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

DANCEAFRICA: ONE AFRICA/MANY RHYTHMS

The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will once again lead the BAM DanceAfrica celebration on Memorial Day Weekend (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 25-28, free – $50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

For some people, it isn’t summer in New York City until the beaches and pools open, or half-day Fridays begin, or the free outdoor music series kick off all over town. For us, summer doesn’t get under way until BAM’s annual DanceAfrica returns, four days of dance, film, music, fashion, food, and one of the best street fairs of the year. The thirty-fifth annual cultural celebration starts in the Howard Gilman Opera House on May 25 with performances by the Adanfo Ensemble, Farafina Kan: The Sound of Africa, United African Dance Troupe, and the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. On Saturday, Adanfo and Restoration will be joined by the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre and the Oyu Oro Afro-Cuban Dance Company, on Sunday by Illstyle Peace Productions and Creative Outlet, and on Monday by Hamalali Wayunagu Garifuna and Asase Yaa. The inimitable Baba Chuck Davis will participate in an Iconic Artist Talk on May 27 at 6:00 with Kariamu Welsh in the Hillman Attic Studio. The Mason-Jam-Ja Band will play BAMcafé Live on Friday night at 10:00, while the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra Salute to Don Cornelius & Soul Train takes place on Saturday night, followed by a late-night dance party with DJ Idlemind. BAMcinématek will be screening such films as Fabio Caramaschi’s One Way, a Tuareg Journey, Zelalem Woldemariam Ezare’s Lezare (For Today), Abdelkrim Bahloul’s A Trip to Algiers, Akin Omotoso’s Man on Ground, Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back, Africa, Andy Amadi Okoroafor’s Relentless, Daniel Daniel Cattier’s 50 Years of Independence of Congo, Claus Wischmann & Martin Baer’s Kinshasa Symphony, and Michel Ocelot’s Tales of the Night, with Omotoso, Cattier, and Okoroafor on hand for Q&As. Through June 3, BAM will be hosting the exhibition “Waiting for the Queen,” highlighting works on paper by U.S.-based Nigerian artists Njideka Akunyili and Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, curated by Dexter Wimberly. And on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the DanceAfrica 2012 Bazaar will transform Ashland Pl. into a global marketplace rich with African and Caribbean cultural heritage, including great food, clothes, art, jewelry, books, music, and so much more. “Ago!” “Amée!!”

FLEET WEEK

An international contingent of military vessels and tall ships will pull into the metropolitan area for Fleet Week

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and other locations
Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St.
May 23–30
Admission: adults $22, children three to six $10, seven to seventeen $17 (if purchased online in advance)
www.intrepidmuseum.org
www.fleetweeknewyork.com

Started back in 1984, Fleet Week takes place May 23-30, when thousands of men and women from the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard come ashore in New York City for a week of special events and all-night partying. The official Parade of Sail begins Wednesday morning, May 23, at 8:11 at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, making its way past the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center site. Twenty-one ships from around the world will dock in the metropolitan area, with many available for boarding; the lineup includes the USS Wasp, the USCGC Eagle, and the USS Donald Cook at Pier 90 in Manhattan, the USS Mitscher, Roosevelt, San Jacinto, and Gonzalez and the tall ships Cisne Branco and KRI Dewaruci on Staten Island, the USCGC Seneca and Willow, the RAF Argus, JS Shirane, and FNS Pohjanmaa, and the tall ships Etoile, La Belle Poule, Buque Escuela Arm Cuauhtemoc, and Juan Sebastian de Elcano in Brooklyn, and the tall ships ARC Gloria and BAE Guayas at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Among the special events are the USN Leap Frogs Parachute Jump on Coney Island on May 24, U.S. Marine Corps Day in Battery Park on May 25, an Explosive Ordnance Team demo in Eisenhower Park and Military Day in Times Square on May 26, the Staten Island War of 1812 Commemoration on May 27, and the Manhattan Memorial Day Parade on May 29. The Intrepid will host a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Mercury-Atlas 7 mission on May 24, Broadway showcases featuring performances by the casts of Ghost, Sister Act, Chicago, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Rock of Ages, Godspell, Porgy & Bess, Peter and the Starcatcher, Anything Goes, Memphis, The Unauthorized Harry Experience, Traces, and The Gazillion Bubble Show on May 25, screenings of Men in Black 3 (May 24) and Top Gun (May 25), the annual Tug of War on May 26, a USCG Search & Rescue Demonstration on May 27, and a lunchtime talk with former USS Mason crewmember Lorenzo DuFau on May 29. You can get an advance look at the ships by taking New York Water Taxi’s Special OpSail 2012 Preview Tour on May 22 ($45-$60) and the up-close-and-personal OpSail VIP Parade of Sail Tour on May 23 ($55-$75).

NEVER STAND STILL

Documentary celebrates the long history of Jacob’s Pillow as a mecca for dance (photo by Christopher Duggan)

NEVER STAND STILL: DANCING AT JACOB’S PILLOW (Ron Honsa, 2011)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
May 18-24
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
firstrunfeatures.com

In conjunction with the eightieth anniversary of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Ron Honsa has made Never Stand Still, a documentary that celebrates the long history of the national historic landmark dedicated to the art of movement. Narrated by Bill T. Jones, the seventy-five-minute documentary looks back at the founding of the Pillow, located in Becket, Massachusetts, through exciting archival footage of Ted Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, Shawn’s all-male troupe, and the construction of the first American theater dedicated specifically to dance. Honsa speaks with such legendary dancers and choreographers as Merce Cunningham, Suzanne Farrell, Mark Morris, Judith Jamison, Paul Taylor, and Marge Champion, who all discuss the importance of the Pillow as a nurturing creative mecca that continues to bring performers and audiences together from all over the world. “It was a place where people could, quietly or not, think differently and act differently,” Cunningham says in one of his last interviews. Gideon Obarzanek calls the Pillow “one of the few places you can come and really feel and understand the past in order to move into the future.” Honsa focuses on a series of companies and creators as they rehearse and perform at Jacob’s Pillow, including Obarzanek’s Chunky Move, Rasta Thomas and Bad Boy Dance, solo artist Shivantala Shivalingappa, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Jens Rosén and Stockholm 59° North, Nikolaj Hübbe and the Royal Danish Ballet, and Bill Irwin, who pays tribute to the movement skills of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Honsa (The Men Who Danced) gives equal time to the past, present, and future of dance, incorporating classical, modern, contemporary, hip-hop, experimental, ballet, and other styles and genres, playing no favorites. The film runs May 18-24 at the Quad; Honsa and special guests will participate in a Q&A following the 6:15 screening on opening night.

THE CARETAKER

Jonathan Pryce, Alex Hassell, and Alan Cox star in THE CARETAKER at BAM (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through June 17, $25-$100
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Jonathan Pryce gives a whirlwind tour-de-force performance in the latest revival of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, running at BAM’s Harvey Theater through June 17. In the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse/Theatre Royal Bath production, Pryce (Miss Saigon, Comedians) stars as the tramp Davies, a homeless man in tatters who is just looking for a good pair of shoes and a place to rest his weary bones. He is offered both by Aston (Alan Cox), a friendly sort of chap Davies met in a pub who takes Davies to his apartment, a ramshackle space overloaded with dusty, moldy black-and-white and gray objects, the only color a brightly painted ceramic Buddha. Davies is soon being harassed by a strange man who turns out to be Aston’s younger brother, Mick (Alex Hassell), who enjoys teasing the elderly Davies. Over the course of several weeks, the trio engages in existential philosophical discussions à la Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, speaking about nothing and everything as both brothers separately ask him to serve as the apartment building’s caretaker, leading to confusion over who’s really in charge. Meanwhile, Davies keeps talking about having to get to Sidcup to reclaim his identity papers, as his real name is not actually Davies. Directed by Christopher Morahan, The Caretaker is worth seeing just for Pryce’s extraordinary performance as the title character, an endearingly eccentric figure who likes things his own extremely particular way. The first half is filled with eclectic humor and slapstick, but the second half gets bogged down in repetition and plot twists that come out of left field, not really going anywhere ― even though that’s part of the point. “I can take nothing you say at face value,” Mick says to Davies. “Every word you speak is open to any number of different interpretations.” And so it is with the play and Pinter himself. The Caretaker was his breakthrough, premiering in London in 1960 with Donald Pleasence as Davies, Alan Bates as Mick, and Peter Woodthorpe as Aston; Robert Shaw took over the role of Aston on Broadway and in Clive Donner’s 1963 film. Pryce will participate in an Artist Talk following the May 24 performance, speaking with Pinter scholar Austin E. Quigley.

ELENA

Nadezhda Markina gives a marvelously understated performance in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s ELENA

ELENA (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2011)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
May 16-29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.zeitgeistfilms.com

Winner of a Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena is a poignant character study and family drama set in Vladimir Putin’s post-Communist Russia. Nadezhda Markina gives a marvelously understated performance as Elena, a former nurse now married to her second husband, the successful and very direct Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov). Elena’s son from her first marriage, the unemployed Sergey (Alexey Rozin), is in need of money to support his wife, Tatyana (Evgenia Konushkina) and send his son, Sasha (Igor Ogurtsov), to university, but Vladimir is reconsidering helping them out, believing that it’s about time that Sergey got a job and took care of things himself. Vladimir’s hesitation extremely disappoints Elena, especially when Vladimir continues to support his daughter, Katerina (Elena Lyadova), a free spirit who barely acknowledges his existence. After Vladimir suffers a heart attack, Elena fears for her future and that of her family, suddenly facing some hard questions. Zvyagintsev has followed up the critical smash successes The Return and The Banishment with another superbly told tale that makes expert use of the tools of his trade, from the strong, assured script, which he cowrote with Oleg Negin, and the gorgeous cinematography by Mikhail Krichman to the solid acting and the haunting music. Elena is this generation’s Jeanne Dielman, a deliberate, methodical woman who finds herself caught up in a complex situation with no easy way out. The slow pace of the film, which is filled with lingering shots and Philip Glass’s modern-noir score (from 1995’s Symphony No. 3), moves intoxicatingly to the beat of Elena’s heart. Zvyagintsev, who was just celebrated at BAM with a three-day “Next Director” retrospective, will be at Film Forum for a discussion following the 8:00 screening on May 16.

HILARY EASTON + COMPANY: THE CONSTRUCTORS

Hilary Easton celebrates her twentieth anniversary this week with two new shows at BAC

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
May 17-20, $20
212-868-4444
www.bacnyc.org
www.hilaryeaston.com

Native New Yorker Hilary Easton is celebrating her company’s twentieth anniversary in style this week at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. The Manhattan-based dancer and choreographer will be presenting the world premiere of the evening-length piece The Constructors, which will be performed by Alexandra Albrecht, Michael Ingle, Joshua Palmer, Emily Pope-Blackman, and Sarah Young, with music by Mike Rugnetta, lighting by Kathy Kaufmann, and costumes by Madeleine Walach. The Constructors delves into the nature of collaboration through a series of kinetic tasks that break down the barrier between audience and performer. In addition, as a special bonus, on Thursday and Friday Easton will be performing a new solo, The Heart Is Like a Toboggan, with a costume by fashion designer Cynthia Rowley. An artists’ dialogue will follow the Sunday matinee, with Easton and her company discussing the making of The Constructors; ticket holders from any of the performances can attend the presentation for free.

NYPH ’12

DJ Spooky’s immersive “Sinfonia Antarctica” should be a highlight of the 2012 New York Photo Festival

NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL 2012
powerHouse Arena (37 Main St.) and other locations throughout Dumbo
May 16-20, free – $20
nyph.at

The fifth annual New York Photo Festival takes place throughout Dumbo beginning with the vernissage May 16, followed by four days open to the general public. Although admission to all exhibits is free, a $15 ticket (in advance, $20 on-site) is good for presentations and receptions, food samples, and various local discounts. NYPH ’12 features four guest curators. Glenn Ruga’s “On the Razor’s Edge: Between Documentary and Fine Art Photography” consists of works by Bruce Davidson, Reza, Eugene Richards, Rina Castelnuovo, and Platon at powerHouse Arena. Also at pH Arena, Claude Grunitzky’s “The Curse and the Gift” looks at photography as a way of life, with work from Evangelia Kranioti, Irmelie Krekin, and Christian Witkin. At 56 Water St. and pH Arena, Amy Smith-Stewart’s “What Do You Believe In” collects multidisciplinary images from such artists as Jen DeNike, Hank Willis Thomas, Xaviera Simmons, and Daniel Gordon, examining at how photography is a forum for ideology. And DJ Spooky’s “Sinfonia Antarctica (The Book of Ice)” takes place out on the streets, with digital media, live performances, sculpture, and more. Satellite and affiliate shows include “Tokyo-Ga” and “PRC in NYC” at 111 Front St., “The Art of Documentary” at pH Arena, “Liberty and Justice (for All): A Global Photo Mosaic” honoring Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros at VII Gallery, Jeanette May and Jocelyn Chase’s “Creature Features” at A.I.R. Gallery, Rania Matar’s “A Girl and Her Room” at Umbrage Gallery, Andrew Frost’s “The Northeast Kingdom” at United Photo Industries, “Ken Rosenthal: Photographs 2001-2009” and “Vojtech V. Slama: Wolf’s Honey” at Klompching Gallery, “America” at Generation Gallery, and Robin Bowman’s “It’s Complicated ― The American Teenager” at spring. The festival will also host workshops, tutorials, gallery talks, lectures, book signings, and panel discussions; among the highlights are “What Do You Believe In” with Smith-Stewart, DeNike, Simmons, and Matthew Spiegelman (May 17, 3:00); “On the Razor’s Edge: Form and Content in Documentary Photography” with Ruga, Davidson, Lori Grinker, Platon, and Reza (May 17, 7:00); “The Curse and the Gift” with Grunitzky, Kranioti, Krekin, and Witkin (May 18, 3:00); an immersion experience by DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid (May 18, 8:00); “Tokyo-Ga” with Naoko Ohta, Haruna Kawanishi, Yasutaka Kojima, and Corinne Tapia (May 19, 2:00); and Adriana Teresa in conversation with Erin Trieb (May 19, 3:00).