Monday night I went to Mercat for the press conference announcing the upcoming CATALAN DAYS Festival. (English site for institut ramon lull here.)

The festival will be from 15 April – 20 May and will feature arts, food, literature and more from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. Not only that but a lot of it is FREE or very inexpensive. So you can sample the delicious food and passionate culture of this region without breaking the bank!! Good times.

There’s way too much to put here so I’ll just give you a quick rundown of a few picks (totally biased, of course):

From April 27-May 3 Catalan authors will be featured as part of the PEN World Voices Festival. April 29th will be a reading at Cooper Union on the theme Evolution/Revolution featuring such talent as Edwidge Danticat and Salman Rushdie.  April 30 (6PM-7:30PM0 is a panel at Instituto Cervantes (FREE!) on “Quiet Revolutions in Storytelling” featuring Philip Gourevitch and others. Also April 30, also free, at the Graduate Center at CUNY (8PM-9:30PM) is A Celebration of the life and work of Reinaldo Arenas and Blai Bonet: Island Dialogues: Poets from Cuba and the Balearic Islands. Check websites for more info.

From May 2-12 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center there’s a ton of great stuff, all of it free. On  may 2 you can see Jessica Lange perform an adaptation of acclaimed Catalan novel The Time of the Doves, May 4 an evening of Catalan Food and Drama – watch Kate Valk and others perform readings of three plays in translation. Food from Mercat Restaurant will be served between readings. May 5 -8 are a series of dance pieces that each look fascinating. And May 12 is going to be INSANE as Barcelona’s annual Sonar festival takes over the entire BAC for a multimedia electronic music fest and installation party environment festacular. Yowza!!!

 Then from May 13-17 at the Jazz Standard is Catalan Days Barcelona Nights – a really dynamic line-up of top-notch jazz, also paired with great chefs from Catalonia cooking up regional specialities. Check websites for more info. I don’t know about all the musicians but I ran into an old friend of mine at the press party who is a jazz writer and he says this is going to be the good stuff.

So put on your party hat and your dancing shoes, get ready for some spicy paella and celebrate Catalan Days!!!

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From a fascinating article in the Washington Post on Ralph Applebaum and his influence on museum design and practice:

In the course of a five-hour conversation in his office on the 29th floor of a downtown New York high-rise, Appelbaum, 66, throws out perhaps a dozen different definitions of what museums should do.

“Museums are essentially ethical constructs.”

“They are about the fabric and texture of our creativity . . .”

“They cure social amnesia . . . ”

“They teach from the inside out . . .”

The list goes on, but the ideas all stress the opening up of museums as social and learning spaces, community centers, places of collective engagement. He borrows the progressive language of a century ago, the ideals of John Dewey and John Cotton Dana, who sought to incorporate hands-on experience into education, and rescue cultural institutions from elitist and exclusionary leadership. It is a progressive vision updated for the Internet age and, not surprisingly, Appelbaum’s projects are saturated with interactive technology. Touch screens, mini-theaters and video monitors are set within large walls of photographs, all emphasizing the abundance of knowledge, the multiplicity of voices, the layeredness of our media-saturated society.

Read the rest here.  Love this stuff. Great ideas.

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Just got this e-mail from Miz Julie Muz:

“Hi everyone! I’m back in NYC for a little while and would love to see you and have a old fashioned good time. Cum on Down to WANTED and spend a little time with me, the SPECIAL APRIL FOOLS SHOW!!! Wanna pull a real prank on your office mates this April Fool’s? Take ‘em to Wanted! Wild Bandits of Burlesque on March 31st and watch the clock strike 12 and the shenanigans begin with more whoopee cushions than you could shake a stick at! Wanted! Wild Bandits of Burlesque presents the best and the brightest burlesque legends, art stars, and circus side show freaks! This month stars special guests Ekaterina and Little Brooklyn and, as always, Cousin Rooster, Julie Atlas Muz, and Dr. Lucky. Part saloon, part salon, the last Tuesday of every month brings death-defying novelty acts, gorgeous showgirls, campfire sing alongs, and an evening of guaranteed side-splitting laughter and eye-popping thrills. The Double D Ranch Wranglers are giving you a recession special you’ll never forget! NO COVER EVER! Come early for live honky-tonk music and stay late — kitchen closes at 2 am and DJ Momotaro will be spinning the shit-kicking tunes all night long. Happy Trails!”

DOC & JAM Productions Bring You:

WANTED! Wild Bandits of Burlesque

Tuesday, March 31st (and Every Last Tuesday of the Month)

Show at 11pm; Live music at 9 pm

Rodeo Bar

375 3rd Avenue at 27th Street

New York , NY

NEVER A COVER

(2 drink minimum)

Subway: 6 train to 28th Street

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Howdy.

I’m Elizabeth Zimmer, and I’m going to try babysitting for Culturebot while Andy’s traveling from April 5 through 16. I’m an arts writer, editor and teacher, based in New York; for years I edited the dance section at the Village Voice, and am now a regular dance and theater reviewer at New York Metro. I’m currently researching the subject of comedy in dance, for a talk I’m giving in Chicago in November. I plan my editorial calendar about six weeks in advance, so if you’re showing something in the city in May or June, do let me know at ezimmeratrcndotcom.

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from our inbox this morning:

Terrible Baby Theater Co. is currently seeking production assistants and volunteers for their premiere productions: “The Nosemaker’s Apprentice” and “The Colonists” at the Brick Theater in April/May.

Terrible Baby is a new super group theater company dedicated to the theatrical endeavours of Nick Jones (Jollyship the Whiz-Bang), Rachel Shukert (Bloody Mary, author: Have You No Shame? and former Culturebot contributor) and director Peter Cook (Sailor Man, now playing at Bleecker St. Theater). In their own right, each of the primary artists has become known for elaborate sophisticated comedy with subversive and quasi historical inclinations, rooted in the traditions of Charles Ludlam, Joe Orton, and Jim Henson.

(PERSONAL NOTE: Enough writing in the third person. Listen. No one has ever become rich doing one of our shows. But no one has ever complained either. Because the work is truly its own reward, and we are up to our necks in rewards right now, so we need your help! Join our company and laugh your ass off while learning about the fundaments of puppetry, stage design, and culturally enriching escapism.)

Here’s who we need:

*Assistant Stage Manager for “The Nosemaker’s Apprentice” – (March 31-May 24) during rehearsals, tech, and performance we’re looking for a very dedicated, awesome person to be a part of this production.

*Load-in help (April 13-18) – for one day or more, carpentry/electrics skills a plus.

*Board op for “The Nosemaker’s Apprentice” (April 23-May 23, Thurs-Sat, 7pm-9:30pm)

*Board op/Stage manager for “The Colonists” (April 24-May 24, Sundays, 1pm-3pm and 6pm-8pm) [This position pays $20/show!]

*Ushers/front-of-house help – all performances!

If you’re interested in any of that, or anything else, email Jaime Green at jaime.green@yahoo.com with your availability, fantastically pertinent skills, and/or questions.

Here’s more info about the shows:

http://www.bricktheater.com/nosemaker

http://www.bricktheater.com/colonists

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Name: Ant Hampton

Title/Occupation: Performance maker

Organization/Company: Rotozaza

URL: www.rotozaza.co.uk / guessbook.wordpress.com

1. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

Right now i:m in _tokyo. weird keyboard, hence weird typos sometimes. I:m here because we:re doing _rotozaza:s Etiquette in Japanese. Working in different languages is important for 芽　me – i see it as a big reason why we’re able to travel so much with the work. I was born in Switzerland. My half sister lived in Paris all her life, and I fell in love with that city as a child. It was the first place I lived on my own (training at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, 95 thru 97). After that all my friends were spread out over Europe and beyond. My roots began to define themselves as rootless. London is a good base because its a great place to leave, and strangely comforting to come back to. 

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? 

Forced Entertainment’s ‘Pleasure’, 1998. and before that, a tiny production of Peter Handke:s Kaspar at Avignon, 1993 by Cie de Sablier. Both made me feel extremely uncomfortable for a while during the actual experience, but in a very urgent and somehow necessary way. The concerns behind both works were also beautifully expressed in different ways outside of the actual work, in FE’s case by Tim Etchell’s  thoughts in the programme, and for Kaspar by an unforgettable public street intervention / experiment exploring the same issues as the play – the manipulation of the individual by the masses, language as a physical power / intertia. (When i eventually remade contact with the company 8 years later, it turned out they they were still doing this, in ever more sophisticated and interesting ways… )

3. What skill, talent or attribute do you most wish you had and why?

A little more patience, to be more patient.

4.  What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day.

There is no normal day. Everything is always changing. But for a while now I:ve been able to manage by making performance, either in/as Rotozaza, or with other solo projects, collaborations, jobs (eg a recent post as Dramaturg for Manifesta7 - manifesta7.it ). Etiquette is a show that can happen in different places at once. It has been a wonderful thing for Rotozaza, on a financial level as well as for the company’s general development.  

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

I’ve always made art, but its been hard work. The main thing has always been to make sure that the work is a pleasure. The moment the pleasure stops, something has to be wrong. I started Rotozaza with Silvia really with that one idea in mind – that if we:re going to work daily on something which demands so much on every level, which requires such risk and which turns our life into such a precarious balance, then it should be, at every possible turn, a pleasure. When we started RZ we joked with the concept of ‘Teatro Viziato’ – something like ‘theatre of the Spoilt Rotten’, in reaction to the whole idea of ‘no pain no gain’ physical theatre, Growtoski, etc, which was really doing our heads in (collaborations and group devised shows where sweat and tears seemed to be an end in itself..).

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curtain call

When my friend Coop called me with last minute tickets to a preview of HAIR on Broadway I immediately said yes. And then said no. And then said yes again. I mean, I grew up with HAIR. I sang along with the LP record original broadway cast recording from the age of 10. I saw the movie. My biggest dream ever was to grow up and magically discover a world where HAIR was real and I could be in America’s Tribal Love-Rock Musical forever and always. This is the musical show that made me do drugs, dammit! All of my youthful hopes, dreams, passion and vision were tied up in this show that I had never seen live.

When I was in college they staged they show. One of my university’s notorious musical theater hacks staged it pretty unimaginatively [though Brian D'Arcy James did a wonderful job as Berger, if I recall. Or maybe Claude? I don't remember very well. But he was good]. I of course, didn’t get cast for a number of reasons, not least of which is because I looked like this:

(note an also very young Anna Gunn behind me holding up the cover our our AO3 textbook)

Which I think was a little too close to the real thing for the Musical Theater Department. BUT ANYWAY….The point is that I was reluctant to see the show on Broadway. And as the show began I thought my suspicions were confirmed: Oh god, another re-hash bullshit baby-boomer self-indulgence festival romanticizing their youth and repackaging the “hippie” brand one more time to cash in on the new era of “hope”. And maybe for some people it is.

But what I walked away with – and I hope this was Diane Paulus’ intention – was a much darker, thoughtful and heartbreaking examination of the loss of innocence; a meditation on the passion, romanticism, idealism and naivete of youth; in some ways this Hair is a tragedy in that we, as the audience, know the horrible ending even as the actors do not, thus it employs the Ancient Greek device of Tragic Irony.

I’m not going to give anything away but I’d love to know how much of this was in the original and how much Paulus put in. It was the first version of the show that, to me, had a (relatively) clear plotline. And strangely it adhered to a psychedelic concert structure that I generally attribute to the Grateful Dead – the first set is short, popp-y songs, the second set after intermission much more of an extended interwoven psychedelic jam, when the LSD has kicked in and you’re not just “happy” but you’re seriously tripping.

Also – the cast is so young, optimistic, energetic and winning you can’t help but fall in love with them. To some extent that’s what left me weeping by the end of the show. This was the first time in my life that I had experienced Hair from the other side of the generation gap. I was looking at these kids and I not only was heartbroken for what their characters would become (I lived through the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s, I watched as a child the missteps and mistakes and grievous errors the Baby Boomers committed, I watched the hippie dream die a self-indulgent and brutal death, reaching its dark apotheosis during the reign of George W. Bush) but I empathized with the kids themselves. I remembered being that kid and I watched these happy, energetic, idealistic young actors performing their hearts out and I just wanted them to stay that way forever, to not have to suffer the difficulties that life inevitably brings. I thought about how fortunate this generation is that, generally speaking, the upside of the Baby Boomer revolution is that parents nowadays are much more understanding because they’ve been through it themselves. So even though they want to protect their kids they don’t feel the need to trample on youthful exuberance.

So I don’t know if its me or the show or Diane Paulus – but I feel like she rescued Hair from being a nostalgic museum piece and made it into a beautiful, bittersweet, psychedelic celebration of youthful idealism and the tragic loss of innocence. Plus she brought back that loose, interwoven, presentational style of theater that, generally, feels yucky and contrived. But she did it nicely. For those people who go looking for a nostalgia-fest, they might be disappointed, but those people who go wanting to see a fresh adapation and have a powerful, surprising encounter with a well-known text will be satisfied for sure. If at first you don’t succumb, relax and go with it. By the end of the show you will be won over.

I guarantee it.

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Hi Friends – Long story short  – a few weeks ago I did a pledge drive through a group called Fundable.com. They had some problems with their system – among other things- and since we didn’t meet our fundraising goal we didn’t collect any of the pledges. If you like what we do here I urge you to consider making a donation via paypal or visiting our store at CafePress. We want to cover more artists and shows, we want to expand our coverage and offer more services but we just can’t do it without your help. If you can’t spare a donation at this time, please consider it for the future. Or maybe you would be willing to volunteer? We’re looking for a CTO to help us re-build and expand and for some help fundraising (obviously) and also developing a business plan to support our growth and sustainability. We love what we’re doing and we want to do it more and better. Please help today!! (I usually get panicked about this around rent time, you may have noticed!) xoAndy

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This just landed in our inbox:

City Funding Refusal Threatens Welfare of

Thousands of Homeless LGBTQ Youth

The New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) has failed to consider $253,718 in funding for Sylvia’s Place, a project of MCCNY Homeless Youth Services, thus jeopardizing the welfare of over 1,000 homeless and runaway LGBTQ youth in the coming year who would rely on Sylvia’s Place services.

The refusal follows DYCD claims that all Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) Drop-In Center proposals in Manhattan had been eliminated from consideration for funding in fiscal year 2010. DYCD also rejected a continued funding request from Bronx Community Pride Center, who has also been offering DYCD-funded drop-in services to LGBTQ youth for the past four years. DYCD slashed funding by 2/3 for Green Chimneys, which operates a transitional housing program for LGBT youth. DYCD also severely cut funds for Safe Horizon’s Streetworks Lower East Side and Streetworks Overnight, which serve 35%-40% LGBTQ youth.

“In 2008, Ali Forney Center, which provides drop-in services to LGBTQ youth from its facilities in Chelsea, was subject to a similar funding refusal by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,” said MCCNY Charities Executive Director William Morán-Berberena.

MCCNY Homeless Youth Services operates Sylvia’s Place, which currently provides 1/3 of the city’s existing beds for LGBTQ homeless and runaway youth, who face harassment, violence and discrimination at mainstream shelters. Without DYCD funding, the LGBTQ youth waiting on transitional beds at the Ali Forney Center and Green Chimneys—a process which can take a long time—will be forced back to the streets.

“Losing contact with at-risk youth will mean that we will be unable to locate them when their names come up on months-long waiting lists,” said MCCNY Homeless Youth Services Director Lucky S. Michaels. “We will also be unable to ensure that the youth receive the services—food, medical care, and shelter—they need, and the assistance they require to avoid future interactions with law enforcement.”

Of the nearly 3.800 youth who are homeless in New York City every night, over 1080 identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to a 2007 study by the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services. Sylvia’s Place currently houses 26 of the only 75 beds for LGBTQ homeless youth in the city.

“Without DYCD funding for drop-in centers in Manhattan, all Sylvia’s Place’s programs are at great risk of closing, reducing the LGBTQ bed per client ration to well below 2007 levels.,” said the Reverend Pat Bumgardner, Senior Pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York.

“The recurrence of these city funding refusals to LGBTQ-specific social service organizations brings into question not only the welfare of the City’s LGBTQ community but also the willingness of city agencies to protect LGBTQ New Yorkers,” said Morán-Berberena.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Tell the DYCD and City Council that the futures of LGBTQ homeless youth matter! Forward this message to your press and network contacts and get the word out that LGBTQ youth are at risk of losing vital services!

E-mail your letter to:

Daniel Symon, DYCD Chief Contracting Officer

dsymon@dycd.nyc.gov

Jeanne B. Mullgrav, Commissioner DYCD

jmullgrav@dycd.nyc.gov

SAMPLE LETTER AFTER THE JUMP

Continue Reading

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Usually when Culturebot gets offered swag it’s pretty lame. every once in a while though, we get something good. we were pretty pleased to receive a copy of the new Decemberist’s CD. I had heard of them but never actually listened to their music so I was looking forward to checking them out. And now I’ll give some quotable copy: 

The Decemberists’ new CD The Hazards of Love is a bright, shiny, lustrous, concept album with crisp, clean, digital production values, calling to mind a whole host of semi-psychedelic sprawling epic concept albums that preceded it including the early Grateful Dead albums Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa, the Stone Roses’ debut record, Trip Shakespeare’s Lulu, The Who’s Tommy and a number of others.  The Hazards of Love strikes a nice balance between whimsy and seriousness, with a playful retro-poetic bent to the lyrics but a lush, complicated musical structure that is alternately lovely and jarring. I really loved the vocals, too. The girl vocalist sounds like someone from my musical memory but I just can’t place it.

I’m not sure I really follow the “story” as such – but I will certainly be giving it another listen. Living in NYC we are exposed to so much horrible Broadway music posing as “Rock Opera” and so much bombastic, downtown art-y “music-theater” that is frequently neither, it is always with trepidation that I approach concept albums.

But there is something in the sweep and scope of Hazards of Love that feels deeply attuned to this aesthetic moment. Having reached a sort of “nadir of nihilism” during the Bush era, we have swung back a full 40 years where we are dreaming again, hoping again, Romantic again.  The expansive sound of the Hazards of Love is suited to the this new heroic age, the occasionally jarring transition, the dissonance and the edge show the history of what we’ve been through, musically. There’s some Pixies in there, a touch of Nirvana and from my limited exposure, maybe a hint of the Dears. The danger is that the whole enterprise frequently veers a little too close to the pretentious prog rock world of early Genesis and Jethro Tull …. but I’m going to give the Decemberist’s the benefit of the doubt and assume they are self-aware and slightly tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing.

Whatevs. Its a great album and now its on my iPod so I look forward to listening to it a few more times not just to enjoy the music but see if I can figure out what the heck is going on. Something about a girl named Margaret. And love. And a singing Faun and the Hazards of Love & stuff.

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