Kenny Lattimore will be performing at Harlem Week Summer in the City festivities
West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, August 15, and Sunday, August 16, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
harlemweek.com
The annual Harlem Week festival continues August 15 with Summer in the City and August 16 with Harlem Day, two afternoons of special events along West 135th St. that honor the theme “Celebrating the Journey: Embracing the Future.” Saturday’s festivities include the Historic Black College Fair & Expo, the Peace in Our Community Conference, New Yorkers Are “Dancing in the Street” (with Alvin Ailey instructors and dancers), the Fabulous Fashion Flava Show, the first day of the NYC Children’s Festival (with a parade, sports clinics, health testing, arts & crafts, and more), Harlem Honeys & Bears swimming activities in the Hansborough Recreation Center, an International Vendors Village, the Uptown Saturday Concert with Kenny Lattimore, the Jeff Foxx Band, and Deborah Cox, an Our Lives Matter program, and a screening in St. Nicholas Park of Damani Baker and Alex Vlack’s 2010 documentary, Still Bill, about newly inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bill Withers. Sunday’s Harlem Day celebration features the Upper Manhattan Auto Show, tennis clinics, a health village, the second day of the NYC Children’s Festival (with a Back to School theme), the Upper Manhattan Small Business Expo & Fair, live music, dance, and spoken-word performances, another fashion show, and a musical tribute to Malcolm X with Doug E. Fresh, Vivian Green, and others.
Carmen & Geoffrey is an endearing look at Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder’s lifelong love affair with dance — and each other. The New Orleans-born de Lavallade studied with Lester Horton and went to high school with Alvin Ailey, whom she brought to his first dance class. Best known as a pitchman for 7UP (the “uncola”) and playing the intriguing Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die, Trinidadian Holder was a larger-than-life gentle giant who was a dancer, choreographer, composer, costume designer, actor, stage director, writer, photographer, painter, and just about anything else he wanted to be. The two met when they both were cast in Truman Capote and Harold Arlen’s Broadway show House of Flowers in 1954, with Holder instantly falling in love with de Lavallade; they remained together until Holder’s death this past October at the age of eighty-four. Directors Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob combine amazing archival footage — of Eartha Kitt, Josephine Baker, Ulysses Dove, de Lavallade dancing with Ailey, and other splendid moments — with contemporary rehearsal scenes, dance performances, and interviews with such stalwarts as dance critic Jennifer Dunning, former Alvin Ailey artistic director Judith Jamison, and choreographer Joe Layton (watch out for his eyebrows), along with family members and Gus Solomons jr, who still works with de Lavallade, and Dudley Williams, who just died last month. The film was made on an extremely low budget, and it shows, but it is filled with such glorious footage that you’ll get over that quickly. Carmen & Geoffrey, along with additional rare archival footage, is screening August 1 as part of the free Lincoln Center Out of Doors program “A Celebration of the Life of Geoffrey Holder” and will be preceded by the panel discussion “The Life and Work of Geoffrey Holder” with Doob and Atkinson, moderated by Leo Holder, Geoffrey and de Lavallade’s son. Fans should also check out the new exhibition 
