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

HARRIS SAVIDES — VISUAL POET: MILK

Sean Penn won an Oscar for his portrayal of San Francisco political figure Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant biopic

MILK (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, June 9, 2:00, and Monday, June 10, 7:00
Series runs through June 21
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.filminfocus.com

Gus Van Sant’s Milk is a solid if surprisingly standard biopic focusing on the last eight years in the life of Harvey Milk, the gay activist and politician who was assassinated in 1978. Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, To Die For, Good Will Hunting) follows the eventual unofficial Mayor of Castro Street (Sean Penn) as he moves to San Francisco with his much younger partner, Scottie Smith (James Franco), and sets up a camera shop that soon becomes an important meeting ground for the local gay community, fighting for equal rights and supporting Milk as he continually campaigns for public office. The battle hits its high point in 1978 when Milk takes on John Briggs (Denis O’Hare) and the Briggs Initiative, also known as Proposition 6, which sought to take away existing employment rights from gays and lesbians in the California public school system, eerily reminiscent of the recent battle over Proposition 8 there. Although Milk was a rallying figure — his opening mantra was always “My name is Harvey Milk, and I am here to recruit you!” — the film never quite takes off the way it wants to, instead becoming too reverential and melodramatic. Penn, who won an Oscar for his portrayal, is good but subdued in the lead role; the best performance comes from Josh Brolin as Dan White, Milk’s main adversary among the SF supervisors. Milk is screening June 9 & 10 at MoMA as part of the series “Harris Savides: Visual Poet,” which pays tribute to the fashion photographer and cinematographer who died in October 2012 at the age of fifty-five; the festival includes a wide range of works on which he served as director of photography, including Noah Baumbach’s underrated Greenberg, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Woody Allen’s Whatever Works, James Gray’s The Yards, David Fincher’s Zodiac, and John Turturro’s Illuminata, with Baumbach, Coppola, Fincher, and Turturro on hand to introduce various screenings.

EGG ROLLS & EGG CREAMS FESTIVAL 2013

Annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams fest flies into the Lower East Side on June 9 (photo by Kate Milford)

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Sunday, June 9, 12 noon – 4:00 pm
Admission: free
212-219-0302
www.eldridgestreet.org

The thirteenth annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams block party once again will bring together the Jewish and Chinese communities of the Lower East Side on June 9 for what is always a fun day of food and drink, live music and dance, history, culture, and lots more. Among the highlights of the festival are the kosher egg creams and egg rolls, yarmulke and challah workshops, tea ceremonies, a genealogy clinic, Yiddish and Chinese lessons, Hebrew and Chinese calligraphy classes, mah jongg, cantorial songs, Jewish paper cutting and Chinese paper folding, face painting, and free tours (in English and Chinese) of the wonderfully renovated Eldridge St. Synagogue, which boasts the East Window designed by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans. In past years, the festival has included performances by the Chinatown Senior Center Folk Orchestra, Qi Shu Fang’s Peking Opera, the Shashmaqam Bukharan Jewish Cultural Group, Ray Muziker Klezmer Ensemble, and Cantor Eric Freeman, some of whom will be back again for this year’s multicultural celebration.

AILEY AT LINCOLN CENTER

Ronald K. Brown leads rehearsal for FOUR CORNERS, which makes its world premiere next week as AADT returns to Lincoln Center (photo by Claudia Schrier)

Ronald K. Brown leads rehearsal for FOUR CORNERS, which makes its world premiere next week as Alvin Ailey returns to Lincoln Center for the first time since 2000 (photo by Claudia Schreier)

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza
June 12-16, $25 – $135
212-496-0600
www.alvinailey.org
www.davidhkochtheater.com

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater always puts a jolt into the holiday season, taking up residence at City Center every December. This month, as an added bonus, they’ll be performing at Lincoln Center for the first time in thirteen years. Led by artistic director Robert Battle, AADT will be at the David H. Koch Theater from June 6 to 12, presenting seven pieces over the course of seven performances. The highlight is the world premiere of Ronald K. Brown’s Four Corners, which was inspired by Carl Hancock Rux’s “Lamentations” and is set to music by Hancock Rux and others. The seven programs also feature Brown’s beautiful Grace as well as Garth Fagan’s From Before, Jiří Kylián’s inventive Petite Mort, Battle’s whirlwind solo work Takademe (performed by either Kirven James Boyd or Jamar Roberts), Ohad Naharin’s dazzling Minus 16, and the company’s signature Revelations. (For reviews of many of these works from the past two years, go here and here.) Battle has just added Ailey II’s Jeroboam Bozeman and Fana Tesfagiorgis and Battleworks veteran Elisa Clark to the troupe, while rehearsal director and guest artist Matthew Rushing will take the stage in both Brown pieces. Revelations, which closes six of the performances, will include either Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims or Alicia Graf Mack and Roberts teaming up for the “Fix Me” pas de deux, and the June 15 matinee will be followed by a Q&A with the dancers.

BIG APPLE BARBECUE BLOCK PARTY 2013

Nearly 150,000 hungry people are expected to line up at the eleventh annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party this weekend

Madison Square Park
23rd to 26th Sts. between Fifth & Madison Aves.
Saturday, June 8, and Sunday, June 9, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Admission: free; $9 per plate of barbecue, $3 per drink
www.bigapplebbq.org
www.madisonsquarepark.org

One of the season’s most crowded festivals, the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party will be serving up bbq from eighteen pitmasters in Madison Square Park on Saturday and Sunday, along with foot-stompin’ music, seminars, cooking demonstrations, and other events. A variety of ’cue will be prepared by Mike Mills (Memphis Championship Barbecue, Las Vegas, 17th Street Bar & Grill, Murphysboro, IL), Scott Roberts (Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, TX), Joe Duncan (Baker’s Ribs in Dallas), Garry Roark (Ubon’s Barbecue in Yazoo City), Chris Lilly (Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, AL), Drew Robinson (Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q in Birmingham), Patrick Martin (Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint in Nashville), Mike Emerson (Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis), Tommy Houston (Checkered Pig in Danville, VA), Rodney Scott (Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, SC), Jimmy Hagood (BlackJack Barbecue in Charleston), Ed Mitchell (Raleigh), John Wheeler (Memphis Barbecue Co., Horn Lake, MS), and Sam Jones (Skylight Inn, Ayden, NC). The New York City entrants are John Stage (Dinosaur Bar-B-Que), Kenny Callaghan (Blue Smoke), and Charles Grund Jr. (Hill Country). The Saturday music lineup features the Spampinato Brothers (1:00), Barrence Whitfield & the Savages (2:45), and Marcia Ball (4:30), with Sunday consisting of the Myles Mancuso Band (1:00), Elizabeth Cook (2:45), and the Dirty Guv’nahs (4:30). Among the seminars are “From Tide to Table” with Chris Hastings, “Barbecue & Bivalves” with Mike Lata, “A Cure for What Ails You” with John Currence, and “Smoke, Bitters, Cucumbers, and Citrus . . . Cocktails from the Kitchen” with Joseph Lenn and Ashley Christensen. New this year is the Weber Grilling School, which will hold classes with Kevin Kolman; tickets are $30 and include a copy of Weber’s New Real Grilling cookbook. To best navigate the crowds, we suggest going with a group of friends, with each person waiting on a different line, then meeting up for your feast while listening to the live music.

BOOK LAUNCH: TAIPEI BY TAO LIN

powerHouse Arena
37 Main St. at Water St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, June 5, free (advance RSVP appreciated), 7:00
718-666-3049
www.powerhousearena.com
www.taolin.info

“It began raining a little from a hazy, cloudless-seeming sky as Paul, 26, and Michelle, 21, walked toward Chelsea to attend a magazine-release party in an art gallery. Paul had resigned himself to not speaking and was beginning to feel more like he was ‘moving through the universe’ than ‘walking on a sidewalk.’”

So begins Tao Lin’s third novel, Taipei (Vintage Contemporaries, June 4, $14.95), the official launch of which takes place June 5, with people walking toward DUMBO to attend the book-release party at the art gallery/bookstore/event space powerHouse Arena. (Wine will be served, and the festivities will be DJ’d by Pitchfork’s Jenn Pelly and Carrie Battan.) The follow-up to his earlier novels, 2007’s Eeeee Eee Eeee and 2010’s Richard Yates, in addition to several story and poetry collections, Taipei follows a writer as he goes off on a book tour, visits his parents in their native Taipei, and experiences disaffection with the state of his personal world. “In his tiredness and inattention these intuitions manifested in Paul as an uncomplicated feeling of bleakness — that he was in the center of something bad, whose confines were expanding, as he remained in the same place,” Lin writes. “Faintly he recognized in this a kind of humor, but mostly he was aware of the rain, continuous and everywhere as an incognizable information, as he crossed the magnified street, gleaming and blacker from wetness, to return to the party.” It’s not supposed to rain tomorrow night, when the literati gather at powerHouse to celebrate Lin, who is staking his claim to be the Millennial Generation’s Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, and/or Douglas Coupland. Lin, who was born in Virginia and currently lives in Manhattan, will also be at McNally Jackson on Prince St. on June 27 at 7:00 in conversation with Christian Lorentzen, at Spoonbill & Sugartown on July 9 for a reading and Q&A, and at BookCourt on July 22 as part of a panel discussion with Marie Calloway and Ryan McNamara, moderated by Mike Vilensky. For an unfortunately out-of-focus video of Lin, who is also the founder and editor of Muumuu House, doing a guerrilla reading at MoMA on April 20 as part of Transform the World! Poetry Must Be Made by All!, go here.

DANCE CONVERSATIONS 2013

Motley Dance’s DRILL PIECE examines the social and cultural aspects of gender and the military (photo by Victoria Masters)

The Flea Theater
41 White St. between Broadway & Church St.
June 4-14, Tuesday – Friday, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
212-352-3101
www.theflea.org

The Flea’s free annual Dance Conversations series returns June 4-13, giving dancers and choreographers the opportunity to present new pieces, excerpts, and works-in-progress, then discuss their creative process with the audience and special moderators. This year’s festival, curated by Nina Winthrop, gets under way on June 4 with Susan Thomasson & Elissaveta Iordanova (Who’s Going to Blink?), David Appel (more than a murmur), Amy Cova Dance (Spinal Streets and a Straw), and Motley Dance (Drill Piece), followed by a talk moderated by Molissa Fenley. On June 5, the lineup includes Daniela Hoff Dance Company (Mirror), Claire Porter/PORTABLES (Falling for Prepositions), and Naomi Goldberg Haas (The Dress), with moderator Rebecca Lazier. On June 6, there will be performances by Inclined Dance Project (Stuck Together Pieces), Barbara Mahler’s Dances (When She Stumbles), Ian Wen & Irina Kom (Houseguest de novo), and KATES (KATES: which is unusual), with moderator Joanna Kotze, while June 7 features GREYZONE (Waves), Tomomi Imai (Deep Blue), and Khaleah London/LAYERS (The Ultimatum), with moderator Kimberly Bartosik. The second week includes such companies and choreographers as binbinFactory/Satoshi Haga & Rie Fukuzawa, Krista Jansen, Jesse Phillips-Fein, Megan Sipe/Dancing Fish Productions, and Rosario, with moderators Gus Solomons jr, Jody Oberfelder, Pooh Kaye, and Winthrop. Dance Conversations is a great forum for dance enthusiasts to get sneak peeks at works from emerging and midcareer choreographers and go behind the scenes of their creations in intimate discussions.

QUEER/ART/FILM: PERFORMANCE

Mick Jagger puts on quite a show in Nicolas Roeg’s trippy PERFORMANCE

Mick Jagger puts on quite a show in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s trippy PERFORMANCE

PERFORMANCE (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Monday, June 3, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

A British gangster on the run hides out with a psychedelic rock star in this strangely enticing film from Donald (The Demon Seed) Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (making his big-screen directorial debut). James Fox didn’t know what he was getting into when he signed on to play Chas, a mobster who finds sanctuary with mushroom-popping rock-diva has-been Turner, played with panache by Mick Jagger. Throw in Anita Pallenberg, a fab drug trip, and the great “Memo to Turner” scene and you have a film that some consider the real precursor to MTV, some think a work of pure demented genius, and others find to be one of the most pretentious and awful pieces of claptrap ever committed to celluloid. We fall somewhere in the middle of all of that. Performance is screening in a 35mm print June 3 at 8:00 as part of the IFC Center series “Queer/Art/Film” and will be followed by a discussion with artist, writer, documentarian, and activist Gregg Bordowitz. The monthly series, which consists of films selected by gay New York City artists, continues July 22 with Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night, chosen by Amadéus Leopold, and August 19 with Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette, picked by Chitra Ganesh.