twi-ny recommended events

36.5 / A DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE WITH THE SEA: NEW YORK ESTUARY

Sarah Cameron Sunde will conclude thirteen-year durational project in New York City on September 14 (photo courtesy Sarah Cameron Sunde)

Who: Sarah Cameron Sunde
What: Conclusion of nine-year artistic environmental journey
Where: Hallet’s Cove, special viewing areas, and online
When: Wednesday, September 14, free, 7:27 am – 8:06 pm
Why: Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist and director Sarah Cameron Sunde began 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea back in 2013, in which she stands in bodies of water for full twelve-plus-hour tidal cycles, with the public invited to join her in person or online. The work, which has been performed on six continents, was inspired by the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, to the community, humanity, and artists specifically. The piece comes to its conclusion on September 14 with 36.5 / New York Estuary, when Sunde will be at Hallet’s Cove at 31-10 Vernon Blvd.; you can go in the water with her, watch the livestream at home or with others at Brookfield Place, Manhattan West, Riverside Park Conservancy, Gallatin Galleries at NYU, Mercury Store in Brooklyn, the RISE center in Far Rockaway, or the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor in Staten Island, or check it out from viewing stations on the northern tip of Roosevelt Island or the Upper East Side. There will also be remote participants from Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, the Netherlands, and Aotearoa—New Zealand. In conjunction with the finale, Sunde cofounded Kin to the Cove, a community organization that hosts site-specific workshops, discussions, and other events.

The work has previously been performed in Maine, Mexico, San Francisco Bay, the Netherlands, the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, the Bay of All Saints in Brazil, Bodo Inlet in Kenya, and Te Manukanukatanga ō Hoturoa in Tāmaki Makaurau. Sunde explained in a statement, “36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea is my attempt to translate the seemingly abstract idea of climate change and sea-level rise into our bodies. It’s also about Time on many different scales: a durational work that unfolds over thirteen hours that has taken nearly a decade to complete. The tide tracks time on my body viscerally, which functions as a metaphor for the changing environment. The water is my collaborator, and the risks are real. I stay present in the sensations, attempt to embody the ocean, and find a way to endure the struggle while decentering my human experience and acknowledging potential futures. The public is invited to stand in the water with me for however long they like and to participate in a series of artistic interventions from the shore, creating a human clock that communicates to me each hour as it passes.”

On October 6 at 6:00, NYU dean for the humanities Una Chaudhuri will moderate “Standing with the Sea: Reflections on Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea” at Gardner Commons in Shimkin Hall, followed by a screening of an updated video on the outside Bobst Library wall.

BIJAYINI SATPATHY: DOHĀ

Bijayini Satpathy concludes her MetLiveArts residency on September 13 (photo courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Who: Bijayini Satpathy
What: MetLiveArts performance
Where: Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
When: Tuesday, September 13, $35+ (includes museum admission), 7:00
Why: MetLiveArts artist in residence Bijayini Satpathy concludes her residency with Dohā, taking place September 13 at 7:00 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. In the evening-length work, the Indian principal dancer, master teacher, and respected scholar explores ritualized prayer while embracing playfulness as she searches for the divine. Satpathy will also give give a talk on Odissi dance at the New York Public Library on September 19 at 6:00 as part of the new Dr. Sunil Kothari Honorary Lecture series; admission is free with advance registration.

HISPANIC GOLDEN AGE CLASSICS | LOPE DE VEGA: THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES

Who: Red Bull Theater
What: Online benefit reading and free discussions
Where: Red Bull Theater online
When: Monday, September 12, $25, 7:30
Why: Red Bull Theater kicked off its “Hispanic Golden Age Classics — Lope de Vega” initiative on September 8 with the panel discussion “Lope de Vega & Shakespeare,” exploring how the Bard and Spanish playwright and novelist Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio both wrote works about the Capulets and the Montagues; UCLA professor Barbara Fuchs and UCLA PhD candidate Rhonda Sharrah were joined by actor Dakin Matthews, who wrote the new rhyming translation that is being used. The “Diversifying the Classics” programming is centered by a live, online reading of Lope de Vega’s The Capulets and the Montagues (Castelvines y Monteses) on September 12 at 7:30 (available through September 18 at 11:59 pm), performed by Junior Nyong’o as Romeo and Cara Ricketts as Juliet, along with Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Christian DeMarais, Carson Elrod, Topher Embrey, Alejandra Escalante, Jake Hart, Paco Lozano, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Timothy D. Stickney, and Matthews, directed by Melia Bensussen. On September 15 at 7:30, members of the creative team will participate in the interactive online Bull Session “The Capulets and the Montagues.”

“Castelvines y Monteses is the sixth comedia I have translated, and my first Lopean adventure — after three Alarcóns, one Tirso, and one Moreto. It was a bracing experience to dip for the first time into the font from which sprang all later comedias,” Matthews explains in an introductory essay. “And it was just as bracing to work with material that so closely accorded with that of Shakespeare, who has been the subject of my lifelong fascination and study. And there, of course, lies the first trap that I — and any translator who comes to Lope’s version of the Romeo and Juliet story — must try to avoid. (Which I did not make any easier on myself, I confess, by my determination to use the equivalent Shakespearean proper names in an effort to make the play more appealing to English-speaking producers and audiences.)” Meanwhile, Sharrah notes, “Miguel de Cervantes, [Lope’s] contemporary and rival, may not have meant it entirely as a compliment when he called Lope a ‘monster of nature’ (monstruo de la naturaleza). Yet Lope’s prodigious output was fundamental to developing the theater of his age, and to our understanding of it today. The monster of nature left us many gifts.”

MIGUEL GUTIERREZ: SUEÑO

Miguel Gutierrez and others will perform sueño on the High Line next week (photo by Marley Trigg Stewart)

Who: Miguel Gutierrez, Justin Faircloth, Estado Flotante, Johnnie Cruise Mercer Jr, Seta Morton, Angie Pittman, Christopher Ralph, Kim Savarino, Santiago Venegas, Rosana Cabán
What: Live musical performance of sueño
Where: The High Line at Fourteenth St.
When: September 12-14, free with RSVP
Why: Queens-born, Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Miguel Gutierrez brings his newest work, sueño, to the High Line for three special performances September 12 and 14 at 7:00 and September 13 at 6:00. Gutierrez, whose previous pieces include Sabotage, SADONNA, Age & Beauty, I as another, Unsustainable Solutions: Duet with Dead Dad, and Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us), will play keyboards and sing in both English and Spanish, accompanied by dancers Justin Faircloth, Estado Flotante, Johnnie Cruise Mercer Jr, Seta Morton, Angie Pittman, Christopher Ralph, Kim Savarino, and Santiago Venegas. Rosana Cabán joins Gutierrez with the arrangement, production, and sonic transitions; the lighting is by Alexandra Vásquez Dheming.

The dreamy project features churchlike harmonic songs that explore melancholy and longing, with movement inspired by such choreographers as Ted Shawn and Harald Kreutzberg. Gutierrez also hosts the podcast Are You for Sale? and performs music as the Belleville, explaining, “i make sad songs in weird ways.” With sueño, you can expect the unexpected, in a terrific space.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE: JANN WENNER IN CONVERSATION WITH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Who: Bruce Springsteen, Jann S. Wenner
What: Virtual and in-person discussion
Where: 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave., and online
When: Tuesday, September 13, $60 (includes book), 7:00
Why: “I went to the Rolling Stone offices on a Monday morning in mid-May 2019. My assistant met me downstairs to take my attaché case, as I was still walking with two canes. It was a gray day in New York, one of rain, with a forecast for more all week. When I got to our second-floor lobby, workmen were putting up plywood to protect the walls from the movers,” Jann S. Wenner writes in “The Last Days,” the prologue to his new memoir, Like a Rolling Stone (Little, Brown, $35). Cleaning out his office, he writes, “I took down Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of a young Pete Townshend, his hands bloody from playing his guitar. . . . I packed up the small wood and metal sculpture of a skier that Patti Scialfa sent for my birthday.” Describing the memoir itself, he posits, “Our readers often referred to Rolling Stone as a letter from home. This is my last letter to you.”

On September 13, Wenner will be at the 92nd St. Y to discuss his memoir with his longtime friend Bruce Springsteen, who has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone by himself fourteen times and another eight with others; the conclusion to Wenner’s prologue is a reference to Springsteen’s most recent album, Letter to You. Bruce, whose wife is Patti Scialfa, has been the subject of numerous RS interviews, but this time he turns the tables, interviewing Wenner about the new book, delving into the New York City native’s often controversial life and career. Springsteen says of the memoir, “If you were young, alone, and in the far lands of New Jersey, Rolling Stone was a dispatch from the front, carrying news of a bigger world and another life awaiting. Like a Rolling Stone is a touchingly honest memoir from a man who recorded and shaped our times and of a grand life well lived. It is a wonderfully deep and rewarding reading. I loved it.”

The book features seventy-seven chapters that explore the counterculture, politics, family, and such journalists, musicians, and pop-culture icons as Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph J. Gleason, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, John Belushi, Jackie Onassis, Tom Wolfe, the Dalai Lama, and the Grateful Dead. In addition to being the founder and publisher of Rolling Stone, Wenner, a cofounder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has interviewed such figures as Bono, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, and Townshend for the magazine; Jagger and music executive Ahmet Ertegun inducted Wenner into the hall in 2004. Tickets are $60 and come with a copy of the book, which will be signed for those attending the event in person.

DAKOTA MODERN: THE ART OF OSCAR HOWE

Oscar Howe, Dance of the Heyoka, casein on paper, 1954 (Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma)

DAKOTA MODERN: THE ART OF OSCAR HOWE
National Museum of the American Indian
George Gustave Heye Center, One Bowling Green
Through Sunday, September 11, free
212-514-3700
americanindian.si.edu

In April 1958, after Oscar Howe’s work had been rejected by the Philbrook Art Center, the Yanktonai Dakota artist wrote a letter to curator Jeanne Snodgrass: “Who ever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian Art indeed. There is much more to Indian Art than pretty, stylized pictures. There was also power and strength and individualism (emotional and intellectual insight) in the old Indian paintings. Every bit in my paintings is a true studied fact of Indian paintings. Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way? We are to be herded like a bunch of sheep, with no right for individualism, dictated as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and only the White Man knows what is best for him. . . . Well, I am not going to stand for it.”

Born in 1915 on the Creek Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, Howe (his tribal name was Mazuha Hokshina) had a distinguished career as an artist, teacher, advocate, and activist. His life and work are explored in the sensational exhibit “Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe,” which continues at the National Museum of the American Indian through September 11. Howe’s canvases evoke the color and angular graphic style of Jacob Lawrence, but they depict the American Indian experience, particularly his Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture, instead of that of African Americans. Many of the works, in watercolor, gouache, tempera, and casein on paper, require longer viewing as their subjects emerge from an initially abstract image.

“We are finally at a point in the twenty-first century where we can recognize the impact and complexity of Oscar Howe’s incredible work as both Native American and modern American art,” curator Kathleen Ash-Milby said in a statement. “This project is a long overdue recognition of his contribution to the field that we hope will establish Howe’s place as a twentieth-century modernist.”

Sensational Oscar Howe exhibit continues through September 11 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The show follows Howe from his high school years up to his death in 1983 at the age of sixty-eight. The paintings are supplemented with substantial biographical information, including archival film footage, highlighted by a 1960 appearance on This Is Your Life, the television series hosted by Ralph Edwards; Howe collector Vincent Price introduced the artist, who came to regret his participation because it only furthered stereotypes.

In Fleeing a Massacre, an Indian on horseback is caught within a swirling storm of ghosts and the American flag. Wounded Knee Massacre features armed American soldiers on land in the top half, with Indians flailing below in a bloody pit. At first, Fighting Bucks looks like a kind of acid trip until the antlers and bodies of two deer become evident. Dance of the Heyoka comes at you in a barrage of complex geometric shapes and bold colors.

“Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe” is an exceptional, revelatory show, arriving right on time as a reckoning is underway in the art world, reexamining work done by underrepresented and misrepresented creators. The rediscovery of Howe is nothing less than thrilling; the exhibition is accompanied by a deluxe catalog with essays by Janet Catherine Berlo, Christina Burke, Philip J. Deloria, Erika Doss, Emil Her Many Horses, John Lukavic, Inge Dawn Howe Maresh, Anya Montiel, Denise Neil, and Joyce Szabo that shed new light on this extraordinary artist.

TABLE OF SILENCE PROJECT: A CALL TO ACTION FOR PEACE

Annual “Table of Silence Project” performance ritual of peace returns for twelfth year to Josie Robertson Plaza (photo courtesy Lincoln Center)

TABLE OF SILENCE PROJECT
Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center
65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, September 11, free, 8:10 – 8:46 am
www.tableofsilence.org
lincolncenter.org

Every September 11, there are many memorial programs held all over the city, paying tribute to those who were lost on that tragic day while also honoring New York’s endless resiliency. One of the most powerful is Buglisi Dance Theatre’s “Table of Silence Project,” a multicultural public performance ritual for peace that annually features more than one hundred dancers on Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center. It had to be reconfigured during the pandemic but is now back in a hybrid format, available to be experienced in person or streaming live here.

On Sunday morning from 8:10 to 8:46, the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center, BDT will present the full piece, around the Revson Fountain. “The strength of the work is found in the gestures, patterns, and repetition that mirrors our daily lives and is accesssible to all. We would not return to the work each year if it were not so universally meaningful as a tool for storytelling through which the audience can recognize itself,” BDT artistic director Jacqulyn Buglisi, who recently received the President’s Medal from Juilliard, said in a statement. “Your passionate belief makes this ritual a powerful testimonial of freedom for all people suffering oppression and is an imperative at this time in our history.”