Public park picnics, beach lounging with pigeons, tourist-riddled gallery hopping, sweat-drenched city joggers—what New York summer is complete without the Shakespeare in the Park frenzy? Folks all around the city can be heard boasting, “Dude, I woke up at, like, six in the morning to get my Shakespeare in the Park tickets!” Hordes of Bard lovers queue in at Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre in the wee hours of morn, armed with folding chairs and busy-work crossword puzzles. The less passionate turn to Craigslist, offering line standers upwards of a lucrative fifteen bucks per hour.
SummerStage is Shakespeare in the Park’s tame cousin. No tickets are needed for entry—just a small dose of willpower to wait on the quarter mile-long line leading to the packed Rumsey Playfield. The wait, luckily, never surpasses ten minutes, though an exasperated few caved for an illicit bottle of brew to last it out. [click to continue….]
Tagged as:
Rumsey Playfield,
SummerStage,
The Moth
How would you spend your last twenty minutes trapped in a small spaceship alone on Mars? Would you go mad? Would you tell jokes to the aliens in your mind? Would you talk to your daughter who (at closest) is 35 million miles away knowing she can’t hear you? Unfortunately for James Allerdyce, this isn’t a question. It’s reality. [click to continue….]
Tagged as:
FRINGE Festival,
James Allerdyce
While many artists have believed music and art to have a potent connection, it has hardly been manifested so uniquely as in The Big Draw’s I Write The Songs event. Part of the River to River Festival around the coasts of New York City (and co-produced by The Drawing Center), I Write The Songs literally demonstrates how art can be music and how music can be art.
Before actually entering the Winter Garden room of the World Financial Center in Battery Park, unearthly string-produced sounds can be heard from the neighboring promenade of Esplanade Plaza. As always, inside the vastly spacious Winter Garden room does not feel like inside — large palm trees litter the hall and the walls and ceiling are glass. Still, today is different. [click to continue….]
Tagged as:
FLUX Quartet,
River to River Festival,
The Drawing Center
Walking the normal route to Lincoln Center, I found myself taking a detour away from the main plaza bringing me into Damrosch Park. The first thing I saw there a crowd gathered around the bell of a large sousaphone. These sights were accompanied by the sounds of loud, fast and powerful marching music. However, there was no parade, there were no colorful military uniforms, instead there were the fun-loving folks of Slavic Soul Party. They rallied a crowd around them with their melodic horn lines and solid drum beats. After joining the crowd and dancing around rubbing elbows with spectator and musician alike, we all found ourselves slowly grooving toward the large stage of the Damrosch Park Band shell. [click to continue….]
Tagged as:
Auktyon,
Damrosch Park Bandshell,
John Medeski,
Lincoln Center,
The Plastic People of the Universe
The Capoeira style performance of DanceBrazil at NYU’s Skirball Center was truly beautiful and invigorating.
The first piece, Ritmos, was very energetic and rhythmic, nearly voltaic. The dance was spiritual and adrenalizing. This first piece seemed very martial-arts based and was bold and captivating. Each dancer was always in harmony with their partner, and this pattern continued when there were two specific groups. There were amorous dances between a man and a woman then later playful competitions between the men for applause. Ritmos was filled with very impressive, fast steps which included flipping and punching that were always pleasing to the audience. Beautiful, strong lines added backbone to the dancing and made it seem all the more masculine. At times the dancing had animalistic, feral undertones that brought even more life to the piece.
The second piece was the world premiere of Inura. [click to continue….]
Tagged as:
Capoeira,
DanceBrazil,
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
