Tag Archives: abrons arts center

COIL 2014

Multiple venues
January 3 – February 1, $15-$20
212-352-2101
www.ps122.org

PS122’s East Village home might be under renovation, but that isn’t stopping the organization from presenting the ninth annual incarnation of its winter performance festival, Coil. This year’s festivities comprise nine cutting-edge works in various disciplines, with tickets for all shows only $20, so there’s no reason not to check out at least one of these unique, unusual productions. Reid Farrington stages the ultimate heavyweight match in the world premiere of Tyson vs. Ali at the 3LD Art & Technology Center (January 3-19), in which live action and multiple screens pit Mike Tyson against Muhammad Ali. Mac Wellman’s Muazzez at the Chocolate Factory (January 7-17), from “A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds,” transports the audience, and actor Steve Mellor, into outer space. Heather Kravas’s a quartet at the Kitchen (January 8-12) consists of four dancers performing four dances in four parts each. Director Phil Soltanoff, systems designer Rob Ramirez, and writer Joe Diebes boldly go where no one has gone before in An Evening with William Shatner Asterisk at the New Ohio Theatre (January 9-12), creating a hybrid work highlighted by humans interacting with video clips of words spoken by Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek but strung into new thoughts and statements. Tina Satter’s highly stylized House of Dance at Abrons Arts Center (January 9-13) investigates a tap-dance contest and the relationship between a teacher and his student. The performance series CATCH 60 celebrates its tenth anniversary with the one-night-only CATCH Takes the Decade at the Invisible Dog Art Center (January 11), with works by Cynthia Hopkins, Molly Lieber & Eleanor Smith, Anna Sperber, Ivy Baldwin, and others. Okwui Okpokwasili’s solo Bronx Gothic at Danspace Project (January 14 – February 1) is a song-and-movement-based coming-of-age story about two eleven-year-old girls. All three parts of Jeremy Xido’s solo piece The Angola Project will take place at the Invisible Dog (January 14-17). And family tragedy lies at the center of Brokentalkers’ Have I No Mouth at Baryshnikov Arts Center (January 14-26), with company director Feidlim Cannon and his mother trying to put things back together. In addition, the Red + White Party will get folks mingling as SPIN New York on January 12 ($30 and up) with Elevator Repair Service, and the SPAN conversation series will be held at NYU on January 18.

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Sineglossa’s REMEMBER ME is part of second Queer New York International Arts Festival

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
October 23 – November 3, free – $18 (many shows $10 suggested donation)
212-598-0400
www.queerny.org
www.abronsartscenter.org

In a 2012 Huffington Post blog about the first Queer New York International Arts Festival, artistic codirector André von Ah wrote, “Queerness, in perhaps its barest and most basic concept, is about breaking the rules, shaking things up, and challenging preconceived ideas.” The second QNYIA continues to shake things up with twelve days and nights of performances, panel discussions, film screenings, workshops, and other events at such venues as Abrons Arts Center, the Invisible Dog, La MaMa, Joe’s Pub, and New York Live Arts, but sadly, it will be proceeding without von Ah, who curated this year’s programming with artistic director Zvonimir Dobrović but sadly passed away suddenly last month, still only in his mid-twenties. This year’s festival, which is dedicated to von Ah, opens October 23 with the U.S. premiere of Ivo Dimchev’s P-Project at Abrons Arts Center, the Bulgarian artist’s interactive piece that uses words that begin with the letter P to investigate societal taboos. Italy’s Sineglossa uses mirrored screens in Remember Me, based on Henry Purcell’s opera about Dido and Aeneas. Audience favorite Raimund Hoghe pays special tribute to von Ah with An Evening with Judy, in which he channels Judy Garland, Maria Callas, and others. Poland’s SUKA OFF investigates skin shedding in its multimedia Red Dragon. Brazil’s Ângelo Madureira plays “the dreamer” in his contemporary dance piece Delírio. Croatia’s Room 100 presents the U.S. premiere of its dark, experimental C8H11NO2. Dan Fishback offers a concert reading of The Material World at Joe’s Pub, the sequel to You Will Experience Silence; Fishback will also participate in the October 26 panel discussion “Creating Queer / Curating Queer” at the New School with Carla Peterson, Tere O’Connor, TL Cowan, Susana Cook, and Dobrović. The Club at La MaMa will host the New Music Series, featuring M Lamar, Shane Shane, Enid Ellen, Nath Ann Carrera, and Max Steele. The festival also includes works by Bojana Radulović, Elisa Jocson, Guillermo Riveros, Daniel Duford, Bruno Isaković, Gabriela Mureb, Heather Litteer, CHOKRA, Antonia Baehr, and Antoni Karwowski, with most shows requiring advance RSVPs and requesting a $10 suggested donation.

JACK FERVER: ALL OF A SUDDEN

Jack Ferver delves into Tennessee Williamsʼs SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER in new multidisciplinary piece (photo by Al Hall)

Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
May 2-4, $20, 8:00
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.jackferver.org

In our May 2012 interview with the great Jack Ferver, he tantalizingly described what he was working on next, a piece entitled All of a Sudden. “It is loosely inspired by Tennessee Williamsʼs Suddenly, Last Summer and explores the similarities between the artist/dramaturg and the patient/therapist relationship,” he said. “ Of course, it was a play before the film, but having played Cleopatra this past year [in Me, Michelle], I feel I am being haunted by Liz in some way.” Ferver has previously brought his unique interpretation, melding dance, theater, confessional, psychoanalysis, and multimedia elements, to such disparate films as Notes on a Scandal, Poltergeist, Black Swan, and Return to Oz. This time he has set his sights on the steamy story about an institutionalized woman and her sordid southern family, which debuted on Broadway in 1958 and was made into a film the next year by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with an all-star cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn, Albert Dekker, and Mercedes McCambridge. Ferver collaborated with Joshua Lubin-Levy on the new show, which will be performed by the two men along with Jacob Slominski; music and sound design is by regular Ferver composer Roarke Menzies, with set design by Marc Swanson (Ferver’s Two Alike) and costumes by Reid Bartelme (Mon Ma Mes). Ferver has an endlessly inventive imagination that is thrilling to watch onstage; he’s never afraid to take chances as he opens up his heart and soul — and injects ample amounts of his wicked sense of humor — in fabulously entertaining and deeply personal ways. All of a Sudden runs May 2-4 at Abrons Arts Center, and you’d be doing yourself a great disservice if you missed it.

Update: Jack Ferver blurs the lines between audience and performer, creation and execution, and straight and gay in All of a Sudden, his latest multimedia work to use film as a way to tell a more personal story. This time Ferver focuses in on Tennessee Williams’s 1959 melodrama Suddenly, Last Summer, in which Catherine, a southern woman played by Elizabeth Taylor, is in a mental institution, being treated by a doctor (Montgomery Clift) who is trying to get her to remember a tragic event before her aunt (Katharine Hepburn) forces her to get a lobotomy. The show opens with Ferver, as Catherine, overemoting and Jacob Slominski, as the doctor, underemoting, as Joshua Lubin-Levy sits in a chair across the stage, carefully watching and taking notes. It soon becomes apparent that the three men are in the midst of creating the piece, which is far from done, discussing various elements and possible changes. At one point Slominski goes off to call his wife while Ferver and Lubin-Levy look at clips from Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film on an old television set that mimics a theatrical dressing-room mirror, and later Ferver and Slominski break off into duets that include lots of kissing. They also at times directly address the audience, acknowledging that they are being viewed while still, in essence, rehearsing. It’s all great fun, but with more than a touch of seriousness to go with the humor. The set, designed by Marc Swanson, features a group of ropes dangling from above in one corner, evoking death and suicide, while Reid Bartelme’s costumes for Ferver are spectacularly beautiful, from ridiculously tight and tiny green body-hugging shorts to an elegant, sparkling red sequined dress. As always, Ferver adds an occasional level of discomfort to the fanciful proceedings, keeping the audience on edge, never knowing quite what is going to happen next as fantasy morphs into reality and back again, art and life becoming one and the same.

AMERICAN REALNESS 2013: MON MA MES

Jack Ferver examines his life and his work in self-analytical MON MA MES at Abrons Arts Center and FIAF (photo by Yaniv Schulman)

Thursday, January 10, Le Skyroom, French Institute Alliance Française, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves., free with RSVP, 212-355-6160, 7:30
Friday, January 11, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St., $20, 5:30
Saturday, January 12, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St., $20, 3:00

In such engaging works as Rumble Ghost, Swann!, and Two Alike, dancer, writer, and choreographer Jack Ferver digs deep within himself while telling stories inspired by familiar pop-culture tales. He goes a few steps further with Mon Ma Mes, in which he explores the nature of fiction and reality in an extremely intimate and revealing performance about his life and work. Mon Ma Mes premiered at the French Institute Alliance Française’s 2012 Crossing the Line festival, and it is now being presented again at FIAF as well as the Abrons Arts Center January 10-12. In the sixty-minute piece, Ferver takes “questions” from not-necessarily-random people in the audience, pulls individuals out of the crowd to join him, and breaks out into painstaking movements as he relates deeply personal tales from his younger days. As with most of his works, Ferver infuses Mon Ma Mes with intentionally uncomfortable moments in which the audience is not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. An exquisitely talented dancer, Ferver, at times accompanied by Reid Bartelme, moves to Schubert and Chopin as well as a commissioned piece by electronic music artist Roarke Menzies, twirling, jumping, and doing push-ups in tight shorts while John Fireman films everything as part of a documentary he is making about him. Mon Ma Mes is another compelling, self-analytical evening-length work by one of New York’s most inventive performers.

(The performances are part of the annual American Realness series, held in conjunction with the APAP conference.
”American Realness” runs January 10-20 with such other events as Maria Hassabi’s Show, Trajal Harrell’s Antigone Sr. / Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church [L], Jeanine Durning’s inging, and Faye Driscoll’s You’re Me.)

COIL 2013

Multiple venues
January 3-19, $20-$30 per performance, $75 passport for five shows, $122 for ten
www.ps122.org

Every January, Performance Space 122 uncoils its COIL festival, several weeks of cutting-edge experimental dance, theater, art, and music. The 2013 winter celebration runs January 3-19 at multiple venues in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens but not at PS122 itself, which is undergoing a major renovation. COIL actually got an early start last month with Kristen Kosmas’s There There at the Chocolate Factory (through January 12), in which a woman has to suddenly replace Christopher Walken in a one-person show with the help of her Russian translator. Radiohole presents the world premiere of Inflatable Frankenstein at the Kitchen January 5-19, offering an unusual look at Mary Shelley’s book and James Whale’s film. In fall 2011, Emily Johnson brought her dazzlingly original The Thank-You Bar to New York Live Arts; now she and her Catalyst company is bringing Niicugni to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a work that explores time and place. Annie Dorsen and Anne Juren examine femininity through a magic show with nudity in Magical, making its U.S. premiere January 15-19 at New York Live Arts. The BodyCartography Project follows up its 2011 COIL presentation, Symptom, with Super Nature, an ecological dance at Abrons Arts Center with live music by Zeena Parkins and scenic installation by Emmett Ramstad that is also part of the fourth annual American Realness festival. Other performances include the return of Pavel Zuštiak / Palissimo’s Amidst and Brian Rogers’s Hot Box. From January 15 to 18, COIL will host SPAN, a free noon dialogue with some of the artists, and the annual Red + White Party takes place January 13 at SPiN NYC with Ping-Pong, the Vintage DJ, and the National Theater of the United States of America. COIL offers a great opportunity to experience exciting new directions in the multidisciplinary arts, and with most tickets no more than twenty dollars and running times less than seventy minutes, you can’t give much of an excuse not to check a few things out.

REID FARRINGTON’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Reid Farrington’s unique version of Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL returns for an encore season at Abrons Arts Center

Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Thursday – Sunday through December 23, $25 ($5 off through 12/1 with discount code DICKENS)
212-352-3101
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.reidfarrington.com

In a December 2011 twi-ny talk, Reid Farrington discussed his latest multimedia work, a rather unique version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, comprising excerpts from nearly three dozen television and movie versions, projected onto screens of varying sizes held by five moving performers. “I have always been obsessed with the idea of actually walking into a movie. There’s that image from so many movies (or maybe just one?) of a little kid putting his hand through a screen — I forget what it’s from, but that’s it. I think that’s the spark that led to this obsession of having live actors interact with screen images. That flexible reality is so exciting to me,” said Farrington, who has also taken on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope in Gin & “It” and Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc in The Passion Project. “I also love the sparseness of a projection surface,” he continued. “It makes the work look easier than it is. There are no wires in a projection surface, no gears, no visible computer, nothing. It’s a simple dance of light.” Farrington’s A Christmas Carol is back for a month-long encore at Abrons Arts Center, featuring John Forkner, Laura K. Nicoll, Erin Mallon, Adin Lenahan, and downtown legend Everett Quinton moving about the space as such Scrooges as George C. Scott, Albert Finney, Mr. Magoo, Alastair Sim, Patrick Stewart, Reginald Owen, Bill Murray (Farrington’s favorite), and others tell the classic holiday story.

CROSSING THE LINE 2012

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 14 – October 14, free- $45
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Tickets are now on sale for the sixth annual Crossing the Line festival, a month-long program of interdisciplinary performances and art sponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française at venues across the city. Running September 14 through October 14, the 2012 edition of CTL, curated by Gideon Lester, Lili Chopra, and Simon Dove, features a host of free events, with most ticketed shows twenty dollars and under. The festival opens on September 14 with the first of three concerts by innovative guitarist Bill Frisell, playing with two of his groups, the 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers, in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall; he’ll then be at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn the next morning at 8:00 for the world premiere of his solo piece “Early (Not Too Late),” followed that night by the world premiere of the multimedia “Close Your Eyes” at the Invisible Dog, a collaboration with musician Eyvind Kang and visual artist Jim Woodring. Brian Rogers, cofounder and artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, will present Hot Box at the Long Island City institution, a chaotic look at mayhem, stillness, and disorder using a live video feed. Festival vet Gérald Kurdian returns with The Magic of Spectacular Theater at Abrons Arts Center, combining music and magic. DD Dorvillier / Human Future Dance Corps brings Danza Permanente to the Kitchen, reimagining a Beethoven score for four dancers, with acoustic design by Zeena Parkins. Choreographer Sarah Michelson will deliver Not a Lecture / Performance, while Jack Ferver will blend psychoanalysis with dance in the very personal Mon Ma Mes, both one-time-only presentations at FIAF. Joris Lacoste’s 4 Prepared Dreams uses hypnosis on April March, Annie Dorsen, Tony Conrad, and Jonathan Caouette. Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula, who dazzled CTL audiences last year with more more more . . . future, will participate in a discussion on September 17 with director Peter Sellars, followed by his solo work Le Cargo on September 18. Pascal Rambert’s Love’s End examines the disintegration of a relationship, with Kate Moran and Jim Fletcher at Abrons, while Raimund Hoghe teams up with Takashi Ueno at the Baryshnikov Arts Center for Pas de Deux, a playful look at the history of the classical duet. For Diário (através de um Olho Baiano), one of numerous free events, Bel Borba, collaborating with Burt Sun and André Costantini, will create a new piece of art every day somewhere in the city throughout the festival, with all coming together for a grand finale. Also free is David Levine’s Habit, a live ninety-minute-drama that loops for eight hours in the Essex Street Market, and OMSK / Lotte van den Berg’s Pleinvrees / Agoraphobia, in which the audience (advance RSVP required) wanders around Times Square listening on their cell phones to a man making his way through the area as well. In addition, Steven and William Ladd’s Shaboygen installation will be up at the Invisible Dog, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s audiovisual portraits will be on view at the FIAF Gallery. Once again, CTL has included a little something for everyone, from performance art and dance to video and photography, from theater and concerts to the unusual and the indefinable.