The Kills’ latest single from 2011’s Blood Pressures album, “The Last Goodbye,” has been turned into a classy, claustrophobic black-and-white video directed by actress Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) in which Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince play around in a photo booth while Mosshart proclaims, “It’s the last goodbye, I swear / I can’t survive on a half-hearted love / that will never be whole.” Also on the cinematic front, Giorgio Testi has made the short documentary Into the Unknown, in which the duo talk about their music right before taking the stage at Brixton Academy in London. The Kills will be back in New York City on February 11, playing a sold-out show at Terminal 5 with one of our favorites, Jeff the Brotherhood, and Hunters.
this week in music
VIDEO OF THE DAY — THE GORIES: “THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I”
Detroit garage rockers the Gories are back together again and coming our way. Featuring Mick Collins and singer Dan Kroha on guitars and vocalist Peggy O’Neill on drums, the Gories always did things their own way, starting out when they formed more than twenty-five years ago and continuing through such albums as Houserockin’, Outta Here, and I Know You Fine, But How You Doin’ and a previous reunion tour. The trio will be at Maxwell’s on January 27 ($20, 9:30) with Bloodshot Bill and Boom Chick and at the Bell House on January 28 with Mark Sultan and the Mighty Fine.
VIDEO OF THE DAY — JESSE SCHEININ BAND: “HIGHER”
Saxophonist, singer, and songwriter Jesse Scheinin will fill the stage at Pianos on January 25 with a special performance by the Jesse Scheinin Band, featuring Vishal Nayak and Jon Nellen on drums, Josh Hari on bass, Kenji Herbert on guitar, Jake Sherman on piano, and Eddie Barbash and Ben Flocks on sax as well. The group will also include the Choir of Angels adding lofty vocals. Described by Scheinin as the love child of Sigur Rós and Wayne Shorter, the band gets its unique groove on with such songs as “Higher,” “Always So Much Mystery,” “From Now On,” and “Bubbles.” They’ll be taking the Pianos stage at 10:00, preceded by Ilan Bar-Lavi at 8:00 and Julia Easterlin at 9:00 and followed by Celestial Shore at 11:00.
VIDEO OF THE DAY — CLASS ACTRESS: “BIENVENUE”
Class Actress, which consists of vocalist and songwriter Elizabeth Harper and producers and keyboardists Scott Rosenthal and Mark Richardson, make haunting, luminescent electro-pop. Last year the trio released its debut album, Rapprocher (Carpark, October 2011), featuring such tunes as “Keep You,” “Weekend,” and “Let Me In.” Above you can check out the group’s brand-new video for Rapprocher’s “Bienvenue,” which was shot in Paris by Clement Gino and Gregory Faure, then catch Harper and Co. in their home borough of Brooklyn on February 3 ($12, 8:00) at 285 Kent with Pictureplane and Beige.
DAVID DORFMAN DANCE: PROPHETS OF FUNK
David Dorfman Dance will dance to the music in PROPHETS OF FUNK at the Joyce
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 24-29, $10-$39
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.daviddorfmandance.org
For more than twenty-five years, David Dorfman Dance has been staging narrative and abstract works that deal with such subjects as political activism, violence, abolitionism, athleticism, and life and death. Among its many projects are underground, Lightbulb Theory, Subverse, and Approaching No Calm Counting Laughter. This week the company returns to the Joyce to present its latest work, Prophets of Funk — Dance to the Music, which harkens back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, set to songs by Sly and the Family Stone, featuring dancers Kyle Abraham, Meghan Bowden, Luke Gutgsell, Renuka Hines, Raja Kelly, Kendra Portier, Jenna Riegel, Karl Rogers, Whitney Lynn Tucker, and Dorfman. Performances run January 24-29, with a Dance Chat following the January 25 show.
LUNAR NEW YEAR 4710: YEAR OF THE DRAGON
The annual Chinatown Lunar New Year festivities will welcome in the Year of the Dragon (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Sara D. Roosevelt Park (and other venues)
East Houston St. between Forsythe & Chrystie Sts.
January 23 – February 5, free – $20
www.betterchinatown.com
There will be celebrations galore the next two weeks as the Lunar New Year arrives, 4710, the Year of the Dragon. The party kicks into high gear on Monday at 11:00 with the Chinese New Year Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, with live music and dance, speeches by politicians, drum groups, lion, dragon, and unicorn dancers making their way through local businesses, and 600,000 rounds of firecrackers warding off evil spirits and welcoming in a prosperous new year, with 200,000 expected attendees. Next Sunday, the thirteenth annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade & Festival takes place, with cultural booths in the park (11:30 – 4:00) and a parade with floats, antique cars, special performers, and many others, beginning at 1:00 in Minuscule Italy. The Museum of Chinese in America will be hosting several new year events, including Family Drop-in Arts & Crafts on January 23 and 30 from 2:00 to 4:00, when kids ages six and up can make their own zodiac animal puppets. The walking tour “Preparing for the New Year” will wander through Chinatown on January 28 at 11:00 am and 1:00 pm, and “Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children’s Songs with the Shanghai Restoration Project” will be held on February 4 at 1:30. The New York Chinese Cultural Center will celebrate the holiday with live music, acrobatics, folk dances, arts and crafts, and more at the World Financial Center on January 28. The sixteenth annual Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing is scheduled for Friday, February 4, at 11:00 am, followed by the Lunar New Year Dance Sampler at Flushing Town Hall at 2:00 and Lunar New Year workshops on Sunday, February 5, in which families can make dragon puppets and Korean lucky bags. And remember that it’s good luck to eat a whole steamed fish with head on for the new year, in addition to other delicacies. Gōng xǐ fā cái!
CULTUREMART 2012
YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. opens Culturemart 2012 with an intimate look at the Iraq war (photo © Jared Mezzocchi)
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
January 24 – February 11, $15
212-647-0202
www.here.org
The January parade of experimental theater festivals, which has already included Coil, Under the Radar, American Realness, and the Times Square International Theater Festival, continues with HERE’s annual Culturemart. Referring to itself as a “vital testing ground,” Culturemart will present a dozen works in progress from January 24 through February 11 in a variety of disciplines, beginning with Christine Evans, Joseph Megel, and Jared Mezzochi’s You Are Dead. You Are Here., an interactive multimedia examination of the relationship between an American soldier and an Iraqi blogger during the Iraq war. Among the other productions are Aaron Landsman’s participatory City Council Meeting, Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan’s A Marriage: 1, involving a couple who watches Fox News in a motel room for twenty-four consecutive hours (and is supplemented by an exhibition at HERE), Bora Yoon’s audiovisual one-woman show Weights and Balances, Betty Shamieh’s The Strangest, which imagines the story of the Arab killed in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, and Alexandra Beller/Dances’ other stories, which delves into narrative itself. Tickets to all events are only fifteen bucks, so it’s always worth checking out something different and unusual at one of the city’s best spots to see cutting-edge productions.