Tag Archives: dixon place

THE LEGEND OF THE WAITRESS AND THE ROBBER

The Legend of the Waitress and the Robber comes to Dixon Place May 25-29 (photo by Stefan Hagen)

Who: Playfactory Mabangzen, Concrete Temple Theater
What: Cross-cultural theatrical collaboration
Where: Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Pl. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
When: May 25-29, $20-$25
Why: The Seoul-based Playfactory Mabangzen and the NYC-based Concrete Temple Theater have teamed up to present a unique mashup of two Robin Hood–style tales, Friedrich Schiller’s 1781 play, The Robbers, and the Joseon dynasty Korean novel The Story of Hong Gildong. Written before the pandemic by Renee Philippi and directed by Philippi and Eric Nightengale, The Legend of the Waitress and the Robber takes place in a dystopian society fighting for justice for seniors and freedom from cellular devices. The opening song explains, “Imagine, if you will, there’s a world much like ours. Maybe in the future. Maybe even now. A world where every human lives separate and alone. The only interaction allowed — is on a phone.”

The seventy-five-minute show will be performed by Carlo Adinolfi, Hye Young Chyun, Lisa Kitchens, Anthony Simone, Ju Yeon Choi, Nam Pyo Kim, Won Kyongsik, Joo Youn Park, and Noh Yura, with sets by Adinolfi, costumes by Laura Anderson Barbata, an original score by Lewis Flinn, and musical direction by Jacob Kerzner and Hee Eun Kim. The New York City premiere runs May 25-29 at Dixon Place; tickets are $20-$25.

SoloDuo DANCE FESTIVAL

In-person SoloDuo Dance Festival is set for February 6-7 at Dixon Place

SoloDuo DANCE FESTIVAL
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Pl. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Sunday, February 6, 6:00 & 8:00, and Monday, February 7, 7:30, $15-$25
212-219-0736
dixonplace.org
www.whitewavedance.org

In November 2020, Young Soon Kim’s Brooklyn-based White Wave troupe had to go virtual with its SoloDuo Dance Festival, presenting filmed excerpts of its long-running work-in-progress iyouuswe II. This year, White Wave will be holding its sixth annual SoloDuo Dance Festival at Dixon Place, with three in-person shows on February 6 and 7. The festival features solos and duets by more than two dozen emerging and midcareer choreographers, from companies and individuals from across the country. Below is the full lineup.

Sunday, February 6, 6:00
CoreDance Contemporary (NY)
Corian Ellisor Dance (GA)
Scott Autry (NY)
Yu.S.Artistry (NY)
THE MARK dance company (NC)
sk|dancers (IN)
Santiago Rivera (CA)
Kevin Toyo (NY)
Li Chiao-Ping Dance (WI)
Obremski/Works (NY)

Sunday, February 6, 8:00
Elizabeth Shea Dance (IN)
New York Theatre Ballet (NY)
FUSE Dance Company (CA)
East by North Dance Theatre (NY)
John Beasant III (TX)
University of Arizona School of Dance (AZ)
Metanoia Dance (NY)
Constance Nicolas Vellozzi (NY)
Koin & Co (NY)
Charlotte Adams & Dancers (AZ)
WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (NY)

Monday, February 7, 7:30
ZINC Movement Co. (NH)
Quianna Simpson (OH)
Smutek Dance (MI)
Amos Pinhasi (NY)
DiMauro Dance (NY)
HR Dance (NY)
Alison Cook Beatty Dance (NY)
Lindsey Bramham Howie (NC)
Elise Knudson (NY)
WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (NY)

INTERGLACIAL

Laura Peterson’s Interglacial makes its world premiere this week at Dixon Place (photo by Peter Yearsley)

INTERGLACIAL
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
December 8-11, $15-$21, 7:30
212-219-0736
dixonplace.org
www.openartsstudio.org

In a 2011 twi-ny talk with Laura Peterson, the New York City–based dancer and choreographer said about Wooden, “I am often influenced by visual art, and I started seriously looking at earthwork and pieces made from natural materials. I found myself thinking that those pieces are meant to change, as they are subject to time and weather.” Climate and land art are also at the center of her latest piece, Interglacial, which is having its world premiere December 8–11 at Dixon Place. Part dance, part installation, the work explores Arctic glacier loss as the performance space transforms over the length of the show.

“In Interglacial, I am trying to understand the devastating effects humans have had on our environment,” Peterson (Failure, SOLO), the artistic director of Open Arts Studio, said in a statement. “I’m exploring the intersection of the human body with landscapes and nonhuman phenomena. This work has a particular focus on the qualities of time, from the hyperspeeds of the digital world to the impossibly slow travels of a glacier across a continent, as it drags rocky material toward the sea.” Interglacial is performed by Peterson, Ching-I Chang, Jennifer Payán, and Darrin Wright, with sound by Omar Zubair, lighting by Amanda K. Ringger, and costumes by Charles Youssef.

CRIMINAL QUEERNESS FESTIVAL: GLOBAL STORIES FOR GLOBAL IMPACT

criminal queerness festival

Who: Omer Abbas Salem, Noor Hamdi, Connor Bryant, Rula Gardenier, Bahar Beihaghi, Martin Zebari, Sharifa Yasmin, Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, Amahl Raphael Khouri, Hashem Hashem, Sivan Battat, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, Pooya Mohseni, Samy Nour Younes, Louis Sallan, Roger Q. Mason, Ianne Fields Stewart, Migguel Anggelo, Marlene Ramirez-Cancio, Adam Elsayigh, Adam Odsess-Rubin, J. Julian Christopher, Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
What: Second annual Criminal Queerness Festival
Where: Dixon Place Zoom, Facebook, YouTube
When: June 13-29, free (some events require advance RSVP)
Why: National Queer Theater and Dixon Place’s second annual Criminal Queerness Festival consists of two and a half weeks of live performances, discussions, screenings, master classes, and workshops that bring together queer playwrights from around the world to fight censorship, inspire activism, and help shape a quickly changing culture. This year’s festival focuses on presentations involving four artists whose work had to be canceled or postponed at Dixon Place because of the pandemic: Chicago-based actor Omer Abbas Salem’s debut play, Mosque4Mosque; transgender Jordanian documentary playwright Amahl Raphael Khouri’s She He Me; Venezuelan-born, Brooklyn-based Migguel Anggelo’s Maid in America; and 2019 Lambda Literary Award winner Mashuq Mushtaq Deen’s The Shaking Earth. Among the issues being investigated in the plays and talks are “The Syrian Civil War and LGBTQ Communities,” “Queer Transnational Activism in the Middle East,” “Queering Trauma into Fabulousness,” and “What Does It Mean to Be Criminally Queer?” Online admission to everything is free, but donations are accepted and some events require advance registration. Below is the full schedule.

Saturday, June 13
“Creative Conversations: The Syrian Civil War and LGBTQ Communities,” with Omer Abbas Salem and Noor Hamdi, moderated by festival dramaturg Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, 2:00

Tuesday, June 16
“Creative Conversations: Queer Transnational Activism in the Middle East,” discussion surrounding Amahl Raphael Khouri’s documentary play She He Me, with Khouri and Hashem Hashem, moderated by director Sivan Battat, noon

Thursday, June 18
Master Class with Amahl Raphael Khouri on giving testimony, 2:00

Wednesday, June 17
“Queer and Disabled: Examining the imagination,” with Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, 2:00

Friday, June 19
Reading of Mosque4Mosque by Omer Abbas Salem, with Noor Hamdi, Connor Bryant, Rula Gardenier, Bahar Beihaghi, and Martin Zebari, followed by a talkback moderated by director Sharifa Yasmin, 8:00

Saturday, June 20
LGBTQ Digital Pride and Migration 2020 Festival: Livestream performance of excerpts from Amahl Raphael Khouri’s She He Me, 1:00

Sunday, June 21
LGBTQ Digital Pride and Migration 2020 Festival: Live performance of Amahl Raphael Khouri’s She He Me, with Pooya Mohseni, Samy Nour Younes, and Louis Sallan, followed by a talkback with Khouri, moderated by director Sivan Battat, 4:00

Master Class with playwright Omer Abbas Salem, 7:00

Monday, June 22
“The House of Joy: A Tent Revival for the Legendary Quarantined Children,” exercises and open discussion with Roger Q. Mason and Ianne Fields Stewart, 8:00

Tuesday, June 23
Panel discussion on LGBTQ human rights in Latin America, with multidisciplinary artist Migguel Anggelo, moderated by Marlene Ramirez-Cancio of the Hemispheric Institute, 7:00

Thursday, June 25
“Queering Trauma into Fabulousness”: Master Class with J. Julian Christopher, 7:00

Friday, June 26
Live screening of vichitra: an anthology of queer dreams, directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, with video by Kameron Neal and sound design by Jeremy Bloom, followed by discussion with Chowdhury, 7:00

Sunday, June 28
Maid in America: original semiautobiographical video by Migguel Anggelo, with screenplay by J. Julian Christoper, musical direction by Jaime Lozano, and directed and developed by Srđa Vasiljević, 7:00

Monday, June 29
Master Class with Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, 3:00

LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS: THE MT. OLYMPUS OF LES LOVE! and more

festival of the arts

Who: Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, William Electric Black, more
What: Live concert and summit (and many other events)
Where: Theater for the New City
When: Saturday, May 23, free, 8:00 (festival runs May 22-24)
Why: Since 1996, Theater for the New City’s annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts has been a harbinger of summer, three days of multidisciplinary performances taking place in and around the organization’s East First St. home. But the twenty-fifth anniversary of the popular weekend event goes virtual because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it’s slowed down in the least. From May 22 to 24, the festival, whose theme is “Renaissance: Arts Alive 25,” will feature 250 participants providing music, dance, theater, discussion, and more, all for free. The centerpiece occurs on May 23 at 8:00 with “The Mt. Olympus of LES Love!,” a concert with an amazing lineup consisting of Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, and William Electric Black, followed by a summit that attempts to answer the question “Where do we go from here?”

The three-day celebration will feature such speakers as Nii Gaani Aki, Michael Musto, Brad Hoylman, Carlina Rivera, and Candice Burridge; theater excerpts with Barbara Kahn, Anne Lucas, Eve Packer, Greg Mullavey, the Drilling Company, Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, and others; comedy from Reno, Stan Baker, Trav S.D., Wise Guise, Izzy Church, Epstein and Hassan, and Ana-Maria Bandean with Gemma Forbes; dance with Ashley Liang Dance Company, Constellation Moving Co., Dixon Place, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Wendy Osserman Dance Company, Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, and Zullo/RawMovement; music by Donald Arrington, Allesandra Belloni, Michael David Gordon and the Pocket Band, Art Lillard, and Yip Harburg Rainbow Troupe; cabaret with KT Sullivan, Marissa Mulder, Eric Yves Garcia, Aziza, and Peter Zachari; and poetry readings by Coni Koepfinger, Tsaurah Litzky, Lola Rodriguez, Bob Rosenthal, Lissa Moira, and Brianna Bartenieff; along with puppetry, film screenings, children’s events, and visual art, all for free, although donations are gladly accepted.

BURNT-OUT WIFE

(photo by Nick Pierce)

Sara Juli explores marriage in personal, funny ways in latest one-woman show (photo by Nick Pierce)

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St. between Rivington and Delancey Sts.
February 21-22, 27-28, $19-$23, 7:00
dixonplace.org
www.sarajuli.com

“The funny thing about marriage over time is I was very focused on locking it in, and now I just feel locked in,” Sara Juli says in her one-woman show Burnt-Out Wife, which makes its New York premiere February 21-22 and 27-28 at Dixon Place in conjunction with the American Dance Festival. The comedic dance-theater work takes place in a peppy pink bathroom designed by Pamela Moulton, with Juli wearing a range of household costumes (or not much of anything) created by Carol Farrell as she sings, dances, and riffs on relationships while sharing intimate moments and eliciting audience participation. Juli, a Skidmore graduate with degrees in dance and anthropology whose previous shows include The Money Conversation and Tense Vagina: an actual diagnosis, lived in New York for fifteen years before moving in 2014 with her husband and two children to Maine, where she produces the contemporary dance series Maine Moves and runs the fundraising consulting practice Surala Consulting, among other artistic ventures. In preparing for Burnt-Out Wife, Juli and her husband went to marriage counseling, covering as many bases as possible as she explores commitment in deeply personal yet funny ways from a distinctly feminist perspective. The seventy-minute presentation, which involves cake, an original song, and plungers, features dramaturgy by Michelle Mola, sound by Ryan MacDonald, and lighting by David Ferri; tickets are $19 in advance and $23 at the door.

PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL: GENDER AND POWER

pen world voices

Multiple venues
April 30 – May 7, free – $35
www.worldvoices.pen.org

The thirteenth annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature turns its attention to a hot-button issue in America and around the world, taking a hard look at gender and power. The festival runs April 30 to May 7, featuring panel discussions, lectures, readings, plays, Q&As, film screenings, literary pub crawls, and more. The curators for this year’s festival, which explores bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia as well, are Susan Bernofsky, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Kim Chan, Ram Devineni, Mona Eltahawy, Marlon James, Saeed Jones, Meg Lemke, Valeria Luiselli, Paul Morris, Chinelo Okparanta, Steph Opitz, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, and Andy Tepper, chaired by Rob Spillman. “PEN America launched the World Voices Festival after 9/11 at a moment when the U.S. was becoming cut off from the rest of the globe,” PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel said in a statement. “Amid visa bans and an America First foreign policy, World Voices is now an important antidote to an America at risk of only talking to itself, fanning baseless fears, and damaging relations with allies and people around the world. This year’s festival will center on both celebration and mobilization, rallying around PEN America’s mission to defend free expression and enable the breadth of voices vital to an open marketplace of ideas.” Below is one highlight for each day; also among the more than 150 participants from 40 countries are Carrie Brownstein, Patti Smith, Salman Rushdie, Laurie Anderson, Rita Mae Brown, Jessica Hagedorn, José Emilio Pacheco, Eileen Myles, Trevor Noah, Eiko Otake, and Ani DiFranco.

Sunday, April 30
Festival Prelude! A House Divided, the Great Hall, the Cooper Union, free with advance reservations, 3:00

Monday, May 1
World Voices: International Play Festival 2017, featuring Patricia Cornelius’s Shit (4:00), Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s Take Out the Rubbish, Sasha (6:00), and Mîrza Metîn’s Hungry Dogs (8:00), CUNY Segal Theatre, free

Tuesday, May 2
Exposure: Politics, Sex, and Power, with Rokudenashiko, Ali Asgar, and Mohsen Namjoo, moderated by Alexandra Munroe, Dixon Place, $15, 7:00

Wednesday, May 3
Portraying Gay Male Life Today, with Tobin Low, Andrew Solomon, Garth Greenwell, Ali Asgar, and Edouard Louis, the Greene Space at WNYC, $15, 7:00

Thursday, May 4
Gender, Power, and Authoritarianism in the Dystopian Age, with Marge Piercy, Alice Sola Kim, Namwali Sperwell, and Basma Abdel Aziz, New School Auditorium, $15, 6:30

Friday, May 5
Pen vs. Sword: Satire vs. the State, with Mo Rocca, Abdourahman Waberi, Aleksandar Hemon, Masha Gessen, and others, moderated by Elissa Schappel, St. Josephs College, $10, 7:00

Saturday, May 6
Women in Ink, with Roz Chast, Liana Finck, Rayma Suprani, and Emily Flake, moderated by Liza Donnelly, Dixon Place, $20, 12 noon

Saturday, May 6
and
Sunday, May 7
The Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture: Masha Gessen and Samantha Bee, the Great Hall, the Cooper Union, $35, 6:00

Sunday, May 7
Unapologetically Afro-Latina, with Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, Nancy Morejon, Magdalena Albizu, and Amanda Alcantara, Apollo Theater, free with advance reservations, 4:15