twi-ny recommended events

TICKET GIVEAWAY: VISITORS

VISITORS (Godfrey Reggio, 2013)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves.
Opens Friday, January 24
212-330-8182
www.visitorsfilm.com
www.landmarktheatres.com

In their Qatsi trilogy — 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, 1988’s Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation, and 2002’s Naqoyqatsi: Life as War — director and producer Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass gave audiences unique audiovisual experiences of the modern world, combining slow motion with time-lapse photography and avoiding any dialogue, resulting in often mind-blowing scenes of life around the globe. Reggio, Glass, and Naqoyqatsi editor Jon Kane have collaborated again, this time on Visitors, a meditative examination of individual identity in technology-driven society. The wordless work, which features seventy-four shots in eighty-seven minutes, was filmed by Trish Govoni, Graham Berry, and Tom Lowe; Glass’s score is performed by Bruckner Orchestra Linz and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

“These films are not predicated on a narration in a traditional sense, meaning coming from literature. They come out of a form where the texture, the form, is the language of the film,” the New Orleans-born Reggio, a former monk, toldVisitors official presenter Steven Soderbergh in a recent interview. “We see the world through language. I know that. That’s why these films have no language. The reason for that is not for lack of love of language, it’s because at least from my limited point of view our language no longer describes the world in which we live. . . . So these films are not so much to entertain you as to watermark the audience, so I wanted to offer them something where they could reflect afterwards. These films are not aimed at the head or the cerebellum. They’re not aimed at making sense. They’re aimed at your solar plexus. They are a visceral form of cinema.”

In conjunction with the theatrical release of Visitors, the Museum of Arts and Design is hosting ”Life with Technology: The Cinema of Godfrey Reggio,” a complete retrospective through March 14 of Reggio’s shorts and full-length films in addition to a masterclass he and some of his collaborators will give on January 23.

twi-ny readers can win tickets to see VISITORS opening weekend at the Landmark Sunshine

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Visitors opens January 24 at the Landmark Sunshine, and twi-ny has two pairs of tickets to give away for free to the 7:00 screenings on January 24 and 25, both of which will be followed by a Q&A with Godfrey Reggio and Jon Kane. Just send your name, daytime phone number, preferred screening, and favorite Godfrey Reggio film to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, January 23, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; two winners will be selected at random for each screening.

TWI-NY TALK: JODY OBERFELDER

JODY OBERFELDER PROJECTS — 4CHAMBERS: A SENSORIAL JOURNEY INTO THE HUMAN HEART
Arts@Renaissance, Garden Level
2 Kingsland Ave. at Maspeth Ave., Greenpoint
January 21 – March 22, $60 before February 1, $75 after, Thursdays at 6:30 & 8:00, Fridays & Saturdays at 7:00 & 8:30
866-811-4111
www.jodyoberfelder.com
www.renaissancenbk.org

Last summer, New York-based choreographer, director, and filmmaker Jody Oberfelder presented 4CHAMBERS on Governors Island, an immersive journey inside the human heart in which six dancers led twelve audience members through an abandoned, specially renovated former officer’s house, each room representing another chamber, incorporating film, interactive video, factual information, and plenty of physical contact. “You will be touched by the performers, both literally and figuratively,” we wrote back in July. Although it was her first site-specific installation piece, 4CHAMBERS is not the first time Oberfelder has delved into the nature of the human heart; she previously examined the blood-pumping, life-giving organ in 2012’s Throb. For more than two decades, Jody Oberfelder Projects has been addressing such emotions as love and the search for social identity in such works as LineAge, The Title Comes Last, Approaching Climax, and Sung Heroes. Oberfelder is now bringing back 4CHAMBERS, restaging the sixty-minute piece at Arts@Renaissance in Greenpoint, in a building that previously was home to, appropriately enough, a hospital. A few days before opening night — the show runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from January 23 to March 22, with bonus performances January 21-22 — Oberfelder discussed transformation, collaborating with her husband, people’s hunger for real experience, and more.

twi-ny: 4CHAMBERS was initially performed on a hot and sweaty summer weekend on Governors Island, and now it will be performed in what so far has been a pretty cold winter. Even though the performance takes place inside, do you think the weather will have any impact on the audience and dancers? Cold and heat do have very different effects on the heart.

Jody Oberfelder: On Governors Island, people came in from an outside temperature of about 98.6, matching their actual body temperature. There was something beautiful about this, since our piece has so much to do with getting under the skin, an internal experience. Thankfully, at Arts@Renaissance, we have our thermostat set to a comfy 72 degrees. It’s perfect. This time people will venture out from cold, nasty weather and to an inside space that is warm and breathing and atmospheric.

twi-ny: How did you find this new space in Brooklyn?

Jody Oberfelder: I’d seen Then She Fell at Arts@Renaissance in fall of 2012. The creators, Third Rail, did a tremendous job of transforming the space as a trip down the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. A@R has a competitive open call for their three-month residencies. Lo and behold, my project was selected.

It was clearly a raw space with potential. After several site visits with my video collaborator, Jason Bahling, lighting designer, Kryssy Wright, set designer, Juergen Riehm, and a couple of dancers (Mary Madsen and Mercedes Searer), we found where each of our four chambers could live, figured out how to create passageways that would need to be created for arteries and veins, etc., and drew up a plan of how to site this particular work. At the time of our application, we’d not yet been given the Governors Island opportunity. Our first rendering was in an old officer’s house, with built-in metaphors of house as heart — with plumbing, walls, and corridors — whereas A@R is a former hospital.

Sited work is particular. It’s not like transplanting a proscenium work to a stage where you adjust the lights and wings and find out how many steps to the green room. We have transformed the entire floor level to a labyrinthian sensorial journey.

Jody Oberfelder explores the human heart in immersive site-specific dance piece (photo by Ian Douglas)

twi-ny: Did you have to make significant changes to the space to incorporate the main themes of the show, or did you make any changes in the performance to mold it to the space?

Jody Oberfelder: One of the challenges was to carve out the flow of traffic. We conceptualized this piece as a moving in one direction like the flow of blood, through four chambers. And each room has different needs in terms of architecture, lighting, technology, and space. The floor was too hard for the performers to really go for it, so we built a custom sprung floor and created specialized wall space. (I don’t want to give too much away.)

twi-ny: You mentioned your set designer, architect Juergen Riehm, who is also your husband. What is the collaboration process like between the two of you? Is it possible to separate the professional from the personal?

Jody Oberfelder: Fun question. Let’s just say we have a rule. We set up appointments to talk with each other about the piece. Otherwise I’d be bugging him first thing in the morning, at every meal, etc. There is crossover, of course. It’s great to have a production stage manager (Katie Houff) as intermediary. On the upside, Juergen Riehm knows me, and is very sensitive to my needs, won’t let me go the way of kitsch, or schlocky, catches my abundant imagination and helps me hone.

Thankfully, there are other key collaborators. Video artist Jason Bahling has been part of this piece almost from conception. And visual elements figure in prominently. Sound is now a major factor — since Governors Island, Sean Hagerty has come in and worked some magic.

twi-ny: On Governors Island, the performers did multiple shows in one day. Will some of the dancers again be doing back-to-back shows? The performance is extremely physical. Is there any special training involved?

Jody Oberfelder: The dancers do two shows a night. Physically, dancers are athletic and endurance poses no problem. I look for dancers who are unique, not cookie cutter, whose “technique” is present and ever felt. What takes energy in 4CHAMBERS is a discreet attention to audience members. It’s like being in a relationship for a night. The ratio is 1:2. We call the performers “docents” — we guide the audience, as a museum docent might, and encourage audience members to be in their bodies — to connect. That’s an evening of intensity.

twi-ny: There is a lot of interaction between those “docents” and the audience members, whom you refer to as “guests,” including a lot of touching. Were there any surprises for you regarding how that relationship between guest and performer played out on Governors Island?

Jody Oberfelder: We’ve found that people are hungry for real experiences. That putting away multitasking for an hour and slipping into a present dilated moment is something we all are craving. The performers are instructed to try to meet guests where they are and guide. We don’t have a “toolbox” of techniques for this but have practiced and learned each guest is different. It’s individual. The most intellectual people living in their heads also have a body under their necks, and once you crack that code, the rest is porous and smooth sailing. Yes, some guests are self-conscious at first, but that goes away. That’s why we’ve chosen to do it this intimately. There are no outside voyeurs. It’s intimate.

twi-ny: What’s the most significant thing you’ve learned about the human heart during the whole 4CHAMBERS project?

Jody Oberfelder: Everybody has a human heart. The body is a container for this vital organ. We often do a drive-by of living, plow through life, with our heart doing its job of keeping us alive. I’ve learned that the heart and the mind work together. 4CHAMBERS gives people a sense of being alive.

4CHAMBERS runs January 21 – March 22 at Arts@Renaissance and is performed by Megan Bascom, Zachary Denison, Rayvawn Johnson, Joey Kipp, Mary Madsen, Shane Rutkowski, Mercedes Searer, Lonnie Poupard Jr, and Lily Bo Shapiro, with set design by Juergen Riehm, lighting by Kryssy Wright, sound by Sean Hagerty, and music by Matt McBane, Richard Einhorn, and Jonathan Melville Pratt. Film and video feature appearances by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Edward Einhorn, Dr. Wendy A. Suzuki, Dr. André A. Fenton, Sarah Trignano, Lonnie Poupard Jr, Christina Noel Reaves, Jake Szczypek, and Jessica Weiss.

20AT20 2014

DISASTER! musical parody is one of more than fifty shows taking part in 20at20 promotion

Multiple venues
January 21 – February 9, $20
www.20at20.com

In addition to Broadway Week (January 21 – February 6), during which two-for-one tickets are available in advance for such Great White Way shows as Matilda the Musical, Twelfth Night, No Man’s Land, The Glass Menagerie, and others, 20at20 is about to get under way, with twenty-dollar seats on sale twenty minutes before curtain for more than fifty off-Broadway productions. For twenty days, from January 21 to February 6, a Jackson will get you in to such shows as Bertolt Brecht’s A Man’s Man at Classic Stage with Justin Vivian Bond and Stephen Spinella, Bedlam’s versions of Saint Joan and Hamlet in repertory at the Lynn Redgrave Theater, Seth Rudetsky’s Disaster! musical parody at St. Luke’s, the true story Riding the Midnight Express with Billy Hayes also at St. Luke’s, Thomas Bradshaw’s sure-to-shock Intimacy at the Acorn, Jake Jeppson’s The Clearing at St. Clement’s, and the world premiere of Charles Busch’s The Tribute Artist, starring Busch and Julie Haltson, at Primary Stages. There is also such family-friendly fare as Angelina Ballerina the Musical, Fancy Nancy the Musical, Gazillion Bubble Show, and The Berenstain Bears Live!

MLK DAY 2014

MLK Day features a host of special events and community-based service projects throughout the city (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues
Monday, January 21
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-five this month, and you can celebrate his legacy tomorrow by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of several special events taking place around the city. BAM’s twenty-eighth annual free Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. includes a keynote speech by Angela Davis, live performances by José James and the Christian Cultural Center Choir, the NYCHA Saratoga Village Community Center student exhibit “Picture the Dream,” and a screening of Shola Lynch’s 2012 documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners. The JCC in Manhattan will host an MLK Day blood drive and “The Living Legacy of Dr. King,” consisting of the panel discussion “Leading a Socially Responsible Life” with Ruth Messinger, Harrie Bakst, and Rabbi Joanna Samuels, interactive workshops for teens, and the “Artists Celebrate the Living Legacy of Dr. King” performance with Judith Sloan, Susannah Heschel, and Joshua Nelson, the Prince of Kosher Gospel. (Admission is free but preregistration is recommended.)

The Museum of the Moving Image is screening THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN PROMISE on MLK Day

The Museum of the Moving Image will be open on MLK Day, with two screenings of the 1963 documentary The Negro and the American Promise as part of its “Changing the Picture” series (free with museum admission). The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with the “Martin’s Mosaic” workshop, the “Heroic Heroines: Ruby Bridges” book talk, and live performances by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem All Stars Band, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum has such special hands-on crafts programs as “Let’s March!,” “Let’s Join Hands,” and “Dream Clouds” and live music from the Berean Community Drumline. And the Museum at Eldridge Street will be hosting a free reading of Eloise Greenfield and Jan Spivey Gilchrist’s picture book The Great Migration: Journey to the North.

UNDER THE RADAR: BRAND NEW ANCIENTS

KATE TEMPEST / BATTERSEA ARTS CENTRE ON TOUR: BRAND NEW ANCIENTS
St. Ann’s Warehouse
29 Jay St. at Plymouth St.
Through January 19
718-254-8779
www.undertheradarfestival.com
www.stannswarehouse.org

On January 16 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, British poet, rapper, and playwright Kate Tempest prefaced her performance of her breakout hit, Brand New Ancients, with a heartfelt, off-the-cuff love letter to New York City, which has adopted the twenty-seven-year-old during her ten-show run in DUMBO. She then offered up her 2010 poem, “Balance,” a parable that deals with four kids, Ambition, Talent, Envy, and Pride, that could serve as a personal mission statement for Tempest, who started rapping when she was sixteen and has experienced widespread success. Casually dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a faded T-shirt, she then began Brand New Ancients, a compelling seventy-five-minute tale that earned her the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Backed by Emma Smith on violin, Natasha Zielazinski on cello, Jo Gibson on tuba, and George Bird on percussion and electronics, Tempest tells the story of two middle-class families brought together by lust and violence as they search for connections in a lonely world. Childless couple Kevin and Jane live next door to Brian and Mary, who have a son, Clive; Jane and Brian’s affair leads to the birth of Tommy, triggering years of problems for all involved. Tempest transforms the melodrama into a lurid yet insightful fable of superheroes and villains where the gods are everywhere and in everyone. In gorgeous, rhythmic cadences that avoid the staccato bravado so prevalent in much of hip-hop, Tempest says, “The myths of this city / have always said the same thing — / how we all need a place to belong, / how we all need to know / what’s right and what’s wrong, / and how we all need to struggle / to find out for ourselves / which side we are on.” She soon adds, “We’re the same beings that began, still living, / in all of our fury and foulness and friction, / everyday odysseys / dreams and decisions, / the stories are there if you listen.” The rapt, sold-out crowd listened to Tempest’s every word as she passed no judgment and cast no aspersions on her characters’ sins. The strings were particularly effective in Nell Catchpole’s minimalist score, while the drum solos during Tempest’s short breaks felt mostly unnecessary. Brand New Ancients, which is part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, is a clarion call for people to take a look at themselves, and at the world around them, and become heroes in their own everyday lives.

VERMEER, REMBRANDT, AND HALS: MASTERPIECES OF DUTCH PAINTING FROM THE MAURITSHUIS

Johannes Vermeer, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” oil on canvas, ca. 1665 (Mauritshuis, The Hague)

The Frick Collection
1 East 70th St. at Fifth Ave.
Through January 19, $20
212-288-0700
www.frick.org

Numerous blockbuster shows in the past year have created massive crowds waiting hours to get into museums and galleries. Among the most popular have been “Yayoi Kusama” at David Zwirner, “Jean-Michel Basquiat” at Gagosian, “Rain Room” at MoMA, and Christian Marclay’s The Clock at MoMA and other locations. The current hottest art spot in New York is the Frick, which cautions on its website, “Please expect to wait in line outside since we are experiencing unprecedented crowds.” (The blocks-long line starts at the Seventieth St. entrance and can wrap around Fifth Ave. onto Seventy-First.) Why are people waiting hours outside in a freezing-cold January to get in? For a chance to get up close and personal with one of the world’s most famous, and most beautiful, works of art.

The centerpiece of “Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis” is Johannes Vermeer’s mid-seventeenth-century painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Considered the Dutch Mona Lisa, the glorious tronie resides by itself in the Oval Room, where it can be seen by only small groups of visitors at a time. Restored in 1994, it’s a dazzling tour de force by Vermeer, who sets the fictional subject’s penetrating eyes, soft red lips, shadowy cheeks, blue and yellow turban, and glittering pearl earring against a black background, making the details all the more mesmerizing. The painting is on loan from the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery in The Hague, which is undergoing a major expansion and renovation; among the other fourteen works on view at the Frick are Gerard ter Borch’s “Woman Writing a Letter,” Nicholas Maes’s “Old Lacemaker,” Jan Steen’s “As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young,” Jacob van Ruisdael’s “View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds,” and four canvases by Rembrandt, including “Susanna” and “Simeon’s Song of Praise,” along with “The Goldfinch,” Carel Fabritius’s lovely little painting that plays a key role in Donna Tartt’s current bestselling novel of the same name. As a bonus, the Frick has also brought together three Vermeers from its permanent collection, “Officer and Laughing Girl,” “Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” and “Mistress and Maid,” which can be seen side-by-side-by-side in the East Gallery. Meanwhile, in the Multimedia Room, Rob and Nick Carter re-create every aspect of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s “Vase with Flowers in a Window” in the animated digital film Transforming Still Life Painting. Although online timed tickets for “Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals” are sold out, a limited number of same-day and advance tickets are available at the admissions desk. And be prepared; there’s even a line to get into the special gift shop.

STEPHEN FREARS — THE CHAMELEON: THE QUEEN

Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth II in THE QUEEN

Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears’s THE QUEEN

THE QUEEN (Stephen Frears, 2006)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, January 18, free with museum admission, 3:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

It’s tradition versus modernization in Stephen Frears’s re-creation of the Royal Family’s reaction to the death of Princess Diana on August 31, 1997. While the world mourns, Queen Elizabeth II (a stoic Helen Mirren), Prince Philip (an acerbic James Cromwell), and the Queen Mum (Sylvia Syms) just continue their daily routine as if nothing has happened. They take Diana and Prince Charles’s (Alex Jennings) children up to Balmoral to hunt stag, refusing to publicly acknowledge the tragedy. Meanwhile, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen, reprising the role from Frears’s 2003 British television movie THE DEAL) has been swept into the office of prime minister in a landslide victory for forward-thinking change. Noting the public response to Diana’s death, Blair implores the queen to respond, but protocol, pride, and dignity get in the way. Frears cleverly, if obviously, displays the differences between the old and the new in depicting the simple home life of the Blairs against the opulence of the Royal Family, each way of life representing the ever-growing gap in British society. Through exhaustive research, screenwriter Peter Morgan imagines the relationship between Blair and the queen, including numerous private conversations held over the phone and in person, and as intriguing as they are, there’s just no way to know how much of it really happened. (A similar fate befell The Last King of Scotland, in which cowriter Morgan imagined conversations Idi Amin had with a made-up character.) Nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, The Queen is a compelling film, with solid acting (Cromwell is a screaming riot, and Mirren won an Oscar for Best Actress for her stellar performance) and appropriately calm direction, but it never quite reaches the heights it aspires to. The Queen is screening January 18 at 3:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “Stephen Frears: The Chameleon,” being held in conjunction with the success of the director’s most recent work, Philomena, which has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress (Dame Judi Dench).