Wind Rose is part of special performance series by Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance (photo by Annie Drew)
Who:Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance What: Climate-change-themed performance series Where:The Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East Fourteenth St. between Second & Third Aves., and online When: May 5-7, $10-$100 Why: New York–based choreographer, dancer, writer, and scholar Jody Sperling, the founding artistic director of Time Lapse Dance (TLD), continues her climate-change-themed collaboration with Alaskan-born composer, sound artist, and eco-acoustician Matthew Burtner with a series of live events May 5-7 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y. TLD will present four shows that investigate the relationship between the body and the environment, with dancers Frances Barker, Morgan Bontz, Carly Cerasuolo, Anika Hunter, Maki Kitahara, Sarah Tracy, Nicole Lemelin, and Sperling and live music by Burtner.
The bill, which marks the company’s return to live, indoor performance in front of an audience after having made numerous dance films during the pandemic, includes the stage premiere of Plastic Harvest, about plastic pollution, performed by dancers immersed in a world of plastic bags; 2019’s Wind Rose, a work about breath and atmosphere for five dancers in flowing white costumes and a soloist in black; 2015’s Ice Cycle, about the melting of the ice caps; and an excerpt from the processional American Elm. It all begins with a gala on May 5 at 7:00 featuring a full performance, an artist talk, and a benefit reception. On May 6 at 7:00, a full performance can be experienced in-person or livestreamed. There will be a family-friendly in-person program May 7 at 2:00, followed by an in-person-only finale at 7:00.
Daniel Raim takes viewers behind the scenes of the making of one of the most beloved musicals of all time in Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen, opening April 29 at the Angelika. Raim follows the development of the 1964 Broadway smash Fiddler on the Roof, which ran for 3,242 performances and won nine of the ten Tonys it was nominated for, into the classic 1971 film that was up for eight Oscars and won three.
The documentary is anchored by a series of talks with Fiddler’s director and producer, Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison, who had previously made The Cincinnati Kid,In the Heat of the Night, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and would go on to direct and produce Jesus Christ Superstar,A Soldier’s Story, and Mooonstruck. One of the first things we learn about Jewison is that he isn’t Jewish.
Recalling the initial meeting he had with United Artists executives, Jewison recalls, “[Studio head] Arthur Krim looked at me and he says, ‘What would you say if we were to say we want you to produce and direct Fiddler on the Roof?’ And my heart came up into my mouth and I thought, Oh my G-d. And I looked over, waited, and they waited, and they all kind of leaned forward. They thought, What is he waiting for? And then I said, ‘What would you say if I told you I’m a goy?’” He got the job because, as Krim explained, “We want a film for everybody.”
Documentary goes behind the scenes of the making of Fiddler on the Roof
Raim incorporates old and/or new interviews with vibrant lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who turns ninety-eight on April 30 (the score was composed by Jerry Bock, who passed away in 2010); musical director and conductor John Williams, who is featured extensively; production designer Robert F. Boyle, who was Raim’s professor at AFI; cinematographer Oswald Morris; American film critic Kenneth Turan; and Israeli star Chaim Topol, who nabbed the role of Tevye from Zero Mostel, who played the anguished, deeply religious father on Broadway. The film is worth seeing just for the lovely interviews with the three actresses who portrayed the three oldest daughters, none of whom marry the men their parents prefer: Rosalind Harris (Tzeitel), Michele Marsh (Hodel), and Neva Small (Chava). “What a gift I was given,” Marsh, nearly in tears, remembers.
Discussing his approach to the cross-cultural nature of the story, which was based on the 1894 Yiddish tales of Tevye the dairyman by Sholem Aleichem, Jewison points out, “Themes of family is universal; everybody has a family — good or bad, right or wrong, we all have a family, and we all have our little problems. But we all end up sitting around the table. And I thought, this is so common, this is something people can understand. They can understand a family. They can understand Golde. They can understand Tevye; they can understand his problems with life and his relationship to G-d. I think all of these things, all put together, make the story of Fiddler on the Roof so compelling.”
More than a dozen years in the making, Fiddler’s Journey can be a bit scattershot and is supplemented with occasional narration by Jeff Goldblum that feels like filler, consisting primarily of excerpts from Jewison’s This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, Alisa Solomon’s Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, and Morris’s Huston, We Have a Problem: A Kaleidoscope of Filmmaking Memories. Unfortuntely, these distract from the main narrative, which is packed with fabulous details about everything from the construction of the synagogue, Frank Sinatra’s desire to play Tevye, and the stocking Boyle placed over the lens of the camera to the influence of Marc Chagall’s paintings, Harris understudying Bette Midler onstage, and the involvement of Isaac Stern.
The wealth of material includes archival stills and film footage, Mentor Huebner’s storyboards, and photos by Roman Vishniac that inspired the look of the movie, which was shot in Lekenik in what was then Yugoslavia. There are also in-depth looks at such treasured songs as “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and “Do You Love Me?”
The Fiddler on the Roof movie might be fifty years old now, but its impact is as powerful and, sadly, as relevant as ever. “One of the things that Fiddler is about: Nothing is permanent,” Turan says. Long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine — Aleichem was born and raised in Kyiv — the show (most recently revived in Yiddish by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage) and the film captured the pain of refugees forced to leave their home. Raim’s (Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, The Man on Lincoln’s Nose about Boyle) documentary was completed prior to the invasion, but it’s impossible to watch it without thinking about all the Anatevkas we see on the news every day, in Ukraine and around the world.
(Raim will be at the Angelika on April 29 and 30 for Q&As following the 7:25 screenings, joined by Small and Harris.)
Gilda, Dow’s Golden Skeleton, is part of Yes Men retrospective at carriage trade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who:The Yes Men What: Exhibition closing reception and catalog launch Where:carriage trade, 277 Grand St. When: Friday, April 29, free, 6:00 Why: For a quarter-century, the Yes Men — Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (or Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) — have been confronting corporate greed and environmental neglect through “identity-correcting” hijinks in which they portray fake entrepreneurs and spokespeople at actual press conferences, conventions, and television news programs. They build realistic sham websites and use forged IDs to gain entrance to locations they have no business being at as they take on George W. Bush, Dow Chemical, the World Trade Organization, ExxonMobil, the New York Times and the New York Post, HUD in New Orleans, the US Chamber of Commerce, Shell Oil, VW, and, most recently, the United Nations COP26 summit. They pull off the pranks with ingenuity, bold daring, and a wild sense of humor, as evidenced by their hysterical “SurvivaBall,” which is on view at carriage trade’s small but terrific Yes Men retrospective.
The show, which has been extended several times because of popular demand, features Dow’s Golden Skeleton, named Gilda, a gold skeleton wearing a beauty contest sash that declares her an “acceptable risk”; a wall of fake Chevron street ads, riffing on the company’s “We Agree” campaign, making such claims as “I can see sludge & dead birds from my window” with a photo of Sarah Palin, “I’m living like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t one” with a photo of Don Draper from Mad Men, “We lie and we don’t care — we love money — fuck the world!” with a photo of Jim Carrey from Liar Liar, and “To prove us likes you us will smash your planet” with a picture of Bizarro Superman; a vitrine of ExxonMobil Vivoleum phallus candles made from the skin of the “late” climate change victim Reggie Watts; and copies of a fake New York Times edition that proclaims, “Iraq War Ends,” “Maximum Wage Law Succeeds,” and “Ex-Secretary Apologizes for W.M.D. Scare,” which you can take home and read to your heart’s delight. There is also a case of newspaper and magazine articles and legal cease and desist orders sent to the Yes Men, a collection of fake IDs they’ve used, a pictorial history of the Golden Phallus stunt, and a room where twenty of their short and full-length films are on continuous rotation, from 1996’s Bringing IT to YOU! to 2021’s “Total Disaster” excerpt from The Fixers.
On April 29 at 6:00, carriage trade will be hosting the closing reception of the exhibition, along with the launch of the seventy-two-page catalog ($25; $20 at the reception). There’s no telling who might be there and in what capacity, so be ready for anything. (For more on the show, check out Montez Press Radio’s interview with Jacques Servin and carriage trade’s Peter Scott here.)
AMOC’s With Care comes to the 92nd St. Y this week (photo by Natalia Perez)
Who:Bobbi Jene Smith,Or Schraiber,Keir GoGwilt, Miranda Cuckson What: New York City premiere of work by AMOC (American Modern Opera Company) Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Center, 1395 Lexington Ave. at Ninety-Second St., and online When: In person Thursday, April 28, $30, 8:00; online April 29, noon, to May 1, midnight, $15 Why: In November 2018, married former Batsheva dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber debuted With Care at ODC Theater in San Francisco, a co-commission with AMOC (American Modern Opera Company). The piece, which explores caregiving, carelessness, and loss — as perceived prior to the pandemic, when those issues took center stage — was created by Smith in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt; the latter performs with violinist Miranda Cuckson as current L.A. Dance Project artists-in-residence Smith and Schraiber, portraying a caregiver and a wounded spirit, move around them.
Directed by Smith and featuring music by AMOC cofounder Matthew Aucoin, the work includes chairs, small wooden slats, and sand with dance, music, and spoken word that should take on new meaning in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. “The original impetus for With Care came out of the last section of my previous work with Keir, A Study on Effort,” Smith said in a statement. “This piece consists of seven efforts, the last of which is the effort of taking care. We thought to expand this study of emotional and physical labor into a theatrical context, investigating the dynamics of caregiving and taking between four characters. Adding Or and Miranda opened a world in which the dynamics of care spiral from empathy to apathy. The more our characters attempt to break free from this cycle, the more they become lost in the maze of their commitments to each other. Yet ultimately the only solace they find is in each other. Never stop caring.”
With Care will be performed live at the 92nd St. Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall on April 28 at 8:00; a recording will be available online from April 29 at noon to May 1 at midnight. For more on Smith and Schraiber, check out Boaz Yakin’s 2019 film, Aviva, and Elvira Lind’s 2017 documentary, Bobbi Jene. The Harkness Main Stage Series continues in May with the Future Dance Festival and in June with Jonathan Fredrickson of Tanztheater Wuppertal.
The Dessoff Choirs presents a cantata by Margaret Bonds made in collaboration with Langston Hughes and inspired by the words of W E B. Du Bois
Who:The Dessoff Choirs What: New York premieres of cantatas by Margaret Bonds Where:Church of the Heavenly Rest, 1085 Fifth Ave. at Ninetieth St. When: Thursday, April 28, $20-$40, 6:45 talk, 7:30 concert Why: “I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell.” So begins W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1904 prose poem Credo, which served as inspiration for African American composer, pianist, teacher, and Chicago native Margaret Bonds’s piano/vocal score that is part of the Dessoff Choirs’ presentation of a pair of New York premieres of cantatas by Bonds, taking place April 28 at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. The company, which was founded in 1924 by Margarete Dessoff, previously released the recording The Ballad of the Brown King & Selected Songs, centered around Bonds’s 1954 collaboration with Langston Hughes about Balthazar, one of the three kings who visited the baby Jesus. At the Heavenly Rest, the Dessoff Choirs, joined by a full orchestra, Grammy-winning bass-baritone Dashon Burton, soprano soloist Janinah Burnett, and the Carter Legacy Singers, will perform I Believe: Credo and Simon Bore the Cross, the latter also a collaboration with Hughes.
“Dessoff is dedicated to performing rarely heard choral masterpieces,” Dessoff music director Malcolm J. Merriweather said in a statement. “We are thrilled to cast a spotlight on Margaret Bonds’s neglected but important contribution to the American music canon. She is a forgotten voice for civil rights that must be remembered, appreciated, and cherished. It seems the time has come for Bonds’s voice to be heard.” The program begins with a preconcert talk at 6:45, followed at 7:30 by Dr. Rollo Dilworth’s seven-movement choral symphony version of Credo and Bonds’s Easter cantata, about Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross; the work was found in a dumpster at a book fair, along with other scores of hers.
An all-star cast celebrates the power of poetry in online benefit for Literacy Partners
Who: Common, Julianne Moore, Liev Scheiber, Danai Gurira, Ethan Hawke, John Leguizamo, Tayari Jones, Cleo Wade, Kiese Laymon, Tommy Orange, Dinaw Mengestu, Kevin Kline, John Lithgow, Megha Majumdar, Zibby Owens, Mira Jacob, more What: Online poetry reading benefiting Literacy Partners Where:Literacy Partners online When: Thursday, April 28, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 8:00 Why: On April 28 at 8:00, Literacy Partners will stream an encore presentation of “I Love This Poem: An Online Reading,” consisting of short works read by such actors as Common, Julianne Moore, Liev Scheiber, Danai Gurira, Ethan Hawke, John Leguizamo, Kevin Kline, and John Lithgow, hosted by Zibby Owens and Mira Jacob. Part of the organization’s literary and social justice series, the event, which was held on May 20, 2021, also features favorite poems read by two students, Angie and Monica. “We present this public reading in celebration of the power of poetry to heal, connect, and inspire us to advocate for a more just and equitable world,” Literacy Partners explains.
The evening includes poems by Fion Lim, Langston Hughes, Natalie Diaz, Billy Collins, Rabindranath Tagore, Lucille Clifton, John Keats, Alice Walker, William Shakespeare, Kim Addonizio, Pablo Neruda, Adrienne Rich, Rodolfo Gonzalez, and Maya Angelou. Literacy Partners was founded in 1973 to “emphasize support for individuals excluded from education because of racial or ethnic segregation and discrimination, economic challenges, sexism, or immigration status.”
Who: Andy Goldsworthy, Brett Littman What: Live and livestreamed discussion about new Andy Goldsworthy exhibition, “Red Flags” Where:Galerie Lelong, 528 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., and Zoom When: Saturday, April 23, free, 11:00 am (exhibition continues through May 7) Why: In September 2020, Cheshire-born, Scotland-based environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy installed 109 hand-painted “Red Flags” in Rockefeller Center, replacing state flags and now featuring the color of the earth from each state. “Collectively I hope they will transcend borders,” he said when he started the project. “The closeness of one flagpole to another means that in certain winds the flags might overlap in a continuous flowing line. My hope is that these flags will be raised to mark a different kind of defense of the land. A work that talks of connection and not division.” He also compared the red earth to the blood running through our veins.
Installation view, Andy Goldsworthy, Red Flags, 2020 (courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York)
The installation has now been reconfigured as an indoor exhibit at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea — whittled down to fifty flags and accompanied by two related videos — where it will be on view through May 7. Goldsworthy’s work with natural materials is well documented, in such films as Thomas Riedelsheimer’s 2001 Rivers and Tides and 2016 Leaning into the Wind as well as Goldsworthy’s permanent Garden of Stones at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. “Red Flags may not have been conceived as a response to recent events, but it is now bound up with the pandemic, lockdown, division, and unrest,” Goldsworthy added back in September 2020. “However, I hope that the flags will be received in the same spirit with which all the red earths were collected — as a gesture of solidarity and support.”
In conjunction with Earth Day, the gallery is hosting a free conversation with Goldsworthy and Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum director Brett Littman, taking place in Chelsea and Zoom on April 23 at 11:00; admission is free in person and online. You can also check out a September 2020 virtual interview Goldsworthy did with the Brooklyn Rail about his flags project and career here.
