this week in dance

FRIDA KAHLO: ART, GARDEN, LIFE

New York Botanical Garden re-creates Frida Kahlos Casa Azul studio and garden (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

New York Botanical Garden re-creates Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s Casa Azul studio and garden (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New York Botanical Garden
Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Tuesday – Sunday through November 1, $8-$25
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org/frida
frida kahlo: art garden life slideshow

Don’t let the cold weather scare you away from seeing the New York Botanical Garden’s beautiful celebration of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s passionate relationship with the natural world. “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life,” on view at the Bronx institution through November 1, is a wide-ranging tribute to the artist, including paintings, photographs, a historical timeline, a re-creation of her garden and studio, known as La Casa Azul, and special programs. “When we began to research Frida Kahlo, we wanted to delve into the story of the woman who has been examined through her pain and suffering and paint her in a different light,” NYBG associate vice president of exhibitions and public engagement Karen Daubmann writes in her catalog essay, “Making Frida Kahlo’s Garden in New York: The Conservatory Exhibition.” She continues, “We wanted to learn more about the iconic face that is emblazoned on canvases, the strong and fierce-looking dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who used to be known as Diego Rivera’s wife and is now known simply as Frida. The more we researched, the more intrigued we became. . . . We were fascinated by the incredible detail of Kahlo’s curated life.” That curated life is lovingly explored in the exhibition, which features fourteen of the artist’s paintings in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s art gallery, including “Portrait of Luther Burbank,” in which Kahlo depicts the famed botanist emerging from the root of a tree; the vulvic “Sun and Life”; “Two Nudes in the Forest,” which was originally called “The Earth Itself”; and the sensational “Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird,” in which Kahlo, in between her first and second marriages to Rivera, paints herself surrounded by flowers, a dead hummingbird, a monkey, butterflies, and a black cat, a symbolic representation of life, death, and rebirth. The path to the next part of the show, in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, is lined with poems by Nobel Prize–winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz, including “The Religious Fig” and “Nightfall.” Paz was in fact not a big fan of Kahlo’s and Rivera’s; “Diego and Frida ought not to be subjects of beatification but objects of study — and of repentance . . . the weaknesses, taints, and defects that show up in the works of Diego and Frida are moral in origin,” Paz wrote in Essays on Mexican Art. “The two of them betrayed their great gifts, and this can be seen in their painting.”

Pyramid is centerpiece of Casa Azul re-creation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The centerpiece of the exhibition is La Casa Azul, a reconstruction of Kahlo’s studio and garden at her family home in Mexico City, which is now a museum. The conservatory is filled with folk art objects, religious ex-voto paintings, Mexican plants described in both English and Spanish (and inspired by archival photographs), and re-creations of the Frog Fountain with its mosaic floor, Kahlo’s desk and easel, and the strikingly colorful Casa Azul pyramid, holding dozens of Mexican cacti and succulents. The conservatory exhibition was designed by Scott Pask, the three-time Tony-winning designer of The Book of Mormon, The Coast of Utopia, and The Pillowman. Outside the conservatory, by the lily pond, is a fence of organ pipe cacti, like the one Kahlo had at her San Ángel house. “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life” immerses you in the world of this fascinating artist, who passed away in 1954 at the age of forty-seven. In conjunction with the exhibition, the NYBG is hosting special programming through closing day. On Saturdays and Sundays at 1:00, there is live music and dance in Ross Hall and throughout the garden, with performances by such groups as Mexico Beyond Mariachi, the Villalobos Brothers, Flor de Toloache, and Calpulli Danza Mexicana. “Cooking with Frida” takes place in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden on Wednesdays, Saturday, and Sundays at 2:00 & 4:00. The daily “Frida’s Fall Harvest” consists of family-friendly activities in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, including a puppet show and playhouse kitchen; the children’s garden will be open till 9:30 on October 23 for “Frida for Families: A Spooky Nighttime Adventure.” Also daily (but not for kids), “Spotlight on Agave: A Tequila Story” presents the history and tradition of the Mexican spirit. October 22 is “Frida al Fresco Evening” LGBT Night, with live music, stilt dancers, and Mexican food and drink. On October 24-25 and October 31 – November 1, things get scary with Día De Los Muertos Weekends, featuring skeletal processions, stilt dancers, skull face painting, and more. The “¡Cámara, Acción!” film series continues on Sundays at 3:00 in Ross Hall with Alonso Ruiz Palacios’s Güeros on October 25 and Francisco Franco’s Last Call on November 1. Also on November 1, there will be a live performance by two male models interacting with Humberto Spíndola’s “Two Fridas” sculptural installation, based on Kahlo’s 1939 double portrait in which two versions of her sit next to each other, holding hands.

IMPROVISATION AND STATEMENTS OF FREEDOM IN JAZZ AND MOVEMENT

Choreographer Kyle Abraham and jazz drummer Otis Brown III will team up for outdoor sound and movement workshop in Times Square on October 12

Who: Kyle Abraham and Otis Brown III
What: “Improvisation and Statements of Freedom in Jazz and Movement”
Where: Broadway Plaza, Times Square, Broadway between 42nd & 43rd Sts.
When: Monday, October 12, free, 2:00 – 4:30
Why: From November 10 to 15, MacArthur Fellow Kyle Abraham’s Abraham.In.Motion company will perform at the Joyce, in a program with live music that includes Absent Matter, a collaboration with jazz drummer Otis Brown III, a New Jersey native whose debut album, The Thought of You, was released by Revive/Blue Note last year. Brown will also be part of the Robert Glasper Trio, which will play live to Abraham’s The Gettin’ at the Joyce. You can get a taste of what’s to come on October 12, when Abraham and Brown team up for a free workshop in Times Square, for dancers and nondancers alike. “Improvisation and Statements of Freedom in Jazz and Movement” uses sound and dance to explore social change; to participate in the workshop, you can register by contacting Arts@TimesSquareNYC.org.

CINDERELLA: A BAROQUE BURLESQUE BALLET

Austin McCormick and Company XIV give a whole new look to beloved fairy tale (photo by Phillip Van Nostrand)

Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between MacDougal St. & Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 15, $40-$100
companyxiv.com
minettalanenyc.com

New York-based Company XIV brings a rather decidedly decadent edge to Cinderella, the anti-Disney version of Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale about an orphaned and abused girl on the cusp of womanhood, seeking her Prince Charming despite severe family dysfunction. Billed as a “Baroque Burlesque Ballet,” this Cinderella boasts bold sexuality, acrobatics, cross-dressing, pole dancing, and a wildly imaginative score, all brought together by company artistic director Austin McCormick. Outfitted in Zane Pihlstrom’s dazzling, body-baring costumes that quote drag ball and S&M style — Pihlstrom also designed the small set, which features a lush curtain topped by a glittering crown, a baroque backdrop, and a fun-house mirror — the twelve dancers put on a dazzling show, with Allison Ulrich as Cinderella, Steven Trumon Gray as the strikingly handsome prince, Marcy Richardson and Brett Umlauf as the dastardly stepsisters, Katrina Cunningham as the heroic Fairy Godmother (who takes nurturing to a new extreme), and Davon Rainey as the devious stepmother, a fearlessly erotic combination of Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Billy Porter in Kinky Boots as conceived by the Marquise de Sade and Louis XIV. The two-hour-plus show, with two intermissions, contains almost no dialogue; instead, details of the plot are revealed by performers Hilly Bodin, Lea Helle, Jakob Karr, Nicholas Katen, Malik Kitchen, and Mark Osmundsen, who walk across the stage with two-sided chalkboards announcing scenes and acts in addition to their other roles. Jeanette Yew’s lighting shows off the heated dancing and eye-opening costumes to great effect.

Company XIV reimagining of CINDERELLA is a decidedly adult undertaking (photo by Phillip Van Nostrand)

Highlights include a virtuoso solo by Rainey, a provocative duet between Ulrich and Cunningham, the beautifully choreographed ball scene, and a cage dance by Ulrich, turning the standard fairy-tale musical inside out with more than a touch of strip-club bravado. The score contains eerie versions of such songs as Lorde’s “Royals,” Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die,” Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug,” and Nicki Minaj’s “Get on Your Knees,” as well as works by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and Irving Berlin. During the two intermissions, the performers display their vast talents in out-of-character burlesque vignettes that are well worth sticking around for. Company XIV has previously staged such compelling, cutting-edge shows as Rococco Rouge and Lover. Muse. Mockingbird. Whore, and in November they’ll be bringing back their popular Nutcracker Rouge, with their rendition of Snow White scheduled for January. We can’t wait to see what this immensely skilled and adventurous company has in store for that.

ONASSIS FESTIVAL NY — NARCISSUS NOW: THE MYTH REIMAGINED

Onassis Cultural Center NY
Olympic Tower
645 Fifth Ave. at 51st St.
October 8-11
www.onassisfestivalny.org

The Onassis Cultural Center is celebrating its newly renovated home in Midtown with a four-day festival built around the myth of Narcissus. As the Onassis Festival NY website explains, “From psychoanalysis to selfies, the Narcissus myth serves as an emblematic example of the unparalleled influence of Classical antiquity on our culture.” The festivities begin on October 8 with the opening-night presentation (free with advance RSVP) of choreographer Jonah Bokaer and composer Stavros Gasparatos’s specially commissioned Triple Echo, a site-specific work exploring mimesis, with solos by dancers Hristoula Harakas, Sara Procopio, and Callie Nichole Lyons, live percussion by Matt Evans, and recorded vocals by Savina Yannatou. The festival, curated by BAM director of humanities Violaine Huisman, continues through October 11 with more than two dozen free events (most requiring advance registration). Below are some of the highlights; there are also art installations by Lynda Benglis (“Now”), Blind Adam (“Columns”), Andreas Angelidakis (“Mirrorsite”), Jenny Holzer (“You Must Know Where You Stop and the World Begins”), and others, as well as satellite events at BAM and McNally Jackson.

Thursday, October 8
Triple Echo, by Jonah Bokaer and Stavros Gasparatos, featuring Hristoula Harakas, Sara Procopio, Callie Nichole Lyons, Matt Evans, and Savina Yannatou, Onassis Cultural Center Atrium and Gallery, 7:00

Friday, October 9
Narcissus & Art in the Woods: A Lecture with the Bruce High Quality Foundation, Onassis Cultural Center Gallery, 11:00 am

Narcissus & Fashion, with Sarah Lewis, Konstantin Kakanias, and Mary Katrantzou, moderated by Judith Thurman, Onassis Cultural Center Gallery, 2:30

Narcissus & Technology, with Zachary Mason and Sree Sreenivasan, moderated by Dominic Rushe, Onassis Cultural Center Gallery, 5:30

Saturday, October 10
Narcissus & Ballet, with Heléne Alexopoulos and Jennifer Homans, Onassis Cultural Center Gallery, 11:00 am

Narcissus & Acting, with Paul Giamatti and Vanessa Grigoriadis, Onassis Cultural Center Gallery, 1:00

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Jonas Mekas, 2000), part of the BAMcinématek series “Diaries, Notes, and Sketches: Cinematic Autobiography,” BAM Rose Cinemas, $10, 2:00 – 7:20

Narcissus & Song, with Eleanor Friedberger, BAMcafé Live, Lepercq Space, 30 Lafayette Ave., 9:00

Sunday, October 11: Family Day
Narcissus & Space: A Short Film, Moon Mirrors, with filmmakers Sharon Shattuck and Ian Cheney and astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, moderated by Matthew Stanley, Onassis Cultural Center Gallery, 10:00 am, 12 noon, and 2:00

Tell It Again! with Efi Latifi, Onassis Cultural Center Atrium, 11:15 am & 1:15 pm

Narcissus & Echo, with Benjamin Weiner, Onassis Cultural Center Atrium, 12:15 & 2:15

FIRST FRIDAYS! “ALL THE LADIES SAY” UNDERGROUND HIP-HOP ANNIVERSARY

1040 Grand Concourse at 167th St.
Friday, October 2, free, 6:00 – 10:00
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org

Ten years ago, the Bronx Museum partnered with Full Circle Prod Inc. to promote B-girl culture, leading to, among other things, East Harlem-raised pioneering break dancer Ana “Rokafella” Garcia’s 2010 documentary on female hip-hop culture, All the Ladies Say. On October 2, the Bronx Museum and Rokafella are teaming up again with a special free First Fridays! presentation celebrating the fifth anniversary of the film. The evening will include performances by Lah Tere and Queen Godis from Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen and DJ KS360, live painting by Lady K Fever, and a dance-off between Brooklyn B-girl Mantis and Connecticut B-girl N’tegrity. The event starts at 6:00, but be sure to get there early to check out the excellent exhibit “¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York” and the new show “Trees Are Alphabets.”

CHAMBRE

Jack Ferver channels Lady Gaga and Jean Genet in brilliant CHAMBRE (photo by Jason Akira Somma)

CROSSING THE LINE: CHAMBRE
New Museum Theater
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Installation: through October 4
Performances: October 1-2, 7:00, October 3, 3:00 & 7:00, October 4, 3:00, $15
www.fiaf.org
www.jackferver.org

Writer, actor, dancer, and choreographer Jack Ferver holds nothing back in his electrifying, emotionally charged performances. In his latest piece, Chambre, he took things to the next level, literally bleeding for his art. In a climactic moment during the work’s official New York City premiere last week at the New Museum, Ferver put his hand through a window in Marc Swanson’s set, shattering the glass and apparently cutting his palm. At first the audience was uncertain, wondering if it was part of the show or just more artifice. Ferver has an innate knack for pushing audiences into bouts of uncomfortable laughter and challenging them to separate the real from the imagined, fact from fantasy. Blood seemed to well on his palm, and his fellow performers, Michelle Mola and Jacob Slominski, very carefully navigated around the sea of glass shards on the floor; the mystery of whether it was real or staged continued into a closing monologue in which a diva-like Ferver complained about barely being able to afford health insurance. Not until later that night did it become clear that it was indeed accidental when Ferver posted a photograph of the broken window on Facebook and publicly apologized to Swanson. But it all fit in rather well with the work itself, a slyly playful and inventive reimagining of Jean Genet’s The Maids, which itself was inspired by the true story of two sisters, Christine and Léa Papin, who perpetrated a horrific crime in France in 1933. At the beginning of Chambre, ticket holders can walk around Swanson’s set, which includes unfinished walls, windows, mirrors, a rack of white dresses (designed by Reid Bartelme), and three statues representing the main characters. After the statues are moved out of the way, Ferver emerges in a glittering, glamorous gold-chained outfit and, with the audience still gathered around him, delivers a deliciously wicked monologue taken verbatim from a bitter deposition Lady Gaga gave in 2013 when being sued by a former personal assistant. It’s a classic celebrity rant: “I’m quite wonderful to everybody that works for me, and I am completely aghast to what a disgusting human being that you have become to sue me like this,” Ferver spits out venomously into a microphone.

Jacob Slominski and Jack Ferver take role-playing to a new level in immersive presentation at the New Museum (photo by Jason Akira Somma)

Meanwhile, the audience can watch him, as well as themselves, in a large horizontal mirror hung from the ceiling behind white-draped rows of seats, multiplying the number of visible Fervers, who is not attacking Lady Gaga as much as celebrity culture. It’s also a terrific lead-in for the role-playing done by Ferver as Christine and Jacob as Léa, mocking how they are treated by Madame (Mola), exaggerating how the wealthy take advantage of and abuse the poor. “I know you are necessary, like ditch diggers and construction workers are necessary, but I hate having to see you,” Slominski-as-Léa-as-Madame says. But soon the sisters take their revenge, doing what so many only fantasize about doing to the rich and privileged. “I’m surprised things like this don’t happen more often,” Ferver says shortly after the opening soliloquy. Eventually, the audience gets to sit down and experience Chambre in a more traditional arrangement, although there’s very little that’s traditional about the thoroughly engaging and entertaining production, which also features a subtly ominous score by Roarke Menzies. Ferver examines class division, sibling rivalry, gender, and the “monetization of performance” as only he can, with a wickedly potent sense of humor loaded with hard-to-swallow truths. In his introduction to Genet’s The Maids and Deathwatch, Jean-Paul Sartre writes, “For Genet, theatrical procedure is demoniacal. Appearance, which is constantly on the point of passing itself off as reality, must constantly reveal its profound unreality. Everything must be so false that it sets our teeth on edge.” Ferver (Rumble Ghost, Night Light Bright Light,), Swanson, Slominski, Mola, and Menzies set our teeth and more on edge with the seriously funny Chambre, which continues at the New Museum through October 3 as part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival, an apt name for Ferver’s fiendishly clever work.

FROM MINIMALISM TO ALGORITHM: SEPTEMBER SPRING

“September Spring” combines music, dance, painting, and installation at the Kitchen (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Installation open Tuesday – Saturday through October 10, free
Performances Tuesday to Thursday at 5:00 and Friday and Saturday at 2:00 & 5:00 through October 3
212-255-5793 ext11
thekitchen.org

Writer, photographer, and installation artist Sam Falls has created a beautifully intimate tribute to his late godbrother, Jamie Kanzler, with “September Spring,” continuing at the Kitchen through October 10. In 2013, Kanzler, who wrote poetry under the name September Spring and recorded music as Oldd News, died suddenly at the age of twenty-four. Falls has teamed up with dancers Hart of Gold, the New York-based duo consisting of Elizabeth Hart and Jessie Gold, for the durational work, which combines music, dance, and art in unique ways. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 5:00 and Saturdays at 2:00 and 5:00 since September 9, Hart of Gold has been performing an intricate dance on two stacks of twenty-four canvas rugs each, representing every year Kanzler was alive, separated by a translucent black scrim with a doorway at the center, in the Kitchen’s upstairs gallery. First, dabs of paint are carefully applied across each canvas. Then Hart and Gold, dressed in white, begin moving on the surface to the lo-fi, scratchy sounds of Oldd News, played on a turntable in another room. The dancers initially form a large yellow circle (Kanzler’s favorite color), then follow Falls’s choreography as they create a kind of action painting with their feet, at times evoking how a needle moves across a record, with Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s lighting going from bright to dark to stroboscopic and one of the dancers changing into a black costume. The audience is encouraged to walk around during the show, experiencing it from changing lines of sight. After each performance, which lasts about an hour, the resulting paintings are removed from the stack and hung from cords; although the choreography and color and initial placement of the paint are the same for every performance, each canvas comes out different. The last performance is on October 3, but the exhibition of the paintings will remain on view for another week. Falls, who was partly inspired by Kanzler’s cover version of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” notes in a deeply personal statement, “Jamie had twenty-four dynamic years and over the course of the show the twenty-four rugs become representations of this time, blending the lightness of days to the darkness at the end, the colorful depth of the center, the core of every mortal life.” But despite all the sadness associated with the concept behind the piece, it is an exhilarating experience, focusing much more on life than on death. “September Spring” is part of “From Minimalism to Algorithm,” a series of works curated by Lumi Tan that examine the legacy of Minimalist art in the digital age.