The Lars Lubovitch Dance Company will present CRISIS VARIATIONS and HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT at MMAC this weekend (photo by Kokyat)
Manhattan Movement & Arts Center
248 West 60th St. between Amsterdam & West End Aves.
February 10-12, $15-$45
212-787-1178
www.manhattanmovement.com
www.lubovitch.org
Last March, an all-star lineup teamed up for a one-night-only presentation of a new English-language production of Igor Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. The production is now back for three shows this weekend at the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, running February 10-12. The 1918 work, based on a parable about a Russian soldier who makes a deal with the devil, will be conducted by flutist Ransom Wilson for his Le Train Bleu ensemble, with choreography by Lar Lubovitch. The production features Lar Lubovitch Dance Company members Reid Bartelme as the soldier, Nicole Corea as the princess, and Attila Joey Csiki as the devil, with Reed Armstrong acting the part of the devil and Corey Dargel the soldier; Marni Nixon will serve as narrator. The evening will also include Lubovitch’s Crisis Variations, which plays off the word “crisis,” with dancers Katarzyna Skarpetowksa, Brian McGinnis, Corea, Csiki, Reed Luplau, Jason McDole, and Laura Rutledge along with five musicians performing a commissioned score by Yevgeniy Sharlat. The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will then head farther uptown for the Harkness Dance Festival at the 92nd St. Y, where Stripped/Dressed will feature The Legend of Ten and various demonstrations, with Lubovitch discussing the creative process with dance writers Anna Kisselgoff (February 17), Deborah Jowitt (February 18) and Gus Solomons Jr. (February 19).
Avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia) collaborated with Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in the elegiac The Miners’ Hymn, a tribute to the now-gone collieries, or coal mines, of Northeast England. The fifty-two-minute documentary opens with new aerial shots of the locations where the Durham coal mines were, since replaced by luxury housing and megastores. The film shows the birth and death dates of several collieries going back to the nineteenth century, then seamlessly blends into archival black-and-white footage of the miners at work underground, the community coming together for a local fair, and a union rally during a strike that includes a confrontation with the police. There is no text and no narration in The Miners’ Hymn; instead, Morrison’s savvy editing of the found footage, consisting of both moving pictures and still photographs primarily acquired through the British Film Institute and the BBC, brings the old-fashioned town and its old-fashioned ways to vibrant life even though they roll across the screen in slow motion. Jóhannsson’s score punctuates the proceedings with an occasional brassy flare when not sounding more funereal. Despite the lack of text and narration, Morrison’s point of view is clear and all too obvious, paying homage to something that has been lost, and he is never quite able to make an emotional or personal connection with the viewer. However, The Miners’ Hymns contains remarkable footage that still manages to tell an important story, even if it is one-sided and lacking at least a little more historical context. The Miners’ Hymns is playing February 8-14 at Film Forum, along with Morrison’s short films Release (2010), featuring footage of Al Capone’s release from prison, Outerborough (2005), which looks at the Brooklyn Bridge, and The Film of Her (1996), a documentary about a Library of Congress copyright office employee who finds a vault full of old paper movies. Morrison will be at Film Forum for the 8:00 show on February 8, which will also feature live violin by Todd Reynolds. 
Born in 1945 in rural Georgia to a mother who abandoned him when he was three months old, Winfred Rembert grew up picking cotton, dropped out of high school, spent time in jail and on a chain gang, and lost nearly all his teeth. But it was his years behind bars that turned him into a new man, as he learned to read and write and developed a unique art style that soon had him carving out the tales of his life on leather. Longtime journalist, producer, and writer Vivian Ducat tells Rembert’s amazing story in her engaging feature-length debut, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert. Ducat follows the oversized Rembert, who regularly bubbles over with joy, as he returns for a show in Cuthbert, Georgia, and prepares for a big opening in New York City. “I know he’s here for a reason,” his sister Lorraine says in the film. “To help people and to be a witness through his art.” Throughout All Me, Rembert discusses many of his works, in which he uses indelible dyes on carved leather, in great detail, each one representing a part of his life, focusing on being a poor black man in a white-dominated society. It is quite poignant late in the film when he points out that his art seems to be most appreciated by whites even though it is meant as a visual history for blacks. But what really makes the documentary work is not just that Rembert is such an enigmatic, larger-than-life figure but that his art is exceptional, his self-taught, folksy style reminiscent of such forebears as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, capturing a deeply personal, intensely intimate part of the black experience in twentieth-century America. Rembert, one of the most fascinating characters you’re ever likely to come upon, will be at the Pelham Fritz Recreation Center on February 9 at 1:00 with Ducat and producer Mark Urman for a free screening of All Me, and what should be an enlightening Q&A afterward. (Rembert and Uman will also be at the Montclair Art Museum on February 16 at 7:00 as part of the fifth annual Montclair African American Film Festival, which is also free.) And if you’re as captivated by Rembert’s story as we are, you can see more of his work in his “Amazing Grace” exhibition, running through May 5 at the 
