twi-ny recommended events

BROADWAYCON

Lin-Manuel Miranda and other members of the cast and crew of HAMILTON will take part in the first annual BroadwayCon (photo by Joan Marcus)

New York Hilton Midtown
1335 Sixth Ave. between 53rd & 54th Sts.
January 22-24, $50 Explorer Pass, $95 Day Pass
www.broadwaycon.com
www3.hilton.com

The first-ever BroadwayCon is being held January 22-24 at the Hilton in Midtown, with dozens of Great White Way stars participating in panels, workshops, autograph and Q&A sessions, meet and greets, and live performances. Weekend passes are sold out, but you can still get single-day tickets to see cast and crew members from such shows as Fun Home, Hamilton, Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Les Misérables, Rent, Wicked, School of Rock, and many others. Below are only some of the highlights.

Friday, January 22
Something Wonderful: A Look Behind The King and I, with Christopher Gattelli, Donald Holder, Scott Lehrer, Bartlett Sher, Michael Yeargan, and Catherine Zuber, moderated by Ted Chapin, Beekman, 2:00

The BroadwayCon 2016 Opening, with surprise guests, MainStage, 3:30

History Is Happening in Manhattan: The Hamilton Panel, with Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., and Phillipa Soo, moderated by Blake Ross, MainStage, 5:00

Autograph Session: Rent, Nassau, 9:00

The BroadwayCon Jukebox, with Kerry Butler, Jenn Colella, Anthony Rapp, Ryann Redmond, Stark Sands, and Alysha Umphress, moderated by Ben Cameron, MainStage, 9:30

Saturday, January 23
Autograph Session: Fiddler on the Roof, Americas Hall I, 10:20 am

Master Class: Anthony Rapp, Gramercy West, 11:00 am

A Conversation with Sheldon Harnick, MainStage, 12:30

Dance, Ten: Broadway’s Choreographers, with Christopher Gattelli, Lorin Latarro, and Kathleen Marshall, moderated by Michael Gioia, Nassau, 3:00

Divas, Darlings, and Dames: Women in Broadway Musicals of the 1960s, with Stacy Wolf, Beekman, 4:00

Sunday, January 24
Audition Q&A with Bernie Telsey, Gramercy West, 9:00 am

Obsessed! Live: Disaster! Edition, with Roger Bart, Kerry Butler, Kevin Chamberlin, Max Crumm, Lacretta Nicole, Adam Pascal, Faith Prince, Jennifer Simard, and Rachel York, moderated by Seth Rudetsky, MainStage, 11:00 am

I Can Do That! Broadway Siblings, with Karmine Alers, Yassmin Alers, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Maggie Keenan-Bolger, Sutton, 12 noon

The “Pippins and Wickeds and Kinkies, Matildas, and Mormonses” Singalong, Sutton, 3:00

The First Annual BroadwayCon Cabaret, with Nick Adams, Alex Brightman, Jeremy Jordan, Lesli Margherita, and Krysta Rodriguez, moderated by Rob McClure, MainStage, 11:00 pm

TICKET ALERT: CHOICE EATS 2016

Restaurateurs prepare for huge crowds at Choice Eats 2015 (photo by tw-ny/ees)

Who: More than fifty restaurants, in addition to beverage purveyors and sweets dispensers
What: Village Voice ninth annual Choice Eats tasting event
Where: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
When: Friday, March 11, $70-$99 (includes souvenir tasting glass), 6:00 – 10:00 (21 and older only)
Why: Tickets are now on sale to the ninth annual Choice Eats, taking place March 11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion. More than fifty restaurants will be participating in the festivities, serving signature dishes; the list so far includes Awadh, Broken Spoke Rotisserie, Fletcher’s Brooklyn Barbecue, Fonda, the Handpulled Noodle, Kuma Inn, Le Fond, Luke’s Lobster, Mable’s Smokehouse, the Meatball Shop, Meat Hook Sandwich Shop, No. 7 Veggie, Queens Comfort, Raclette, Socarrat Paella Bar, StreetsBK, Swine, and Veselka, with many more to be announced. But you don’t want to wait for the final lineup, as tickets could very well be gone by then. General admission is $70 for 7:00 entry; for $85, you can get in at 6:30, while $99 earns you VIP status, with 6:00 entry, a gift bag, and access to the VIP Lounge with private bar, snacks, and bathroom access.

UNDER THE RADAR — DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA / COMPAGNIE KADIDI: SAMEDI DÉTENTE

Dorothée Munyaneza recalls personal horrors of the Rwandan genocide in SAMEDI DÉTENTE (photo by Laura Fouqueré)

LuEsther Hall at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 14-17, $25
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com
anahi-spectacle-vivant.fr

Rwandan-born, French-based singer, actress, writer, and dancer Dorothée Munyaneza is mesmerizing in Samedi Détente, as she recalls the fateful month of April 1994 in her native country, when she was twelve years old and genocide was about to be unleashed as Hutu sought to eradicate Tutsi. Munyaneza, barefoot and dressed in multiple colorful layers, speaks starkly to the audience, sings, dances atop a table that she later balances on her head, and holds a knife that drips blood through a hospital tube. With a haunted yet determined look in her eyes, she remembers the death of President Habyarimana, of men with guns arriving at their home and separating her family, of how the rest of the world turned their backs on Rwanda. “They all left us in deep shit and blood,” she says. Her harsh, compelling narrative is accompanied by Ivory Coast dancer Nadia Beugré, who at first stands to Munyaneza’s right, covered in a hood as if she is being held hostage, while on the other side French musician Alain Mahé adds music and sound effects and sharpens knives. But the show, running at the Public Theater’s LuEsther Hall through January 17 as part of the Under the Radar Festival, takes a baffling turn in a vignette in which Beugré performs zouglou, a popular dance style from the Ivory Coast celebrating the joy of life while commenting on current affairs.

Munyaneza, who wrote and directed Samedi Détente for her troupe, Compagnie Kadidi, might be using Beugré’s interlude to contrast the horrors of genocide with the feel-good partying that went on around the globe, and particularly in France and Africa, during those harsh months, but instead it disappointingly dilutes what was a compelling narrative. Munyaneza is able to right things before the finale, but one can’t help but wonder how much more powerful Samedi Détente, which was named after a Rwandan radio show that translates as “Saturday Relief,” would have been if it just focused on its central raison d’être. “How to tell the unspeakable? How to speak about leaving a beloved place? About the circumstances in which you had to flee the cradle of childhood, one day, hiding, on roads scattered with bodies, blood, and silence?” Munyaneza, who had a song on the Hotel Rwanda soundtrack and released her debut solo album in 2010, asks in her artist statement, continuing, “I want to speak though the eyes of those who have seen. I want to share the words of those who were there.” For much of Samedi Détente, she accomplishes just that, not needing the additional artifice. (The January 17 performance will be followed by a discussion with members of the cast and crew.)

AMERICAN REALNESS / MAKING SPACE — JACK FERVER: MON, MA, MES (REVISITÉ)

Jack Ferver brings an updated version of MON, MA, MES to American Realness and Gibney Dance’s Making Space (photo by Scott Shaw)

MAKING SPACE
Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway between Chambers & Reade Sts.
January 13-16, $20, 9:30
646-837-6809
americanrealness.com
www.gibneydance.org

If Jack Ferver is an acquired taste, then he’s a taste you need to acquire. The Wisconsin-born, New York City–based dancer, actor, choreographer, and performance artist returns to American Realness with Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité), a revised and updated version of a work he originally presented at FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival in 2012 and American Realness the next year. It’s an hour-long confessional in which you never quite know whether anything Ferver says is actually true, as he performs as “Jack Ferver,” talking about his childhood, his parents, his career, his husband, and his kids while wearing a black shirt, tight black shorts, and high black socks. He sings, dances to Schubert and Chopin, gets sexy, and discusses loneliness, fame, control, love, and collaboration; he skewers various people he’s worked with, including Liz Santoro and composer Roarke Menzies, who was part of the previous iteration of Mon, Ma, Mes, and costumer and occasional coperformer Reid Bartelme. Bartelme had an onstage role in the original production but on opening night at Gibney Dance he was in the audience — where Ferver reminded him again and again that he had been cut from this new edition. Collaboration and its unease, both in private life and the professional world, is perhaps the primary theme of Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité). Ferver repeatedly reveals his ambivalence about and fear of collaborators as he performs a piece that is impossible without them: Even the audience plays a crucial role in his unique storytelling, beginning with the packed house participating in a riotous Q&A; audience members are seated on three sides of the small room while the fourth side is the long rehearsal room mirror where they can see themselves and everyone else — and where Ferver can revel in reflections of himself, since this is all about self-reflection anyway. Part of the fun is being able to watch other people’s reactions as Ferver, often sitting on a chair, talking into a microphone in the fully lit room, goes about his business of melding personal success and failure with hysterical pop-culture references, making direct eye contact every step of the way. As fresh and exciting as it was four years ago, Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité) was well worth bringing back, in this case for both American Realness and Gibney Dance’s Making Space program. Ferver (Rumble Ghost, Chambre) can next be seen this summer at the Kitchen with I Want You to Want Me, a piece for ADI about which Ferver says, “I consider myself a populist, but some people really hate my work. They even hate me they hate my work so much. . . . Oh, I also just wanted to say that not everyone is going to make it. I don’t mean make it to the show. I mean make it out of the show alive.”

MLK DAY 2016

Multiple venues
Monday, January 18
www.mlkday.gov

In 1983, the third Monday in January was officially recognized as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, honoring the birthday of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Dr. King would have turned eighty-seven this month, and you can celebrate his legacy on Monday by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of numerous special events taking place around the city. BAM’s thirtieth annual free Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. includes a keynote address and book signing by Michael Eric Dyson, live performances by the Brooklyn Interdenominational Choir and Kimberly Nichole, the NYCHA Atlantic Terminal Community Center student exhibit “Picture the Dream,” master of ceremonies Eric L. Adams, and a special film screening. The JCC in Manhattan will host “Artists Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.,” with a screening of Aviva Kempner’s documentary Rosenwald at 5:00, followed by a Q&A with the director, and “Idealism and Activism: A Conversation with Bill T. Jones” at 7:30 ($5, benefiting Saturday Morning Community Partners).

The Harlem Gospel Choir will play a special matinee at B.B. King’s on MLK Day

The Harlem Gospel Choir will play special matinees at B.B. King’s and the Children’s Museum of Manhattan on MLK Day

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with the “Heroic Heroines: Coretta Scott King” book talk at 10:00 and 2:00 and the World Famous Harlem Gospel Choir at 3:00 and 4:00, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum hosts the special hands-on crafts workshops “The Art of Protest” and “Protest Prints,” a noon screening of Rob Smiley and Vincenzo Trippetti’s 1999 animated film Our Friend, Martin, and the toddlers program “Storytime & Civil Movements.” The Museum at Eldridge Street will be hosting a free reading of Kobi Yamada and Mae Besom’s picture book What Do You Do with an Idea? along with a mural workshop. The Harlem Gospel Choir will also give a special MLK Day matinee at 12:30 ($22-$26) at B.B. King’s in Times Square, while Big Daddy Kane will take the mic with a live band at 9:00 ($15-$30).

UNDER THE RADAR — TOSHIKI OKADA: GOD BLESS BASEBALL

Toshiki Okada steps up to the plate with his political allegory, GOD BLESS BASEBALL (photo © Julie Lemberger)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 14-17, $35
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.publictheater.org

Toshiki Okada uses America’s national pastime to explore the relationship between Japan, Korea, and the United States in God Bless Baseball, making its North American premiere this weekend at Japan Society as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. The Yokohama-born playwright and director doesn’t begin God Bless Baseball with the traditional “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” but instead with “Mickey Mouse March,” the theme from The Mickey Mouse Club, as two young women, one Korean (Sung Hee Wi), one Japanese (Aoi Nozu), take the stage. Sung and Aoi are marvelous, their odd gestures, a hallmark of Okada’s style, epitomizing “awkward” as they discuss how they don’t understand the rules of baseball. They are standing at the front of controversial visual artist Tadasu Takamine’s primarily black set: a small baseball diamond with four white bases; a pair of scoreboard-like monitors, one for Korean, the other for Japanese surtitles; a bucket of balls; and a twelve-sided polygon high on the wall behind home plate; the quirky costumes are by Kyoko Fujitani. The two women are soon joined by a man (Yoon Jae Lee) who attempts to explain the rules of the game, even though he admits that he is not a fan of the sport. They delve into offense and defense, strikes and innings, free time and boredom, and how their fathers love the game. “OK, so that’s all clear and great but I still don’t really understand like what kind of sport baseball is, ultimately,” the Japanese girl says. “For those of us who don’t understand anything about baseball, it was honestly pretty opaque,” the Korean girl adds. Soon an Ichiro impersonator (Pijin Neji) arrives, carrying a bat and wearing the Seattle great’s number, 51, on the back of his spectacularly hip hoodie. He references the March 2006 controversy when Ichiro, playing for Japan against Korea in the World Baseball Classic, may or may not have dissed his opponents, which set off a new hostility between two nations that already had a bad history. “It was just a misunderstanding,” Ichiro says while taking practice cuts. Things get even more surreal when the polygon starts talking to the characters in a disembodied voice that is part umpire, part godlike figure. “It’s no use lying to me,” the very American voice intones. “Place your hand upon your heart and tell me the truth.”

Okada, who has previously presented such works as Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech and Five Days in March at Japan Society with his chelfitsch theater company, creates just the right mood in this clever allegory, capturing the complications of not only the game of baseball itself but the relationships between parents and children as well as political tensions in Asia. Casting America as the spiritual father of Korea and Japan when it comes to baseball, two cousins who do not get along very well, Okada also throws in a few fastballs at corporate culture, gently mocking sponsorship and the more capitalist aspects of the sport. The four actors are excellent, especially in a late dance segment in which they give up control of their bodies. And as a sweet bonus, when you enter Japan Society, you’ll be met by two women hawking small, adorable bags of Tohato caramel corn. You definitely don’t need to know anything about baseball to enjoy this delightful, metaphorical romp, so don’t be afraid to step up to the plate and take a swing.

IN THE WORKS

Emily Johnson is among those presenting works-in-progress at Gibney Dance on January 17

Who: Fifteen choreographers
What: In the Works at 890 Broadway
Where: Gibney Dance, 890 Broadway between 19th & 20th Sts., free with advance RSVP, 212-677-8560
When: Sunday, January 17, free with advance RSVP, 9:30 am – 3:30 pm
Why: Gibney Dance will be offering sneak peeks at works-in-progress by some of the dance world’s most exciting and innovative choreographers on Sunday, January 17, from 10:00 am to 3:30 pm. “In the Works” consists of fifteen-to-forty-minute showcases by Dance in Process Resident Artists Beth Gill, Amanda Loulaki, Juliana May, Pavel Zustiak, and Tere O’Connor, Meredith Boggia Artists K. J. Holmes, Ivy Baldwin Dance, Katie Workum, Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, and Emily Johnson, and American Dance Institute Artists Joanna Kotze, Steven Reker, John Jasperse, and Chris Schlichting. Admission is free, but advance RSVP is strongly suggested; we particularly recommend checking out May, Jasperse, Johnson, and Lieber and Smith, all of whom have been featured in twi-ny in recent years.