twi-ny recommended events

SPINE OUT: NOVELISTS READ PERSONAL ESSAYS

Who: Kass Morgan, Danielle Paige, Seth Rudetsky, Joy Peskin, Susan Shapiro, and Emmy Laybourne
What: “Spine Out: Novelists Read Personal Essays”
Where: Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., 212 219-0736
When: Thursday, September 17, $12-$18, 7:30
Why: Dixon Place’s quarterly literary series, “Spine Out,” returns on September 17 with an impressive lineup of authors reading intimate personal essays: Kass Morgan (the 100 series), Danielle Paige (Dorothy Must Die), Seth Rudetsky (The Rise and Fall of a Theater Geek), editor Joy Peskin, Susan Shapiro (Five Men Who Broke My Heart, What’s Never Said), and Emmy Laybourne (Sweet, Monument 14). “There are a lot of storytelling shows in NYC — this isn’t one of them,” host Laybourne explains in a statement. “This is bestselling novelists reading finely crafted essays. We give the authors a stage and they let their inner David Sedaris shine.”

POETRY UNDER “FATA MORGANA”

Spoken-word performances will take place under Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana” installation in Madison Square Park on September 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Madison Square Park
23rd to 26th Sts. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Thursday, September 17, free, 6:00
Installation continues through winter 2015-16
www.madisonsquarepark.org

We still haven’t made up our mind about American artist Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana,” a five-hundred-foot-long sculpture winding through the walkways of Madison Square Park. Consisting of canopies of mirror-polished discs with small sections cut out of them resembling clouds or leaves, the work blocks the otherwise 6.2-acre open area’s access to the sky, creating a claustrophobic feeling despite very cool reflections above and intriguing shadowy forms below. “By hovering over the park in a horizontal band, ‘Fata Morgana’ becomes a ghostlike, sculptural, luminous mirage that both distorts the landscape and radiates golden light,” Fernández explains on the Mad. Sq. Art website. In conjunction with the site-specific installation, the park is hosting a number of special events, so maybe that will shed more light on the project. On Thursday, September 17, “Poetry under ‘Fata Morgana’” will feature spoken-word performances by Sandra María Esteves, Bonafide Rojas, Machete Movement, True, and Emanuel Xavier, who curated the program with Fernández as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Among the other free September events in Madison Square Park are Mad. Sq. Reads with Sophie McManus (September 17, 12:30), the Studio Series: Time & Luck Quartet and Kristin Diable (September 19, 3:00), Singapore: Inside Out (September 23-27), and Mad. Sq. Reads with Amanda Lee Koe and Jenny Zang (September 24, 12:30).

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Social Health Performance Club will explore the framing of work as queer at the fourth annual Queer New York International Arts Festival (photo by Laura Bleür)

Abrons Arts Center (unless otherwise noted)
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
September 16-26, $15-$25
212-598-0400
www.queerny.org

Curated and produced by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović, the fourth annual Queer New York International Arts Festival consists of more than a dozen performances in multiple venues over eleven days. The program, which expands the idea of just what queer art is and can be, begins on September 16 with the legendary Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens leading an EcoSex Walking Tour of Central Park ($25, 3:00), focusing on SexEcology and including a water toast, Ecosexercises, a search for the E-spot, and other sex and environmental issues. Sprinkle and Stephens will then head over to festival hub Abrons Arts Center to present the New York City premiere of their 2014 film, Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story ($25, 8:00). Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev returns to QNYIAF with two shows, the interactive Facebook Theater (9/17, suggested donation $25, 8:00), in which the audience creates the text, and the concert 15 songs from my shows (9/18, suggested donation $25, 8:00). On September 19, John Moletress pays tribute to Derek Jarman with the multimedia one-man piece Jarman (all this maddening beauty) ($15, 8:00), while on September 20, Max Steele explores power and gender in the solo cabaret show The Good Daughter ($20, 8:00). One of the festival highlights should be the world premiere of Bruno Isaković’s Disclosures (9/22-26, suggested donation $20), in which people are invited to expose themselves both through words and the removal of clothing. Also on the bill are the Social Health Performance Club, Joshua Monten’s Doggy Style, Mmakgosi Kgabi’s Shades of a Queen, Kaia Gilje and Lorene Bouboushian’s Know What Smokes, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s Stupidité contrôleé or jump jump baby jump jump at the Merton D. Simpson Gallery, and Michael Breslin’s Kiss me just once more at Dixon Place.

BARBARA FELDON: ALWAYS IN CONTROL! 50 YEARS OF GET SMART

Barbara Feldon will be at Theatre St. Marks on September 16 to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of GET SMART

Theatre 80 St. Marks
80 St. Marks Pl. between First & Second Aves.
Wednesday, September 16, $25-$50, 7:00
212-388-0388
theatre80.wordpress.com
www.wouldyoubelieve.com

Would you believe that Get Smart is turning fifty years old? On September 18, 1965, NBC premiered a new television series starring comedian Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, an ingenious combination of James Bond and Inspector Clouseau, and Barbara Feldon as his partner, the lovely and patient Agent 99. Together they formed a kind of alternate version of John Steed and Emma Peel from the hit British show The Avengers. On September 16, 2015, Feldon, who earned two Emmy nominations for her role, will be at Theatre 80 St. Marks to celebrate the golden anniversary of Get Smart, sharing inside stories in a benefit for the HoFoPro (Howard Otway and Florence Otway Opportunity) Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “the promotion and development of theater by making grants to artists and artistic companies needing funds to complete their projects and providing a venue for the performance of their works.” Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the Cold War spy spoof, which pitted the good guys of CONTROL against the nasty villains of KAOS, also featured Edward Platt as the put-upon Chief, Bernie Kopell as evil mastermind Siegfried, Robert Karvelas as the hapless Larabee, Victor French as Agent 44, Dick Gautier as Hymie the Robot, and an endless stream of guest stars and up-and-comers, from Jack Gilford, James Caan, Ernest Borgnine, Don Rickles, Alice Ghostley, Billy Barty, Ted Knight, and Leonard Nimoy to Carol Burnett, Farley Granger, Larry Storch, Tom Bosley, Cesar Romero, Maury Wills, Julie Newmar, Broderick Crawford, Wally Cox, Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller, and Hugh Hefner. The show, which inspired the cartoon series Inspector Gadget, spawned such catchphrases as “Would you believe,” “Sorry about that, Chief,” and “Missed it by that much,” and introduced the world to the shoe phone and the Cone of Silence, ran for five seasons (four on NBC, the last on CBS) and won seven Emmy Awards, including twice for Outstanding Comedy Series. Feldon, whose character never revealed her real name (in one episode it is given as Susan Hilton, but it’s a ruse), will be joined by Joseph Sirola, who appeared in the episodes “Bronzefinger” and “Satan Place,” Get Smart experts Carl Birkmeyer and Nathan Sears, film journalist Lee Pfeiffer, and cinema historian Paul Scrabo. “A lot of women have said 99 was a role model for them. Because she was smart and always got the right answer,” Feldon says in The Get Smart Handbook. “And that was one of the first roles on television that showed women that way.” It should be quite a special treat to see Feldon talk about this all-time classic; unfortunately, Adams is no longer with us, having passed away in 2005 at the age of eighty-two.

SPA WEEK 2015

Skin Spa is one of many companies offering special $50 treatments during Spa Week

Skin Spa is one of many locations offering special $50 treatments during Spa Week

Multiple locations
October 12–18, treatments $50
www.spaweek.com

It’s time to start making appointments for Spa Week; through the middle of next month, dozens of salons, spas, and studios throughout the metropolitan area will be booking selected services at the very special rate of $50 each. As Spa Week veterans, we are happy to say that this year the deals are outstanding, particularly the amazing skin care. We have to rave about the skin care at the Skin Spa Flatiron/Chelsea, where we tried a customized facial with microcurrent add-on. The NuFace microcurrent technology firmed and plumped our sun-dry post-summer skin like no other; it was not only painless but also effective for days afterward. Another standout is GemVie Medical Spa in Murray Hill; they’re offering a Medical Grade Chemical Peel, which we can vouch for, a Deep Pore Detox Facial, and Dermaplaning followed by an Algo Mask to remove evidence of summer sun abuse. Returning favorites all over town include Essential Therapy and L’Institut Sothys, but with seven Skin Spa locations around Manhattan, from Midtown West to Soho, we just might go get microcurrent-zapped again in October and be well satisfied.

FALL FOR DANCE FESTIVAL 2015

New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tickets go on sale Sunday, September 13, 11:00 am
Festival runs September 30 – October 11, $15
212-581-1212
www.nycitycenter.org

One of the hottest tickets of the season is always the annual Fall for Dance Festival at City Center, ten days of performances by twenty companies from around the world, each show a mere fifteen bucks. Tickets go on sale Sunday, September 13, at 11:00 am, so don’t waste any time if you want to see any of the below programs, because these events sell out ridiculously fast.

Wednesday, September 30, and Thursday, October 1, 8:00
Miami City Ballet, Allegro Brillante, George Balanchine
Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc., Hapless Bizarre, Doug Elkins
L.A. Dance Project, Murder Ballades, Justin Peck
Che Malambo, Che Malambo, Gilles Brinas and dancers

Friday, October 2, and Saturday, October 3, 8:00
La Compagnie Hervé Koubi, U.S. premiere of What the Day Owes to the Night, Hervé Koubi
Steven McRae, U.S. premiere of Czardas, Steven McRae
Project FFD: Pam Tanowitz, One Last Good Chance, Pam Tanowitz
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Four Corners, Ronald K. Brown

Tuesday, October 6, and Wednesday, October 7, 8:00
Companhia Urbana De Dança, Eu Danço — 8 solos no geral, Sonia Destri Lie and dancers
Fang-Yi Sheu and Herman Cornejo, Pheromones, Fang-Yi Sheu
Houston Ballet, Maninyas, Stanton Welch
Paul Taylor Dance Company, Brandenburgs, Paul Taylor

Thursday, October 8, and Friday, October 9, 8:00
Nrityagram, Invoking Shiva, Surupa Sen
San Francisco Ballet, Solo, Hans van Manen
Stephen Petronio Company, Locomotor, Stephen Petronio
Dorrance Dance, world premiere of a Fall for Dance commission, Michelle Dorrance

Saturday, October 10, 8:00, and Sunday, October 11, 7:00
Boston Ballet, Pas de Quatre, Leonid Yakobson
Bill Irwin and Tiler Peck, Time It Was/116, Bill Irwin, Tiler Peck, and Damian Woetzel
Jesús Carmona & Cia, U.S. premiere of Ímpetu, Jesús Carmona
L-E-V, Killer Pig, Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar

THE WARRIORS CONEY ISLAND REUNION

You can come out and play with the Warriors as many of the actors return to Coney Island for a special reunion on September 13

THE WARRIORS (Walter Hill, 1979)
Surf Pavilion
3029 Stillwell Ave., Coney Island
Sunday, September 13, $20-$25, 10:00 am
surfpavilion.com
www.warriorsmovie.co.uk

In the classic cult film The Warriors, a Coney Island gang has to return home after a disastrous gathering in the Bronx. On September 13, many of the actors from the film will be returning to Coney as well for a special reunion screening taking place at Surf Pavilion on Stillwell Ave., including Michael Beck (Swan), Dorsey Wright (Cleon), David Harris (Cochise), Bryan Tyler (Snow), Thomas G. Waites (Fox), Terry Michos (Vermin), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (Mercy), Jery Hewitt (Furies leader Muson), Apache Ramos (of the Orphans), and others. The film opens at a huge gang meeting in the Bronx (actually shot in Riverside Park), where the Warriors are wrongly accused of having killed Cyrus (Roger Hill), an outspoken leader trying to band all the warring factions together to form one huge force that can take over New York City borough by borough. The Warriors then must make it back to their home turf, Coney Island, with every gang in New York lying in wait for them to pass through their territory. This iconic New York City gang movie is based on Sol Yurick’s novel, which in turn is loosely based on Xenophon’s Anabasis, which told of the ancient Greeks’ retreat from Persia. Beck stars as Swan, who becomes the de-facto leader of the Warriors after Cleon gets taken down early. Battling Swan for control is Ajax (James Remar) and tough-talking Mercy. Serving as a Greek chorus is Lynne (Law & Order) Thigpen as a radio DJ, and, yes, that young woman out too late in Central Park is eventual Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl.

Among the cartoony gangs of New York who try to stop the Warriors are the roller-skating Punks, the pathetic Orphans, the militaristic Gramercy Riffs, the all-girl Lizzies, the ragtag Rogues, and the inimitable Baseball Furies. Another main character is New York City itself, especially the subway system. Presented by the LSRR Tour and the Village Voice, the special conclave will include autograph signings, meet-and-greets, a cosplay contest, and live performances by the Gotham City Mashers and Sick of It All. If you can’t come out and play-ee-ay on September 13, The Warriors is also having its annual Coney Island Film Festival screening on September 19 at Sideshows by the Seashore ($10, 10:30 pm).