twi-ny recommended events

VIRTUAL MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL

virtual museum mile

Who: Eight arts institutions along upper Fifth Ave..
What: Virtual Museum Mile Festival
Where: Individual websites, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
When: Tuesday, June 9, free 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
Why: For forty-one years, New Yorkers have crowded onto Fifth Ave. between 82nd and 105th Sts. for the annual Museum Mile Festival, in which eight popular arts institutions open their doors for free, providing access to exhibitions and hosting live performances, workshops, panel discussions, and more between 6:00 and 9:00. With the pandemic lockdown still in place for museums, the festival goes virtual for 2020, taking place all day instead of just three hours, offering exhibition tours, curator and artist talks, family-friendly activities, and other special programs that people can experience from the comfort of their home. The live and prerecorded events are scheduled for 9:00 am to 9:00 pm on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook; follow #VirtualMuseumMile for specific info. Below are some of the highlights.

The Africa Center
“African/American: Making the Nation’s Table,” prerecorded videos with Ezra Wube, livestreamed conversation at 5:00 between culinary historian and exhibition’s curator Jessica B. Harris and exhibit advisor and Teranga executive chef and co-owner Pierre Thiam

Museum of the City of New York
“Curators from the Couch: Who We Are,” with chief curator and deputy director Sarah Henry, information designer Giorgia Lupi, and artist and computer scientist Brian Foo; MCNY Live, with cartoonist Roz Chast and novelist and Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin

El Museo del Barrio
Prerecorded interviews with artists, including iliana emilia garcia and Hiram Maristany; Collection-ary, with curators Rodrigo Moura and Susanna Temkin and artists Elia Alba and Scherezade García, 6:00; “¡Muevete!” with Nina Sky, free with advance RSVP, 8:00

The Jewish Museum
At-home art projects for families; audio tours with Isaac Mizrahi, Kehinde Wiley, Alex and Maira Kalman, Ross Bleckner and Deborah Kass, and others; “Movies That Matter: Teens Confront Segregation in America,” with artist and filmmaker Gillian Laub; interview with artist Rachel Feinstein about the exhibition “Rachel Feinstein: Maiden, Mother, Crone”; discussion with artists Rachel Feinstein and Lisa Yuskavage, filmmaker Tamara Jenkins, and curator Kelly Taxter; performance for families from the Paper Bag Players at Home

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Virtual tour of the exhibition “Contemporary Muslim Fashions”; video art-making lessons, including potato stamp pattern making inspired by Eva Zeisel; design talk “Exploring A.I.: Data Portraits,” with curator Ellen Lupton and artists R. Luke DuBois, Jessica Helfand, and Zachary Lieberman

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Virtual Stroller tour/talk for young children, 3:00; Guggenheim at Large, with curators talking about the collection; “Sketch with Jeff,” a hands-on activity for families with teaching artist Jeff Hopkins; a self-directed audio/visual experience via the Guggenheim Digital Audio Guide

Neue Galerie New York
Virtual tour of “Madame d’Or” with exhibition curator Dr. Monika Faber; a hands-on arts and crafts activity “Making Hats: Use What You Have,” with Deborah Rapoport; “Baking Linzer Cookies: A Recipe from Café Sabarsky”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
Virtual tours of “Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara” and “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All”; prerecorded interview with artist Wangechi Mutu; design your own puppet and banjo using recycled materials; flower crown making; streaming of 2019 MetLiveArts dance performance by Silas Farley filmed in museum galleries

THE ROOM PLAYS: THE BEDROOM PLAYS

The Room Plays, In A Bubble, With You featuring Simone Grossman and Robert Gemaehlich

In a Bubble, with You features Simone Grossman and Robert Gemaehlich as part of Eden Theater Company’s Room Plays

Who: Eden Theater Company
What: Short Zoom plays about isolation
Where: Zoom room
When: Tuesday, June 9, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 8:00 (followed by different productions July 9 and August 6 at 8:00)
Why: Led by producing artistic director Diane Davis and creative artistic director Cassandra Paras, the New City-based Eden Theater Company’s mission holds that by “fostering a collective of multigenerational, multidisciplinary diverse innovators, we can bridge the gap between artists and audiences of different ages, experiences, and beliefs and inspire a more authentic awareness and deeper understanding of the world we inhabit, our role in the world, and the impact of our decisions.” They are expanding their conviction that “storytelling should not be bound by convention” with their latest female-driven production, The Room Plays, the first edition of which will take place in bedrooms wherever performers are sheltering in place. On June 9 at 8:00, The Bedroom Plays will consist of The Man in the Fuchsia Mask, written by Jake Brasch, directed by Jordan Gemaehlich, and featuring Audrey Rapoport and Byron Anthony; Daeva, written by Paras, directed by Anthony, and starring Matt Pilcie and Paras; and In a Bubble, with Only You, written by Tracy Carns, directed by Davis, and featuring Simone Grossman and Robbie Gemaehlich. The three short plays, running about forty-five minutes in total, deal with the isolation and loneliness people are experiencing during the pandemic. ETC explains, “This series of short plays are at-home productions that take place in the rooms that we create for ourselves, and the rooms from which we have no immediate exit. The Room Plays provide an empathetic vantage into different experiences, different traumas, and different states of spiritual well-being while in quarantine.” ETC will move the location for the site-specific iterations scheduled for July 9 to living rooms and August 6 to bathrooms, which promise unique levels of intimacy.

UNORTHODOX Q&A WITH ANNA WINGER

Unorthodox cocreator and writer Anna Winger will discuss the show at JCC Q&A

Who: Anna Winger
What: Live Q&A with cocreator of Unorthodox series
Where: Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
When: Monday, June 8, free with RSVP, noon
Why: One of the runaway television hits of the pandemic has been Netflix’s Unorthodox, about a young married Orthodox woman in Brooklyn who runs away to Berlin to escape the suffocating life she is trapped in. The four-part series has led to the breakout success of Israeli actress Shira Haas, who has a smaller but critically significant role in the earlier Israeli series Shtisel, which also involves Orthodox marriage. Unorthodox was inspired by Deborah Feldman’s memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots; while the Brooklyn segments of the show are based on the book, the Berlin sections are fictional. One of the writers and creators of the show, Anna Winger, who also wrote and created Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86, was scheduled to do a live Q&A on May 28 as part of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan’s Paul Feig z”l Tikkun Leil Shavuot, but the event was postponed because of the protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The free discussion is now taking place June 8 at noon. Judging by Winger’s Twitter feed, she will have a lot to say not only about Unorthodox but about what is happening in America today.

WORKS & PROCESS ARTISTS VIRTUAL COMMISSIONS: STORM

NYCB principal dancer Sara Mearns performs moving and heartfelt Storm for WPA Virtual Commissions series (photo by Joshua Bergasse)

Who: Sara Mearns
What: World premiere of WPA virtual commission
Where: Works & Process at the Guggenheim YouTube, Facebook, Instagram
When: Sunday, June 7, free (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: Since May 1984, Works & Process has been presented at the Guggenheim primarily in the Peter B. Lewis Theater, where arts creators offer advance looks at upcoming productions and discuss their methodology, followed by a reception. With the pandemic lockdown, the popular program has moved online with Works & Process Artists (WPA) Virtual Commissions, in which dancers, choreographers, musicians, storytellers, and others make original pieces of no more than five minutes, from wherever they are sheltering in place. Streaming live on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram every Sunday and Monday night at 7:30, the videos are later archived for subsequent viewing, including Brandon Stirling Baker’s Oh, Light, Gus Solomons Jr.’s Fac(e)tude, and Dance Heginbotham’s 24 Caprices. The standout presentation thus far has been Jamar Roberts’s blistering, electrifying Cooped, five harrowing minutes of longtime Ailey dancer Roberts moving and shuddering in dark, confined spaces. Shot by Roberts with a haunting, grainy quality and set to a screeching score by David Watson on bagpipes and Tony Buck on drums, Cooped is a dramatic statement not only on isolation but on the black body, which at times here seems to float, trapped in the ether, glistening with sweat, desperate to break free.

On June 7, WPA will premiere Storm, a beautiful, heartbreaking complement to Cooped. Filmed and choreographed by Emmy winner Joshua Bergasse (SMASH, Sweet Charity) and performed by his wife, NYCB principal dancer Sara Mearns (Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes, Rodgers and Hart’s I Married an Angel for Encores!), the black-and-white piece takes place in their Lincoln Square apartment, where Mearns, wearing a black one-piece leotard, a loose-fitting white button-down shirt, and sneakers, glides across their relatively spacious living room while, on the soundtrack, Margo Seibert (The Thanksgiving Play, Octet) sings pianist Zoe Sarnak’s poignant ballad “The Storm Will Pass Soon Now.” At one point Mearns, who has been featured in works by Christopher Wheeldon, Kyle Abraham, Warren Carlyle, Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky, and Benjamin Millepied in addition to Robbins, Balanchine, and others for NYCB, grasps her neck with both hands, seeking emotional comfort while echoing a canvas on the wall of a ballet dancer happily hugging a glorious swan. She jumps, twists, falls to the ground, sits on a couch with her two dogs, Ozzie and Rocky, and walks over to the large window, resting her hands on the frame as she gazes out with longing and Seibert sings, “Look out for hope and you’ll find some, you’ll see / Maybe it’s not where you thought it would be.” Whereas Roberts is cramped and restricted, his body never seen clearly in total, Mearns is caught in a more open, brighter space, which appears even larger when it is reflected in a television monitor that also shows the balcony, an escape to the outside world that is closed off to her. Sensitively edited by Lee Cherry, Storm concludes with a dramatic statement of its own, quieter and more hopeful but still aching. Together, the two works, made before the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests, capture the zeitgeist of a nation at war with itself yet determined to move forward.

HOWL! ALLEN GINSBERG FILM FESTIVAL — FERLINGHETTI: A REBIRTH OF WONDER

Lawrence Ferlinghetti proves to be a man of many hats in refreshing documentary

FERLINGHETTI: A REBIRTH OF WONDER (Christopher Felver, 2009) / HUM BOM! (Christopher Felver, 1999)
Howl!
Friday, June 5, free, 7:00
Festival continues through June 6
www.howlarts.org
ferlinghettifilm.com

“Poetry should be dissident, and subversive, and an agent for change,” poet, publisher, painter, activist, and military veteran Lawrence Ferlinghetti says in Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder, a refreshing and revealing documentary about the author of A Coney Island of the Mind and owner of the famous City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. The film is streaming online for free on June 5 at 7:00 as part of Howl!’s Allen Ginsberg Film Festival, which continues through June 6. Director Christopher Felver, who has previously made documentaries on John Cage, Tony Cragg, Donald Judd, and Cecil Taylor, has compiled ten years of interviews with Ferlinghetti, including trips to Italy, where the poet’s father was born; France, where the aunt who raised him was from; and his childhood home in New York.

Among those sharing their opinions of the charming and friendly Ferlinghetti, who turned 101 in March, are fellow poets Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman, and Billy Collins as well as such other artistic figures as David Amram, Dave Eggers, Dennis Hopper, and Jean-Jacques Lebel, all of whom have only the most positive things to say about the film’s subject. Despite his radicalism and calls for social and political change around the world, Ferlinghetti is nearly always wearing a smile, clearly enjoying the long life he’s leading. He discusses his friendships with Kenneth Rexroth, Shakespeare & Co. founder George Whitman, and the Beats, primarily Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, focusing at one point on the censorship trial involving his publication of Ginsberg’s Howl, which turned into a critical battle over First Amendment rights. Counterculture guru Ferlinghetti is shown performing in a studio with Amram, accepting an award from the city of San Francisco, discussing his family, working on his abstract paintings, and wearing silly hats. He is completely at ease with who he is and where he came from, as well as where he’s going, still fighting the power as valiantly as ever, not just relaxing on his many laurels. Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder is also likely to make viewers think twice about their own lives, realizing there’s a great big world out there, and it is possible for each and every person to make a difference, especially during these challenging times.

A Rebirth of Wonder will be shown along with Felver’s 1999 short, Hum Bom!, featuring Ginsberg and Amram, as well as video of the 2018 Howl Gallery party. The celebration concludes June 6 at 7:00 with Colin Still’s 1997 doc No More to Say and Nothing to Weep For: An Elegy for Allen Ginsberg, Felver’s video for Sonic Youth’s “Making the Nature Scene,” and video of the 2019 Howl Gallery party.

LET’S STAY (IN) TOGETHER: A BENEFIT FOR THE APOLLO THEATER

apollo

Who: “Captain” Kirk Douglas, Kool & the Gang, Gary Clark Jr., Robert Randolph, Ray Chew, Michael McDonald, Lil Buck & Jon Boogz, Keb Mo, Celisse Henderson, Infinity’s Song, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Warren Haynes, Celisse Henderson, Ziggy Marley, Vernon Reid, DJ Reborn, DJ D-NICE, Dionne Warwick, Doug E. Fresh, Roy Wood Jr. and the 125th St. neighborhood
What: Virtual benefit concert to support the historic Apollo Theater
Where: The Apollo Theater website and Facebook page
When: Thursday, June 4, free with advance RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: The virtual Apollo Theater gala benefit was supposed to take place June 2, but it was delayed because of Blackout Tuesday, the music industry’s response to the government’s mishandling of the George Floyd protests and police brutality. Opened in 1934 on West 125th St. as a place where black musicians could play to black audiences, the Apollo is a landmark in African American history. In moving the date of the gala, the institution explained, “The Apollo Theater stands with #TheShowMustBePaused. In observance of Blackout Tuesday and in solidarity with our artists, neighbors, and the global community, our benefit — Let’s Stay (IN) Together — has been rescheduled from June 2 to June 4.” On Thursday night, the virtual celebration will have even more to say about the state of race in America; among the performers are “Captain” Kirk Douglas of the Roots, Kool & the Gang, Gary Clark Jr., Robert Randolph, Ray Chew, Michael McDonald, Lil Buck & Jon Boogz, Keb Mo, Celisse Henderson, Infinity’s Song, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Warren Haynes, Celisse Henderson, Ziggy Marley, Vernon Reid, DJ Reborn, and DJ D-NICE, along with appearances by Dionne Warwick, Doug E. Fresh, and Roy Wood Jr. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted, with proceeds going not only to the theater but to local merchants and small businesses. And as the Apollo states on its website, “Love Black People Like You Love Their Culture.”

RESISTANCE: TORI AMOS IN CONVERSATION WITH ESQUIRE’S JEFF GORDINIER

tori amos

Who: Tori Amos, Jeff Gordinier
What: Online book launch
Where: 92nd St. Y online
When: Thursday, June 4, $10, 5:00
Why: On the back cover of her new book, Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage (Atria, May 2020, $26), North Carolina Music Hall of Famer Tori Amos writes, “What follows in this book is my journey to engage, examine, and then reassess the artist’s role in society and, by doing so, to create a way forward for us as we commit to resist those dark forces that would wish to subjugate us instead of lifting us up and giving a voice to be the best in us. . . Join me on the path of resistance — of the art that will set us free.” Resistance has come to mean a whole lot more during this pandemic and the George Floyd protests, so it should be fascinating to hear Amos, an activist whose albums include Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, Boys for Pele, and Native Invader, talk about that with Esquire’s Jeff Gordinier on June 4 at 5:00, bringing together the personal and the political as part of the continuing 92nd St. Y at Home programming. Registration is ten dollars, with proceeds going to 92nd St. Y’s Help Now campaign.