HUMMINGBIRD is one of three pieces to be presented by Cincinnati Ballet in the company’s Joyce debut (photo by Peter Mueller)
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
May 6-11, $10-$59
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.cballet.org
Usually when you talk about Cincinnati being in New York, it means that the Reds are taking on the Mets at CitiField or the Bengals are in town taking on the Jets or the Giants at the Meadowlands. But this week it refers to Cincy in NYC, seven days of art, music, dance, theater, and food celebrating the Queen of the West. The centerpiece is the Cincinnati Ballet, returning to New York City for the first time in thirty-five years as part of its fiftieth anniversary season. The company, which features six Cuban dancers, will be presenting three recent works at its Joyce debut from May 6 to 11. Resident choreographer Adam Hougland’s 2013 Hummingbird in a Box is a piece for eight dancers, set to seven specially commissioned songs by guitar god Peter Frampton and Gordon Kennedy; Frampton, who performed the music live at the Cincinnati premiere, will be on hand to introduce the work on opening night at the Joyce. Trey McIntyre’s 2004 Chasing Squirrel is a wildly energetic and fanciful piece for ten dancers in dazzling costumes by Sandra Woodall, with raucous Latino-infused music recorded by the Kronos Quartet. And Val Caniparoli’s 2013 Caprice is an elegant piece that brings together live musicians and ten dancers to Paganini’s “Violin Caprices.” Cincinnati Ballet artistic director Victoria Morgan will participate in a Joyce Dance Chat following the May 7 show.
Cincy in NYC also includes University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music jazz alums performing at Lincoln Center, “Music and Words with Ricky Ian Gordon” at the National Opera House, a Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park staged reading of Cincinnati native Theresa Rebeck’s new play, Fool, at Pearl Studios, the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, seven Cincy chefs preparing a special meal at the James Beard House, the CCM Ariel Quartet playing Haydn, Berg, and Beethoven at the 92nd St. Y’s downtown SubCulture, and, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the reunion of Rembrandt’s separate portraits of a husband and wife, the Taft Museum’s “Portrait of a Man Rising from His Chair” and the Met’s “Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan.”
Based on the Russian novel Yama (The Pit) by Aleksandr Kuprin, protofeminist director Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sisters of the Gion offers a poignant look at the changing desires of women in twentieth-century Japan. In the Gion District, geisha have become one-man prostitutes, taking up with one wealthy patron at a time. When Furusawa (Benkei Shiganoya) loses his business, the bankrupt man turns away from his wife and instead goes to Umekichi (Yōko Umemura), who takes him in, believing that it is her responsibility. Her younger sister, Omocha (Isuzu Yamada), is furious, arguing that geisha, and women in general, should be more than just the playthings of men. She wants her sister instead to find a rich patron who can take care of her in style. Omocha is a manipulative woman, willing to lie to get what she thinks she and Umekichi deserve, but she is not doing it for evil reasons as much as she wants to change the plight of the geisha and give more power to women. But Umekichi cannot break free of the old-fashioned ways as Omocha plays games with successful businessman Jurakudo (Fumio Okura) and his assistant, Kimura (Taizō Fukami), devising a plot that threatens to tear everything apart. Mizoguchi fills Sisters of the Gion with long shots of narrow passageways as characters try to escape from their situations but are unable to. Made in 1936, just before a war that would change Japan’s views on houses of ill repute, the film is virtually timeless for most of its too-brief sixty-nine minutes, until one man decides to take actions into his own hands and suddenly cars and the nearby city shift the overall perspective. In the end, it’s about more than just money, although it’s definitely about that, but it’s also about respect, about common decency, and about humanity, as seen from all sides. Sisters of the Gion is screening May 4 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s five-week tribute to the master auteur — who made more than eighty films, less than half of which still exist — which continues through June with such other works as Song of Home, Oyuki the Virgin, White Threads of the Waterfall, The Downfall of Osen, and Straits of Love and Hate.
In the historical romantic drama Vincere, Italian master filmmaker Marco Bellocchio delivers the little-known real-life story of Ida Alser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Benito Mussolini’s (Filippo Timi) first wife and the mother of Il Duce’s first-born son, Benito Albino (Fabrizio Costella). Alser and Mussolini first meet in Milan in 1907, when she is a fashion and beauty entrepreneur and he is a newspaper journalist championing a religion-free Socialist. They feel an immediate connection and have passionate meetings. Soon they have a child and are married. But as Mussolini’s power in the Fascist movement grows, he takes a more traditional wife (Michela Cescon) and has another child, disavowing any relationship with Ida and young Benito and going to any lengths to cover up their very existence. Set amid the swirling turmoil that pervaded Italy during the two World Wars, Vincere, featuring an epic score by Carlo Crivelli, is a beautifully shot melodrama (courtesy of cinematographer Daniele Ciprì), able to focus on two strong, unrelenting characters who know what they want – and what they don’t. Bellocchio interweaves archival newsreel footage, lending the film not only more reality but firmly placing it in historical context. Mezzogiorno is brilliant as Alser, a modern-day woman ahead of her time who fought for what she believed in and what she deserved, even if it meant going up against one of the most powerful men in the world. Vincere is screening on May 4 & 7 as part of MoMA’s Bellocchio retrospective, held in conjunction with the upcoming U.S. release of his latest film, Dormant Beauty, which opens June 6 at Lincoln Plaza. The series continues through May 7 with such other Bellocchio works as The Conviction, Vacation in Val Trebbia, A Leap in the Dark, and Dormant Beauty.