twi-ny recommended events

ADOPTAPALOOZA

Cats and dogs will be ready to go home with you at Adoptapalooza in Washington Square Park

Washington Square Park
Saturday, May 22, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
www.animalalliancenyc.org/adoptapalooza

Come to Washington Square Park today and soak up some sun, check out some street performers, and go home with a dog or cat at the first annual Adoptapalooza. Sponsored by the Mayor’s Alliance, the event will feature cute and cuddly pets from Animal Care & Control, Sean Casey Animal Rescue, the Picasso Veterinary Fund, and the North Shore Animal League, with each adopter receiving a gift bag along with a new little family member. The afternoon features such special events as the Adoptable Dog Trot, raffles, a dog agility demonstration, photo sessions, a trivia quiz, Ask the Vet and Ask the Trainer booths, guest appearances (Tinsley Mortimer?), a live performance by Care Bears on Fire, and more. The canine costume contest includes prizes for cutest, sexiest, most outrageous, celebrity look-alike, and identi-tail twins, for those of you who dress like your pets.

DANCE PARADE 2010

There should be plenty of dancing fools at annual Dance Parade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Saturday, May 22, 21st St. & Broadway, 1:00
Admission: free (but text DANCE to 20222 to donate $5)
www.danceparade.org

More than six thousand dancers representing some sixty-five styles will be dancing through the streets of the city at the fourth annual Dance Parade, beginning at Broadway and 21st St. at 1:00 and continuing down to Tompkins Square Park, where DanceFest will run from 3:00 to 7:00. This year’s grand marshals are Ellenore Scott, Elizabeth Zimmer, DJ Jellybean Benitez, and Amy Marshall. The nonprofit that runs the parade declares, “This is our future. Open your heart! Free your mind! Face your fears! Live your soul! Dance!” Among those participating in the parade are the Congolese Association for the Development of Authentic African Music, Song Hee Lee Dance Company, One Love – the Dancing Path, BellyRhythm, Toury Chivas of Colombia, KineticArchitecture, the New York Swing Dance Society, Hip Hop Fusion, Fitnotic, the House of Yes, Renegadevirus, and dozens of others. The after-party in Tompkins Square Park will feature a social dance as well as two stages of performances and lessons from such companies as Contemporary Ballet Theatre, Inner Spirit Dance, 60×60, NYC Bhangra, Martha Graham II, Yosakoi Dance Project, the Amazing Amy: Yoga Contortion Dancing, Manhattan Tribal, and Strictly Traditional Tango. Everybody, dance now!

THE PENGUIN REVOLUTION

Long Island band will stage a revolution at the Gramercy Theatre on May 22

Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd St. at Lexington Ave.
Saturday, May 22, $20, 8:00
212-614-6932
www.myspace.com/thepenguinrevolution1
www.livenation.com

“Get funky,” Long Beach, Long Island’s Penguin Revolution declares on “Soul Brother,” and it’s hard not to comply. Named after Sakura Tsukuba’s popular young adult manga series, TPR knows how to throw a party. Mixing genres in clever ways, they tell the continuing story of penguin Oscar Hamilton, who is after nothing short of world domination. With Kevin McIntyre on vocals, rhythm guitar, and didgeridoo, Jim Willi on lead guitar, Scruff on bass, John Montoya on drums, and Dan Wagner, Andrew Hagerty, and Julie Gallo on various brass instruments, TPR is nonstop fun. Reggae beats and horns populate “Punky,” while the band goes psychedelic on the thirteen-minute epic “Lydibot.” And if “Rhombus on Parkside” doesn’t get your juices flowing, you better check your pulse. On “Coleman Parade,” they sing, “You think you know about energy”; there’ll be plenty to know on May 22 at the Gramercy Theatre, when the Penguin Revolution opens up for city boys the Energy.

PHILIPPE HALSMAN: JUMP

Philippe Halsman, “Jean Seberg with Cat,” vintage silver print, 1959

Laurence Miller Gallery
20 West 57th St. between Fifth & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through May 28
Admission: free
212-397-3930
www.laurencemillergallery.com

The Laurence Miller Gallery has followed up Denis Darzacq’s “Hyper,” recent colorful photographs of street dancers leaving their feet in French megamarts, with quite a blast from the past, Philippe Halsman’s ecstatic 1950s shots of international celebrities jumping for joy. His Jumpology series features black-and-white photographs of such iconic figures as Benny Goodman, Audrey Hepburn, Aldous Huxley, Brigitte Bardot, Dick Clark, Grace Kelly, Jackie Gleason, Marilyn Monroe (three times, including one in color and another with Halsman himself), and the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor jumping for his camera. He captures such dance figures as Merce Cunningham and Marth Graham, Edward Villella, and Gisele MacKenzie alongside such newsmen as Mike Wallace and Murray Kempton, fellow photojournalists Weegee and Edward Steichen, and even Richard Nixon. Leave it to Salvador Dalí to come up with the most creative and bizarre jumps, one involving popcorn, loaves of bread, and a nude woman, another making use of cats and water. It’s an engaging exhibition that brings out the child in the subjects as well as the viewer.

HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA IN NEW YORK CITY

The Dalai Lama shares his wisdom at Radio City press conference (photo by twi-ny / Ellen Scordato)

Radio City Music Hall
1260 Sixth Ave. at 51st St.
Thursday, May 20, through Saturday, May 22, $17-$360
Sunday, May 23, public talk, $25-$40, 1:00
Sunday, May 23, interfaith dialogue, St. John the Divine, 2:30 (sold out)
866-858-0008
www.radiocity.com
www.dalailamany.org
radio city slide show

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in the midst of a four-day stand at Radio City Music Hall, teaching and lecturing on various texts and philosophies and attaining enlightenment. From May 20 to 22, he will speak on Shantiveda’s A GUIDE TO THE BODHISATTVA’S WAY OF LIFE and Nagarjuna’s COMMENTARY ON BODHICIITA, followed by a public talk at 1:00 on May 23 on “Awakening the Heart of Selflessness” (with a Q&A afterward). The fourteenth Dalai Lama, also known as Tenzin Gyatso, will then head straight from Radio City to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine to participate in the interfaith dialogue “Enter the Conversation: Kinship and Its Meaning in Our World Today,” with Eboo Patel and Sakena Yacoobi, moderated by the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, and with a special performance by Paul Winter on saxophone. The Dalai Lama is an engaging, thoughtful, and intelligent man, and his teachings are detailed and complex; it definitely helps if you are at least somewhat familiar with the texts he will be covering.

NAT BALDWIN

Baldwin and his double bass will be at the Issue Project Room on May 22

Issue Project Room
232 Third St. between Sackett & Union Sts.
Saturday, May 22, $10, 8:00
718-330-0313
www.myspace.com/natbaldwin
www.issueprojectroom.org

Born in New Hampshire and now based in Brooklyn, Nat Baldwin mixes free jazz with experimental indie pop and classical elements to create a captivating hypnotic hybrid. Baldwin is able to get unusual sounds out of his double bass and voice on such songs as “Lake Eerie,” “Wounds,” and “Dome Branches” and such discs as 2006’s ENTER THE WINTER and LIGHTS OUT and 2007’s MOST VALUABLE PLAYER. Baldwin, who studied with master musician Anthony Braxton and is a member of the Dirty Projectors, will be playing the Issue Project Room in his adopted hometown on May 22, on a bill with Woody Sullender and peace, loving.

STREETFEST

Stone Street Historic District
Saturday, May 22, 12 noon through late evening
www.ulyssesfolkhouse.com/events/festivals/streetfest

The Stone Street Historic District extends from Pearl St. to Hanover Square and William St. and features the first paved street in New York City, dating from 1658. The area will be be hosting the third annual Streetfest on May 22, highlighting food and drink specials (especially potent for beer lovers) from such local spots as Adrienne’s Pizzabar, the Stonestreet Tavern, Ulysses’, Burger Burger, the Dubliner, Mad Dogs & Beans, Becketts, and the Waterstone Grill. The festivities benefit Self Help Africa, a nonprofit that “is committed to helping rural communities become self-reliant, encouraging participation of the poor at every stage of the development process.”