Croatia’s Perforations Festival returns to New York City with unusual and innovative productions at Abrons Arts Center and La MaMa
Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East Fourth St., second floor
November 17-26, $25 lamama.org/perforations
Croatia’s Perforations Festival, featuring ten days of cutting-edge performances from Central and Eastern Europe, returns to the city with seven productions running November 17 to 26. Founder and curator Zvonimir Dobrović notes, “It is always a privilege to present such an exciting roster of energetic and creative artists to new audiences. These artists have been the driving forces behind the current wave of resistance to neo-conservatism in Eastern Europe and their work has been an oasis of hope for a whole generation.” The festival kicks off November 17-18 at Abrons Arts Center with Jasna L. Vinovrški’s interactive Staying Alive, then moves to La MaMa with the Great Jones Repertory Company’s adaptation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Pylade, directed by Ivica Buljan; Marta Ziółek’s Make Yourself, with the Polish Ziółek serving as moderator and guide; Via Negative’s One Hundred Toasts, with music by Glenn Miller, Michael Nyman, Alfred Schnittke, and the Stooges; Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s multimedia, multidisciplinary Suddenly Everywhere; TukaWach/Magda Stawman-Tuka and Anita Wach’s double bill, How the Hares Are Dying and Private Inventor, exploring ontological insecurity and transformation; and Ina Sladić’s two-part Penny/Audience, in which Sladić receives live instructions from Penny Arcade in the former and the audience in the latter. Tickets to all performances are a mere twenty-five bucks to check out some innovative and unusual theater.
Director Bobbi Jo Hart and members of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo will be at the Quad for a Q&A on November 15
REBELS ON POINTE (Bobbi Jo Hart, 2016)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Wednesday, November 15
212-255-2243 www.quadcinema.com www.rebelsonpointe.com
You don’t have to wait for their next season at the Joyce to catch the Trocks, aka Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, here in New York City. On November 15, Canadian director Bobbi Jo Hart’s ninety-minute documentary, Rebels on Pointe, opens at the Quad, an intimate look at the “the World’s Foremost All-Male Comic Ballet Company.” Founded in 1974, the Trocks specialize in parodying classical ballet and gender identity. “In the early years, the company was blackballed because of the gay element,” notes one troupe member, while another says, “I can be myself. I can wear tutus; why not? Little things change the world.” Named Best Documentary at several film festivals, Rebels on Pointe follows the troupe as it travels around the world, presenting its unique flair and talent, going behind the scenes and showing them perform onstage. “When that curtain goes up, it’s just electric,” another dancer declares. Hart (Rise, I Am Not a Rock Star) and members of the troupe will be at the Quad for a Q&A following the 7:00 screening on November 15.
Barbara Kruger takes back her iconic graphic style in pop-up skate shop as part of Performa 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Multiple locations
Daily through November 19, free
“Untitled (The Drop),” Thursday, November 16, $5, 4:00 – 8:00 pm 17.performa-arts.org
Newark-born artist Barbara Kruger has been making socially conscious, provocative signs, slogans, and billboards primarily using white Futura Bold Oblique letters on a red background since the 1980s (in addition to black-and-white statements over photographic images). Many call it her trademark style, but watch that language: “Trademark” is a weighty term. In 1994, the Supreme skateboard and clothing brand opened up shop, creating a logo co-opted from Kruger’s work, which explores aspects of women’s rights and American consumerism; the Pictures Generation artist is also a cultural critic and graphic designer for magazines. In 2013, Supreme sued Leah McSweeney of Married to the Mob for her “Supreme Bitch” T-shirts, which also utilized Kruger’s style with Supreme’s brand name. Kruger, who had not previously commented on Supreme’s use of her iconic design, sent an email to the Complex pop-culture site in response to the lawsuit, writing, “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.” Kruger, who is based in New York and Los Angeles, has taken the issue even further with her Performa 17 commissions, in which she reclaims her art, incorporating Supreme’s business practices in a series of ultracool installations. On the High Line at Seventeenth St., her billboard proclaims, “Know Nothing. Believe Anything. Forget Everything.” Kruger has added numerous signs to Coleman Skatepark on Monroe St. under the Manhattan Bridge, including “Love It. Share It. Praise It. Please It.,” “Bad Is Good. Happy Is Sad. Ignorance Is Bliss,” and “Plenty Should Be Enough.” Be on the lookout for a school bus traveling across the city wrapped in black-and-white phrases with the word War. And in her ultimate coup, she has built “The Drop,” a pop-up shop at the Performa Hub at Broadway and Canal where people wait on line to purchase skate-related items made by Volcom featuring white type on red backgrounds, including a white T-shirt saying, “Whose Hopes? Whose Fears? Whose Values? Whose Justice?,” a black hat, black sweatshirt, and black T-shirt proclaiming, “Want It. Buy It. Forget It.,” and skate decks declaring, “Don’t Be a Jerk.” Entry is $5 in advance, and the items for sale range from $15 for patches to $65 for a skate deck and $300 for a complete skateboard. It’s a fabulous way to turn everything inside out and upside down while raising money for Performa.
In conjunction with the excellent exhibition “Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” which equates primarily black-and-white etchings, drawings, and films by Spanish painter Francisco Goya, Russian auteur Sergei Eisenstein, and American visual artist Robert Longo as they relate to the socioeconomic and -political issues of their times, the Brooklyn Museum is hosting an artist talk with Longo and American art critic and historian Hal Foster, author of such books as Compulsive Beauty, The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, and The Art-Architecture Complex. The exhibition features stunning large-scale, multipanel charcoal drawings by the Brooklyn-born Longo that resemble photographs, including “Untitled (Black Pussy Hat in Women’s March),” “Untitled (Bullet Hole in Window),” and “Untitled (Mecca).” Longo and Foster will discuss how art and activism, and particularly photography, can have an impact in times of emergency, like what is happening right now in the United States and around the world.
Conference: NYIT, 1871 Broadway, $45 – $215, 8:00 am – 12:30 pm
Festival: Museum of American Finance, 48 Wall Street, $95 – $215, 6:00 – 9:00
Thursday, November 16 www.politicsoffood.nyc
The Politics of Food will bring together more than 250 chefs, politicians, experts, and policy makers, examining the current state of nutrition in New York State and serving signature dishes. Held on November 16, the day begins at 8:00 in the morning at the New York Institute of Technology for a conference that includes the panel discussions “Future of food programs for NYC’s vulnerable communities,” with Barbara Turk, Donna M. Corrado, Margarette Purvis, and Joel Berg, “Legislating Nutrition and Sustainability,” with Charles Platkin, Elizabeth Balkan, Gale A. Brewer, and Kim Kessler, and “Food Dialogue with Farmers and Consumers: Common values? Common ground?” Richard Ball will deliver the keynote address, with closing remarks by Julia Turshen. The fun really begins at 6:00 at the Museum of American Finance for the Taste of Lower Manhattan Food Festival, hosted by Wylie Dufresne and boasting samples from chefs Jay Strauss, Jin Ruan, Joseph Mallol, Louis Goral, Mark Rosati, Matt Deliso, Nicolas “Nico” Abello, and Shaun Acosta and restaurants Amada, Benares, Blacktail at Pier A, Brushstroke, the Dead Rabbit, Blue Ribbon Federal Grill, Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, Harry’s Cafe and Steak, Harry & Ida’s Luncheonette, Jing Fong, L’Appart, Pier A Harbor House, Shake Shack, the Tuck Room, and Westville. Tickets for the conference are $45 and the food festival $95, with various VIP incentives at higher prices.
Wangechi Mutu, “Banana Stroke,” site-specific action painting, 2017 (courtesy of the artist / photo by Andrew Dru Mungai)
MetLiveArts / Performa 17
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Performance: Monday, November 13, and Tuesday, November 14, free with advance registration, 7:00
Talk: Wednesday, November 15, Performa Hub, 427 Broadway at Canal St., free, 1:00
212-570-3949 www.metmuseum.org 17.performa-arts.org
Kenyan-born artist and activist Wangechi Mutu, who is based in New York and Nairobi, will be at the Met Fifth Ave. on November 13 and 14 presenting the Performa 17 commission and MetLiveArts program Banana Stroke. The sculptor, collage painter, and multidisciplinary, multimedia artist is the founder of AFRICA’SOUT!, an organization that seeks to raise awareness and “advance radical change” regarding freedom of creative expression in Africa and the diaspora, with a particular focus on gender equality and gay rights. Banana Stroke is an immersive environment constructed from collages made with dyed, fermented, or saturated paper, a live performance, and a site-specific action painting. “A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it’s insidious, some of it’s innocuous, some of it’s invisible. It’s there,” Mutu told Mother Jones in 2013. On November 15 at 1:00, she will be at the Performa 17 Biennial Hub at 427 Broadway for a free talk with writer and scholar Adrienne Edwards, concentrating on Mutu’s use of abstraction and performance over the last two years. The conversation is being held in conjunction with Performa’s AFROGLOSSIA program, curated by Edwards and featuring work by Mutu, Teju Cole, Tracey Rose, Julie Mehretu and Jason Moran, Yto Barrada, and others.
Wangechi Mutu, “Banana Stroke,” site-specific action painting, 2017 (courtesy of the artist / photo by Andrew Dru Mungai)
Update: Wangechi Mutu’s Banana Stroke is an intimate, immersive experience reminiscent of the Happenings of the 1960s and ’70s. A small, extremely lucky crowd is ushered into the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium and onto the stage, where they take seats on white benches of various heights and lengths, placed to the right and left. In between is an empty space with large white canvas boards at the front and back. Sounds of nature seep in and two related videos produced, edited, and photographed by Andrew Dru Mungai are projected onto the boards, in which the Kenyan-born Mutu rises from the ground wearing long banana branches on both hands. The videos switch from color to black-and-white while Mutu gently recites Nobel Prize–winning St. Lucian writer Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa,” including: “Again brutish necessity wipes its hands / Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again / A waste of our compassion, as with Spain, / The gorilla wrestles with the superman. / I who am poisoned with the blood of both, / Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? / I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule, how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?” In addition, such words as “Wail,” “Cry,” “Promise,” “Profane,” and “Stroke” appear on one of the walls and are spoken. The lights go out, and Mutu walks into the center, two long banana branches shackled to her arms. She moves slowly while going back and forth between the two canvases, dipping the banana leaves in metal containers of black ink and banging, dotting, and swirling them onto the stark whiteness and dragging them over the floor, the ink at times threatening to touch the audience as Mutu dances and throws her arms in the air.
Wangechi Mutu, “Banana Stroke,” site-specific action painting, 2017 (courtesy of the artist / photo by Andrew Dru Mungai)
Satisfied with her stark creations, she leaves the stage in darkness, and soon two more videos are projected over the artwork, similar to the earlier films but not exactly the same. The action paintings are essentially abstract, but Mutu carefully crafted some very specific patterns that now make sense with what’s happening onscreen. The images and words clash with the black strokes on the white screens, calling into question the effects of the artistic intervention as well as that of the colonialists. And about sixty minutes before it all started, it’s over; the audience leaves in silence, Mutu not coming out to take a bow. Banana Stroke is a powerful, provocative experience layered with meaning that will take time and effort to decipher, but it’s well worth further investigation; perhaps Mutu will shed more light on it during her November 15 talk with curator Adrienne Edwards.
The Dead & Company fall tour comes to Madison Square Garden on November 12 and 14
Madison Square Garden
Seventh to Eighth Ave. between 31st & 33rd Sts.
Sunday, November 12, and Tuesday, November 14, $75-$500, 7:00 www.msg.com www.deadandcompany.com
When the Grateful Dead performed their five fiftieth anniversary “Fare Thee Well” concerts in 2015, the hype machine went into overdrive celebrating the legendary band’s history. Most mainstream media outlets treated “Fare Thee Well” as a one-time mega-event, roundly ignoring that the surviving members of the reuniting band had spent the twenty years following Jerry Garcia’s passing and the Grateful Dead’s demise performing together in some form or another more or less continuously in a number of guises and permutations. As recently as 2009, the four longest-tenured members of the historic psychedelic/Americana act (guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart) had all toured together as the Dead, followed by Weir and Lesh combining forces in the group Furthur. Following the culmination of the historic “Fare Thee Well” shows, Lesh returned to fronting his long-running, rotating Phil & Friends combo in a reduced touring mode, but Weir, Kreutzmann, and Hart wasted little time in regenerating the long-running musical conversation that is the Grateful Dead’s legacy and raison d’etre.
Forming yet another new continuation of the theme — Dead & Company, which comes to the Garden on November 12 and 14 — the three took to the road in fall of 2015 with the somewhat initially curious choice of John Mayer in the lead guitarist role — a chair that has been ably filled in previous mix-and-match combinations by capable pros including Steve Kimock, Mark Karan, Jimmy Herring, Warren Haynes, John Kadlecik, and Trey Anastasio . . . though always with some controversy and always with the ubiquitous and attendant moaning or applauding of various segments of the vocal Deadhead fan base. Mayer may have seemed a peculiar choice initially, his ability as a stellar blues-influenced guitarist being somewhat overshadowed by his celebrity reputation and pop-influenced solo musical output. He had developed an interest in the Grateful Dead’s music only in recent years, but after playing with Weir on a couple of occasions, Mayer threw himself into studying the group’s material as well as its ethos. Though debate continued to rage among Deadheads over the choice, each successive tour undertaken by the nascent Dead & Co. enterprise (from 2015 to the present) has seen Mayer acclimating more and more and gradually crafting his own unique spin on the band’s repertoire — a technique sounding individualistic but still reverent to both the memory of his beatified progenitor, Garcia, and to the overall gestalt of a group that has now been creating music for more than half a century.
With a celebrated multipart documentary (Long Strange Trip) appearing on Amazon in 2017, the Grateful Dead is nothing short of an American phenomenon in the minds of casual music fans and dedicated heads alike. The Dead & Company aggregation has taken to the road again this fall to continue exploring the band’s music, pushing sonic boundaries (including the improvisational Drums-and-Space segments that were a staple of GD shows), and as always performing a completely different setlist at every unique performance. The group’s summer tour proved highly lucrative, with the shows well attended and parking lots approximating the nostalgic circus atmosphere of the Dead’s heyday. And in keeping with tradition, the repertoire over this jaunt was indeed varied, with more than one hundred different songs being played over twenty shows. Even this, though, raised some murmuring among the devoted fan base, who noted the band’s current incarnation sticking to a less-catholic assortment of material, eschewing post-Garcia compositions written by the later iterations of the band and its members. Missing in action, for instance, were any of Weir’s latter-day songs with RatDog, music explored and developed by post-Jerry outfits the Other Ones and Furthur, or material off Weir’s lauded 2016 Blue Mountain album.
Beside long-standing historical figures Weir, Kreutzmann, and Hart and alongside now-devoted disciple Mayer, the Dead & Company lineup also includes the talented keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, a veteran of all the post-Garcia lineups, and Oteil Burbridge, longtime bassist for the Allman Brothers, who has become a crowd favorite with both his dextrous playing and emerging vocal responsibilities. On the most recent tour, Burbridge began lending his vox to the mix more prominently, spelling Weir and Mayer with the occasional heartfelt lead on such songs as “Stella Blue” and “Comes a Time.” Chimenti also sings but thus far has been relegated to harmony and ensemble duties. As with Mayer via Garcia, Burbridge does not try to approximate the exact style of his long-term predecessor, Lesh, but is able to mesh his substantial talents with the music being created onstage to a degree that the group’s distinctive overall vibe is present, even as it continues to develop in new directions.
Indeed, part of what keeps the old warhorse chugging along is the sense, from night to night, that the band could do anything, that surprises could always lay in store. A new arrangement for a classic such as “Jack Straw,” a long-neglected Dylan cover pulled out of mothballs, such chestnuts as “High Time” or “Viola Lee Blues” broken out or returned to the song rotation? And all along, the debate continues to rage among concertgoers: Is Dead & Company a Dead cover band? Or are they something familiar, yet new? Is a musical conversation that began before much of the audience was even born continuing in unexpected and interesting ways? Are Dead & Company little more than a cynical cash grab? Or are they a way of keeping classic Grateful Dead material circulating, treasured songs still being performed in a way both reverential yet fresh, to the delight of thousands of fans who love both the music and the concert experience? Are the performances dynamic and ever evolving? Do they evoke nostalgia while still being vital?
The discourse shall persist. ’Twas ever thus, actually, when it comes to the music, as well as the legacy of a band that was once described as being both sociologically and sonically similar to the old parable about four blind men encountering an elephant. The long, strange trip continues apace in its latest transformative mutation, and perhaps the only way to arrive at an opinion might be to clear the mind, open one’s ears, and decide for oneself at the Garden. Or, to take a page from the Dead’s own well-trodden lyrical playbook (courtesy of Robert Hunter): “If you get confused, listen to the music play.” What you hear may surprise you.
