this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

ARMORY ARTS WEEK 2016

Christian Jankowski directs CRYING FOR THE MARCH OF HUMANITY, which is being shown at Spring/Break Art Show

It’s that time of year again, when the art world descends on New York City for the start of art fair season. There are no fewer than eleven fairs this week, with the next batch scheduled for May. Below is a brief look at March’s shows, highlighted by participating artists and/or galleries and special projects. The anchor is the Armory Show; prices range from free to a hefty forty-five bucks.

What: Spring/Break Art Show: ⌘COPY⌘PASTE
Where: Skylight at Moynihan Station, 421 Eighth Ave. at 34th St.
When: March 2-7, $10 in advance, $15 at the door
Why: Mira Dancy, Nick Darmstaedter, Sue de Beer, Vanessa Castro, Renee Dykeman, Brock Enright, Daniel Gordon, Christian Jankowski, Janus, Jim Jarmusch, Oliver Jeffers, Joan Jonas, Maripol, Coke Wisdom O’Neal, Walter Robinson, many more

What: The Art Show
Where: Park Avenue Armory, Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
When: March 2-6, $25
Why: Sherrie Levine, Alex Katz, Gillian Wearing, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Marcel Dzama, Edward Hopper & Company, Frank Stella, Carolee Schneemann, Beauford Delaney, Wolfgang Laib, Sigmar Polke, Milton Avery, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, Richard Diebenkorn, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Richard Artschwager, Daniel Buren, many more

Wednesday, March 2
“Tree Talk” by Maria Elena González, 2:00 & 6:00

What: VOLTA NY
Where: Pier 90, West Fiftieth St. at Twelfth Ave.
When: March 2-6, $25
Why: Ronald Cyrille, Tom Anholt / Günther Förg, Jessica Peters, Florian Heinke / Gavin Nolan, Toshiya Masuda, Paul Brainard, Philip Taaffe, Elad Kopler, Jorge Pineda, Becca Lowry, Anthony Goicolea, Dawit Abebe, Shoplifter, many more

Friday, March 4
Shaun Leonardo: “I Can’t Breathe Workshop and Performances,” 5:00

Mike and Doug Starn’s “Structure of Thought 30” will be on view at the Edwynn Houk Gallery booth at the Armory Show (photo courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery)

What: The Armory Show
Where: Piers 92 & 94, Twelfth Ave. at Fiftieth St.
When: March 3-6, $45
Why: Special projects by Kapwani Kiwanga, Emeka Ogboh, Lebohang Kganye, Karo Akpokiere, Ed Young, Athi-Patra Ruga, Jared Ginsburg, Mame-Diarra Niang, Stephen Burks, Sung Jang, Carlo and Mary-Lynn Massoud, Modern, Contemporary, African Perspectives, Armory Presents, Open Forum, more

Thursday, March 3
“Looking Back, Leading the Way,” with El Anatsui and Sam Nhlengethwa, moderated by Bisi Silva, part of the Armory Show 2016 Symposium: African Perspectives, Media Lounge, Pier 94, 5:30

Saturday, March 5
“A Spell That Flows Both Ways,” lecture-performance by Kapwani Kiwanga, Media Lounge, Pier 94, 1:00

What: Art on Paper
Where: Pier 36, 299 South St.
When: March 3-6, $25
Why: Special projects by Suzanne Goldenberg, Libby Black, Laurence Vallières, Alex Paik, Lower Eastside Girls Club, Bob Gill, Javier Calleja, Glenn Goldberg, Federico Uribe, Takaaki Tanaka, Li Hongbo

What: New City Art Fair
Where: hpgrp Gallery, 434 Greenwich St.
When: March 3-6, free with pass
Why: Fumi Ishino, Keigo Nishikiori, Harumi Shimizu, Shuji Terayama, Daisuke Takahashi, snAwk, So Sekiyama, Meguru Yamaguchi

What: Scope
Where: 639 West Forty-Sixth St. at Twelfth Ave
When: March 3-6, $35
Why: Breeder Program (Haven Gallery, Kallenbach Gallery, One Mile Gallery, Jenn Singer Gallery, Barbara Edwards Contemporary, Cordesa Fine Art), Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series winner Aron Belka

What: Pulse
Where: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West Eighteenth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
When: March 3-6, $25
Why: Special projects by Erin D. Garcia, Armando Marino, Melissa Pokorny, Anna Paola Protasio, Macon Reed, Yumi Janairo Roth, Mia Taylor, Richard Vivenzio, Jason Willaford

Thursday, March 3
through
Sunday, March 6
Macon Reed, “Eulogy for the Dyke Bar” events, including Last Call podcast broadcast, DJ Happy Hour, Rocky and Rhoda Trivia Night, Stashes and Lashes Drag Show, and Eulogy Ritual, multiple times

What: Clio Art Fair
Where: 508 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
When: March 3-6, free
Why: Detlef Ewald Aderhold, Thierry Alet, KO-HEY Arikawa, Manss Aval, Sarah Hai Edwards, Sunil Garg, Andrea Goldsmith, Seunghwui Koo, Emily Madrigal, Jamie Martinez, Roberto Perotti, Kerstin Roolfs, Daniel Rosenbaum, Raimonda Sanna, Gisella Sorrentino, Zoya Taylor, Anthea Zito, others

Maija Blåfield’s GOLDEN AGE will be screening at the Moving Image art fair (photo courtesy AV-arkki)

What: Moving Image
Where: 269 Eleventh Ave. between Twenty-Seventh & Twenty-Eighth Sts.
When: March 3-6, free
Why: Amalie Atkins, Perry Bard, Maija Blåfield, Marcos Bonisson and Khalil Charif, boredomresearch, Jeremy Chandler, Sarah Choo Jing, Clément Cogitore, Jennifer Dalton, Rico Gatson, Sofia Hultén, Anthony Iacono, Erdal İnci, George Jenne, Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev, Kalliopi Lemos, Pablo Lobato, LoVid, Alexandre Mazza, Olivia McGilchrist, Lorna Mills, Tameka Norris, Anne Spalter, Mika Taanila, Sergio Vega, Saya Woolfalk, Gil Yefman

What: alt_break art fair
Where: Multiple locations
When: March 3-6, free
Why: alt_break 2016: SHIFT_ consists of site-activated exhibits at Creative Art Works, Fountain House Gallery, and the Center for Social Innovation as well as at the Armory Show, Scope, and Spring/Break, with such artists as Anne-Marie Lavigne, Jee Hee Kang, Lizz Brady, Reba Hasko, Geraldo Mercado, and Sean Naftel

Friday, March 4
Launch event with artists, curators, raffle prizes, and a live performance by Ryan Krause, Fountain House Gallery, 702 Ninth Ave. near Forty-Ninth St., 6:00

Sunday, March 6
Closing panel discussion and reception with curators Audra Lambert, Kimi Kitada, Victoria Manganiello, and Adam Zucker and special guests, moderated by Andrew Kaminski, Center for Social Innovation, Starrett-Lehigh Building, 601 West Twenty-Sixth St. west of Eleventh Ave., third floor, 2:00

What: The Independent
Where: Spring Studios, 50 Varick St.
When: March 4-6, price TBD ($20 in 2015)
Why: The Approach, London; Artists Space, New York; The Box, Los Angeles; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome; Elizabeth Dee, New York; Delmes & Zander, Cologne/Berlin; gb agency, Paris; Herald St, London; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo; the Modern Institute, Glasgow; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne/Berlin; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt; Office Baroque, Brussels; others

EDM ANTHEMS — FRENCH TOUCH ON FILM: DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED

The fascinating history of French EDM pioneers Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo is detailed in DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED

DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED (Hervé Martin Delpierre, 2015)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, March 1, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through April 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

You might think that the phrase “the French Touch,” which is part of the title of FIAF’s March-April edition of its CinéSalon series, refers to the unique style of such French auteurs as François Truffaut, Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Jean Cocteau, Éric Rohmer, and others whose films are often included in these Tuesday-night festivals. But the term actually describes a group of DJs and bands associated with electronic dance music, or EDM, in France. So it is rather appropriate for the series, “EDM Anthems: French Touch on Film,” to kick off with Daft Punk Unchained, a thumping documentary about the patron saints of that movement, the iconoclastic duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, better known as Daft Punk. Director Hervé Martin Delpierre, who cowrote the film with Marina Rozenman, had his work cut out for him, as he had to make the film without the participation of Daft Punk itself, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo, who have not shown their faces in public this century and rarely give interviews of any kind. But Delpierre gets just about everyone else who has ever worked with them to open up, allowing others to interpret the band’s musical evolution and cultural impact as he traces DP’s career from 1992, when they were in the somewhat more traditional bass-guitar-drum combo Darlin’, to the worldwide sensation of their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, as they melded American disco, German techno, and Manchester industrial into something wholly new. A special focus is placed on their mind-blowing show at Coachella in 2006, which single-handedly changed the future of EDM.

Amid rare photographs of Bangalter and de Homem-Christo without their trademark robot helmets or masks and audio clips of radio interviews, Delpierre speaks with such Daft Punk collaborators as Kanye West, Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Pete Tong, Todd Edwards, Pharrell Williams, Skrillex, and Paul (Phantom of the Paradise) Williams, in addition to special effects master Tony Gardner, anime director Leiji Matsumoto, and filmmaker Michel Gondry, who first put DP in helmets. Also sharing insight into what makes the duo so significant are former manager Pedro (Busy P) Winter as well as various journalists, record label heads, and friends. “I just think they’re a unique set of individuals. I have a hard time calling them human, just because musically the robots are something else,” Pharrell, who scored a huge hit with Daft Punk on eventual Grammy favorite “Get Lucky,” says. “I just never experienced working with individuals like them. Everything is so concise. There’s a reason behind everything. Nothing is done by coincidence, by accident or mistake. It’s always with an intention to serve a purpose.” What also serves their purpose is avoiding promotion or publicity that would involve their making an appearance of any kind. Thus, we don’t learn about Bangalter and de Homem-Christo’s private lives, how they work with each other, or what they even look like today. But with everyone stressing how individualistic Daft Punk is, how they insist on doing things their own way no matter what, we wound up rooting for them to keep those helmets on and let the groove-heavy mystery linger on. Daft Punk Unchained is screening at FIAF on March 1 at 4:00 and 7:30; the later show will be followed by a Q&A with Delpierre and DJ Superpoze. In addition, Winter will lead a French Electronic Music Master Class on March 3 with Boston Bun, Superpoze, Jacques, and Julian Starke, and there will be a party celebrating the FIAF series on March 4 at Le Bain with Busy P, Boston Bun, Jacques, and Superpoze. The series continues through April 26 with such other films as Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, which are either set in the club scene or feature EDM-based soundtracks.

TICKET ALERT: THE FREEDOM SEDER

freedom seder

Who: David Broza, Peter Yarrow, Michael Dorf, and more than a dozen other special guests
What: Sixteenth annual Downtown Seder
Where: City Winery, 155 Varick St. between Spring & Vandam Sts., 212-608-0555
When: Wednesday, April 13, $75-$135 ($25 surcharge for glatt kosher)
Why: A limited number of tickets will go on sale to the general public on Thursday, February 25, at 3:00 for the sixteenth annual Downtown Seder, aka the Freedom Seder, hosted by City Winery owner Michael Dorf. Among those performing at the interactive event, which is being held on April 13, nine days before the actual beginning of Passover, will be beloved Israeli musician David Broza and legendary American singer-songwriter-activist Peter Yarrow. Past participants have included Al Franken, Harvey Fierstein, Lewis Black, Dr. Ruth, Judy Gold, Lou Reed, Neil Sedaka, and many others. Tickets for VinoFile members go on sale two days earlier, at 3:00 today (February 23), so you’ll have to act quickly if you want to partake in the ritual about the Exodus from Egypt in one of New York’s best music venues. How can you go wrong with a setlist likely to include “Dayenu,” “Chad Gadya,” “Mah Nishtnanah,” and “The Ten Plagues”?

THE BIG OSCARS QUIZ THING

biq quiz oscars thing

(le) poisson rouge
158 Bleecker St.
Sunday, February 28, $10 in advance, $15 at the door, 5:30
212-505-4474
www.bigquizthing.com
www.lepoissonrouge.com

Just how good is your knowledge of Oscar history? How do you do every year in your Oscar pool? You can test your skill on Sunday night, when the Big Quiz Thing hosts its fourth annual Academy Award–themed multimedia team trivia competition. The Big Oscars Quiz Thing will take place at (le) poisson rouge in Greenwich Village, leading right into the actual Oscars telecast, which will be broadcast live at the club on large screens, starting with the red carpet; Quizmaster EdP will keep the trivia questions coming during the Oscars show. Among the giveaways you’ll be trying to win are passes to On Location Tours, an Intro to Improv class at the PIT, Insomnia cookies to make sure you stay awake for what is always a rather long ceremony, a membership to (le) poisson rouge, screening passes to Videology, passes to the Broadway Comedy Club, and tickets to Scott’s Pizza Tours. Here’s one question to get you going, and remember, no cheating: Who was the youngest actor to ever win an Oscar?

THE CHERRY ORCHARD

Lev Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg inject the comedy back into THE CHERRY ORCHARD (photo © Stephanie Berger)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. at Ashland Pl.
Through February 27, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 1904, shortly after witnessing the premiere of what would be his last play, The Cherry Orchard, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre, Anton Chekhov wrote to his wife, Olga, who was playing Madame Ranevskaya, “Stanislavski has ruined my play. Oh well, I don’t suppose anything can be done about it.” Although the play was a hit, Chekhov believed it to be a comedy with farcical elements, while Stanislavski, who later became famous for his method acting system, staged it as a tragedy. But now innovative Siberian-born Russian theater director Lev Dodin has indeed done something about it, something wonderful, presenting The Cherry Orchard in all its (tragi)comic glory, continuing at BAM through February 27. Dodin and his St. Petersburg-based Maly Drama Theatre previously brought Uncle Vanya to BAM in 2010, followed by Three Sisters in 2012. For their version of The Cherry Orchard, which was named Best Large Scale Drama at Russia’s prestigious Golden Mask festival last year, Dodin and set designer Aleksander Borovsky have transformed the charmingly pseudo-dilapidated environment of the BAM Harvey into the formerly extravagant home of Madame Lyubov Ranevskaya (Ksenia Rappoport). Every seat is wrapped in a linen seat cover, evoking the ghostly white sheets draped over the family’s furniture gathered on the floor at the foot of the stage, from a billiards table, a bed, a piano, and a bookcase to chairs for some of the audience members, who occasionally find members of the cast sitting next to them. Lyubov has just been called home from Paris because the estate’s centerpiece, a lush, beautiful, well-known cherry orchard, is being put up for auction to help pay off the family’s debts. While Lyubov, her brother, Gayev (alternately played by Igor Chernevich and Sergei Vlasov), her biological daughter, Anya (Danna Abyzova), and her adopted daughter, Varya (Elizaveta Boiarskaia), go on about the past, don’t seriously consider the future, and flirt around with perpetual student Petr Trofimov (Oleg Ryazantsev), clerk Semen Yepikhodov (Andrei Kondratiev), and merchant Yermolai Lopakhin (Danila Kozlovskiy), only Lopakhin has come up with a plan of action. Lopakhin, a wealthy man whose father was a serf on the cherry orchard, tries to convince the family to chop down the trees and turn the area into summer rental cottages, or dachas, but Lyubov and Gayev fail to recognize what’s happening in the present, and throughout Russia, stuck in their old aristocratic ways and ignoring the oncoming revolution. Even when they lose the orchard and the estate at auction, they don’t truly understand the consequences as the victor celebrates his spoils.

Madame Lyubov Ranevskaya (Ksenia Rappoport) and her brother, Gayev (Igor Chernevich) face the end of an era in fabulous new production of Chekhov classic (photo © Stephanie Berger)

In his 2005 book, Journey without End: Reflections and Memoirs, the Siberian-born Dodin wrote in a chapter entitled “Why I Don’t Direct Comedies”: “I am interested not in comic situations but in the amusement of self-recognition, even when it is tinged with anguish.” That is precisely how he approaches The Cherry Orchard, which boasts grand comic gestures amid the sadness. The uniformly outstanding cast — some of whom make their way up and down the orchestra steps at the Harvey, delivering lines while standing right next to audience members, Damir Ismagilov’s lighting illuminating sections of the crowd — also features Tatiana Shestakova as the governess, Charlotta; Andrei Kondratiev as Semen Yepikhodov, a clerk; Arina Von Ribben as Dunyasha, the piano-playing housemaid; Stanislav Nikolskii as Yasha, the young manservant; and a fabulously funny Sergei Kuryshev as Firs, the aging manservant who shuffles about ever-so-slowly while moaning about the good old days when he was an abused and mistreated slave. Rappoport is superb as Madame Lyubov, always dressed in black, in constant mourning for the drowning death of her son but occasionally getting caught up in silent slapstick, but the dapper Kozlovskiy steals the show, roaming the Harvey in his brightly colored outfit and yellow shoes, at one point dancing up and down the aisles and breaking out into a decidedly non-early-twentieth-century-Russian song. Another way Dodin injects fresh life into the old theatrical warhorse is by using film projections; when Lopakhin first presents his plan to the family, he does so by showing haunting footage of the orchard, as if bringing their fading memories, and their virtually unbreakable bond to the past, right out in the open. Although Chekhov was inspired by real-life situations when writing the play, including the story of an actual cherry orchard, the symbolism is still apparent, though subtle; cherry blossoms signal the coming of spring, but their brief existence reminds us of the impermanence of beauty, of material desires, of life itself. “My life’s gone by as if I’d never lived at all,” the doddering, elderly Firs mumbles at the start of the play. With their version of The Cherry Orchard, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre evoke all of that and more while making sure we have plenty of time to laugh at life’s endless foibles. The Cherry Orchard continues through February 27; on February 24 at 6:00 ($25) in BAM Rose Cinemas, Ethan Hawke, who played Trofimov in Sam Mendes and Tom Stoppard’s 2009 version of the play, and David Hyde Pierce, who was Yasha in Peter Brook’s 1988 production, both of which were seen at BAM, will participate in the discussion “Into the Archives: The Cherry Orchard” with BAM Hamm Archives director Sharon Lehner.

SUPER SÁBADO: CARNAVAL!

carnaval

FREE THIRD SATURDAYS
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Saturday, February 20, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org

El Museo del Barrio celebrates carnaval with the February edition of its free third Saturdays Super Sábado program. There will be a Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert featuring Nation Beat; a meet-and-greet with NYC family ambassador Dora the Explorer; an arteXplorers Family Corner activity card; Colorín Colorado . . . with Something Positive Inc. bringing the story “Come Dance with Me” to life with carnaval characters Jab Molassie and Dame Lorraine and a participatory procession; a Movement Workshop with dancers from Conjunto Nuevo Milenio teaching traditional dances from El Palenque; a Manos a la Obra art workshop in which kids can make their own vejigante mask; and guided tours of the exhibitions “The Illusive Eye” and “Figure and Form: Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection.”

MARIA HASSABI: PLASTIC

(photo by Julieta Cervantes / (c) Museum of Modern Art)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
February 21 – March 20, free with museum admission ($14-$25)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
mariahassabi.com

In a 2011 twi-ny talk, Cyprus-born, New York City–based dancer and choreographer Maria Hassabi declared, “I was born flexible!” That statement is true not only of the remarkable things she can do with her body but also of where she performs her impressive, often painfully slow movement. We’ve seen her wrestle with a carpet at PS122, maneuver through a packed house seated on the floor at the Kitchen, and crawl down the cobblestoned path of Broad St. Ever investigating the relationship between performer and audience as well as dance and object — in 2012, Hassabi collaborated with Lutz Bacher and Tony Conrad on “Chandeliers,” in which more than a dozen light fixtures descended from floor to ceiling over the course of the day at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève — Hassabi next will set up shop at the Museum of Modern Art, where she will present Plastic for one month. Every day from February 21 to March 20, Hassabi and her team of dancers will be at several locations in MoMA, moving among the visitors, so watch out where you walk, because there will be no barriers separating them from you. You’ll find Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Neil Greenberg, Elizabeth Hart, Kennis Hawkins, Niall Jones, Shelley Senter, RoseAnne Spradlin, and David Thomson in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, Hassabi, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, Paige Martin, and Oisín Monaghan on the Marron Atrium and Agnes Gund Garden Lobby staircase, and Jones, Michael Helland, Tara Lorenzen, and Mickey Mahar on the staircase between the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries. The sound design is by Morten Norbye Halvorsen, with song fragments by Marina Rosenfeld. “Taking place underfoot in the transitional spaces of a museum known for its crowds, the work can be seen from multiple vantage points and inverts the typical relationship between performer and viewer so that it is the dancer who appears static and the onlooker who moves,” writes MoMA associate curator Thomas J. Lax in the brochure for the living installation, which was co-commissioned by MoMA, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. On February 24 at 7:00 ($8-$12) in the atrium, Hassabi will discuss the work with Philip Bither of the Walker Art Center.