Kudos to Patricia Cohen, whose latest Times article breaks down the financial backstory of the current revival of Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights, running now at Minetta Lane Theater. Cohen follows the development trail of the revival and shows how it “came within a hair’s breadth of not happening at all” despite the following three-year laundry list:

- Government support (an NEA American Masterpieces grant)

- Corporate support ($50K from American Express)

- Festival showing (American Dance Festival hosted the piece as a work in progress opener in ’07)

- Out-of-town opening (at Two River Theater in NJ)

- In-kind support (from Flying by Foy)

- the final “yes” from the right producer (in this case, Rhoda Herrick, who’d never met Clarke but committed after a single phone call from her)

Cohen rightly acknowledges the role of September’s economic crisis in leaving Clarke’s production nearly high and dry, but I’m glad she doesn’t downplay the pre-existing difficulties in geting a known, acknowledged masterpiece produced. And I’d love to see the Times do a follow up showing its readers who don’t work in the arts what it takes to get enough support to produce an untested new work that doesn’t have the benefit of Martha Clarke’s artistic standing.

Meantime, do yourself a favor and see the piece.

Nov 19 – Jan 18

Tue. 7 pm; Wed-Fri. 8 pm; Sat 3 & 8 pm; Sun 3 & 7 pm

Tickets here; holiday times here

Okay so I know I should be writing about culture and stuff. I just got back last Sunday from ten days abroad and have been digging out from under a heap of emails and huge massive piles of backlog work. I was in Tel Aviv for awhile, which is amazing. It is like Paris with Palm Trees. I saw tons of cool art, partied with the Batsheva dance company at the Susanne Dellal center and much, much more. It was hard to come back to cold, cold, NYC. But I’m getting back in the swing of things.

And what with the holidays and all, my thoughts turn to credit card debt. According to Wikipedia (and their sources):

• Total U.S. household debt, including mortgage loan and consumer debt, was $11.4 trillion in 2005. By comparison, total U.S. household assets, including real estate, equipment, and financial instruments such as mutual funds, was $62.5 trillion in 2005.^[47]
• Total U.S Consumer Credit Card revolving credit debt was $937.5 billion in November 2007.^[48]

It just seems to me that if the government can bailout AIG to the tune of some $85 billion and Citi to the tune of, what, $45 billion? And a total bailout plan to all the fatcat investors of nearly $1 trillion dollars – that maybe it would be a really great idea to bailout more regular american who are burdened by credit card debt. Many people have accumulated debt that they’ve had since they were in their 20′s. The credit card people target students, we live in a culture that saturates common consumers with overwhelming messages to get into debt for a better life, etc. etc. Wages have remained stagnant at the  price of living has gone up, etc. etc.

Imagine the financial stimulus if people who are spending significant parts of their annual budget trying to pay down credit card debt – and never being able to get out from under it – could actually start over? What if they could have the opportunity to restructure their personal finances to get ahead and become a more robust and healthy part of the economy? Surely someone could figure out a way to distinguish between the chronically malfeasant and the redeemable but burdened debtors?

How about a bailout plan for the little guy?!!!

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA AND YALE SCHOOL OF MUSIC ANNOUNCE THE YALE INSTITUTE FOR MUSIC THEATRE - JUNE 7-21, 2009

APPLICATIONS FOR TWO-WEEK WORKSHOP ACCEPTED NOVEMBER 19, 2008 THROUGH JANUARY 23, 2009

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA (James Bundy, Dean) and YALE SCHOOL OF MUSIC (Robert Blocker, Dean) announce the YALE INSTITUTE FOR MUSIC THEATRE. 

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Mark Brokaw and Producer Beth Morrison, the YALE INSTITUTE FOR MUSIC THEATRE will select three original music theatre works to receive a two-week workshop in New Haven June 7-21, 2009.

Established by Yale School of Drama and Yale School of Music, the YALE INSTITUTE FOR MUSIC THEATRE seeks to identify distinctive and original music theatre works by emerging writers and composers, and to serve those writers by matching them with collaborators such as directors, music directors, and actors/singers who can help them further develop their work.  By limiting production resources and values, the workshop will keep the focus on the creative process of the artistic team. 

“We are delighted that Yale School of Drama and Yale School of Music are joining forces to nurture gifted young music theatre writers.  The Yale Institute for Music Theatre supports their creative process by providing the writers with this developmental opportunity to hear and see their work interpreted in a professional environment including their peers in training here at the University,” Dean Robert Blocker and Dean James Bundy said in a joint statement.  “We are very pleased that Mark Brokaw and Beth Morrison will provide such experienced leadership to this new endeavor as artistic director and producer of the Institute.”

Continue Reading

the NoLA Rising Exhibit is only open until 8PM tonight at IRT (154 Christopher #3B) – it is an awesome installation/exhibit that totally transforms the IRT space into an immersive multimedia street art exhibit:

Mirror Wall w/Tagging and Video

More pictures ON FACEBOOK.

the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council wants to give it to you:

Swing Space

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council will begin accepting online applications for the next session of its Swing Space program on December 10, 2008. In partnership with area landlords, LMCC makes vacant storefront, commercial and office space downtown available to artists, curators, and cultural organizations for periods of two to four months. The program is designed to address short-term space needs for a range of projects, and to encourage creative, experimental and collaborative approaches to artistic practice in unconventional spaces. Applications will be accepted for Presentation Space, Development Space, and Office Space in the Performing Arts and the Visual Arts.  Past space grants have included theater and dance rehearsal space, studio space for visual artists, unconventional venues for self-produced performance, and groundfloor storefront spaces for installation projects and exhibitions.  Artists, directors, choreographers, theater and dance companies, music ensembles, collaborative artist groups, curators and arts organizations are eligible to apply. Stipends ranging from $300 to $3,000 are provided to support project costs. Swing Space was created with lead support from The September 11th Fund.

Application guidelines and forms are available online:

www.lmcc.net/swingspace/apply

Deadline:

January 21, 2009

Information Sessions:

RSVP required: www.lmcc.net/swingspace/apply

Thursday, November 20, 4pm at 100 Church Street

Wednesday, December 10, 7pm at 14 Wall Street

Thursday, January 8, 4pm at 14 Wall Street

Contact:

Ben Kerrick

Program Manager, Artist Residencies

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

125 Maiden Lane, 2nd Floor

Tel: 212.219.9401 x104

Fax: 212.219.2058

E-mail: bkerrick@lmcc.net

Website: www.lmcc.net

In conjunction with the Whitney exhibit Alexander Calder: The Paris Years (1926-1933), artist Colin Gee will be performing a new series at the Whitney twice this week. Details:

“Objective Suspense, a Whitney Live commission conceived and performed by Colin Gee, is a serious of intimate performance experiences inspired by Alexander Calder’s innovative idea of movement and the love of the circus.

Though no one but the artist could animate Calder’s Circus-an early example of performance art-Gee’s surprise interventions, using figures of his own devising, charge the atmosphere of the gallery with parallel senses of suspense and animation

With Calder’s Circus nearby, Gee manipulates abstract forms in several short acts that focus on the dynamics of movement.  Using eye contact, rhythm, play, and stillness, Gee re-orients perceptions of the circus itself.”

Performance times are unnannounced to maintain a sense of surprise but will repeat every 15 minutes for at least several hours. I hear Wednesday and Sunday afternoon this week are a good times to go…

Two Spheres within a Sphere, Calder, 1931

What are you doing with your chilly NYC Saturday? Lounging on the couch? Think again, kids – we’re supporting a post-Katrina grassroots art campaign at IRT with a  festival right now and a party tonight.

The details:

SLIGHTLYaskew hosts NoLA Rising Festival at IRT | 154 Christopher St. #3B

Main Exhibition: thru Nov 26 | Benefit: TODAY till 9 pm | Party: TONIGHT 9-4 am

The story:

Professors from Berkeley and Harvard have named Michael “Rex” Dingler founder of the largest grassroot movement in the contemporary art scene in the American South. Dingler and his post-Katrina art campaign, NoLA Rising, have spread art and hope to over 100 cities around the world. From November 21st through the 26th, New York-based art collective SLIGHTLYaskew will host NoLA Rising’s New York City debut in the NoLA Rising Festival.

The NoLA Rising Festival will celebrate the role public art has played in rebuilding and healing post-Katrina New Orleans. The main feature of the festival is the exhibit, A Tag of Two Cities. A multi-media art installation, A Tag of Two Cities showcases a collection of street art, murals and graffiti created by NoLA Rising in collaboration with celebrated Brooklyn street artists El Celso, Endless Love Crew, Robots Will Kill, and infinity. In the community based spirit of NoLA Rising, SLIGHLTYaskew hosted several paint parties in New York city parks, where locals from all five boroughs created signs of hope. These paintings will be displayed in the exhibit and will then be given to New Orleans city residents and public schools.

The festival includes a 24-hour art happening on Saturday November 22nd. Events and performances include live music by Lauren Pritchard (Spring Awakening, original cast) and James Subudhi, and funk reggae band Suspicious Brown and an all night dance party with DJs cassettenova, Vietcong Disco and DJ Theo Action Lorraine. Proceeds from the benefit will go to NoLA Rising and Young Audiences, an organization that provides art supplies and funds teacher salaries in public schools that have gone without art classes since Katrina. All participants in the festival hope to promote public art as a vital aspect of healthy communities, to encourage support for art therapy programs and to challenge traditional perspectives on street art.

After Redmoon Theater’s visually delightful interpretation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame I saw recently at the New Vic, I was looking forward to their newest family-friendly offering, Birdhouse Factory by Cirque Mechanics, a motley crew of acrobats, stuntpeople and clowns whose biographies read like a Who’s Who of circuses.

The story is loose at best: a ragtag bunch of factory workers make the time pass by performing various circus acts that help transform the place from a gloomy dump run by a grumpy juggler to a birdhouse factory run by a delightful clown.  Of course, this show doesn’t have to have a story at all; it’s about circus acts. The acts range from the ordinary (juggling, contortion) to the less common (a great wall trampoline, Rola Bola). Lashua and his team have tried to give a new spin on the standbys by playing with presentation – a contortionist on a moving unicycle-powered platform, a silks act on ropes weighed down with industrial lamps – but many of the acts feel unfocused and long, dwindling in excitement before the act is finished.

The best acts of the evening have their own internal structure and become more challenging from beginning to end, so they overcome the show’s clunky narrative flow and pacing issues. Thayr Harris’ Rola Bola is a crisp, gleeful snapshot. And the German wheel act (performed at the show I attended by Lashua himself) started out daring and remained surprising throughout, so every second was interesting. But most acts don’t deliver work that sustains your initial enthusiasm throughout the act, let alone build it up for what’s coming next.

The score, composed by Julia Newmann and Cody Westheimer, further clouds the pace of each act and the entire story with inexplicably random and drastic changes in tone and tempo. Combined with the tepid between-act potpourri of dance, mime, and Chaplin-esque slapstick between a boss and underling, the overall impression is one of a flurry of hodgepodge bits in need of homes.

The real standout of the night is Jesse Dryden’s fantastic clowning. Dryden, creative director of the Circus Smirkus Big Top tour, mixes sharp classic clowning bits effortlessly with improvised audience riffing in a sweet, silly character you can’t resist cheering for. He delivers a fresh take on a universal act in every second of his performance. I wish the rest of Birdhouse did the same.

Cirque Mechanics’ Birdhouse Factory at the New Victory Theater

now – Dec 14

full schedule & tickets ($15-50) here or 646-223-3010

If you are in the mood for dance this weekend, make your way to the Chen Dance Center at 7.30pm (Fri-Sat) for a real treat. The center, formerly the Mulberry St. Theater, curates newsteps: “a semi-annual dance series dedicated to providing support and performance opportunities for choreographers who are creating innovative and risk-taking works”. Tonight and tomorrow, among the six performances that share the evening, there is a little gem: a duet performed by Makiko Tamura and Ryoji Sasamoto (both members of Ellis Wood Dance) entitled Order Made. Tamura, who choreographed the piece, was inspired by her grandmother’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease, as well as by photographs of the same grandmother in her lively youth. The result is a mesmerizing, poetic dance, an abstract and expressive ten minutes of precise gestural movement, intimate physical (mis)communication, and overall beautiful dancing. Tamura’s choreography begins slowly, mechanically, and soon builds to a faster pace, exploring the many possible relations between the dancers on stage. Throughout the piece both performers maintain a puppet like quality that keeps their dancing unemotional, their eyes looking distant like those of wax sculptures – this is particularly powerful, as their dance does not demand empathy or sympathy, and develops out of what appears to be a strict necessity to move. Tamura and Sasamoto are wonderful dancers, at once powerful and contained in their energy, totally committed and present in their performance: it is a delight to see their work in the intimate space of the Chen Dance Center.

While Order Made is definitely the highlight of this newsteps series, other pieces in the evening deserve attention. Young choreographer Catherine Galasso‘s The Passion of A Hillbilly Greaser, for instance, is a fun dance theater piece that plays with the contrasts between the two performers: Brandt Adams and Yuko Mitsuishi. In an unexpected turn of events, we are serenaded by Mitsuishi’s questionable karaoke skills, while being magically transformed into the audience of some kind of Japanese show. Galasso is particluarly skillfull in establishing an ominous mood, only to subvert it and shake the audience with uneasy humor. Galasso‘s piece stands out in the evening, rejecting the claim to “serious dance” that some of the other works attempt (like the somewhat overly dramatic and repetitive last piece entitled Unibody).

Choreographers’ series like newsteps give you a chance to sample many different styles of work. Of course, it is also the case that pieces showcased at events like this one are not always…ripe. Overall, however, it is exciting to see that there are still dance spaces willing to make room for new, non-commercial, dance. Stepping into Chen Dance Center felt like entering a place from New York before the 1980′s economic boom and the general commercialization of the arts. If you miss this series, keep your ears and eyes out for Tamura – I wouldn’t be surprised to see her work showcased somewhere else soon.

Tonight i believe in you opened up in Brooklyn. I wrote a little about this in an entry last week. Here is more information about the event and the list of performers for Thursday night. Visit their website for the line ups of the weekend.

NOVEMBER 19 – 22, 2008

www.auntsisdance.co

i believe in you

performer-driven event

chain curation DANCE project

4 consecutive evenings

3-hours long each

AUNTS has invited a bunch of artists to perform

they then curated another artist to perform, and so on and so on…get it

got it, good!

admission is a contribution to free boutique / free bar

where

everyone shops and drinks for free

The Event Center

257 Nostrand Ave and Lafayette

G train to Bedford/Nostrand

exit Nostrand/Lafayette

November 20, Thursday

Jim Byrne

Genevieve Belleveau

Cheap Cake

Alfie

Novice Theory

Jesse Wintermute (Glory to the Hole)

Benjamin Asriel & Tim Goossens

Lydia Bell

Natalie Green

Ali Fischer and Eun Jung Choi-Gonzalez

Michael Ingle

Timothy Murray

Colin Stillwell