Tag Archives: bam

VALENTINE’S DAY DINNER & A MOVIE: ROMAN HOLIDAY

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck go for a romantic spin through Rome in William Wyler classic

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck go for a spin in William Wyler classic ROMAN HOLIDAY

ROMAN HOLIDAY (William Wyler, 1953)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, February 14, 6:15 & 8:45
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Audrey Hepburn won an Oscar for her delightful performance in William Wyler’s romantic charmer about a foreign princess who gets to spend a day of anonymity in the city of Rome with a good-looking American newsman (Gregory Peck) who knows at least some of her secrets. The film was nominated for a total of seven Oscars, also capturing the prize for Dalton Trumbo’s script and Edith Head’s costume design. Roman Holiday is screening at 6:15 and 8:45 on Valentine’s Day at BAM, with an optional $67 prix-fixe menu that includes a glass of champagne, an amuse bouche of green-pea flan with poached shrimp, a choice of baby arugula salad, lobster bisque, or spaetzle with Brussels sprout leaves and duck confit for appetizers, and an entrée choice of red-wine braised short ribs, spice-crusted salmon, roasted French-cut chicken breast gnocchi, or crispy wild mushroom risotto cake, followed by a shared lovers dessert of warm chocolate cake with fresh raspberries and vanilla ice cream.

MLK DAY 2013

MLK Day features a host of special events and community-based service projects throughout the city (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues
Monday, January 21
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-four this month, and you can celebrate his legacy tomorrow by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of several special events taking place around the city. BAM’s twenty-seventh annual free Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. includes a keynote speech by Harry Belafonte, a live simulcast of the presidential inauguration activities, and musical performances by the Brooklyn Interdenominational Choir and Kindred the Family Soul. The JCC in Manhattan again teams up with Symphony Space for Artists Celebrate: Martin Luther King, Jr., a free evening consisting of Catherine Russell & Her Band performing “Civil Rights in Song and Spirit,” Anthony Russell, Anthony Coleman, and Michael Winograd coming together for “Convergence: Hebrew, Yiddish, Yemenite, and African-American Songs in a Contemporary Jazz Setting,” and April Yvette Thompson starring in excerpts from Liberty City, her play written with Jessica Blank, all taking place at Symphony Space beginning at 6:30. The Museum of the Moving Image will be open on MLK Day, screening Martha Burr and Mei-Juin Chen’s new documentary, The Black Kungfu Experience, as part of their “Fist and Sword” series, with martial artists Ron Van Clief, Tayari Casel, and Dennis Brown on hand to talk about the film, followed by the special presentation “Tongues Untied, True Tales Told: African-American Women Changing the Picture in Film and Television,” with Ruby Dee, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Barbara Montgomery, featuring discussion along with clips from Montgomery’s upcoming Mitote as part of the museum’s “Changing the Picture” series. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with its “Make a Difference Pledge,” “I Have a Dream Mural,” and performances by the Harlem Gospel Choir, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum has “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Message of Peace” craft activity and an educational discussion of “Justice Everywhere.” And the Museum at Eldridge Street will be hosting a free Family Story Hour & Crafts highlighted by a reading of Eloise Greenfield and Jan Spivey Gilchrist’s picture book The Great Migration: Journey to the North.

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: RHINOCEROS

Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, will present Eugène Ionesco’s classic absurdist tale RHINOCÉROS this week at BAM (photo by Jean-Louis Fernandez)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
October 4-6
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.theatredelaville-paris.com

As much as Jean-Paul Sartre is associated with the idea of existentialism, playwright Eugène Ionesco is linked with the word absurd. Born in Romania in 1909 and raised primarily in France, Ionesco changed the face of dramatic narrative with such works as The Lesson, The Chairs, The Killer, and Exit the King. One of his most famous plays, 1959’s Rhinocéros, which was turned into a 1973 film starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Karen Black, can now be seen in an inventive adaptation by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, running at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House October 4-6 as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival. “I like to come back to playwrights who question the place and role of the individual in collective history, on his responsibility, his freedom of thought, beyond any form of individualism,” Demarcy-Mota, who has also recently directed works by Horváth and Brecht, explains on the company website. The allegory about totalitarianism features set and lighting by Yves Collet, music by Jefferson Lembeye, and costumes by Corinne Baudelot, with François Regnault serving as artistic collaborator; Serge Maggiani plays Bérenger, Hugues Quester is Jean, and Valérie Dashwood takes on the role of Daisy. “”Ionesco knows how to depict dialectically every man’s cowardice, conformism and hypocrisy,” Demarcy-Mota adds. Rhinocéros “is a funereally burlesque play that we wish to render with full energy.” As a bonus, on October 5 at 5:00 at the Rosenthal Pavilion at NYU’s Kimmel Center, the esteemed panel of Demarcy-Mota, Edward Albee, Israel Horovitz, and Marie-France Ionesco will participate in the free “Next Wave Talk: On Ionesco,” moderated by NYU French literature professor Tom Bishop.

Nowhere is safe in Théâtre de la Ville’s thrilling production of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist classic (photo by Pavel Antonov)

Update: Théâtre de la Ville director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota promised a Rhinocéros rendered “with full energy,” and he and the company deliver all that and more in their engaging version of Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist classic, running October 4-6 at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival. Following a short introductory excerpt from Ionesco’s sole novel, The Hermit, the curtain opens on a group of people in a town square just going about their daily business. Jean (a big, blustery Hugues Quester) bikes in to meet his friend Bérenger (Serge Maggiani), a bedraggled man recovering from a hangover, not able to remember much of what occurred the night before. A rhinoceros suddenly roars through the town like a tsunami, leaving in its wake a stunned crowd not quite sure what it really just saw, instead getting caught up in existential discussions of cats’ paws. Eventually life goes on, with Bérenger, who has a crush on Daisy (Valérie Dashwood), arriving at the publishing house where he works, only to encounter another stampeding rhino. As everyone around him starts turning into rhinos, the hapless Bérenger is determined not to succumb to the mass hysteria. Featuring terrific staging (courtesy of Yves Collet) that includes a raised-level office, collapsing rooms, and a majestically morphing figure in addition to a slowly building score by Jefferson Lembeye that nearly explodes at the end, Théâtre de la Ville’s Rhinocéros cleverly captures the philosophical underpinnings of Ionesco’s tale of the fight for individualism in the face of growing totalitarianism and an ever-increasing conformity that is overwhelming a consumer-driven society. Evoking Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, Don Siegel’s sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and such recent disasters as Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the show combines humor, pathos, and playful investigations of logic as the community is overcome by a collective consciousness that seems unstoppable. Ionesco might have written Rhinocéros because of what he saw occurring in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, but it still feels as fresh and relevant as ever in this outstanding production.

TICKET ALERT: BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE

Tickets go on sale August 13 for inaugural Next Wave season in Fishman Space at new BAM Fisher center

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
All tickets $20; on sale Monday, August 13
Season runs September 5 – December 23
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Bigger isn’t necessarily better these days as BAM gets into the low-price, small-theater game for its thirtieth Next Wave festival. Earlier this year, the Signature Theatre opened its new Pershing Square Center on West 42nd St., comprising three venues that seat between 191 and 294 people and with all ticket prices for the initial run a mere $25. Then, in May, Lincoln Center raised the curtain on its new space, the Claire Tow Theater, which resides above the Mitzi E. Newhouse and has room for 112 customers, who pay only $20 per performance. And today, $20 tickets go on sale for BAM’s new venue, BAM Fisher on Ashland Pl., which features the 250-seat Fishman Space. Focusing on short-run experimental presentations, BAM Fisher will host dance, film, music, theater, talks, and more. The inaugural season opens with Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall’s site-specific Eclipse, an intimate four-character dance with the audience on all four sides, and continues with such works as The Shooting Gallery, a collaboration between video artist Bill Morrison and composer Richard Einhorn; Brooklyn Bred, consisting of performance art by Coco Fusco, Dread Scott, and Jennifer Miller, curated by Martha Wilson; Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Living Word Project’s sociopolitical red, black & GREEN: a blues, which promises something for all five senses; and dance pieces by Lucy Guerin (Untrained) and Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (And lose the name of action). Expect the phone lines to be jammed, because tickets ($28-$144) also go on sale today for a new production of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs’s four-and-a-half-hour Einstein on the Beach at the Howard Gilman Opera House.

CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY

Brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner have put together quite a multimedia festival at BAM (photo by David Kressler)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Bam Rose Cinemas, BAMcafe
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
May 3-5, $45
718-636-4100
www.crossingbrooklynferry.com
www.bam.org

In his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” from Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote, “Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers! / Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! — stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn! / Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! / Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution! / Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly!” BAM is now inviting Manhattanites — and everyone else — to once again dare to venture across the river for “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” a three-day film and music festival curated by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National. The festivities begin May 3 with live performances by the Walkmen, Sharon Van Etten, Twin Shadow, Jherek Bischoff, ZS, Callers, People Get Ready, yMusic, JACK Quartet, Heather Broderick, and Yellowbirds, with nine short films (which will be screened each night) by Poppy de Villeneuve & Missy Mazzoli; Jonas Mekas, Dalius Naujo, and friends; Michael Brown & Glenn Kotche; Bill Morrison & William Basinski; Justin Davis Anderson & Juan Comas; Tunde Adebimpe & Ohal Grietzer; Matthew Ritchie & Bryce Dessner; Su Friedrich; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt & wirrow. On May 4, the musical lineup features St. Vincent, the Antlers, Tyondai Braxton, Sō Percussion, Buke and Gase, Sinkane, Ava Luna, Missy Mazzoli and Victoire, NOW Ensemble, Hubble, and Nadia Sirota, followed by DJ sets by Chris Keating and Joakim. The May 5 show is sold out, but in case you can still score a ticket somehow, it includes Beirut, Atlas Sound, My Brightest Diamond + yMusic, Caveman, Oneohtrix Point Never, Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang, Skeletons, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Yehudim, Benjamin Lanz, and Thieving Irons, with late-night / early-morning DJ sets by Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang.

GHETT’OUT FILM FESTIVAL: KILLER OF SHEEP

KILLER OF SHEEP is part of Ghett’Out Film Festival at BAM

KILLER OF SHEEP (Charles Burnett, 1977)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tuesday, April 10, 6:50
Series runs April 10-12
212-415-5500
bam.org
www.killerofsheep.com

In 2007, Milestone Films restored and released Charles Burnett’s low-budget feature-length debut, Killer of Sheep, with the original soundtrack intact; the film had not been available on VHS or DVD for decades because of music rights problems that were finally cleared. (The soundtrack includes such seminal black artists as Etta James, Dinah Washington, Little Walter, and Paul Robeson.) Shot on weekends for less than $10,000, Killer of Sheep took four years to put together and another four years to get noticed, when it won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival. Reminiscent of the work of Jean Renoir and the Italian neo-Realists, the film tells a simple story about a family just trying to get by, struggling to survive in their tough Watts neighborhood in the mid-1970s. The slice-of-life scenes are sometimes very funny, sometimes scary, but always poignant, as Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) trudges to his dirty job in a slaughterhouse in order to provide for his wife (Kaycee Moore) and children (Jack Drummond and Angela Burnett). Every day he is faced with new choices, from participating in a murder to buying a used car engine, but he takes it all in stride. The motley cast of characters, including Charles Bracy and Eugene Cherry, is primarily made up of nonprofessional actors with a limited range of talent, but that is all part of what makes it all feel so real. Killer of Sheep was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1989, the second year of the program, making it among the first fifty to be selected, in the same group as Rebel Without a Cause, The Godfather, Duck Soup, All About Eve, and It’s a Wonderful Life, which certainly puts its place in history in context. Killer of Sheep will be screening on April 10 as part of the Ghett’Out Film Festival at BAM and will be followed by a Q&A with Charles Burnett. The series, which focuses on contemporary low-budget indie French cinema — Killer of Sheep was a major influence on this new French New Wave — continues through April 12 with such films as Jean-Charles Hue’s La BM du seigneur (The Lord’s Ride), Sylvain George’s May They Rest in Revolt (Figures of War) (Qu’ils reposent en révolte), Djinn Carrenard’s $200 Donoma, and Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance.

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: HORA

Ohad Naharin and his Batsheva company reimagine traditional Israeli group dance in HORA (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
March 7-10, $20-$70
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.batsheva.co.il

For more than thirty years, Tel Aviv-based choreographer Ohad Naharin has been creating exciting, unpredictable works that push the limits of what contemporary dance can be. His unique movement language, known as Gaga, has been a centerpiece of the Batsheva Dance Company since 1990, when he was named artistic director. Works such as Deca Dance, Three, Minus 16, and Project 5 have dazzled audiences with their wild creativity and often humorous use of music. Naharin returns to BAM this week with Hora, an hour-long piece for eleven dancers that features lighting and stage design by Avi Yona Bueno, costumes by Anna Mirkin, and a vast array of classical music arranged and performed by Isao Tomita, including snippets of Mussorgsky, Strauss, Ives, Grieg, Wagner, Debussy, Sibelius, and John Williams. You never know what’s going to happen in Naharin’s work, which always makes it fresh and inviting. On Saturday, March 10, at 12 noon ($20), you can join in the fun by taking an open class with Batsheva dancers at BAM’s Hillman Attic Studio; we recently found ourselves onstage with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater going Gaga to their production of Minus 16, a thrill that still gives us chills every time we think of it, which is rather often.

Ohad Naharin’s HORA is a dazzlingly subtle, mesmerizingly beautiful dance (photo by Gadi Dagon)

Update: In a large rectangular room bathed in an intoxicating green light, eleven dancers sit on a long bench at the back. One at a time they get up and start moving slowly to an austere silence that eventually gives way to Ryoji Ikeda’s electronic drone music. Six women, wearing various black leotards, and five men, in white and gray shorts and T-shirts, often stay in place as they bend down, stretch toward the ceiling, and twist and turn. Soon Isao Tomita’s score takes over, playfully reconfigured versions of classical music familiarized in Hollywood movies, including Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” Wagner’s “Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries,” and even John Williams’s main theme from Star Wars. Over the course of sixty minutes, the dancers (including stand-out Iyar Elezra) perform Ohad Naharin’s movement-based nonlinear, nonnarrative choreography that shifts from controlled chaos to featured solos and duets while at other times feeling like the dancers are rehearsing their own roles all at once, seldom making physical contact. The Batsheva Dance Company’s Hora — which never evolves into the title’s traditional Jewish celebratory group dance — is a mesmerizing experience, a stunning balance of light, color, sound, and movement from one of the world’s most innovative and entertaining choreographers.