Lionel Popkin’s RUTH DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE makes its New York City premiere at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Cristal Jones)
Who:Lionel Popkin What:Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, part of Travelogues series Where:Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, Experimental Theater, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St., 212-352-3101 When: October 29 – November 1, $20 Why: Bloomington-born, Santa Monica-based dancer, choreographer, and UCLA professor Lionel Popkin returns to New York City with his most recent evening-length piece, Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, inspired by legendary dancer and choreographer Ruth St. Denis’s fascination with “Oriental” culture, as exemplified by such works as Radha. “Was St. Denis’s Orientalism an act of cultural appropriation or a legitimate examination of sources of dance?” the half-Jewish, half-Indian Popkin asks. “Can a century of perspective help a contemporary choreographer reach his own point of equilibrium?” Danced by Popkin, Emily Beattie, and Carolyn Hall, Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore features a score by composer Guy Klucevsek, performed live by avant-garde accordionist Klucevsek and violinist Mary Rowell, a bevy of fanciful costumes by set designer Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, lighting by Christopher Kuhl, and video design by Cari Ann Shim Sham, as well as the use of microphones, text-based projections, and a leaf blower. “Popkin’s talent lies in his ability to seamlessly blend his intellectual, personal, and kinetic approaches,” explains Travelogues series curator Laurie Uprichard. “He alternates between disarmingly informal narrator and highly structured creator of movement. The intermittent ‘pure dance’ sections are solidly constructed yet the audience is never at a loss for finding its place within the humorous texts.” Popkin’s previous works include There Is an Elephant in This Dance, Miniature Fantasies, and And Then We Eat, all at Danspace Project; he is currently in development with Inflatable Trio, which is set in an inflatable plastic living room.
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.
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.
Experimental composer and musician John Zorn is curating two exciting benefits for the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund at the Abrons Art Center
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Friday, April 8, $35-$50, 6:30 & 9:30
212-352-3101 www.henrystreet.org
Jon Zorn, whose Masada Marathon takes place March 30 at New York City Opera, is one of the leading figures participating in benefits for the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. On April 9, he’ll be playing in the 1:00 gala block ($100) with Philip Glass, Hal Willner, Lou Reed, and Laurie Anderson at Japan Society’s twelve-hour Concert for Japan. And the night before, he’s curating two programs at the Abrons Art Center ($35-$50). At 6:30, Zorn will be playing in a duo with Ikue Mori along with Thurston Moore, Elliott Sharp, the Alhambra Trio with Rob Burger, Erik Friedlander, Lizz Wright & Aya Nishina, Milford Graves, Jamie Saft and New Zion Trio, Gyan Riley, Matthew Shipp, the Masada String Trio, Ned Rothenberg, Mark Feldman & Sylvie Courvoisier, Miya Masaoka, and Jack Quartet. That incredible lineup will be followed at 9:30 by a show featuring Norah Jones, Jessie Harris, Vinicius Cantuaria, Buke and Gass, JG Thirlwell’s Manorexia, Elysian Fields, and Sex Mob. “The tragedy and devastation is really overwhelming,” Zorn said in a statement. “I’ve always felt a strong personal connection to Japan, and I’m just glad to be able to do my part to help. It should be an amazing night.”
