Tag Archives: bam

MLK DAY 2016

Multiple venues
Monday, January 18
www.mlkday.gov

In 1983, the third Monday in January was officially recognized as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, honoring the birthday of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Dr. King would have turned eighty-seven this month, and you can celebrate his legacy on Monday by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of numerous special events taking place around the city. BAM’s thirtieth annual free Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. includes a keynote address and book signing by Michael Eric Dyson, live performances by the Brooklyn Interdenominational Choir and Kimberly Nichole, the NYCHA Atlantic Terminal Community Center student exhibit “Picture the Dream,” master of ceremonies Eric L. Adams, and a special film screening. The JCC in Manhattan will host “Artists Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.,” with a screening of Aviva Kempner’s documentary Rosenwald at 5:00, followed by a Q&A with the director, and “Idealism and Activism: A Conversation with Bill T. Jones” at 7:30 ($5, benefiting Saturday Morning Community Partners).

The Harlem Gospel Choir will play a special matinee at B.B. King’s on MLK Day

The Harlem Gospel Choir will play special matinees at B.B. King’s and the Children’s Museum of Manhattan on MLK Day

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with the “Heroic Heroines: Coretta Scott King” book talk at 10:00 and 2:00 and the World Famous Harlem Gospel Choir at 3:00 and 4:00, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum hosts the special hands-on crafts workshops “The Art of Protest” and “Protest Prints,” a noon screening of Rob Smiley and Vincenzo Trippetti’s 1999 animated film Our Friend, Martin, and the toddlers program “Storytime & Civil Movements.” The Museum at Eldridge Street will be hosting a free reading of Kobi Yamada and Mae Besom’s picture book What Do You Do with an Idea? along with a mural workshop. The Harlem Gospel Choir will also give a special MLK Day matinee at 12:30 ($22-$26) at B.B. King’s in Times Square, while Big Daddy Kane will take the mic with a live band at 9:00 ($15-$30).

RadioLoveFest — SELECTED SHORTS: UNCHARTED TERRITORIES

Hope Davis, Bobby Cannavale, and Parker Posey will participate in thirtieth anniversary of Selected Shorts at BAM

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Saturday, May 9, $30, 7:30
Festival runs through May 10
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.symphonyspace.org

BAM’s second annual RadioLoveFest, a collaboration presented with WNYC, continues with a special Selected Shorts evening celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the popular Symphony Space series in which a roster of film and theater actors reads short fiction. On May 9 at 7:30, Hope Davis (American Splendor, In Treatment), Bobby Cannavale (Blue Jasmine, The Motherfucker with the Hat), Parker Posey (The House of Yes, Broken English), and host Robert Sean Leonard (The Music Man, House, M.D.) will focus on works dealing with unexpected encounters. RadioLoveFest continues through May 10 with such other programs as Hilary Frank’s “Speed Dating for Mom Friends,” Glynn Washington’s “Snap Judgment LIVE!,” Anna Sale’s “Death, Sex & Money,” John Schaefer’s “Mexrrissey: Mexico Loves Morrissey,” and “Leonard Lopate & Locavores: Brooklyn as a Brand.”

CEDAR LAKE CONTEMPORARY BALLET: INSTALLATION 2015

Chargaux and Cedar Lake team up for exciting immersive performance installation in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/ees)

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
547 West 26th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
February 6-7, $35, 7:00 & 9:00
212-244-0015
www.cedarlakedance.com

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s latest biannual immersive performance installation is their best yet, a thrilling display of movement and music that cohesively melds the vast skills of the talented sixteen-person Chelsea company with the unique sounds of Brooklyn-based string duo Chargaux. About fifteen minutes before the start of the event, which is choreographed by the full company along with artistic director Alexandra Damiani, the dancers start walking around the Chelsea space as the audience filters in. Dressed in all black, the serious-faced dancers occasionally pair off into brief pas de deux as they make their way around a central circular stage in silence. They hug, push, lift, and writhe on the floor with one another, weaving through the growing crowd. At the top of the hour, Jasper Gahunia’s electronic score kicks in and the show revs into high gear. Over the course of the next hour or so, the performers range about the room, gathering on the center stage, jumping onto large and small platforms on the south and east sides, climbing the light riggings to the north, and popping up high on a riser to the west. Charly and Margaux, wearing long, colorful skirts and tight tan bras, sometimes find themselves in the middle of the action — or grinding off to the side with one of the hulky male dancers. Nicholas Houfek’s lighting will suddenly shine on a specific area where a dance will break out, then shift to another corner. The eight women dancers (Vânia Doutel Vaz, Ida Saki, Rachelle Scott, Ebony Williams, Madeline Wong, Jin Young Won, Navarra Novy-Williams, and apprentice Daphne Fernberger) take over the stage, followed by the eight men (Jon Bond, Joaquim de Santana, Joseph Kudra, Matthew Rich, Nickemil Concepcion, Guillaume Quéau, Raymond Pinto, and apprentice Patrick Coker), in a kind of battle of the sexes. At one point, the dancers form into two horizontal lines and circle the stage, the audience moving with them, a rapturous moment of intimate bonding. Soon the black skirts and tops come off, the women magically manipulate the men from above, and then everyone joins in for an exciting finale featuring a musically erotic flourish. There will be two more performances on February 7; Cedar Lake will then hit the road, returning to New York City in June for four shows at BAM consisting of Crystal Pite’s Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue, Johan Inger’s Rain Dogs, and a new piece by Richard Siegal on June 3 & 5 and Jacopo Godani’s Symptoms of Development and Emanuel Gat’s Ida? on June 4 & 6.

MIRANDA JULY IN CONVERSATION WITH HOST LENA DUNHAM

Miranda July will discuss her latest book, THE FIRST BAD MAN, with Lena Dunham at BAM on January 28

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
Wednesday, January 28, $35-$50
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

“Miranda July’s ability to pervert norms while embracing what makes us normal is astounding,” Girls creator Lena Dunham says of Miranda July’s debut novel, The First Bad Man (Scribner, January 2015, $25). “Writing in the first person with the frank, odd lilt of an utterly truthful character, she will make you laugh, cringe, and recognize yourself in a woman you never planned to be. By the time July tackles motherhood, the book has become a bible. Never has a novel spoken so deeply to my sexuality, my spirituality, my secret self. I know I am not alone.” On January 28, Dunham, who wrote, directed, and starred in the indie hit Tiny Furniture and whose memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, was released this past September, will host an evening of conversation with July, an influential multimedia artist who writes, directs, and stars in her own films (Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Future), writes short stories (many of her earlier ones have been collected in No One Belongs Here More Than You), has recorded albums (10 Million Hours a Mile, The Binet-Simon Test), developed the personal messaging app “Somebody,” and makes performance pieces and art installations (“Eleven Heavy Things,” “Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About”).

Lena Dunham will be at BAM to host a conversation with Miranda July (photo by Autumn de Wilde)

Lena Dunham will host what should be a kooky conversation with Miranda July at BAM (photo by Autumn de Wilde)

In her first book since 2011’s It Chooses You (a companion piece to The Future), July introduces the world to one Cheryl Glickman, a rather persnickety, peculiar, strangely punctilious woman who lives her life and interprets situations a bit oddly. When her carefully laid out existence is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of her bosses’ troubled daughter, Clee, who will be staying with her for an indeterminate amount of time, Cheryl is forced to reevaluate her needs and her “funny way of doing things,” as Clee says. Cheryl suffers from globus hystericus, has a bizarre relationship with her therapist, pines away for an older member of the board of directors where she works, and is constantly in search of Kubelko Bondy, a “baby I think of as mine.” An eccentric both inside and out, Cheryl and her exploits are endlessly charming and plentifully weird as she deals with sexuality, femininity, class, age, and family. And just when you think you might have her figured out, she does yet another thing that surprises, delights, and confounds you. In reviewing No One Belongs Here More Than You, we wrote, “July’s characters live in their own alternate, warped realities, constantly confusing their relationships with friends, family, and even strangers, mistaking nothings for somethings,” a statement that suits The First Bad Man to a tee. The book even has a cool, chic design, courtesy of July’s husband, artist and filmmaker Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, Beginners); the dust jacket and case are all black, the title and author name in plain white sans serif type, but the endpapers are like a groovy psychedelic abstract painting. Seeing July, who was born in Vermont and raised in Berkeley, and Dunham, a New York City native, together at BAM should be endlessly charming and plentifully weird as well, making for one very entertaining evening. We’re hoping for a warped, brilliant view directly into two very particular expressions of contemporary female creative sensibility — and one very kooky discussion.

IVY BALDWIN DANCE: OXBOW

Katie Workum, Eleanor Smith, Luke Miller, and Anna Carapetyan perform in Ivy Baldwin’s OXBOW (photo by Ian Douglas)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 13-16, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ivybaldwindance.org

Named for the U-shaped bend in a river, Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission, Oxbow, is an evocative five-person dance steeped in the language of Movement Research, where the New York-based choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow is an artist-in-residence (as she also is at the BAM Fisher). With the audience sitting on three sides of the stage, the sixty-minute piece opens with Ryan Tracy, dressed in black, playing an elegiac solo on a piano in one of the near corners of the stage. After finishing his composition, he walks to the back and lies down on his stomach as Eleanor Smith appears, shaking and stretching in a black top and white pants. She is soon joined by Luke Miller (replacing an ill Lawrence Cassella) in all white, Katie Workum in a red dress, the exquisite Anna Carapetyan in red and black (the costumes are by fashion designer Alice Ritter), and Tracy as they move about the stage in front of Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen’s massive horizontal installation of twisted paper, often in silence. The audience can often hear their heavy breathing and every squeak of their feet against the floor; Justin Jones’s live-mixed sound design also includes barely audible background music and unidentifiable crunching sounds, and at one point Smith bangs on the keyboards as well.

A moving duet by Katie Workum and Anna Carapetyan concludes Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission (photo by Ian Douglas)

A moving duet by Katie Workum and Anna Carapetyan is part of Ivy Baldwin’s BAM commission (photo by Ian Douglas)

I don’t know if Baldwin has ever seen William A. Wellman’s classic 1943 Western, The Ox-Bow Incident, or read Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s original novel, but I couldn’t help but see a lot of narrative elements and referents from that famous story about a posse determined to hang three men who might or might not be cattle rustlers who murdered a rancher. Kavanaugh and Nguyen’s sculpture looks like a scorched fallen tree with ropes that could have been nooses, the black-and-white costumes could symbolize good and evil, and the two women in red could represent the potential death of innocent people (as do a series of sudden wailing screams). Regardless, Oxbow is a riveting dance performed by an extremely talented company highlighted by Smith and Carapetyan, who have danced together before in such works as Juliana F. May’s Gutter Gate at New York Live Arts in 2012, in addition to the elegant Workum, the agile Miller, and the surprisingly nimble Tracy. Throughout Oxbow, the performers keep a close watch on one another as they interact in a lovely piece by an imaginative choreographer who is always worth watching as well.

OXBOW

Ivy Baldwin Dance makes its BAM debut with OXBOW (photo by Andy Romer)

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 13-16, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ivybaldwindance.org

Brooklyn-based choreographer Ivy Baldwin is having quite a year. While celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of her company, Ivy Baldwin Dance, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow, and this week she will make her BAM debut with Oxbow, an evening-length work she made as the 2014 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher. The work was created in collaboration with dancers Anna Carapetyan, Lawrence Cassella, Eleanor Smith, and Katie Workum and features a live-mixed score by Justin Jones and additional music by Ryan Tracy. The twisted-paper set is by installation artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, with lighting by Michael O’Connor and costumes by Alice Ritter. In such previous pieces as Ambient Cowboy and Here Rests Peggy, Baldwin has displayed a unique visual flair and compelling sense of narrative likely to continue with Oxbow, described as “exploring the inexorable nature of the two forces that contain us all: space and time, geology and chronology.” The piece runs November 13-16, with tickets only twenty dollars.

BAMkids MOVIE MATINEES: THE RED BALLOON AND WHITE MANE

Pascal Lamorisse makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon in his father’s classic film

THE RED BALLOON (LE BALLON ROUGE) (Albert Lamorisse, 1956) and WHITE MANE (CRIN BLANC: LE CHEVAL SAUVAGE) (Albert Lamorisse, 1953)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, November 30, 11:00 am
212-727-8110
www.bam.org

Two classic short works by Albert Lamorisse were recently lovingly restored by Janus Films and will be shown together in 35mm prints this weekend at BAM. In The Red Balloon, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, a young boy (Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son) makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon, which follows him through the streets of Belleville in Paris, waits for him while he is in school, and obeys his every command. But the neighborhood kids are afraid of this stranger and go on a mission to burst the young boy’s bubble. Lamorisse gives life and emotion to the balloon (more than twenty-five thousand were used in the making of the film) in a masterful use of simple special effects well before CGI and other modern technology. The Red Balloon is being screened with another of Lamorisse’s classics, the lesser-known White Mane, in which a magnificent white stallion “who felt trapped in the world of men,” the “proud and fearsome” leader of a herd of wild horses, struggles to maintain his freedom from cowboys in Camargue in the south of France, helped by a young fisherman named Folco (Alain Emery). As in The Red Balloon, Lamorisse imbues the title character with, dare we say it, a unique humanity, as both the balloon and the horse fight for their individuality with only a single young boy at their side. The tender tale includes a new English translation spoken by Peter Strauss. Both films feature the splendid music of Maurice Leroux and the fine photography of Edmond Séchan. The two films are screening November 30 at 11:00 am as part of the twice-monthly BAMcinématek series “BAMkids Movie Matinees,” which continues December 7 with Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and December 21 with Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story.