twi-ny recommended events

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL 2018

Catherine Galasso’s Of Granite and Glass at Winter Garden is part of LMCC River to River Festival (photo by Victoria Sendra)

Multiple downtown locations
June 15-24, free (some events require advance RSVP)
lmcc.net

The seventeenth annual River to River Festival gets under way today, kicking off ten days of free multidisciplinary programs in downtown Manhattan, sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. R2R specializes in presenting hard-to-categorize works in unusual locations, and this year is no different. “The River to River Festival transforms the landscape of Lower Manhattan and works with artists and communities to explore lesser known pasts, presents, and futures of our neighborhoods,” curator Danielle King said in a statement. Among the highlights are silent :: partner, a dance piece about memory and exclusion by enrico d. wey in Federal Hall; MasterVoices’ Naamah’s Ark, an oratorio in Rockefeller Park about Noah’s Ark, preceded by a family-friendly art workshop; Cori Olinghouse’s Grandma, about which Olinghouse says, “While looping through the practice of hoarding, discarding, coveting, and display, I excavate a particular formation of white southern middle classness that is built up in my memories”; and the LES Citizens Parade, consisting of a processional and performances by senior citizens in Seward Park. Below is the full schedule.

Friday, June 15
through
Sunday, June 17
Catherine Galasso: Of Granite and Glass, part of Of Iron and Diamonds, based on Boccaccio’s Decameron, with performers Doug LeCours, Jordan D. Lloyd, Ambika Raina, and Mei Yamanaka and music by Dave Cerf, Winter Garden, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St. 6/15-16 at 7:00, 6/17 at 6:00

enrico d. wey: silent :: partner, Federal Hall, advance RSVP required, 8:00

Friday, June 15
through
Sunday, June 24
Elia Alba: The Supper Club, art installation, NYC DOT Art Display Cases on Water St. between Wall St. & Maiden Ln. and Gouverneur Ln. between Water & Front Sts.

Friday, June 16
and
Saturday, June 17
Cori Olinghouse: Grandma, performance installation created and directed by Cori Olinghouse, performed by Martita Abril and Cori Olinghouse, with visual design by Dean Moss and Cori Olinghouse, LMCC Studios at 125 Maiden Ln., 6/16 at 1:00 & 5:00, 6/17 at 1:00

Sunday, June 17
MasterVoices: Naamah’s Ark, oratorio composed by Marisa Michelson, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, performed by MasterVoices with Victoria Clark as Naamah and Sachal Vasandani as Merman, conducted by Ted Sperling, Rockefeller Park, 7:00 (preceded by art workshop 1:00 – 5:00)

It’s Showtime NYC! will make a statement on the steps of Federal Hall for R2R Festival (photo by Chloé Mossessian for FIAF)

Monday, June 18
through
Friday, June 22
It’s Showtime NYC!, site-responsive intervention by street dance company, directed by choreographer Marguerite Hemmings, steps of Federal Hall at Broad & Wall Sts. across from New York Stock Exchange, 4:00

Tuesday, June 19
Night at the Museums, free entry to African Burial Ground National Monument, China Institute, Federal Hall National Memorial, Fraunces Tavern Museum, Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, National Archives at New York City, National Museum of the American Indian — Smithsonian Institution, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, 9/11 Tribute Museum, NYC Municipal Archives, Poets House, the Skyscraper Museum, South Street Seaport Museum, and more, 4:00 – 8:00

Thursday, June 21
Tribeca Art + Culture Night, with fine art galleries, art nonprofits, artists studios & residencies, university galleries, design galleries, museums, creative & crafts spaces, and public parks open late, some with special performances and talks, 6:00 – 9:00

Performance parade will feature senior citizens along the waterfront (photo courtesy of Laura Nova)

Friday, June 22, 5:30
and
Sunday, June 24, 4:00
Naomi Goldberg Haas & Laura Nova: LES Citizens Parade, activist processional and performances by senior citizens cocreated by choreographer and Dances for a Variable Population artistic director Naomi Goldberg Haas and visual artist Laura Nova, Seward Park

Saturday, June 23
Engaging LES: Daytime Movement Workshops, movement-based activities including cardio, dance & sweat, Latin, jazz, hip-hop, lindy hop, jazz funk at 10:30 am, Tai Chi workshop at noon, boxing/self-defense at 1:30, and Movement for Life workshop at 3:00, East River Esplanade at Rutgers Slip under the FDR Dr.

NICK CAVE: THE LET GO / WEATHER OR NOT / THESE BAGS WE CARRY ARE FILLED WITH PROMISE

Jorell Williams holds his hands up near the beginning of Nick Cave’s Up Right presentation at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by James Ewing)

Park Avenue Armory and other locations
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
Through July 1, $17-$45
www.armoryonpark.org
nickcaveart.com

Multidisciplinary artist and fashion educator Nick Cave offers relief and release from these hard times with Up Right, a ritual-laden immersive performance that slowly builds to an explosive dance party in the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall in the Park Avenue Armory, part of his major installation The Let Go. As visitors enter the hall, they encounter the hundred-foot-long, forty-foot-high “chase,” two enormous curtains made of many-colored Mylar strips, representing social justice, that glitter in the light as they glide across the space. You can walk through them, but don’t sit on any of the small stools among them, which are for the performers. Ticket holders sit on the periphery on the floor, on benches, or in folding chairs as the curtains stop moving and Darrell Nickens begins playing the piano. Members of Vy Higginsen’s Sing Harlem Choir, consisting primarily of teen girls of color, enter the room, followed by a dozen men with their hands up, in the now-all-too-familiar “Don’t shoot” pose. Jorell Williams starts singing the gospel classic “Wonderful Change” while he and the other men sit in the stools and are dressed by men and women in white lab coats, putting them in Cave’s shaman-like soundsuits, made of colorful accessories that completely cover the body, hiding their gender, age, race, ethnicity, etc. The Sing Harlem Choir then performs a gospel version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” from Carousel, as the men in the soundsuits march and dance around the room to choreography by Francesca Harper and Cave and approach some audience members, taking their hands and making connections. It’s all rather tame, obvious, overly simplistic, and repetitive, like the United Colors of Benetton telling us that we can indeed all get along. But after the ninety-minute show, the hall turns into a dance party where some of the performers return and move and groove to the hot beats with anyone who wants to now cut loose as “chase” winds around the space again.

Nick Cave’s soundsuits are activated as part of The Let Go (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Taking place Wednesdays through Fridays through July 1, Up Right ($35, 8:00) is only one of a number of Let Go programs that are part of the installation, which is curated by Tom Eccles. On Saturdays and Sundays, the general installation is open to the public ($17, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm), with DJs getting things rocking at 2:00, including Joe Claussell on June 16, JD Samson on June 17, Noise Cans on June 23, Sabine Blaizin on June 24, Sammy Jo on June 30, and Tedd Patterson on July 1, with games of Twister, Soul Train lines, soundsuit invasions, a special line dance that you can rehearse here, and more. Numerous sections of the soundsuits are on display in various period rooms, bursting with color and mystery. On June 14 ($25, 7:00), the Freedom Ball should be a splashy evening of fashion, music, and dance, hosted by Matthew Placek and featuring Marshall Jefferson, Ladyfag, Papi Juice, Saada of Everyday People, and others. There will be a Dress to Express ball-style costume contest at 11:00 with $20,000 in prize money spread around three categories, State of the World, Unlike Anything Else, and Dare-Flair; among the judges are artist Mickalene Thomas, art collector and consultant Racquel Chevremon, and Cave. And on June 26 ($45, 7:30), “An Evening of Artistic Responses: The Let Go” brings together songwriter and musician Nona Hendryx, vocalist and artist Helga Davis, dancer and choreographer Harper, and FLEXN dance pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring for site-specific performative responses curated by Cave, who in 2013 transformed Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall into a wildly inventive petting zoo for “Heard•NY.”

Nick Cave’s Tondos deliver a critical message in “Weather or Not” at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Cave fans will also want to check out “These bags we carry are filled with promise,” the new kaleidoscopic three-dimensional mural he and his design collaborator, Bob Faust, have installed in the lobby of New York Live Arts; the opening reception is June 15 from 4:30 to 6:30. On view through September, the soundsuit mural is made from woven bags and is meant to represent the hopes, dreams, and aspirations we all carry inside us but don’t always let out. And through June 23, Cave’s “Weather or Not” exhibition at Jack Shainman in Chelsea is a gorgeous collection of eye-catching wire Tondos that swirl with life on the walls; the mesmerizing, bold colors are based on weather patterns, but they’re superimposed on barely visible scans of the brains of black youths suffering from PTSD because of gun violence. As always, Cave offers beauty and originality tinged with both hope and fear.

AHMED MATER: MECCA JOURNEYS

Ahmed Mater, “Ka’aba,” C-print, 2015/2017 (courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia Gallery of Contemporary Art, fourth floor
Through June 17, $10-$16
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

While the crowds line up to see the time-ticketed “David Bowie is” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a wide-ranging tribute to the late, beloved Thin White Duke, there’s a much quieter, beautifully elegiac show on the fourth floor of the institution. Visitors will find it well worthwhile to take the stairs and “turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes” in one of the holiest sites in the world documented in “Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys.” The show consists of spectacular large-scale photographs, video, and sculpture by Saudi artist Ahmed Mater, who was born, raised, and still lives and works in his native country. Splendidly curated by Catherine J. Morris based on Mater’s 2016 book, Desert of Pharan: Unofficial Histories Behind the Mass Expansion of Mecca, the exhibit focuses on Mecca as a living city that is much more than a destination for pilgrims on the annual hajj. “I was compelled to document the rapidly disintegrating and soon-to-be-lost narratives of the place and its people,” Mater, a former community doctor, writes, noting how modern technological advancement and a more consumerist culture are eradicating the older infrastructure. “What is not yet clear is the impact this will have on the emotional and psychological well-being of the inhabitants of the city,” he adds. Mater has contributed personal and informational wall text and labels to accompany the stunning works.

Ahmed Mater, still from Leaves Fall in All Seasons, video, color, sound, 2013 (courtesy of the artist / © Ahmed Mater)

In the dye-sublimation print “Jibreel (Gabriel),” a construction worker is tethered to a minaret being lifted high in the air to take its position atop the Grand Mosque amid a pollution-ridden sky. In the C-print “Walkway to Mina,” tens of thousands of pilgrims are heading to Mecca. “Ka’aba” depicts the mass of humanity in and around the cube at the center of the holy site, while the calm “Gas Station in Leadlight” reveals a small gas station — where Mater refuels when he travels to Mecca — glowing at night in an empty area. Several photographs were taken in local settlements that have since been demolished. “Because it is rarely perceived as a living city, the idea of Mecca remains unencumbered by the reality of its own inhabitants and historical development,” Mater, who also visited with Burmese Muslims from the Rohingya community, opines. “The symbolic city is replacing the real city.”

Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys Installation Image. Photo by Jonathan Dorado

“Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys” reveals the changes undertaken in the holy city (photo by Jonathan Dorado)

The two-channel video Road to Mecca II shows the madness and mayhem as pilgrims arrive for the hajj, where non-Muslims are not allowed, while the videos King Kong and Disarm Surveil take viewers around the Mecca Royal Clock Tower, the third tallest building in the world. In Leaves Fall in All Seasons, footage taken by workers follows Jibreel astride the golden crescent being installed on the tower. A giant sculpture of the Qur’an made by Saudi artist Dia Aziz Dia can be seen in the C-print “On the Haramain Highway.” A collection of painted window frames hung on the wall is all that is left of many small homes that were torn down in the supposed name of progress. “Room with a View” was taken in an upscale hotel room, going for as much as $3,000 a night, offering a remarkable view of Ka’aba. “The division that luxury hotels impose is anathema within the context of the dignified, fundamental leveling principles that are the very basis of the hajj,” Mater states. “The core tenets of Islam, eloquently articulated by the rituals of the hajj and protected since the days of the Prophet, were never meant to compete with superluxurious hotels or brand names.” In “Mecca Journeys,” Mater makes it clear that what is happening goes beyond mere gentrification, consumerism, and corporate greed; it’s a knife in the back of the city’s history and culture. The exhibit serves as a striking counterpoint to “David Bowie is,” each revolving around different types of worship over something that is already lost, or well on its way, although Bowie’s work will of course stand the test of time.

FIVE SEASONS: THE GARDENS OF PIET OUDOLF

Landscape designer Piet Oudolf and filmmaker Thomas Piper visit lush gardens around the world in gorgeous documentary (photo by Adam Woodruff)

FIVE SEASONS: THE GARDENS OF PIET OUDOLF (Thomas Piper, 2017)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, June 13
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
fiveseasonsmovie.com

Thomas Piper’s Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf is a beautifully composed documentary that unfolds much as flowers and plants grow, evolving over fall, winter, spring, summer, and then fall again. In 2014-15, Piper followed innovative Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf as he visited gardens around the world and developed a brand-new one, Durslade Farm, for the Hauser & Wirth Somerset gallery in Bruton, England, which will ultimately be home to fifty-seven thousand plants. For more than thirty years, Oudolf has taken a unique, radical approach to gardens, as demonstrated in the 1999 book Dreamplants: A New Generation of Garden Plants, which he cowrote with garden designer and writer Henk Gerritsen. “I wanted to go away from traditional planting, [using] plants that were not seen in gardens but were very good garden plants. The more difficult thing was to learn what plants do,” Oudolf tells Hermannshof Garden director Cassian Schmidt in the film. “Your work teaches people to see things they were unable to see,” designer and photographer Rick Darke says to Oudolf as they walk through White Clay Creek Preserve in Landenberg, Pennsylvania. In designing his gardens, Oudolf first creates a multicolored blueprint that is a work of art in itself, like abstract drawings and paintings. He combines plants that would never be together in the wild. “It may look wild, but it shouldn’t be wild. This is what you’d like to see in nature,” he explains in his home base, the lovely Oudolf Garden in Hummelo, where he’s lived with his wife, Anja and their children since 1982. For him, it’s not just about color or size but about character. “I put plants onstage and I let them perform,” he says.

Piet Oudolf’s preparatory drawings and paintings are works of art unto themselves, including this rendering for a garden at the Serpentine Gallery pavilion

Piper, who has previously directed, edited, and/or photographed films about artists Eric Fischl, Sol LeWitt, and Milton Glaser, author James Salter, and architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, includes lengthy, poetic shots of many of Oudolf’s creations as they change over the seasons, accompanied by piano and guitar interludes composed and performed by Charles Gansa and Davíð Þór Jónsson. Among the people the soft-spoken Oudolf meets with to talk shop are High Line horticulture director Tom Smarr, Northwind Perennial Farm designer and nurseryman Roy Diblik, Lurie Garden horticulture director Jennifer Davit, High Line lead designer James Corner, and Hauser & Wirth presidents Iwan and Manuela Wirth. Oudolf gets ideas for “landscapes that you would dream of but will never find in the wild” everywhere he goes; while driving along the Willow City Loop in Texas, he continually stops by the side of the road to take pictures of the spectacularly colored meridian.

Oudolf envisions his gardens as communities, consisting of native and nonnative species, just like communities of people welcoming immigrants. Although he doesn’t consider his work political, he does understand that the natural environment is under siege by climate change and other factors. Serpentine Gallery artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist explains, “If you look at the incredible multiplicity of plants Piet Oudolf has been using in his gardens, it’s not only a celebration of the beauty of plants but it is also the sheer diversity of plant species, and I think that is a wonderful statement to protest against this notion of extinctions.” Oudolf also sees the annual evolution of gardens as representative of the birth, life, and death process of humans, with one major difference. “It’s like what we do in our whole life span happens here in one year, and I think that works on your soul,” he philosophizes. “I won’t come back, but they will.” Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf opens at IFC Center on June 13, with Piper and Oudolf participating in Q&As at the 5:30, 7:00, and 7:30 shows that day; the 5:30 screening will be introduced by High Line horticulture director Andi Pettis.

HERRING FESTIVAL 2018

The new Dutch herring arrives in the city on June 15 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The new Dutch herring board at Russ & Daughters is a delectable delight (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Grand Central Oyster Bar, Grand Central Terminal, lower level, June 13-29, 212-490-6650
Russ & Daughters, 179 East Houston St., 127 Orchard St., Jewish Museum, 212-475-4880
Restaurant Aquavit, 65 East 55th St., June 18 – July 13, 212-307-7311

The new herring is here! The new herring is here! After being sampled by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the Hollandse Nieuwe Haring from Scheveningen has been air-expressed to New York City, where it is available at several prime locations through around the middle of July. For years we’ve been singing the praises of the new herring at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, which will serve the Silver of the Sea from its special cart (marked De Haringkoning — the Herring King) in a cozy nook by the bar June 13-29, accompanied by chopped egg, diced raw onion, and seeded flatbread, along with genever (Dutch gin) as desired. Each bite is a delectable taste sensation that should be slowly savored, never rushed. But we very well might now have a new favorite, the special herring menu at Russ & Daughters Cafe on Orchard St. We adore the herring board, which comes with four luscious tail-on herrings, four hot-dog-shaped challah rolls, and chopped onions and capers. You can also delight in the new catch at the Russ & Daughters shop on East Houston, where the marvelous matjes herring, two fillets attached at the tail, is available for takeout at the counter, although you should strongly consider ordering in advance; there’s a reason why their latest book is called Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built. There will also be kosher herring at the Russ & Daughters restaurant downstairs at the Jewish Museum, where the Herring Pairing Party takes place on June 27 ($79), with live music by bandleader and saxophonist Paul Shapiro and a special viewing of the new exhibition “Chaim Soutine: Flesh.” And Aquavit’s annual Herring Festival runs June 18 through July 13, with a three-course $58 prix-fixe herring menu for lunch, consisting of the new catch with chives, red onion, cheese, and löjrom, seared salted herring with potatoes, peas, and horseradish, and strawberry and rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream. As Sholom Aleichem once said, “A kind word is no substitute for a piece of herring or a bag of oats.” We’re not sure about the bag of oats, but we have no problem choosing herring over a kind word every year at this time.

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER 2018

Mauro Bigonzetti’s Deep is part of Ailey season at Lincoln Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 13-17, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual Lincoln Center season might be short but it’s packed with highlights. From June 13 to 17, AAADT will present three programs, in addition to the gala, at the David H. Koch Theater. On June 13 at 7:30 and June 16 at 8:00, “Celebrate Women” consists of the world premiere of Jessica Lang’s EN, with her husband, Ailey company member Kanji Segawa, serving as her assistant and music by Jakub Ciupinski; new productions of Judith Jamison’s A Case of You, with Joni Mitchell music interpreted by Diana Krall, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter, with music by Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn and Victor See Yuen; and the Ailey standard Revelations. On June 15 at 8:00 and June 17 at 3:00, “Ailey, Then & Now” comprises a new production of Talley Beatty’s Stack-Up, restaged by Masazumi Chaya and with music by Earth, Wind and Fire, Grover Washington Jr., Fearless Four, and Alphonze Mouzon; artistic director Robert Battle’s Mass, with music by John Mackey, and In/Side, set to Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin’s “Wild Is the Wind”; and Revelations. On June 16 at 2:00 and June 17 at 7:30, the “Musical Icons” program brings together a new production of Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Section, with music by David Byrne; the world premiere of longtime company member Jamar Roberts’s Members Don’t Get Weary; Battle’s Ella, set to songs by Ella Fitzgerald; and Revelations. Finally, the Ailey Spirit Gala takes place June 14 at 7:00, with an excerpt of Members Don’t Get Weary, Ailey II performing an excerpt of Juel D. Lane’s Touch & Agree, students from the Ailey School in an excerpt of Battle’s Battlefield, and an original hip-hop performance by AileyCamp.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: A BLANKET OF DUST

blanket of dust 2

Flea Theater Mainstage
20 Thomas St. between Broadway & Church St.
Monday – Saturday through June 30, premium tickets start at $67
866-811-4111
www.ablanketofdust.com
theflea.org

Richard Squires’s A Blanket of Dust, the political thriller opening June 12 at the Flea, begins on September 11, 2001, with Diana Crane on the phone with her husband, who is calling her from inside the North Tower as chaos mounts. After his death, she determinedly seeks justice but comes up against both the media and the government as she hunts for the truth. The world premiere, part of the Theater of Resistance, is directed by Christopher Murrah and produced by writer, actor, director, composer, and experimental gallerist Squires, whose previous works include Feathertop, The Fall of Albion, and the film Crazy Like a Fox. Angela Pierce stars as Diana, an Antigone-like figure who is the daughter of Sen. Walter Crane, played by Anthony Newfield, and the widow of 9/11 victim Sam Power. Alison Fraser is her mother, Vanessa, and James Patrick Nelson is her brother, Washington Post reporter Charlie Crane. Tommy Schrider plays bookstore owner Andrew Black, son of former CIA director Adam Black, who is portrayed by Brad Bellamy. The cast also features Brennan Caldwell, Joseph Dellger, Jessica Frances Dukes, Kelsey Rainwater, Peter J. Romano, and Peggy J. Scott.

The cast of A Blanket of Dust rehearses before opening at the Flea (photo by Jeffrey Wolfman)

TICKET GIVEAWAY: A Blanket of Dust runs through June 30 at the Flea, and twi-ny has two pairs of premium tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite play or movie involving 9/11 and its aftermath to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, June 13, at 3:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; two winners will be selected at random.