Last year, the Blue Note celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with the inaugural Blue Note Jazz Festival. The musical celebration is back June 10-30, with more than fifty shows at various New York City venues. Things take off in a big way on June 10, with Kate Davis playing the Blue Note Brunch, the Harlem Gospel Choir hosting its regular Sunday brunch at the B.B. King Blues Club, Béla Fleck and the Marcus Roberts Trio at the Blue Note, and Curumin and Céu at the Highline Ballroom. Among the plethora of exciting highlights are the Legendary Jimmy Scott at the Blue Note on June 11, Savion Glover with such special guests as McCoy Tyner, Jack DeJohnette, and Roy Haynes at the Blue Note June 12-17, Bootsy Collins at B.B. King’s on June 13, Little Richard at B.B.’s and Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) at the Apollo Theater on June 14 [ed. note: The Yasiin Bey show has been moved to October 28], Kathleen Battle with Cyrus Chestnut at the Blue Note June 19, Toshi Reagon & Allison Miller Present “Celebrate! The Great Women of Blues and Jazz” at the Highline Ballroom on June 21, Africa/Brass: McCoy Tyner & Charles Tolliver Big Band at the Blue Note June 21-24, the Rolling Stones Project ft Tim Ries with Bernard Fowler & Darryl Jones of the Rolling Stones at the Highline on June 22, An Evening with Leon Redbone at the Abrons Arts Center on June 23, Stanley Clarke & George Duke at B.B. King’s on June 26, Meshell Ndegeocello at the Highline on June 28, Cassandra Wilson at the Blue Note June 28-30, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-Stars at the Highline on June 29, and the Adam Deitch Project closing things out as part of the Blue Note’s Late Night Groove Series on June 30.
Silvia Costa’s LA QUIESCENZA DEL SEME will examine birth and consciousness at the Queer New York International Arts Festival
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement (and other locations)
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
June 7-15, $20
212-598-0400 www.abronsartscenter.org www.queerny.org
In March 2011, Zvonimir Dobrović, the curator and producer of the Eastern European Perforacije Festival, put together the inaugural American Perforations Festival at Club La MaMa, a collection of eclectic theatrical productions from Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Macedonia. Dobrović, who is also the artistic director of Queer Zagreb, has now teamed up with art historian and independent curator André von Ah to present the first Queer New York International Arts Festival. Taking place June 7-15 primarily at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side, QNYI features multidisciplinary projects that recontextualize and reconsider what constitutes queer art. The opening-night party, held June 7 at the Delancey, includes performances by Carol Pope, Carmelita Tropicana, Eyes Wild Drag, Sarah-Louise Young, Raul de Nieves, Justin Sayre, Kayvon Zand, and others, with DJ sets by JD Samson, DJ R!C, and DJ Malakai. The shows begin with Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte’s Macadamia Nut Brittle, which is inspired by writings by Dennis Cooper and focuses on four characters in search of their identity. In Tadaku Takamine’s Kimura-San installation, the artist documents how he cared for a paraplegic, including sexually. In Auto + Batterie, David Wampach uses dissonant music, live drumming, extreme choreography, and whipped cream to bring together sound and movement. In Guintche, a drawing by Marlene Monteiro Freitas explodes into life and becomes unstoppable. Silvia Costa of Plumes dans la tête examines birth and not-birth in La Quiescenza del seme. Igor Josifov’s 2-Dimensional reconfigures performer and audience, as people walk over the Macedonian artist, who is trapped under a plexiglass structure. Body parts figure significantly throughout the festival; François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea look deep into “a reflection of the denial of the anus in dance” in Paquerette at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, while Biljana Kosmogina’s ‘P’ Campaign follows the exploits of the presidential candidate Vagina. And East Village Boys are hosting the art exhibit “For personal use” June 7-16 at the Impossible Project, with specially commissioned works by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, Jeff Hahn, Jayson Keeling, Josh McNey, and others.
For a quarter of a century, New York–based Risa Jaroslow & Dancers have been tackling issues of masculinity, community, and the human experience in such works as Book Song Woman Man, Table Talk, Whole Sky, and 311. For their silver anniversary season, coming to Abrons Arts Center March 9-11, they will revive 2006’s Resist/Surrender, in which company dancers Marcos Duran, Luke Gutgsell, Elise Knudson, and Paul Singh are joined by a group of bare-legged men from various walks of life who, dressed in white, watch from the wings as the dancers, wearing sharp blue costumes, break into duets in the center of the stage and incorporate a large wooden wall in the back as composer Scott Johnson’s score is performed live by Fireworks Ensemble, along with snippets of quotes from interviews with men. The company will also present the world premiere of The Middle of Where She Is, a piece about sadness and loss, growth and responsibility, that will be danced by Rachel Lehrer, Knudson, and Jaroslaw, with music by Brooklyn-based violin and viola duo Charly & Margaux.
After delighting audiences at BAM, John Jasperse’s CANYON will celebrate the thrill of the dance at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Tony Orrico)
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 5-15, Show & Tell free, other performances $15
212-352-3101 www.abronsartscenter.org
No, it’s not yet another reality show. “American Realness” is an eleven-day live performance festival that offers fans of contemporary dance, music, and theater an opportunity to catch productions they might have missed as well as the chance to see works in progress scheduled to debut later this year. Held at Abrons Arts Center in conjunction with the Association of Performing Arts Presenter’s Conference, “American Realness” features second looks at such 2011 works as John Jasperse’s Canyon, which celebrates the thrill of the dance while ostensibly being about nothing; Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey’s Tool Is Loot, the result of a yearlong investigation into collaboration; Jack Ferver and Michelle Mola’s Me, Michelle, about ego and power in the form of Cleopatra; and Eleanor Bauer’s (Big Girls Do Big Things), a solo in which Bauer goes through a series of metamorphoses. The festival also includes the New York premiere of Laura Arrington’s Hot Wings, which examines feminine identity; the U.S. premiere of Daniel Linehan’s Montage for Three, in which two dancers re-create images from found photographs; Trajal Harrell’s Antigone Jr., the next stage of his “Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church”; and the pairing of Ishmael Houston-Jones’s mean Cait: a fairytale in progress and Yvonne Meier’s Mad Heidi. The free “Show & Tell” section (advance RSVP required) includes such conversations as “Why a dramaturge?” with Reggie Wilson and Susan Manning and “Surfacing & Song-Based Performance” with Holcombe Waller, Cynthia Hopkins, and Miguel Gutierrez in addition to sneak peeks at such works in progress as Big Dance Theater’s Ich, KürbisGeist, Luciana Achugar’s FEELingpleasuresatisfactioncelebrationholyFORM, and Keith Hennessy’s Turbulence (a dance about the economy).
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Thursday – Sunday through December 18, $20
212-352-3101 www.abronsartscenter.org www.reidfarrington.com
Combining intricately choreographed movement with film projection and live theatrical elements, Reid Farrington retells classic tales in unique, entertaining ways. In Gin & “It,” he deconstructed and reconstructed Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller, Rope, with actors playing characters in the movie as well as behind-the-scenes personnel who change the set and capture parts of the film on translucent screens. In The Passion Project, Laura K. Nicoll gave a dazzling performance as the tortured protagonist of Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1928 silent epic, The Passion of Joan of Arc, moving within a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square and reaching for various wood-framed screens that pick up scenes from the film.
The New York City-based Farrington has turned to a holiday favorite for his current project, A Christmas Carol, in which Nicoll, Christopher Loar, John Forkner, Jennifer L. Reed, and Sandrine Hudi re-create the seasonal ghost story using images from thirty-five different cinematic versions of Charles Dickens’s classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, and the Cratchit family. As he prepared for the opening of the multimedia production, which runs Thursdays through Sundays at the Abrons Arts Center through December 18, Farrington answered a few questions for twi-ny about A Christmas Carol, his unusual staging technique, and who might get the Farrington treatment next.
twi-ny: In September, you gave a sneak-peek preview of A Christmas Carol and advised us to come to an early performance in case the production got shut down for copyright violation. Is that a legitimate fear you have?
Reid Farrington: That fear sort of waxes and wanes in me on a day-to-day basis. There are a lot of ways that I’ve historically gotten around this — there are of course fair use and parody laws, which, if it came to it, I’d be falling under. But if I were in violation, there’s nothing like the threat of being shut down to sell tickets.
twi-ny: The show features clips from dozens of versions of A Christmas Carol. Were there any you were unable to get?
Reid Farrington: I had initially intended to use all seventy film versions of A Christmas Carol for this piece — there are in fact seventy I uncovered. But this started to become impossible because some of the versions are, of course, adaptations with dialogue so far removed from the original that it would be unrecognizable to the viewer if I only used a clip. For example, I found a disturbing little [VH1 original movie] called A Diva’s Christmas with Vanessa Williams — which would just gum up the works (on so many levels). So I had to place a loose restriction on myself of using only Christmas Carols that dance around Dickens’s original text. My piece uses about thirty-five films total.
Laura K. Nicoll and Reid Farrington are teaming up again for A CHRISTMAS CAROL
twi-ny: Do you have a particular favorite?
Reid Farrington: My favorite version is hands down Scrooged with Bill Murray. It manages to weave original text around modern adaptation perfectly.
twi-ny: How did you originally come up with your unique staging technique, which involves actors capturing projections on framed canvases?
Reid Farrington: 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.
I also love the sparseness of a projection surface. 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. The wires, gears, computer, and tech are hidden somewhere above our heads — very like an old movie house. The staging and actors’ movement then comes naturally out of that dance of light. It’s hard to prep how the staging will look until the actors are engaged with that light in rehearsal. This I find really exciting too.
twi-ny: You’ve now taken on Hitchcock, Dreyer, and Dickens; who will get the Farrington treatment next?
Reid Farrington: I have been dreaming of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fight footage and really dancing and exploding those images. I also have an idea that my wife, playwright Sara Farrington, and I have been banging around for a while involving the big film noir movies of the 1940s. Sara is obsessed with Double Indemnity, and I think it would be a great movie to explode too.
More than a hundred venues will be hosting cutting-edge experimental productions at Performa 11, the fourth edition of the biennial multidisciplinary arts festival being held all over the city November 1-21. Featuring art, music, dance, theater, film, architecture, and more in exciting combinations, the three-week festival consists of long-term exhibitions, special one-night stands, and other limited engagements that push the envelope of contemporary performance. Elmgreen & Dragset revisit Beckett in Happy Days in the Art World at the Skirball Center, with Joseph Fiennes and Charles Edwards. L’Encyclopédie de la parole’s Chorale turns political speeches, text messages, and movie quotes into choral works at the Performa Hub on Mott St. Rashaad Newsome holds a medieval rap joust Tournament in conjunction with his new exhibit at Marlborough Chelsea. Anthology Film Archives screens rare footage of one of Lenny Bruce’s last performances, as well as routines by Richard Pryor, Albert Brooks, and Andy Kaufman. Innovative installation artists Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler team up to create the chakra sauna Seven at Nicole Klagsbrun Project Space. Matthew Stone journeys into shamanism at the Hole. Mai-Thu Perret’s Love Letters in Ancient Brick at the Joyce SoHo reimagines Krazy Kat as a love-triangle dance. Dripping paint drives Jonathan VanDyke’s storefront drama With One Hand Between Us at Scaramouche. Israeli collective Public Movement choreographs public demonstrations in various parks for Positions. Daido Moriyama restages his thirty-year-old Printing Show—TKY at the Aperture Foundation. Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim will go from audio to visual with Lukas Geronimas in Feedback at Recess. Liz Glynn’s Utopia or Oblivion: Parts I and II will take place in several outdoor venues, using Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome as inspiration. Raphael Zarka mixes skateboarding and sculpture in Free Ride at the Performa Hub. Gerard Byrne turns the Abrons Arts Center into an interactive theater for In Repertory. Varispeed’s Perfect Lives Manhattan is an all-day performance of Robert Ashley’s opera. Performa Ha! gathers comedians and musicians at the HA! comedy club. And that’s only the first week of this outstanding collection of diverse talent and unique performances, with many of the events free.
Laura K. Nicoll takes an unusual look at Joan of Arc in Reid Farrington’s THE PASSION PROJECT, now playing at the 3LD Art + Technology Center (photo by Paula Court)
Initially presented in November 2007 at the PS/K2 Festival in Copenhagen and staged several times at the downtown 3LD Art + Technology Center over the last few years, Reid Farrington’s The Passion Project is back for a special limited engagement at the Greenwich St. institution through September 25. The thirty-minute piece puts a solitary dancer inside a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square, surrounded by more than a dozen small wooden-framed screens on which are projected scenes from Carl Th. Dreyer’s epic 1928 silent classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc. The performer, Laura K. Nicoll, picks up various screens and moves them around, trapped much like the captured Joan of Arc (Maria Falconetti) is in the film, creating a living, breathing three-dimensional effect filled with powerful emotion. “I’ve been with the project for two years now and it’s so incredibly satisfying to perform,” Nicoll told twi-ny. Monday night’s show will benefit Foxy Films’ newest production, Farrington’s multimedia A Christmas Carol or Dickens: The Unparalleled Necromancer, which will run December 1-20 at the Abrons Arts Center. (For a look at Farrington’s Gin & “It,” which played PS 122 in April 2010, click here.)
Update:The Passion Project is a breathtaking tour de force for both creator and director Reid Farrington and performer Laura K. Nicoll. For thirty mesmerizing minutes, Nicoll, barefoot and dressed in sackcloth and ashes, a sullen yet determined look on her face, places and re-places small wooden-framed white screens on hooks dangling from rope knots (that evoke nooses), moving the screens to capture images being projected into the air that have been taken from three different versions (1928, 1935, and 1980) of Carl Th. Dreyer’s silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc. With whirlwind fury, Nicoll shoots out a screen to show one of the characters discussing Joan of Arc’s fate, or holds another screen in front of her as she walks across the floor, moving with the characters, or suddenly falls to the ground with a screen outstretched to grab yet another part of the story. At other times she sits down next to a small close-up of Joan’s aching face or wanders out of the ten-foot-by-ten-foot area and approaches an audience member, looking into their eyes before continuing on. Translations are shown on three sides so the viewers, who are strongly encouraged to make their way around the set, experiencing the piece from multiple angles, can follow the plot, although every detail is not critical. What is critical is not to miss a moment of Nicoll’s awe-inspiring performance, including the dazzling finale.
