREATHLESS, so if you missed it when it ran earlier this year, you’ll have to catch it during this return engagement, which ends December 7.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will honor Judith Jamison’s long service with special programs at annual City Center season (photo by Jack Mitchell)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 1 – January 2
Tickets: $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Philly-born dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison performed with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1965 to 1980, returning in December 1989 to become the artistic director of the company. After twenty-one years in that role, Jamison is stepping down, and Ailey’s annual winter season at City Center will be honoring her throughout its run, beginning with an opening night gala December 1 featuring the company premiere of Robert Battle’s “The Hunt,” Ailey’s “Cry,” and Sweet Honey in the Rock singing live to “Revelations,” and culminating in a special farewell tribute on January 2 that will include excerpts from many of the works most closely associated with her, from “Cry” (performed by three different dancers) and “Pas de Duke” to “Reminiscin’” and “Firebird.” (Battle will take over as artistic director in July 2011.) The season will also feature specially priced family matinees that will include “Revelations” performed by a cast of fifty; All Ailey programs, with such pieces as “Night Creature,” “Memoria,” “Mary Lou’s Mass,” and “Revelations”; All New programs, introducing world or company premieres and/or new productions of Christopher Huggins’s “Anointed,” Geoffrey Holder’s “The Prodigal Prince,” Camille A. Brown’s “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine,” Jamison’s “Forgotten Time,” and other works; and performances accompanied by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Ailey’s “Three Black Kings,” Hans Van Manen’s “Solo,” Ulysses Dove’s “Vespers” and “Episodes,” Battle’s “In/Side,” Billy Wilson’s “The Winter in Lisbon”) and other groups.

METAMORPHOSIS

Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre returns to the Next Wave Festival with the U.S. premiere of METAMORPHOSIS (photo by Eddi Jonsson)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 30 – December 5, $25-$65
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 2008, Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre, under the leadership of director and star Gísli Örn Gardarsson, made its U.S. debut with their visually arresting production of WOYZECK, and they are returning to BAM’s Next Wave Festival this week for a multimedia interpretation of Franz Kafka’s creepy short story METAMORPHOSIS. Billed as “a six-legged nightmare,” the show, directed and adapted by Gardarsson and David Farr, will once again feature a score composed by Australian madman Nick Cave and his longtime Bad Seed Warren Ellis, with set design by Börkur Jónsson, lighting design by Björn Helgason, costumes by Brenda Murphy, and sound design by Nick Manning. Gardarsson and some of his collaborators will participate in an artist talk following the December 2 performance.

JOE DIEBES: CHRONOLOGY

Joe Diebes’s “Scherzo” is centerpiece of frenetic multimedia installation at Paul Rodgers/9W

Paul Rodgers / 9W
529 West 20th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through December 2, free
212-414-9810
www.paulrodgers9w.com

At the beginning of this year, No Longer Empty held a music-related exhibition, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” in the old Tower Records at Fourth St. & Broadway. The star of the show was Joe Diebes’s “Scherzo,” a frenetic video installation of cellist Rubin Kodheli playing a score by Diebes as fast as he possibly can while being filmed from eight different angles by Andrew Federman. Kodheli’s virtuosic playing had been fed through a computer algorithm that resequenced the various segments into a brand-new, thrilling yet impossible sound piece that questions time and space as well as the reality of seeing and hearing. “Scherzo,” which comes off as a sort of punk-classical amalgamation, is located in one of the small rooms behind what looks like a white closet in the middle of the Paul Rodgers/9W gallery, surrounded by four other audiovisual pieces that line the walls. “One to One,” “Anachronism I,” “Anachronism 2,” and “Steeplechase” involve Diebes tracing and/or erasing scores by Bach, Beethoven, and Charlie Parker, using and/or reusing translucent vellum sheets, while the compositions can be heard through headphones. “I’m receiving and transmitting, or recording and playing, at the same time,” Diebes explains in the exhibition catalog. “My hand is the authority of the composer, but I’m not the composer. My hand is being driven by the recorded performance, so I’m really just a mass of nerves and muscle processing real time information. I’m trying to do it the best I can, but it’s all error.” Diebes might call it error, but the result is an intoxicating multimedia presentation that boggles the senses.

LEONARDO DA VINCI’S THE LAST SUPPER: A VISION BY PETER GREENAWAY

Peter Greenaway will be at the armory on December 4 for a special conversation about his massive installation of “Leonardo’s Last Supper”

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday – Sunday, December 3 – January 6, $15 (children ten and under free), 12 noon – 8:00 pm
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Iconoclastic British director Peter Greenaway has made such films as THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT (1982), THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT (1987), THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER (1989), and THE PILLOW BOOK (1996) over the course of his controversial thirty-year career. Recently he has turned his attention on the art world, making digital documentaries and giving lectures on such masterpieces as Paolo Veronese’s “The Wedding at Cana” and Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” as part of his Nine Classical Paintings Revisited series. Greenaway’s multimedia examination of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” including a life-size re-creation of the work within a clone of its original home, in the Refectory of Santa Maria Delle Grazie, will be on view in the Park Avenue Armory from December 2 through January 6. “Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway” will invite visitors into an immersive environment of light, sound, and illusion, offering new ways to look at the famous painting itself within its historical context as well as art in general. On December 1, Adam Lowe, founder and director of Factum Arte, will hold a lecture on “Duplicating da Vinci: The Art of Cloning a Masterpiece,” while Greenaway will participate in a special conversation on December 4 at 10:30 am about the unique installation. (Each event is $15 and does not include admission to the main gallery.)

BOB DYLAN AND THE BAND: WHAT KIND OF LOVE IS THIS?

The photos of William G. Scheele of Bob Dylan and the Band are the centerpiece of a multimedia celebration of the seminal American musicians

Friday, December 3, “Bob Dylan and the Band, Woodstock to California 1973-1975,” gallery exhibit opening night, 14th St. Y, LABA Theatre, symposium, $45, 7:00
Sunday, December 5, All Star Concert, (le) poisson rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $35, 8:30
www.14streety.org

The 14th St. Y will be paying tribute to the legacy of Bob Dylan and the Band with a series of special events, including a photography show, a symposium, and an all-star concert. Benefiting the renovation of the Y’s LABA Theatre, “Bob Dylan and the Band: What Kind of Love Is This?” kicks off Friday, December 3, with the opening of the gallery exhibit “Bob Dylan and the Band, Woodstock to California 1973-1975,” a collection of photos taken by William G. Scheele, who served as the Band’s equipment and stage manager from 1969 to 1976. The opening will feature a ticketed symposium ($35) discussing the enormously influential collaboration between Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson, which resulted in such seminal albums as PLANET WAVES, THE BASEMENT TAPES, and BEFORE THE FLOOD; the extremely impressive panel will include Greil Marcus, Christopher Ricks, John Niven, Dana Spiotta, Matt Friedberger, D. A. Pennebaker, Stephen Hazan Arnoff, John Wesley Harding, and Scheele. Then, on Friday night, December 5, (le) poisson rouge will host an all-star tribute ($45) to Dylan and the Band, with performances by Steven Bernstein, John Medeski, Rob Burger, Tony Scherr, Jolie Holland, Laura Cantrell, Nicole Atkins, John Wesley Harding, and Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces. This multimedia celebration honors some of the finest American music of the twentieth century while also helping out a great local organization.