Eiko and Koma will perform in Lincoln Center’s Paul Milstein Pool as part of free Out of Doors Festival (photo by Robert G. Sanchez)
Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Paul Milstein Pool, Hearst Plaza
July 27-31, free, 9:30
212-875-5000
www.lcoutofdoors.org
www.eikoandkoma.org
In the spring, innovative New York-based dancers and choreographers Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma performed the powerful Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a free, haunting “living installation” in which the longtime couple moved perilously slowly in a postapocalyptic organic environment that included tantalizing drips of water coming from the ceiling. For their latest site-specific work, Eiko and Koma will perform in the Paul Milstein Pool at Hearst Plaza, July 27-31 at 9:30, as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. Native American flutist-composer Robert Mirabal will accompany the dancers in the water, playing his original score live. Also on hand will be Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure,” which has occupied the pool for years. The new piece was partly inspired by Eiko and Koma’s 1995 River, which takes place in moving water and was recently reconstructed for the 2011 American Dance Festival; water has also played a role in such previous productions as Elegy (1984), Thirst (1985), and Passage (1989). “In this most urban landscape of midtown Manhattan, we also intend to remember and imagine the ancient water all living things came from and each of us was born from,” they explain in a program note. “Finally, many recent disasters remind us that water’s seeming calm is illusory.” It is appropriate that Water is taking place in a reflecting pool, as Lincoln Center is also hosting “Residue,” a multimedia exhibition that looks back at Eiko and Koma’s long career in conjunction with their ongoing Retrospective Project, featuring video, sets, costumes, and the extraordinary structure built for Naked. The display continues at the Astor Gallery at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through October 30. On July 28 at 6:00, Dance magazine editor in chief Wendy Perron will speak with Eiko and Koma and show several of their short videos, including My Parents, The Retrospective Project, Dancing in Water: The Making of River, and The Making of Cambodian Stories. All events are free and open to the public.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s tribute to the late Sidney Lumet continues tonight with two of the Philadelphia-born New Yorker’s greatest works, a pair of tense, powerful fact-based dramas starring Bronx native Al Pacino that helped define the 1970s, both onscreen and off. First up, at 6:30, is one of the most bizarre bank robberies gone wrong you’ll ever see, Dog Day Afternoon. Pacino stars as Sonny, a confused young man desperate to get money to pay for his boyfriend’s (Chris Sarandon) sex-change operation. But things don’t go quite as planned, and soon Sonny is leading the gathered crowd in chants of “Attica! Attica!” while his partner, Sal (John Cazale), wants a plane to take them to Wyoming and Det. Moretti (Charles Durning) is trying to get them to surrender without hurting anyone, primarily themselves. Dog Day Afternoon is a blistering, funny, biting commentary on mid-’70s New York as well as a fascinating character study of a deeply conflicted man. Following at 9:00 is another gritty, realistic drama, Serpico, with Pacino giving an unforgettable performance as an undercover cop single-handedly trying to end the rampant corruption that has spread like a disease throughout the NYPD. When his fellow officers and supposed friends turn their back on him, he is left on his own, vulnerable but still committed, risking both his career and his life to do what he thinks is right. Pacino is explosive in both films, playing two very different protagonists on different sides of the law yet similar in so many ways. “Prince of the City: Remembering Sidney Lumet” features three other Lumet films today, 1978’s The Wiz (10:30 am), 1968’s The Sea Gull (1:15), and 1988’s Running on Empty (4:00), while tomorrow’s schedule includes 1962’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (12:30), 1990’s Q&A (4:00), and 1981’s Prince of the City (7:15), the latter two followed by Q&As with cast members and real characters depicted in the films.
