Large crowds will gather to see the blooming cherry trees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this weekend (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
900 Washington Ave. at Eastern Parkway
Saturday, April 26, and Sunday, April 27, $20-$25 (children under twelve free), 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-623-7200
www.bbg.org
In her book The Cherry Blossom Festival: Sakura Celebration, author Ann McClellan writes, “The breathtaking sight of the cherry trees blooming in Japan has inspired princes, poets, artists, and ordinary people for over 1000 years.” However, just as every rose has its thorn, “The sublime beauty of the flowers and their brief life at the beginning of each spring symbolize the essence of a human’s short life well-lived.” This weekend, the beauty, delicateness, and symbolic nature of the cherry blossom will be honored as more than a hundred cherry trees are expected to bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. On Saturday and Sunday, the annual Sakura Matsuri will include live music and dance, parades, workshops, demonstrations, martial arts, fashion shows, and much more. The festival will feature Ikebana flower arranging, a bonsai exhibit, Shogi chess, a manga mural, a wall scroll show, rice shaker and origami workshops, garden tours, shopping, a bookstore, Japanese food, and more, taking place all day long. Below are just some of the highlights of other special, more time-specific events.
Saturday
Children’s Suzuki Recital, with Brooklyn College Preparatory Center, auditorium, 11:00 am
The Battersby Show, with special guest Misako Rocks, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 12:30
Ikebana Flower Arranging Demonstration, with Sogetsu expert Fumiko Allinder, auditorium, 12:30
Dancejapan with Sachiyo Ito, Cherry Esplanade, 1:00
IchiP Dance Party, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 1:15
BBG Parasol Society Fashion Show, featuring J-pop singer Hitomi Himekawa of Rainbow Bubble, Cherry Esplanade, 2:00
Hanagasa Odori Parade, with Japanese Folk Dance Institute of NY, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 2:00
Urasenke Tea Ceremony, auditorium, 3:00 & 4:30
Samurai Sword Soul, Cherry Esplanade, 4:00
The Battersby Show, with special guest Jed Henry, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 4:15
Sunday
Soh Daiko, Cherry Esplanade, 12 noon
“The Art of Bonsai” Lecture, with Julian Velasco, auditorium, 12 noon
Awa Odori Parade, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 1:00 & 4:30
Ukiyo-e Illustration Demonstration with Artist Jed Henry, J-Lounge Art Alley at Osborne Garden, 1:30 & 3:00
Dancejapan with Sachiyo Ito, Cherry Esplanade, 2:00
Sohenryu-Style Tea Ceremony, with Soumi Shimizu and Sōkyo Shimizu, auditorium, 2:30 & 4:00
Magician Rich Kameda, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 2:00 & 4:00
Hitomi Himekawa and the Rainbow Bubble Girls, J-Lounge Stage at Osborne Garden, 3:00
Ryukyu Chimdon Band, Cherry Esplanade, 4:00
Cosplay Fashion Show, Cherry Esplanade, 5:15
Husband-and-wife filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash follow a flock of sheep herded by a family of Norwegian-American cowboys on their last sojourns through the public lands of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in the gorgeously photographed, surprisingly intimate, and sometimes very funny documentary Sweetgrass. In 2001, Castaing-Taylor, director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, and Barbash, a curator of Visual Anthropology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, found out about the Allestad ranch, an old-fashioned, Old West group of sheepherders who still did everything by hand, including leading hundreds of sheep on a 150-mile journey into the mountains for summer pasture with only a few dogs and horses. Director Castaing-Taylor uses no voice-over narration or intertitles, instead inviting the viewer to join in the story as if in the middle of the action, offering no judgments or additional information. The film begins with shearing and feeding, then birthing and mothering, before heading out on the long, sometimes treacherous trail, especially at night, when bears and wolves sneak around, looking for food. Slowly the focus switches to the men themselves, primarily an old-time singing grizzled ranch hand and a cursing, complaining cowboy. Castaing-Taylor and Barbash spent three years with the sheepherders and in the surrounding areas, amassing more than two hundred hours of footage and making to date nine films out of their experiences, mostly shorter works to be displayed in gallery installations or for anthropological reasons; Sweetgrass is the only one that has been released theatrically, offering a fascinating look at something that is destined to soon be gone forever. Sweetgrass is screening April 17 at 6:30 in the Focus on the Sensory Ethnography Lab section of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Art of the Real,” held in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, and will be followed by a Q&A with Barbash. The inaugural festival runs April 11-26, featuring more than three dozen works that push the boundaries of documentary film.
