Tag Archives: robert wilson

LISTEN TO WHAT THE QUEEN SAID: ISABELLE HUPPERT AS MARY AT NYU SKIRBALL

Isabelle Huppert portrays Mary, Queen of Scots in third collaboration with Robert Wilson (photo by Lucie Jansch)

ROBERT WILSON & ISABELLE HUPPERT: MARY SAID WHAT SHE SAID
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
February 27 – March 2, $125
nyuskirball.org

In October 2005, French superstar Isabelle Huppert performed Sarah Kane’s blistering solo piece, 4.48 Psychose, at BAM’s Harvey Theater. For ninety-five minutes, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA, César, and Cannes–winning actress stood stock-still — except for occasionally scanning the audience or extending a finger — portraying a woman who had just suffered a mental breakdown.

In New York, Huppert has also appeared in Florian Zeller’s The Mother at the Atlantic in 2019 and, at BAM, in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Phaedra(s) in 2016 and Robert Wilson’s Quartett in 2009.

Always ready to take on artistic challenges, Huppert has teamed up with Wilson for the third time with Mary Said What She Said, in which Huppert, who has made more than 135 films, including The Lacemaker, Heaven’s Gate, The Piano Teacher, and Elle, gets inside the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, the sixteenth-century Scottish monarch. The show is divided into three parts consisting of eighty-six paragraphs, beginning with “Memory, open my heart.”

Wilson, who has dazzled the world with such wildly unpredictable and visually stunning productions as Einstein on the Beach, The Black Rider, and The Old Woman, is the director of the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris commission as well as the set and lighting designer. The text, which is performed in French with English surtitles, is by longtime Wilson collaborator, novelist, and essayist Darryl Pinckney, using Mary’s own letters and Stefan Zweig’s 1935 biography of the queen in his research. The music is by Ludovico Einaudi, who has worked with such experimental composers as Luciano Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The US premiere at NYU Skirball runs February 27 to March 2; all tickets are $125 to see one of the greatest actors of our era in a show by one of the most inventive creators of our time, promising to be something special. As a bonus, Huppert will participate in a talkback following the 7:30 show on March 1.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LAZARUS 1972–2022

Ping Chong will revisit his 1972 work, Lazarus, at La MaMa (photo by Cathy Zimmerman)

Who: Ping Chong and Company
What: Reimagining of Ping Chong’s 1972 Lazarus
Where: La MaMa Downstairs Theater, 66 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
When: September 30 – October 16, $30 (panel discussion moderated by Sara Farrington on October 9 after 4:00 show)
Why: “I’ve never thought of myself as a theater artist, I’ve thought of myself as an artist in the theater,” Ping Chong tells Sara Farrington in her new book, The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde (53rd State Press, April 2022, $16). Asked how he first became involved in avant-garde theater around 1971, the Toronto-born Ping explains, “I graduated from the School of Visual Arts in film and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I mean, there were no filmmakers of color around. There was no role model and I wasn’t one of these go-getter aggressive kids. So I was just killing time, trying to figure out what to do next. And then a friend of a friend, an associate of mine from school, said, I’m taking some dance classes with Meredith Monk, do you want to go? So I took her classes — she was doing continuing education classes at NYU. And Meredith said to me, You’re talented, come to my workshop. But I didn’t.” He eventually did attend a workshop — Monk’s studio was only three blocks from his apartment — and even joined Monk’s company. His apartment was also only two blocks from La MaMa; he put on his first show there in 1979.

Ping is now back at La MaMa with what will be his final production as artistic director, Lazarus 1972–2022, a reimagining of his first independent work, which was staged at Meredith Monk’s loft studio half a century ago. It’s a nonlinear piece about cultural alienation in which the title biblical character is resurrected in 1972 New York City; it featured projections, puppets, voice-overs (by Ping and Andrea Goodman), sound effects, music, but no dialogue spoken by the two main characters, portrayed by Tony Jannetti and Catherine Zimmerman. The sixty-minute Lazarus 1972–2022 runs Thursdays through Sundays from September 30 to October 16 at La MaMa Downstairs Theater; Christopher Caines will be Lazarus and Jeannie Hutchins portrays Woman, with sets by Watoko Ueno, lighting by Hao Bai, costumes by Stefani Mar, sound by Ernesto Valenzuela, and projections by Kate Freer.

“Lazarus was a metaphor for my own experience, because I had just left my insular world of Chinatown, moving out of that limbo into figuring out how to exist in larger society,” Ping said in a statement. “The original show was 1972; New York City was nearly bankrupt at that time and the urban purgatory aspect of it was very surreal and real. Originally the work reflected that — but the work has changed: I’m a lifetime New Yorker, and Lazarus is now different than the show was at the time in the sense that New York is also different, and centrally, part of the character of the show. Lazarus 1972–2022 is my love for New York but it’s also my sadness for what it’s become. Lazarus may have left purgatory and come back into the world — but what kind of a world did he come back into in 2022?”

On October 9 following the 4:00 performance, playwright, theater artist, screenwriter, director, and Foxy Films cofounder Farrington will join Ping at La MaMa for the panel discussion “Time Passes: Ping Chong and Fiji Theater Company Then and Now,” accompanied by members of his company from the late-1970s and 1980s, including John Fleming, Brian Hallas, Louise Smith, and Jeannie Hutchins. In her book, Farrington, who has collaborated with her husband, Reid, on such experimental multimedia shows as The Passion Project, CasablancaBox, Tyson vs. Ali, and BrandoCapote in addition to writing and/or directing other works, also speaks with such legendary figures as JoAnne Akalaitis, Anne Bogart, Richard Foreman, André Gregory David Henry Hwang, Bill T. Jones, Adrienne Kennedy, David Van Tieghem, Kate Valk, Mac Wellman, and Robert Wilson, creating a fascinating oral history of avant-garde theater.

FRICK MADISON AND THE SLEEVE SHOULD BE ILLEGAL

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Comtesse d’Haussonville, oil on canvas, 1845 (Purchased by the Frick Collection, 1927)

FRICK MADISON AND THE SLEEVE SHOULD BE ILLEGAL
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
Thursday – Sunday, $12-$22 (includes free guide), 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.frick.org/madison

For the first twelve months of the pandemic, the Frick, my favorite place in New York City, was my “virtual home-away-from-home” when it came to art. And I mean that in a different way than Lloyd Schwartz does in his piece on Johannes Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl in the recently published book The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick, in which the poet and classical music critic uses that phrase to describe what the museum, opened to the public in 1935 at Fifth Ave. and Seventieth St., meant to him when he was growing up in Brooklyn and Queens. The book features more than sixty artists, curators, writers, musicians, and philanthropists waxing poetic about their most-admired work in the Frick Collection.

A native of Brooklyn myself, I am referring specifically to the institution’s online presence during the coronavirus crisis. It had closed in March 2020 for a major two-year renovation, moving its remarkable holdings to the nearby Breuer Building on Seventy-Fifth and Madison, the former home of the Whitney from 1966 to 2014, then host to the Met Breuer for an abbreviated four years. Starting in April 2020 and continuing through last month, chief curator Xavier F. Salomon (and occasionally curator Aimee Ng) gave spectacular prerecorded illustrated art history lectures on Fridays at 5:00 focusing on one specific work in the museum’s holdings; thousands of people from around the world tuned in live to learn more about these masterpieces. Two questions added a frisson of excitement for devoted fans: What cocktail would the curator select to enjoy with the painting, sculpture, or porcelain/enamel object that week? And which smoking jacket would Xavier be rocking? These sixty-six marvelous “Cocktails with a Curator” episodes can still be seen here.

For more than half my life, the Frick has been the spot I go to when I need a break from troubled times, a respite from the craziness of the city, a few moments of peace amid the maelstrom. Going to the Frick, which was designed by Carrère and Hastings and served as the home of Pennsylvania-born industrialist Henry Clay Frick from 1914 until his death in 1919 at the age of sixty-nine, was like visiting old friends, reflecting on my existence among familiar and welcoming surroundings. There is still nothing like sitting on a marble bench in John Russell Pope’s Garden Court, with its lush plantings, austere columns, and lovely fountain, in between continuing my intimate, personal relationships with cherished canvases. In Sleeve, philanthropist Joan K. Davidson writes about Giambattista Tiepolo’s Perseus and Andromeda, “Entering the Frick, the visitor tends to head to the galleries where the Fragonards, Titians, El Greco, the great Holbeins, and other Frick Top Treasures are to be found. Or, perhaps, you turn left to the splendid English portraits in the Dining Room. But not so fast, please. You could miss my picture!” I am not nearly so generous as Davidson, not at all ready to share my prized works with others, preferring alone time with each.

After being teased by Salomon’s discussion of Rembrandt’s impossibly powerful 1658 self-portrait, which gave a glimpse of where it is on display at Frick Madison, it was with excitement and more than a little trepidation that I finally ventured toward Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist building, worried it would feel like seeing friends in a hotel where they’re staying while their kitchen is being remodeled. As artist Darren Waterston admits in his piece on Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, about his first pilgrimage to the museum, “I remember feeling a nervous anticipation as I approached the Frick, as if I were meeting a lost relative or a new lover for the first time.” He now makes sure to return at least once every year.

In addition, I was poring over Sleeve, a cornucopia of Frick love. Many of the rapturous entries are just as much about the institution itself and how the pieces are arranged as the chosen object. Writing about the circle of Konrad Witz’s Pietà, short story writer and translator Lydia Davis explains, “Because of the reliable permanence of the collection — the paintings usually hanging where I knew to find them — they became engraved in my memory. Over time, of course, I changed, so my experience of the paintings also changed.” Fashion designer Carolina Herrera, praising Goya’s Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna, notes, “I would love to move in. And, as one does, I would like to move the furniture around, hang the paintings in different places, and put some of the objects away, to change them from time to time.”

While I had contemplated moving in, I had never considered rearranging anything, although I was blown away when, after decades of seeing Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Sir Thomas More in the Living Hall, where it looks over at Holbein’s portrait of More’s archnemesis, Sir Thomas Cromwell, well above eye level and separated by a fireplace and El Greco’s exquisite painting of St. Jerome, I was able to belly up to the canvas at my height when it was displayed temporarily in the Oval Room, leaving me, as curator Edgar Munhall pointed out on the audio guide, “weak in the knees.” Entering Frick Madison, my thoughts zeroed in on my impending rendezvous with Holbein and More.

Unknown artist (Mantua?), Nude Female Figure (Shouting Woman), bronze with silver inlays, early 16th century (Henry Clay Frick Bequest)

Five people melt over the More portrait in Sleeve; in fact, the title of the book comes from novelist Jonathan Lethem’s foray into the work. Nina Katchadourian raves, “Every time I visit the Frick, I go to the Living Hall to look at Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More. I love it as a painting, but I also see it as the first spark in a series of chain reactions that happen among objects in the room. . . . It is a staging of masterpieces that is itself a masterpiece of staging.” I quickly found the canvas, in its own nook with Cromwell, as if there were nothing else in the world but the two of them. You can get dangerously close to the breathtaking canvases, glorying in Holbein’s remarkable brushwork, his unique ability to capture the essence of each man in a drape of cloth, a ring, a stray hair, a bit of white fabric sticking out from a fur collar.

Utterly pleased and satisfied with the placement of the Holbeins — while I did miss all the finery usually surrounding them, seeing them both so unencumbered just felt right — I continued my adventure to track down other old friends and make new ones. St. Francis in the Desert, a work that demands multiple viewings, with new details emerging every time, usually hangs across from More, but here it has its own well-deserved room. Referring to St. Francis’s position in the painting, hands spread to his sides, looking up at the heavens, artist Rachel Feinstein writes, “That moment of isolation is fascinating in the context of the situation we are in now because of COVID-19. Our family of five may not be living alone in a cave right now, but due to the current circumstances, we have turned more inward, like St. Francis. Looking at this image and its sharp clarity during this time of fear and uncertainty is very soothing and inspirational.”

Trips to the Frick bring up childhood memories for many Sleeve contributors (Lethem, Moeko Fujii, Bryan Ferry, Stephen Ellcock, Julie Mehretu); describing seeing Rembrandt’s Polish Rider for the first time in high school, novelist Jerome Charyn remembers, “He could have been a hoodlum from the South Bronx with his orange pants and orange crown. . . . I left the Frick in a dream. I had found a mirror of my own wildness on Fifth Avenue, a piece of the Bronx steppe.” Donald Fagen and Abbi Jacobson recall lost love, while Frank, Edmund De Waal, and Adam Gopnik bring up Marcel Proust. Arlene Shechet and Wangechi Mutu find the feminist power in the early sixteenth century sculpture Nude Female Figure (Shouting Woman). “Making a small work is an unforgiving process,” Shechet writes. “There is no room for missteps, and the Shouting Woman is an example of exquisite perfection, her bold demeanor wrought with great feeling and delicacy. The plush palace that is the Frick becomes eminently more compelling when I visit with this giant of a sculpture.”

Artist Tom Bianchi gets political when delving into Goya’s The Forge, a harrowing canvas that depicts blacksmiths hard at work as if in hell. “The presence of The Forge in the collection is an anomaly,” Bianchi explains. “Frick’s fortune was built on the labor of steelworkers, whose union he infamously opposed. His reduction of the salaries of his workers resulted in the Homestead strike in 1892, in which seven striking workers and three guards were killed and scores more injured. Ultimately, Frick replaced the striking workers, mostly southern and eastern European immigrants, with African American workers, whom he paid a 20 percent lower wage. One wonders if Frick appreciated the irony of the inclusion of this painting among his Old Masters.”

Agnolo Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano), Lodovico Capponi, oil on panel, 1550–55 (The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest)

I’ve always had a minor issue with how the Frick’s three Vermeers, Officer and Laughing Girl, Mistress and Maid, and Girl Interrupted at Her Music, are displayed; two of the three can usually be seen in the South Hall, above furniture, in a narrow space that is easy to pass by, especially if you are checking out the opposite Grand Staircase, which will at last be open to the public when the Frick reopens in mid-2023.

There are no such obstacles at Frick Madison, where all three are in the same room on the second floor. Together the Vermeers are feted by Fujii, Frank, Vivian Gornick, Gregory Crewdson, Susan Minot, Judith Thurman, and Schwartz. Meanwhile, various artists are completely shut out of Sleeve accolades, including Hans Memling (Portrait of a Man), Frans Hals (Portrait of an Elderly Man and Portrait of a Woman), François Boucher (The Four Seasons), Edgar Degas (The Rehearsal), John Constable (Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds), Carel Fabritius (The Goldfinch), François-Hubert Drouais (The Comte and Chevalier de Choiseul as Savoyards), Paolo Veronese (Wisdom and Strength), and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (La Promenade). Rembrandt’s aforementioned self-portrait receives five nods (Roz Chast, Rineke Dijkstra, Diana Rigg, Jenny Saville, Mehretu), while Ingres’s Comtesse d’Hassuonville nets three (Jed Perl, Firelei Báez, Robert Wilson).

But the biggest surprise for me was the popularity of Bronzino’s Lodovico Capponi, chosen by Susanna Kaysen, David Masello, Daniel Mendelsohn, Annabelle Selldorf, and Catherine Opie. When I saw it at Frick Madison, I had no recollection whatsoever of the 1550s vertical oil painting of a page with the Medici court; it felt like I was seeing it for the very first time. It’s an arresting picture, highlighted by loose background drapery, the curious position of the fingers of each hand, the privileged look in his eyes, and, of course, the ridiculously funny codpiece/sword. As I stood in front of it, it did not strike me the way other portraits at the Frick do; in her “Cocktails with a Curator” entry on the piece, Ng says with a big smile, “This one really is one of my most favorite, if not favorite, works at the Frick. . . . I know I’m not the only one. . . . This is a painting that’s at the heart of many people who are close to the Frick.” When I go back to Frick Madison, which will be very soon, I’m going to spend more time with Lodovico, and I am already preparing myself to make a beeline for it when the original Frick reopens. I clearly must be missing something, as Lodovico has taken a brief sojourn to the Met, where it is not only included in the major exhibition “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570,” which runs through October 11, but is the cover image of the catalog.

Selldorf writes in her piece on Lodovico, “Art informs the space, but the space also informs the art.” Whether it’s the Frick Madison or the Frick on Fifth, “The genius, beauty, and mystery behind its doors may change your life,” Herrera promises. It’s changed myriad lives over its nine-decade existence, from other artists’ to just plain folks’ like you and me. You’re bound to fall in “love at first sight” — as New York Philharmonic principal cellist Carter Brey describes his initial encounter with George Romney’s Lady Hamilton as “Nature” — with at least one work at the Frick, something that will stay with you for a long time, an objet d’art you’ll visit again and again and develop a meaningful relationship with over the years. Just be sure to stay out of my way when I’m reconnecting with Sir Thomas More.

DIGITAL DISCOVERY FESTIVAL — ROBERT WILSON: LECTURE ON NOTHING

Robert Wilson’s adaptation of John Cage’s *Lecture on Nothing* will stream August 12 as part of National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival (photo © Lucie Jansch)

Who: Robert Wilson
What: “Innovation”: Volume 14 of National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival
Where: Live@NationalSawdust, Facebook Live
When: Wednesday, August 12, free, 6:00
Why: Bold and daring theater and opera impresario Robert Wilson has been creating cutting-edge works since the late 1960s, from The Black Rider, Faust, Woyceck, and The Life and Death of Marina Abramović to Alice, Einstein on the Beach, Hamletmachine, and Letter to a Man. He’s a master of combining stunning visuals with ingenious audio in mind-blowing productions that push the boundaries of what theater can be. So he’s a natural choice to take part in National Sawdust’s fourteenth volume of its Digital Discovery Festival, the theme of which is “Innovation.”

On August 12 at 6:00, the Williamsburg-based club will present Texas native Wilson’s Lecture on Nothing, his adaptation of John Cage’s 1950 text, in honor of the twenty-eighth anniversary of Cage’s passing on August 12, 1992, at the age of seventy-nine. The hourlong piece debuted in August 2012 at the Ruhrtriennale Festival in Germany, with Wilson dressed in all-white clothing and makeup, surrounded by textual excerpts from the work and a cluttered floor. “I am here and there is nothing to say,” Cage’s speech begins. “If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment. What we re-quire is silence; but what silence requires is that I go on talking.”

The Digital Discovery Festival has previously featured such themes as “Spirituality,” “Social Change,” “Rebellion,” “Activism,” and “Virtuosity,” with new and archival concerts and master classes with Vijay Gupta, Vijay Iyer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sxip Shirey, Tania León, and others. “Innovation” runs August 10-14 and also includes concerts and/or conversations with Jenny Hval, Trimpin, and Matthew Whitaker. All shows are free and are archived if you miss the livestream.

IMPLICIT TENSIONS: MAPPLETHORPE NOW

Self Portrait 1985, printed 2005 Robert Mapplethorpe 1946-1989 ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation 2014

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, gelatin silver print, 1985 (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; gift, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, 1996)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Through July 10, $18-$25 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:00-7:00)
Part 2 runs July 24 – January 5
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

There’s only one week left to see the first phase of the Guggenheim’s yearlong, two-part exhibition “Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now,” a concise survey in conjunction with the thirtieth anniversary of the death of visual artist Robert Mapplethorpe in 1989 at the age of forty-two. Mapplethorpe’s reputation has been growing since the January 2010 publication of Patti Smith’s award-winning book Just Kids, which details the punk rocker’s relationship with Mapplethorpe, from lovers to best friends and artistic collaborators in the late 1960s and 1970s. More recently, there was the 2016 documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures and the 2018 biopic Mapplethorpe as well as Bryce Dessner’s multimedia Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), which used music and images to focus on several of the controversies surrounding Mapplethorpe’s work, from obscenity charges to questions about racism and his photos of black bodies. “Implicit Tensions” circumvents all of that and concentrates on his immense skill in composition and his immeasurable artistic vision in his photographs of flowers, sadomasochism, male and female nudes, and, most notably, himself, although he’s no mere narcissistic selfie taker.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Ken and Tyler, platinum-palladium print, 1985 (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; gift, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, 1996)

The Guggenheim show consists of more than fifty photographs and unique objects from the museum’s collection, gifts from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation between 1993 and 1998 that led to the Guggenheim developing and expanding its photography collection and forming its Photography Council. The wholly satisfying exhibit is somewhat of a greatest hits display, with iconic photos as well as pictures of such well-known figures as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Anderson, Candy Darling, Philip Glass with Robert Wilson, David Hockney with Henry Gelzahler, and Smith. Mapplethorpe treated all his subjects equally, whether a celebrity, a lover, a flower, an S&M scene, or himself. “My interest was to open people’s eyes, get them to realize anything can be acceptable,” he said in an interview. “It’s not what it is, it’s the way it’s photographed.”

Using Polaroid and Hasselblad cameras, among others, Mapplethorpe captured a bold intimacy in his work, which, in 2019, seems more revolutionary than shocking, although some photos are still daring and outrageous. Early on, he created such collages as Black Bag, Green Bag, and Red Bag, made of clippings from gay porn magazines arranged behind a mesh screen, placing homosexuality tantalizingly out of reach (and seemingly imprisoned). In Dominick and Elliot, a bound and naked Dominick is upside down, as if in a reverse crucifixion pose, next to the shirtless Elliot, who has a cigarette in one hand, Elliot’s testicles in the other. In Ken Moody and Robert Sherman, Moody’s and Sherman’s heads are seen sideways as they look seriously off into the distance, the former’s blackness and the latter’s whiteness almost blending together. It’s a visual companion piece to Ken and Tyler, with Moody’s and Tyler’s nude bodies — their heads are out of the frame — right behind each other, facing the same direction as Ken’s and Robert’s heads.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) Thomas, 1987 Gelatin silver print A.P. 1/2 image: 19 1/4 x 19 3/16 inches (48.9 x 48.7 cm); sheet: 23 3/4 x 19 13/16 inches (60.3 x 50.3 cm) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, 1993 93.4304

Robert Mapplethorpe, Thomas, gelatin silver print, 1987 (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; gift, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, 1993)

This theme of dichotomy is central to the bisexual Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre and is fully evident at the Guggenheim. Two of the most telling photos are a pair of 1977 works titled Pictures/Self Portrait, which were invitations to a gallery show. In both, Mapplethorpe’s hand is writing the word “Pictures”; in one, the hand is shown in a conventional man’s shirt and watch, while in the other the hand wears a black leather glove and a brash metal bracelet, equalizing and contrasting so-called normal and S&M costuming. In one gelatin silver print of bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, she is dressed in black, as if at a funeral, while in another she is nude except for a white sheet over her face that falls like the train of a wedding dress to the floor.

The implicit tension is also on display in Mapplethorpe’s numerous self-portraits, which range from the angelic to the demonic; he has evil horns in one and holds a skull-topped cane in another, while in a third he is elegant in a lush fur and wearing lipstick. In two 1980 self-portraits, he is shirtless and androgynous in one, smoking a cigarette and wearing a leather jacket in the other, comparing sensitivity with toughness as he addresses gender identity and societal ideas of maleness. And then there’s American Flag, a photograph of a ratty, torn flag that speaks volumes. Mapplethorpe had a very personal way of depicting both the private and the public, and thirty years after his death from HIV/AIDS complications, his pictures still get under your skin, the man behind the camera — and in front of it — as elusive as ever, and just as beautiful and beguiling. The second phase of “Implicit Tensions” opens July 24 and will examine Mapplethorpe’s legacy and influence, combining his works with those of Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Lyle Ashton Harris, Glenn Ligon, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

LETTER TO A MAN

Mikhail Baryshnikov goes inside the mind of Vaslav Nijinsky in Robert Wilson’s LETTER TO A MAN (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

BAM Harvey
651 Fulton St.
October 15-30, $35-$130
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Robert Wilson and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who teamed with Willem Dafoe in 2014 at BAM for The Old Woman, have returned to Brooklyn for another avant-Expressionist multimedia marvel, Letter to a Man. Continuing at the Harvey through October 30, the mostly one-man show is based on the diaries of Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, who electrified the dance world before his schizophrenia had him in and out of mental institutions from 1919, when he was twenty-nine, until his death in 1950 at the age of sixty-one. Conceived, directed, and designed by Wilson, who has previously dazzled BAM audiences with such consciousness-expanding works as The Blue Rider, Einstein on the Beach, and Woyczeck, Letter to a Man is built around snippets from the diary Nijinsky kept in early 1919, shortly before being hospitalized for the first time. Performed by Baryshnikov, dressed in a sharp tuxedo and white-painted face, and various disembodied voices as if they’re echoing in Nijinsky’s head, the text, adapted by Christian Dumais-Lvowski and filled with references to God, sex, war, and death, features such devastating lines as “I am standing in front of a precipice into which I may fall. I am afraid to fall,” “I will eat everyone I can get hold of. I will stop at nothing,” and “I went in the direction of the abyss.” Baryshnikov moves exquisitely across the stage, with small dance flourishes that are breathtaking, particularly because no footage of Nijinsky performing exists. A. J. Weissbard boldly lights Wilson’s surreal set, with vaudeville-style flashing stage lights in the front, mesmerizing shades of white and blue, and dark shadows as Baryshnikov stands in front of a large window that could be in an asylum or a church. Wilson includes such elements as a burning cross, a fiery red circle that references Nijinsky’s paranoid drawings of eyes in the diaries, and branches that evoke Nijinsky’s only extant choreographic work, Afternoon of a Faun.

Mikhail Baryshnikov acts out Vaslav Nijinsky’s inner demons in multimedia work at BAM (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The show gets its title from Nijinsky’s fourth notebook, which consists of letters he wrote but never sent; in this case, the “man” in question is Ballets Russes founder and artistic director Sergei Diaghilev, who is never specifically named in the diaries but had a severe falling out with his star dancer and lover after Nijinsky married Romola de Pulszky in September 1913. Although Wilson is treading on familiar territory from a technical standpoint, Letter to a Man is still a mind-blowing tribute to both Nijinsky and Baryshnikov, who along with Rudolf Nureyev redefined ballet in the twentieth century. The music, selected by Hal Willner, ranges from classical to pop, from Arvo Pärt and Henry Mancini to Tom Waits’s “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” and Napoleon XIV’s novelty hit, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!,” bringing levity to the proceedings as Nijinsky’s battle with mental illness intensifies. The mysterious projections are by Tomek Jeziorski; Jacques Reynaud designed Baryshnikov’s costumes, which include a straitjacket, while choreographer Lucinda Childs collaborated on the movement. As with most of Wilson’s works, there are many striking, memorable images that are likely to stay with you for a long time, from Baryshnikov sitting in a chair up on a wall in an almost blindingly white space to him slowly inching backward on a dark beam, moving away from the aforementioned large window, from him approaching a projection of a battlefield to performing a little soft shoe. It’s a glowing tribute that is fraught with sadness, memorializing a special dancer who was overcome by a debilitating disease.

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: LETTER TO A MAN

Mikhail Baryshnikov plays Vaslav Nijinsky in Robert Wilsons LETTER TO A MAN at BAM (photo by Lucie Jansch)

Mikhail Baryshnikov brings Vaslav Nijinsky’s diaries to life in Robert Wilson’s LETTER TO A MAN at BAM (photo by Lucie Jansch)

BAM Harvey
651 Fulton St.
October 15-30, $35-$130
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In March, Mikhail Baryshnikov starred in the one-man show Brodsky/Baryshnikov at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a stirring presentation based on the writings of his friend and fellow Riga native Joseph Brodsky. Now Misha is reteaming with stage impresario and BAM regular Robert Wilson on another one-person show, Letter to a Man, in which Baryshnikov portrays Vaslav Nijinsky, taking the audience on a surreal tour through the legendary Russian dancer’s diaries as he battled mental illness. Baryshnikov was last at BAM in 2014 in Wilson’s The Old Woman with Willem Dafoe, while the Waco-born Wilson, who specializes in wildly inventive audiovisual spectacles, has been putting on shows at BAM since The Life & Times of Sigmund Freud in 1969; he’s staged Einstein on the Beach, The Civil Wars, The Black Rider, Woyczeck, and others there since then. Part of BAM’s 2016 Next Wave Festival, Letter to a Man is directed and designed by Wilson, with text by Christian Dumais-Lvowski, dramaturgy by Darryl Pinckney, music by Hal Willner (with snippets from Tom Waits, Arvo Pärt, Henry Mancini, and Alexander Mosolov), movement collaboration by Lucinda Childs, costumes by Jacques Reynaud, lighting by A. J. Weissbard, sound design by Nick Sagar and Ella Wahlström, and video projections by Tomek Jeziorski. The show runs October 15-30; on October 24, the free program “Inside Nijinsky’s Diaries” will take place at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, featuring Paul Giamatti reading from the diaries, followed by a panel discussion with Pinckney, Joan Acocella, and Larry Wolff, moderated by Jennifer Homans.