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

JOHN JASPERSE: CANYON

John Jasperse’s CANYON should delight audiences at BAM this week

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 16-19, $16-$45, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In works such as Becky, Jodi and John at Dance Theater Workshop, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies at the Joyce, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution at BAM’s 2007 Next Wave Festival, New York City–based choreographer John Jasperse has shared intimate moments with the audience in creating unusual and often challenging evenings of dance theater. This week Jasperse and his Thin Man Dance company return to BAM to present the New York premiere of Canyon, which deals with “the transformative power of losing oneself in visceral experience.” Running November 16-19, the seventy-minute piece features dancers Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn, a live score by Hahn Rowe, visual design by Tony Orrico, and lighting by James Clotfelter. There will be an artist talk with Jasperse and his collaborators following Thursday night’s performance, moderated by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, whose book Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe influenced the making of Canyon.

John Jasperse’s CANYON celebrates the thrill of the dance (photo by Tony Orrico)

Updated: Dance does not always have to be about something. In such previous works as Becky, Jodi and John, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution, John Jasperse dealt with a number of themes, from personal relationships and environmentalism to the fine line between fantasy and reality. In his latest evening-length piece, Jasperse eschews high concept in favor of, quite simply, the thrill of the dance. The seventy-minute Canyon puts Jasperse’s breathtaking choreography front and center, a celebration of the joy of movement, with Jasperse, Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn running, jumping, twisting, and rolling to an exciting score composed by Hahn Rowe and performed live by Olivia De Prato on violin, Ha-Yang Kim on cello, Doug Wieselman on bass clarinet, and Rowe on violin, guitar, and electronics. Because this is Jasperse, there are odd elements as well, courtesy of visual designer Tony Orrico, that include yellow tape that begins outside on the street and wends its way through the BAM Harvey lobby and bathrooms and into the theater, down the steps, across the stage, and onto the back wall, where they resemble an abstract map. Meanwhile, a large white box continually roams the space, adding to the fun. And what fun it is.

THE ART OF THE DATE: A GALLERY WALK ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE

Lower East Side Visitor Center
54 Orchard St. between Grand & Hester Sts.
Wednesday, November 16, free with RSVP, 6:00 – 9:00
www.newyorkdating.eventbrite.com
www.lowereastsideny.com

In the 1972 comedy Play It Again, Sam, Allan (Woody Allen) is in a museum trying to pick up a woman (Diana Davila). “What are you doing Saturday night?” he asks her. “Committing suicide,” she replies, to which Allan responds, “What about Friday night?” On Wednesday, November 16, it might not be so dire as a group of singles mingle for an evening of free art, conversation, music, and drinks and snacks. “The Art of the Date: A Gallery Walk on the Lower East Side” will take participants (free with advance RSVP) from the Lower East Side Visitors Center on Orchard St. to four nearby galleries: Lesley Heller Workspace, which currently has a solo show by Tom Kotik and a group show called “Headcase”; Lost Weekend NYC, which is displaying 1980s photographs by celebrity snapper Patrick McMullan; Dino Eli Gallery, which is showing “Artists on the Prowl: The Hunter, the Wanderer, the Trash Collector & the Street Master”: and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, which is featuring “Transformation and Perception: Paintings by Jill Weber.” In addition to the art, there will be free food from Bruschetteria, PopChips, and Lucky Penny Bake Shop, free drinks courtesy of Beck’s, and music by DJ Michael Little.

SELECTED SHORTS: MIRANDA JULY PRESENTS IT CHOOSES YOU

Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Wednesday, November 16, $15-$27, 7:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.mirandajuly.com

In her second feature-length film, The Future, writer-director-star Miranda July extensively researched PennySaver ads to develop a major plot point — and even discovered Joe Putterlik, who played an important role in the indie flick. The author of the delightful short-story collection No one belongs here more than you., July has turned her PennySaver adventures into It Chooses You (McSweeney’s, November 15, 2011, $24), a book that details her adventures tracking down some of the people who advertise in the paper, accompanied by photographs by Brigitte Sire. “Tuesday was the day the PennySaver booklet was delivered,” July writes early on. “It came hidden among the coupons and other junk mail. I read it while I ate lunch, and then, because I was in no hurry to get back to not writing, I usually kept reading it straight through to the real estate ads in the back. I carefully considered each item — not as a buyer, but as a curious citizen of Los Angeles. Each listing was like a very brief newspaper article. News flash: someone in LA is selling a jacket. The jacket is leather. It is also large and black. The person thinks it is worth ten dollars. But the person is not very confident about that price, and is willing to consider other, lower prices. I wanted to know more things about what this leather-jacket person thought, how they were getting through the days, what they hoped, what they feared — but none of that information was listed. What was listed was the person’s phone number.” The multimedia performance artist, whose interactive “Eleven Heavy Things” filled Union Square Park back in the summer of 2010, will be at Symphony Space on November 16 for a special presentation of the “Selected Shorts” series, performing selections from It Chooses You with Olga Merediz, Adrian Martinez, and Tom Bloom. July is an endearing, engaging figure, so it should make for a memorable event. The evening will begin with Betty Gilpin reading Hannah Pittard’s “Orion’s Belt.” (July will also be reading from and signing copies of It Chooses You at BookCourt in Brooklyn on November 15 at 7:00.)

ANATOMY OF A BREAKOUT

Sameul L. Jackson will take part in special Drama Desk panel discussion on such recent Broadway breakouts as THE MOUNTAINTOP

Fordham Mainstage at Lincoln Center
Pope Auditorium
113 West 60th St. at Columbus Ave.
Sunday, November 13, $15-$20, 6:30
www.dramadesk.org

The Drama Desk and the Fordham University Theatre Program are teaming up November 13 to present a special panel discussion, “Anatomy of a Breakout,” that examines just what it takes for a play, as well as an individual performance, to break through and become a critical and/or popular success. Editor and critic Randy Gener and Drama Desk vice president Leslie (Hoban) Blake will moderate an illustrious panel that features book writer Douglas Carter Beane, composer/lyricist Lewis Flinn, choreographer/director Dan Knechtges, and actress Liz Mikel of Lysistrata Jones; playwright David Henry Hwang, director Leigh Silverman, and actress Jennifer Lim of Chinglish; Venus in Fur playwright David Ives; actor Samuel L. Jackson of The Mountaintop; and Stick Fly and The Mountaintop director Kenny Leon. Tickets are $15 for Drama Desk members (which includes us) and their guests and $20 for the general public with advanceRSVP. The discussion will take place in front of the backdrop being used for Matthew Maguire’s production of Pierre Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro for the Fordham University Theatre Company, which continues November 11 and 17-19.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: ALL FOR ONE THEATER FESTIVAL

MONSTER is just one of the solo plays in this year’s inaugural All for One Theater Festival

Theater 80 St. Marks
80 St. Marks Pl. at First Ave.
November 11-20, $20
www.afofest.org
www.theatre80.net

The inaugural All for One Theater Festival gets under way tonight at Theater 80 St. Marks in the East Village, kicking off ten days of solo performances and panel discussions. Among the shows are Over There — Comedy Is His Best Weapon, in which PJ Walsh gets funny about his stint in Afghanistan; unFRAMED, with Iyaba Ibo Mandingo telling the story of his illegal emigration from Antigua; Monster, with Avery Pearson playing sixteen characters in Daniel MacIvor’s chilling tale; the emotional Happiness, written by and starring Heather Harpham; and RASH, in which Jenni Wolfson delves into her time spent as a UN worker in Rwanda. There are also such free panels as “Why Solo Performance Matters,” “Directing the Solo Show,” “How to Best Enter and Utilize the Festival Circuit,” and “Producing and Contracting for Your Solo Show.”

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets to each All for One Theater Festival show is $20, but we have five pairs of tickets to give away for free. To be eligible to win, just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite solo show to contest@twi-ny.com. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; the first five responses will win a pair of tickets to the show of their choice.

MARGARET MEAD FILM FESTIVAL: 35th ANNIVERSARY

The thirty-fifth annual Margaret Mead Film Festival is sure to take viewers to places they’ve never been

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th St.
November 10-13, $12-$40
212-769-5200
www.amnh.org/mead

“The first Margaret Mead Film Festival, held on Mead’s own seventy-fifth birthday and her fiftieth year at the [American Museum of Natural History], was meant to be a one-time celebration, but it became one of the most enduring legacies in support of visual anthropologists, inspiring generations of anthropologists and filmmakers, including myself,” writes Faye Ginsburg in the brochure for the thirty-fifth annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, running November 10-13 at AMNH. Ginsburg, an anthropology professor and director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History at NYU, will be moderating the panel discussion “How Do We Look?” on November 13 at 4:30, examining the history of the first documentary festival of its kind. Lotte Stoops’s Grande Hotel is the opening-night selection, while Meshakai Wolf’s Flames of God, introduced by Darren Aronofsky, closes things out on Sunday night. In between are such new documentaries as Robert Nugent’s Memoirs of a Plague and Alain LeTourneau and Pam Minty’s Empty Quarter along with retrospective screenings of Jean Rouch’s Jaguar from 1967, John Marshall and Adrienne Miesmer’s N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman from 1980, and Gregory Bateson and Mead’s Trance and Dance in Bali from 1952. Many of the screenings will include appearances by the filmmakers and subjects in addition to related live performances, most notably following Katja Esson’s Skydancer on Sunday afternoon. With the continual technological leaps being made these days, the world might appear to be getting smaller and smaller, but it still takes a festival such as the Mead to help open one’s eyes to what is really going on out there.

OTHER ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL

JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at West 76th St.
Cinema Village, 22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
November 10-17, free-$12
646-505-5708
www.otherisrael.org

The fifth annual Other Israel Film Festival, whose stated goal “is to promote awareness and appreciation of the diversity of the state of Israel, provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for exploration of, and dialogue about, populations in margins of Israeli society, and encourage cinematic expression and creativity dealing with these themes,” begins tonight with an opening-night gala screening of Dani Menkin and Yonatan Nir’s Dolphin Boy at the JCC in Manhattan, about an Arab boy being bullied in northern Israel. The festival continues at the JCC and Cinema Village with screenings of such films as Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Ester Gould’s Shout, Eitan Tzur’s Naomi (Hitpartzut X), Kikuo Kawasaki’s David & Kamal, and Ibtisam Mara’ana’s 77 Steps as well as the U.S. premiere of the Israeli version of The Office television series. In addition, there will be free storytelling by Deborah Da Costa, panel discussions, Q&As, the photography exhibit “Through Others’ Eyes,” and such special guests as Mohammad Bakri, Sigal Emanuel, Caryn James, Ronit Kertsner, Ilan Kutz, Dov Waxman, and Tamar Zandberg.