Revelers kick off the holiday season at the annual Winter's Eve celebration in Lincoln Square (photo by Greenberg)
Broadway from 59th to 66th Sts.
Monday, November 30, free, 5:30
www.winterseve.org
The Lincoln Square Business Improvement District is celebrating its tenth year of presenting Winter’s Eve with another fun, frolicking holiday kickoff party along Broadway. The tree lighting itself — a twenty-five-foot Balsam Fir — will take place in Dante Park at 63rd Sts., hosted by Joy Behar. The great Brooklyn Afro-funk group Antibalas (Main Stage, 64th St., 6:30 & 7:45) headlines a slate of entertainment that also includes God’s Generation Choir (Dante Park, 5:30 & 6:00), the Flaming Idiots (Dante Park, 5:30 & 6:45), the Harlem Samba Band (Richard Tucker Park, 66th St., 6:00, 7:00, 8:00), the Andy Akiho Foundry Percussion Trio (Richard Tucker Park, 6:30, 7:30, 8:30), Alice Farley Dance Theater (Boradway & 65th St.), and Chinese Lion Dancers and the Hungry March Band, both of which will be marching all over the place. In addition, jazz composer and cellist Ben Allison will be playing two special sets at the American Folk Art Museum, “Songs from Think Free and Others” at 6:30 and a special Neil Young birthday tribute at 7:30. Other events are scheduled for the Time Warner Center and the local Barnes & Noble and Apple Store. There will also be ice sculpting demonstrations, AcroYoga, holiday singalongs, children’s activities, special discounts at area stores as well as $1-$5 food tastings from Asiate, Bar Boulud, Josephina, Landmarc, Picholine, Rosa Mexicano, Sushi a-go-go, and other restaurants. Be sure to bring a can of food to donate to the City Harvest truck at Dante Park to help others usher in the season.
Maria Hassabi premiered SOLO, the first part of her “dance diptych,” September 29 – October 3 at P.S. 122 as part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival. Hassabi is now back at P.S. 122 with the second work, SOLOSHOW, a highlight of the Performa 09 biennial. In SOLO, the Cyprus-born, New York-based dancer and choreographer interacted with a Persian carpet to the sounds of ambient city noises. For the companion piece, Hassabi is already balanced on a hard black rectangular platform as the audience enters. Slowly she begins moving her limbs, twisting her body, and stretching her neck into almost impossible positions. As a small speaker emits tinny sounds as if someone is turning an AM radio dial, snippets of recognizable words and music creating a kind of background white noise, Hassabi makes her way around the platform with awe-inspiring skill and dexterity, her muscles and veins bulging as her body shakes, often held slightly above the platform by hands that leave disappearing sweat prints on the dark surface. Her elbows and knees form ninety-degree angles, contrasting with her spiraling torso and exaggerated back arching. Her arms become architectural struts supporting her upper body as her legs pivot out on the fulcrum of her pelvis and hips. As she twists, turns, and rolls across the platform, she occasionally dangles parts of her body over the edges, but she does so not to titillate the audience into fearing she might fall off but instead to demonstrate that there are no boundaries; in fact, when she does completely get off the platform, only to get back on it, the audience is forced to reevaluate the “rules” they had formed in their head. Whereas there seemed to be a limitless amount of things Hassabi could do with the comforting, malleable carpet in SOLO, she refuses to let the dour, unchanging platform limit her imagination in SOLOSHOW. Hassabi will be performing the forty-five-minute piece on November 13, 14, and 15 at 8:00, with Hristoula Harakas taking over on November 14 at 10:00 and November 15 at 6:00.
We don’t think we’ll ever stop crying. Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece stars Carlo Battisti (a professor whom De Sica saw one day and thought would be perfect for the lead role; it would be Battisti’s only film) as Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an elderly former bureaucrat who is too proud to sacrifice his dignity in order to pay his mean-spirited landlady (Lina Gennari), who rents out his room by the hour while he’s out walking his beloved dog, Flag, and trying to find some way to get money and food. Umberto D. is befriended by the boardinghouse maid (Maria Pia Casilio), who is pregnant with the child of one of two servicemen, neither of whom wants to have anything to do with her. As Umberto D.’s options start running out, he considers desperate measures to free himself from his loneliness and poverty. His relationship with Flag is one of the most moving in cinema history. Don’t miss this remarkable achievement, which was lovingly restored a few years ago by eighty-six-year-old lighting specialist Vincenzo Verzini, known as Little Giotto. The film is part of Lincoln Center’s “Life Lessons: Italian Neorealism and the Birth of Modern Cinema,” which continues through November 25 with such films as Michdelangelo Antonioni’s IL GRIDO, Luchino Visconti’s LA TERRA TREMA: EPISODIO DEL MARE, and Francesco Rosi’s SALVATORE GIULIANO. The November 21 screening of UMBERTO D is part of “A Feast of Food and Film,” a special one-day event that also includes admission to Federico Fellini’s I VITELLONI, Roberto Rosselini’s VIAGGIO IN ITALIA, Luigi Comencini’s PANE, AMORE E FANTASIA, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ACCATTONE, a tasting of Lamberti Prosecco and Rose Spumante, Italian delicacies from Sora Lella, all for $30
