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

FIRST SATURDAYS: BLACK MALES DEFYING STEREOTYPES

Chris Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas, with Kamal Sinclair and Bayeté Ross Smith, stills from “Question Bridge: Black Males,” multichannel video installation, 2012 (courtesy of the artists and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum turns its attention to Black History Month for its February First Saturdays program, focusing on the exhibition “Question Bridge: Black Males,” in which Hank Willis Thomas, Chris Johnson, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair traveled around the country interviewing 150 black men in a dozen locations and editing the results into a multiscreen video installation. On Saturday night there will be an Action Station where visitors can add their own questions on the topic of identity, a discussion with the creative team, pop-up dances by Renegade Performance Group inspired by the exhibit, an interactive workshop led by “Question Bridge” education director Samara Gaev, and a dance party with DJ Stormin’ Norman featuring songs by black men. In addition, there will be live music by Game Rebellion, curator Shantrelle P. Lewis will discuss her Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts exhibit “Dandy Lion: A Re(de)fined Black Masculine Identity,” hands-on art will help attendees create a mixed-media piece based on Kehinda Wiley’s work, museum guides will lead a tour about defying gender stereotypes, Daniel Bernard Roumain will play parts of his “Symphony for the Dance Floor” with Lord Jamar, Carla Peterson will discuss her book Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City, and the Brooklyn Circus will host a fashion runway show. And the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” “Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin,” “Raw/Cooked: Shura Chernozatonskaya,” “Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919,” “Work of Art: Kymia Nawabi,” and “19th-Century Modern.”

WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON CASSAVETES?

Mounira Al Solh’s “Dinosaurs” pays tribute to John Cassavetes at Art in General

Art in General
79 Walker St. between Broadway & Lafayette St.
Friday, February 3, 7:00
212-219-0473
www.artingeneral.org

Pioneering improvisational writer-director John Cassavetes, who made such searing, emotional, cinema vérité films as Shadows, Faces, Husbands, and A Woman Under the Influence, died on February 3, 1989, at the age of fifty-nine. Art in General will honor the influential auteur at a special program on the twenty-third anniversary of his death, “What’s your take on Cassavetes?” being held in conjunction with Mounira Al Solh’s new exhibition, “Dinosaurs,” a film installation inspired by four of Cassavetes’ character-driven works, Faces, Husbands, Opening Night, and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Al Solh will talk about and present clips from the four films, followed by a screening of the complete Faces, which stars Gena Rowlands, Seymour Casssel, John Marley, Fred Draper, and Val Avery and was added to the National Film Registry of the Library Congress last year. Also on view at Art in General right now are Katrin Sigurdardóttir’s “Stage” and Theresa Himmer’s “All State.”

FIRST FRIDAYS: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975

Angela Davis speaks out about the Black Power movement in compelling documentary

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011)
Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 166th St.
Friday, February 3, free, 6:00 – 10:00
Admission: free
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org
www.blackpowermixtape.com

From 1967 to 1975, a group of more than two dozen Swedish journalists came to America to document the civil rights movement. More than thirty years later, director and cinematographer Göran Hugo Olsson discovered hours and hours of unused 16mm footage — the material was turned into a program shown only once in Sweden and seen nowhere else — and developed it into The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a remarkable visual and aural collage that focuses on the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, a critical part of American history that has been swept under the rug. Olsson and Hanna Lejonqvist have seamlessly edited together startlingly intimate footage of such seminal figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, including a wonderfully personal scene in which Carmichael interviews his mother on her couch. But the star of the film is the controversial political activist Angela Davis, who allowed the journalists remarkable access, particularly in a jailhouse interview shot in color. (Most of the footage is in black and white.) Davis also adds contemporary audio commentary, sharing poignant insight about that tumultuous period, along with Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets, singer Erykah Badu, professor, poet, and playwright Sonia Sanchez, Roots drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson (who also composed the film’s score with Om’Mas Keith), and rapper Talib Kweli, who discusses specific scenes in the film with a thoughtful grace and intelligence. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an extraordinary look back at a crucial moment in time that has long been misunderstood, if not completely forgotten. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is screening on February 3 as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ free First Fridays program honoring Black History Month and will be followed by a Q&A with coproducer Joslyn Barnes. There will also be performances by GIF, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Mahogany L. Browne, and M.C. K~Swift, and the galleries will remain open until 10:00, giving visitors plenty of time to check out the exhibition “Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx” and the Acconci Studio long-term installation “Lobby-for-the-Time-Being.”

JIN XING DANCE THEATRE SHANGHAI: SHANGHAI TANGO

Jin Xing Dance Theatre Shanghai makes a very welcome return to the Joyce with SHANGHAI TANGO (photo by Angelo Palombini)

Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 31 – February 5, $10-$39
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org

Performing in New York City for the first time since undergoing gender reassignment surgery fifteen years ago, ballerina, choreographer, and People’s Liberation Army colonel Jin Xing leads her company, Jin Xing Dance Theatre Shanghai, in a lyrical, beautiful, stirring show at the Joyce. Jin Xing — who was born to Korean parents in Shanghai in 1967, is married to a German man, and has three adopted children — fills Shanghai Tango with ten exquisite works from throughout her career. The show opens with Liu Minzi spinning around and around on her toes, a light shining on her from above, casting a holy glow as twelve dancers pick up flowing white robes that surround her, the spirit of dance gathering her disciples as Dead Can Dance’s “The Host of Seraphim” plays. It’s a captivating narrative that prepares the audience for an evening of gorgeous set pieces featuring colorful, elegant costumes designed by Jin Xing, an eclectic score with music by Johann Strauss, John Williams, Astor Piazzola, and Rene Aubry, a lovely, unique movement vocabulary that mixes modern dance with ballet, numerous references to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and a surprising sense of humor. In “Dance 02,” Dai Shaoting and Han Bin deliver a stunning pas de deux, spending much of the time with their backs on the floor, at one point Dai delicately balancing on Han with one leg on his chest and the other on his raised knee. In “Red Wine,” the male members of the company move around Jin Xing, who is seated in a chair, and ultimately give her the world’s biggest lap dance. In “Four Happiness,” Deng Mengna, Li Meilin, Liu Minzi, and Pang Kun dance on their knees all in a row, with Wang Peng’s lighting casting large shadows of the women on the back wall. In “Shanghai Tango,” Sun Zhuzhen, Han Bin, Wang Tao, and Liu Xianyi pose for an old-time family photo, but Sun is more interested in the man over her right shoulder than in her husband, who is sitting beside her. And all of that happens before intermission. The second act includes five more works that feature yet more dazzling costumes, breathtaking lifts, holds, and carries, sexy poses, a dazzling duet between Lu Ge and Liu Xianyi, such props as red fans, bicycles, and lilting sheets, and other inventive creations by Jin Xing and her remarkably talented company. Shanghai Tango, which continues at the Joyce through February 5 (with a postshow Dance Chat on February 1 and a preshow Dance Talk on February 2), marks the very welcome return of Jin Xing to New York; she’s been away far too long.

MEET MIKE DOUGHTY: THE BOOK OF DRUGS

Mike Doughty will be at TriBeCa B&N on February 2 for a special performance, signing, and discussion (photo by Deborah Lopez)

Barnes & Noble
97 Warren St. at Greenwich St.
Thursday, February 2, free, 6:00
212-587-5389
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.mikedoughty.com

Mike Doughty first entered the New York scene back in 1991, when he was writing about life and music for the New York Press in its early heyday; using the names M. Doughty and Dirty Sanchez at the alternative weekly, he was part of a cast of characters that also included Sam Sifton, Jim Knipfel, Jonathan Ames, and Amy Sohn. The forty-one-year-old former Knitting Factory doorman started the band Soul Coughing in 1992, releasing such well-received albums as Ruby Vroom and Irresistible Bliss before breaking up in 2000. Doughty digs deep into the details of that time in The Book of Drugs (Da Capo, January 2012, $16), a no-holds-barred look at that old music cliché, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. “I can’t renounce drugs. I love drugs,” he writes in the memoir. “I’d never trade the part of my life when the drugs worked, though the bulk of the time I spent getting high, they weren’t doing shit for me. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t do drugs first. This part of my life — even minus the bursts of euphoria — is better, sexier, happier, more poetic, more romantic, grander.” Doughty gets right down to business in the book, telling it like it is, at least as far as he can remember, making no excuses or philosophizing about the things he did as Soul Coughing exploded and then imploded. He talks about hanging out and doing drugs with Jeff Buckley, spends three pages listing random women that he screwed, admits that “puking became so normal that I stopped kneeling,” and regularly questions his own talent. Well, he needn’t worry about that last thing, as Doughty is damn good at what he does, as evidenced by this lighthearted yet involving memoir, his work with Soul Coughing, and such solo records as 2005’s Haughty Melodic, 2009’s Sad Man Happy Man, last year’s Yes and Also Yes (named after his profile headline on an online dating site), and the just-released The Question Jar Show, a live album interspersed with Doughty answering questions from the audience in between songs. The Brooklyn-based Doughty will be at the TriBeCa Barnes & Noble on February 2 at 6:00, signing copies of The Book of Drugs, talking about his life and career, taking questions, and playing a few songs as well.

BRAINWAVE: IT COULD CHANGE YOUR MIND

Artist Sean Scully and neurology professor Anjan Chatterjee will examine “Abstract Cognition” as part of the Rubin’s fifth annual Brainwave festival

Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
February 4 – April 23, $14-$30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org/brainwave

Don’t forget to pick up tickets for the Rubin Museum’s fifth annual Brainwave festival, in which artists and neuroscientists team up to discuss personal and professional aspects of this year’s central topic, memory. Each session includes a brief mnemonic art tour of the galleries and a karma “telephone” chain that will wind down the spiral staircase left over from when the space belonged to Barneys, if you can remember that far back. The series begins this Saturday afternoon, February 4, with painter Sean Scully and neurology professor Anjan Chatterjee delving into “Abstract Cognition” and is followed by such other pairings as broadcaster Jane Pauley and computational neuroscience professor Sebastian Seung discussing “Welcome to Connectome” on February 8, roboticist Heather Knight and brain researcher Dave Carmel screening and discussing Alex Gabbay’s documentary Just Trial and Error: Conversations on Consciousness on February 18, actor Scott Shepherd and hippocampus expert John Kubie getting into “Committing the Great American Novel to Memory” on March 4, comedian Lewis Black and Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. Barry Gordon screening Gaylen Ross’s Caris’ Peace and asking “What’s My Line?” in regard to short-term memory on March 7, author Diane Ackerman and clinical neurologist and professor Dr. Todd C. Sacktor examining “Using and Losing Language” on April 14, and gourmand Ruth Reichl and psychology professor Paul Rozin exploring Proust and “The Madeleine Syndrome” on April 23. In conjunction with Brainwave, a new Cabaret Cinema series, “You Must Remember This,” begins Friday night with Casablanca, introduced by artist Samuel Cucher, and continues February 10 with Claudia Shear introducing Mae West in She Done Him Wrong, Fern Mallis introducing Gigi on February 17, and Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas on February 24, with other films scheduled through April 27. “In this year’s [Brainwave] series we will look at the role memory has played in the past,” notes Rubin producer Tim McHenry, “and the debatable role it plays in our contemporary cut-and-paste culture.”

METS IN THE MORNING: MILESTONES, MEMORIES, MIRACLES, AND MORE

Mets legend Bud Harrelson will take part in fiftieth anniversary conference on January 28

Society of American Baseball Research
Mid-Manhattan Library
40th St. & Fifth Ave., sixth floor
Saturday, January 28, $25 with preregistration, 10:00 am – 3:30 pm
www.nyc.sabr.org

Back in 1962, a new baseball team came to town, a group of ne’er-do-wells that finished a woeful 40-120 under the leadership of the great Casey Stengel. For the New York Mets’ first seven seasons, they finished either ninth or tenth out of ten teams in their division but then miraculously pulled off the amazing feat of winning the World Series in 1969. The franchise has been back in the doldrums for the last three seasons, and not much is expected of them this year either. But you can expect lots of special events surrounding the team’s fiftieth anniversary, looking back at both the good days and the bad. On January 28, the Society of American Baseball Research will honor the Mets at its annual Casey Stengel Chapter meeting, which is open to the public. At 10:30, Ernestine Miller will moderate “Mets in the Morning: Milestones, Memories, Miracles, and More,” a panel discussion and Q&A with shortstop Bud Harrelson, statistical analysts Benjamin Baumer and TJ Barra, and memorabilia collector Harvey Poris. Following a lunch break, historian Lee Lowenfish, Yankees scout Cesar Presbott, and Cubs scout Billy Blitzer will talk about the state of professional scouting. At 2:00, George Vecsey will lecture on his sports writing career and his latest book, Stan Musial: An American Life. Stan Teitelbaum will conclude the all-day symposium with the research presentation “How Sports Writers Influence the Image of Major Leaguers.”