cityArts April 6, 2010

APRIL 6, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 7

Lance Esplund says William Kentridge can’t draw The return of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival

Joel Lobenthal gets Frank with Twyla Tharp

PLUS:

Courtesy of Lyons Wier Gallery

The SOFA fair, a cracked Menagerie & Lee Krasner beats the boys

“Qee Sahid,” 2010, by Jan Huling. From Lyons Wier Gallery, at SOFA.

InthisIssue 6 CLASSICAL MUSIC & OPERA Christian Tetzlaff’s recent performance of the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall was a tense, awkward affair, according to JAY NORDLINGER.

8 DANCE EXPERTS IN DIAMONDS, ESTATE JEWELRY, GOLD AND WATCHES

JOEL LOBENTHAL recommends Twyla Tharp stick to dance concerts rather than Broadway theater after seeing her latest, Come Fly Away.

9 JAZZ Excited about the return of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival, HOWARD MANDEL looks at the borough’s musical roots.

10 AT THE GALLERIES

For four Generations ouR family business has stood for integrity and fair dealing.

WE OFFER EXCELLENT PRICES for diamonds and fine jewelry. .

Reviews: Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock at Ameringer McEnery Yohe; Unspecific Objects at Thierry Goldberg Projects; Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculpture at Marlborough Gallery Chelsea; Mark Milroy at Kirkland Gallery; Julie Speed at Gerald Peters Gallery; Paul Caranicas at Bernaducci.Meisel Gallery; Bruce Dorfman at Kouros Gallery; Carrie Marill: Visual Aides at Jen Bekman Gallery

12 MUSEUMS William Kentridge is as much on display at MoMA as his work, says LANCE ESPLUND.

13 THEATER Do we need a re-imagining of The Glass Menagerie?

14 ARTS AGENDA Symphony, Chamber Music, Opera, Jazz, Auctions, Art Fairs, Dance, Galleries and Museums.

18 PAINT THE TOWN BY AMANDA GORDON Patrons were game for waltzing at New York City Opera’s spring gala; Brooklyn Arts Council’s benefit at The Bell House; Jeff Koons art car for BMW; and Bobby Flay tells us what dish he’d want to defend if the tables were turned on his Food Network television show.

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InBrief

Ritzi Jacobi, Blue Zone and Floating Water

Don’t Sit On It A Dr. Seussian tangle of paper columns will greet guests as they enter the Park Avenue Armory for the Sculpture Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) fair. Rhode Island-based artist Wendy Wahl is set to install grand paper arches made from stacks of ripped encyclopedias pages, and fair-goers will have to weave through these winding, text-ridden tendrils, shrunken by their larger-than-life scale.

Top textile dealer, browngrotta arts of Wilton, Conn., is responsible for commissioning the monumental installation that will open the fair. This is the fifth iteration of Wahl’s encyclopedia series and her first installation in New York City.

“I’m very excited about being able to do something in New York with this material.

New York is the publishing capital and it’s a changing publishing capital. It’s relevant,” explains Wahl. “I hope it is inspiring. I hope it’s unnerving.”

Despite its name, SOFA is not a showroom full of chic loveseats and sleek armchairs. The fair is a convocation of contemporary design, decorative arts and jewelry

from around the world. During its four-day run from April 16 through 19, SOFA will present the latest in art and design from 60 galleries. Distancing itself from last month’s slew of art fairs, SOFA is one of the only expos to concentrate on contemporary decorative and functional art. Cutting-edge works will be imported from the United States, Canada, France, Japan and Brazil, each broadening the arts discussion with new media, processes and artistic innovation.

“I think the show serves to introduce a lot more people to contemporary design,” says Holly Hotchner, director of Museum of Arts and Design, which supports the fair. “Many of those people are people who’ve never been.

They’ll be exposed to many artists that they’re not aware of.”

New dealers comprise 25 percent the galleries accepted into the fair. Amidst the mixture of dealers are Heller Gallery, Joan B. Mirviss, Lyons Wier Gallery, cross mackenzie gallery and Thea Burger. Moderne Gallery from Philadelphia will be showing work from the American Craft and Studio Furniture Movement. Trading topaz for timber, the crown jewel of their collection is a wooden bench by

art market darling George Nakashima. Made from American black walnut, the piece moves with all the organic lines of a still-standing tree.

According to a recent Reuters report, Christie’s auctioneers reported that in New York, mid-season sale of 20th-century decorative art and design has generated strong interest from U.S. and foreign bidders. Perhaps decorative art, with the help of SOFA, will bolster an otherwise listless art market.

(Bonnie Rosenberg) SOFA, April 16-19, Park Avenue Armory, Park Ave. at E. 67th St.; Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Sun. Noon–6; Mon 11 a.m.–5 p.m., $25-$40, sofaexpo.com.

Art Meets Tech Twitter wasn’t built in a day. Few social media marvels are. For technological and artistic innovation, one day is a tight turnaround. But Seven on Seven, a new conference organized

by Rhizome, is pairing seven artists with seven technology mavens in the hopes that inspirational lightening will strike—in a single day.

“It’s a super high-pressure thing to come up with something interesting. I’m curious

what direction everyone will go in,” says participating artist Kristin Lucas. Technology and its effect on humanity are at the crux of Lucas’ work, making her an ideal candidate for this arts experiment. The rest of the artist participants include artists Ryan Trecartin, Aaron Koblin, Marc Andre Robinson, Monica Narula, Tauba Auerbach and Evan Roth. Several of the “technologists”—which include David Karp, Jeff Hammerbacher, Andrew Kortina, Hilary Mason, Joshua Schachter, Ayah Bdeir and Matt Mullenweg—already have pretty creative web profiles of their own.

Rhizome is a 14-year-old nonprofit dedicated to “art engaged with the Internet and networked technologies,” according to their mission statement, and it has been instrumental in the definition and perpetuation of new media art. It affiliated with the New Museum in 2003 since both institutions share a deep commitment to emerging art in new mediums.

The event joins two seemingly disparate worlds, optimistic that the bond will result in a veritable creative cold fusion. Each odd couple is charged with a task, the parameters of which are wide: They must produce…something.

What that will be isn’t stipulated. Limited to no one genre, they can invent an on-the-go Web app, social media tool, artwork, object or anything else they may think of.

“One of the challenges of an event like this is that you have to keep a very open mind because you haven’t met yet and anything is possible,” Lucas explains.

Presumably the only limitations are the bounds of their imaginations. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day extravaganza at the New Museum on April 17, the day after the 24-hour challenge. Opening remarks and presentations by the duos will be followed by a cocktail reception in the New Museum Skyroom.

“I’m also really interested to find out how these projects will be received,” says Lucas.

“Even if the process is exciting for us, it might be really flat for the audience; they weren’t involved.” The possibility of failure aside, a unique premise bodes well for a show where anything really does go. (Bonnie Rosenberg) Seven on Seven unveiling, April 17, New Museum, 235 Bowery, www.rhizome.org/sevenonseven; 2:30-8:30 p.m., $75-$350.

April 6, 2010 | City Arts

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InBrief

A screenshot from Takahiko Iimura’s “Talking Picture” at Anthology Film Archives.

Traces on Film Many film and video artists make themselves the subject of their own work, but few do so to the disturbingly paradoxical degree as Takahiko Iimura. In two of the three pieces that comprise Anthology Film Archives’ evening of Iimura “film-performances” April 9, the Japanese film and videomaker continually turns the camera on himself and thus becomes the essential mystery of his own investigations into the nature of image, identity, language and creation. The result is a body of work both intensely personal and scientifically “objective.” The aptly titled “Performance/ Myself,” a 29-minute, seven-part series of epistemologically complex excerpts and standalone experiments (made from 1972 to 1995), is fashioned from deceptively simple concepts: Iimura simultaneously “live” on screen and inside a television monitor pronouncing: “I am Taka Iimura” and “I am not Taka Iimura.”

The videos “This Is a Camera Which Shoots This” and “As I See You You See Me” complicate, rather than mitigate, questions about knowing through seeing as they document and also comprise an original live performance.

“Talking Picture (The Structure of Film Viewing)” proceeds in a similar—if drier and even more minimalistic—vein. Once again, in a series of short works (from 1981 to 2009), Iimura narrates and/or places himself in front of a camera, this time filming a square of light projected by an off-screen projector. Sometimes the camera perfectly frames the projected light, sometimes there is space between projection and camera frame; sometimes Iimura can be seen by the camera, sometimes he remains outside the frame; sometimes Iimura’s perceptions match

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those of the viewer he imagines watching his film in the future, sometimes not. Iimura examines and explains every permutation (“You are looking at me, the one who is facing you”) and, aware of the difference between the Western understanding of cinema (moving pictures) and that of Japanese and Chinese cultures (reflected pictures), he unpretentiously breaks down the cinematic (and, in the last piece, video) experience into its most basic components in order to discover what makes viewing and being viewed unique yet interconnected modes.

Seemingly odd-man-out “Anma (The Masseurs)” is 20 minutes of a 1963 performance by Butoh legends Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno and a troupe of dancers. Iimura calls the film a “cine-dance” because of the choreographed movements he himself employed while capturing the action. Insofar as almost every film is a “cine-dance,” “Anma” nonetheless fascinates by calling as much attention to the filmmaker’s involvement as to the violent and bizarre style of Butoh, and, as always, the effect is hypnotic.

(Michael Joshua Rowin) Taka Iimura: Three Film-Performances, April 9, Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave., 212505-5181; 7:30, $6-$9. <

Photogravure Finish

The American Academy of Arts and Letters selected eight artists from their current Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts to receive its 2010 awards in art.

The group of eight was whittled down from 37 contemporary artists who participated in the exhibit, which opened on March 11, and closes April 11. The awards will be presented in May at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial. Lothar Osterburg was awarded an Academy Award in Art to “honor exceptional accomplishment and to encourage creative work.” Osterburg creates photogravure prints that combine images of New York’s cityscapes and Piranesi’s prisons (“Trailer Park,” pictured above). On being awarded, the artist remarked: “I’m walking on clouds right now. It’s an honor, but it also feels like a score for printmaking. In the art world, the printmaker-artists aren’t being recognized on this level.” (BR)

ArtNews new Bleecker Street Theatre Company.

Playwright Peter Zinn has been named artistic director of the new, not-for-profit resident theater company. Rosie Perez, Peter Riegert and Chip Zien will be featured in the first reading, Playtime, on Apr. 5… Brooklyn native Norah Jones will kick off the 32nd annual Celebrate Brooklyn! festival with a free opening night concert June 9…

Yoko Ono will be honored

by ArtTable Apr. 16 at the group’s annual award ceremony and benefit luncheon. Performa Director RosaLee Goldberg will be the keynote speaker, with a presentation by Toby Devan Lewis… From June 8 through 13, The Martha Graham Dance Company will present eight performances at The Joyce Theater featuring four programs, each combining new commissions with classics. American Document by Anne Bogart will premiere on opening night… Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the architectural firm SANAA, have been chosen as the 2010 Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The minds at SANAA are responsible for The New Museum, which completed construction of its Bowery space in 2007…

Creative Time has announced The Creative Time Global Residency Program, an initiative that offers six artists the opportunity to travel to specific regions in the world and investigate social issues. Through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund, Maya Lin, Walid Raad, Emily Jacir, Judi Werthein, Sanford Biggers and K8 Hardy have each been awarded global residencies… The Bronx Museum of the Arts is now accepting applications for its 2011 Artist in the Marketplace Program, which comprises a 13-week seminar program offered annually in the fall and the spring.

IndiePix will release acclaimed Iranian photographer Shirin Neshat’s directorial debut Women Without Men in mid May… Benrimon Contemporary will open its New York exhibition and gallery space, at 514 W. 24th St., with its inaugural show, Roy Lichtenstein: Homage to Monet, running Apr. 8 through May 1… For the final days of its Tim Burton exhibition, closing Apr.26, MoMA will offer extended hours to the public. On Apr. 22, 24 and 25, the entire museum will stay open until 8:45 pm... Robert Wilson was named as this year’s winner of the $100,000 Jerome Robbins Award. <

Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair April 16-19 Park Avenue Armory Opening Night Preview, Thursday, April 15

Honda Syoryu Represented by TAI Gallery

The Museum of Modern Art’s architecture and design department has acquired the @ symbol. The typographic element joins a total collection of 175,000 items. Around 28,000 are housed within the architecture and design department… “All the Art That’s Fit to Print,” a discussion of artist-run, fine art publishing projects and experimental methods to printmaking, including alternative methods of art distribution, will be given

by Oketopia curator Austin Thomas on April 7 at the Lesley Heller Workspace…

Sotheby’s Asia Week sales concluded with the combined total of $22,574,864, well over pre-sale expectations.

The top-selling lot was Two Mynas on a Rock, a 1692 piece by Bada Shanren, which sold for $3 million…

Jazz at Lincoln Center has named its education, recording and rehearsal studio the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio and Broadcast Suite. The space is named after board member Agnes Varis, who donated a $3 million naming gift to the organization…

Branford Marsalis will compose original music for the first Broadway revival of Fences, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Awardwinning play by August Wilson, opening Apr. 26 at The Cort Theater. Denzel Washington will star along side Academy Award nominee and Tony Award winner Viola Davis… The 92nd Street Y announced this summer’s lineup for the annual Jazz in July Festival, which runs from July 20 through 29.

It will start with the concert Hooray for Hollywood: Starring Songs from Classic Hollywood Movies… From April 3 to May 2, Brooklyn Botanic Garden celebrates Hanami, the Japanese cultural tradition of viewing each moment of the cherry blossom season, from the first buds to the pink blossoms. Hanami culminates in Sakura Matsuri, a two-day festival on May 1 and 2… The MATA Festival 2010: “Young Composers—Now” will hold four consecutive evenings of music Apr. 19 through 22 at Le Poisson Rouge…

The Polish & Slavic Center is hosting a gala opening of LA/NY Project 2010, with a Chopin recital by Arthur Skowron and jazz performance by Krzysztof Medyna and Andrzej Winnicki with Komeda Project Band on Apr. 8… Three photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe were donated by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the permanent collections of renowned Florentine state museums, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Galleria degli Uffizi… 45 Bleecker Street has created the

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April 6, 2010 | City Arts

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ClassicalMUSIC

Brainy Fiddler Botches Tchaik Plus, a French operetta and a Carnegie Hall gala

BY JAY NORDLINGER hristian Tetzlaff, the German violinist, is a thoughtful guy, even a cerebral one. He is a leading exponent of Bartok. He is not especially known for Romantic showpieces, but, of course, he plays them, because all musicians want to be complete. (Or rather, most do.) Nearly 20 years ago, Tetzlaff made his San Francisco Symphony debut with the Tchaikovsky Concerto. And he again played the concerto with the SFS when that band visited Carnegie Hall the other week.

It did not go well. Tetzlaff began stiffly, too “thoughtfully,” placing the notes rather than letting them come out naturally. Also, his intonation was poor: The violinist was repeatedly flat. Then, when the going got difficult—got very virtuosic—he simply went off the rails. He could not manage the notes.

At one point, he stopped playing altogether, looking at the conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, helplessly.

The rest of the first movement was a tense, awkward affair. Soloist and conductor held the music together, but barely. I found it hard to sit in my seat, because I had the feeling that I was watching a musician lay an egg. Good thing it was in an obscure, out-of-the-way place like Carnegie Hall. Tetzlaff was just not prepared to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto.

The second movement was passable.

Tetzlaff was calmer, more in control, and it helped that there were fewer notes to play.

(This is the concerto’s slow movement.)

The Finale, he took like the wind, as if to say, “Might as well let it all hang out now.

What do I have to lose?” He was rough but serviceable. This music should be played with much more felicity and slancio, and more accuracy, too. But Tetzlaff was respectable— he had made a decent recovery.

And there will be lots of opportunities to hear him in Carnegie Hall next season: He is featured in a “Perspectives” series.

Chabrier’s Nights Out Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) is not exactly in the pantheon of composers—but his España, a “rapsodie pour orchestre,” endures.

(French composers were always writing “Spanish” music.) You might occasionally hear Joyeuse marche, another orchestra piece, too. And City Opera has done us the favor of presenting L’Etoile, one of Chabrier’s operettas, or opéras comiques. The company revived its production from 2002.

The story is silly and fun. I will quote the first line of City Opera’s synopsis: “King Ouf the First, in disguise, roams his city searching

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Carol Rosegg

C

Vive Ouf! A scene from L’Etoile at New York City Opera, with Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (right) as King Ouf. for a suitable subject to execute as a birthday treat.” The score is sprightly, screwy, sly—a gas. It ain’t Parsifal, but it isn’t supposed to be, and it has its own merit. City Opera’s production is by Mark Lamos, and it often looks like a Toulouse-Lautrec painting. It also looks like the score and the libretto, which is why the production is a commendable one.

In L’Etoile, there is plenty of talking— talking without singing—and City Opera decided to leave this talking in the original French. Earlier this season, the Metropolitan Opera did that with Donizetti’s Fille du régiment. Almost without exception, the Met’s cast spoke French like Spanish cows. City Opera, luckily, had several native speakers.

Still, it might have been better to hear the dialogue in the audience’s language, English.

Whatever your view of this issue, Cori Ellison’s translation of the libretto, given through supertitles, was superb: idiomatic, free and pleasurable.

King Ouf was portrayed by Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, one of the outstanding character tenors of today. He was both hilarious and musical—you couldn’t take your eyes or ears off him. And I might mention Jennifer Zetlan, the soprano portraying Princess Laoula.

This young woman was notably excellent when she was a student at Juilliard—she has obviously lost nothing. As for the conductor,

he was Emmanuel Plasson, son of the famed conductor Michel. He led the proceedings with verve and finesse.

At City Opera, now getting back on its feet after a financial tumble, there are two shows left this season: Madama Butterfly (Puccini) and Partenope (Handel). By the way, the company had a special evening during the Chabrier run: “Boys’ Night at L’Etoile.” It included a drag queen, playing to the crowd at intermission. I can only applaud this outreach: There must be a way, at long last, to interest gay men in opera.

Cock o’ the Walk Carnegie Hall staged a gala for itself—we are all in need of money, even the biggest of us. The hall hired two big singers, one somewhat bigger than the other. The superstar was Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the Russian baritone—the “Siberian Tiger,” as he has sometimes been known. The mid-level star was Sondra Radvanovsky, the soprano from Illinois who is prized for her Verdi. For the last 10 years or so, she has been the go-to soprano for Verdi.

Hvorostovsky sings a lot of that composer too, although he is not classically Verdian: His sound is rather contained, pillowed. I long to bring it forward and clarify it. He is never truly at home, I think, unless he is in Russian.

But he has done ok in his career without direction from me.

The Carnegie program was heavy on Verdi, although there were other composers as well. Hvorostovsky was first to sing, ignoring the principle “Ladies first” (and “Sopranos first”!). He delivered an excerpt from Rossini’s William Tell—which offers much more than Lone Ranger music. He sang with his usual poise and long, long breaths. There is no one smoother in cavatina. Renée Fleming—a smoothie herself—once claimed he must have a third lung.

And does he have the cockiest, struttiest, most rock-’n’-roll walk in music? Or does that walk belong to Lang Lang, the Chinese pianist?

Radvanovsky has a glorious instrument, a glorious voice: big, rich, regal, sort of wet.

There is often a dark little throb to it. And how nice it is to hear a sizable voice, in an age that favors light or lightish lyrics. At Carnegie Hall, when Radvanovsky sang a high C, you really felt it—felt it in your bones.

She did not always sing cleanly or smartly. Take the “Song to the Moon,” from Dvorak’s Rusalka: She repeatedly slid up to a note, Dawn Upshaw-style, rather than meeting it head-on. This can get tiresome.

But Radvanovsky is a winning performer, and this was a winning gala evening. I hope that Carnegie raked it in. <

OPERA

Sexy Charm

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Illustration by Scott McKowen

Desmond Barrit and Amanda Harris in The Fairy Queen at BAM. choruses are not performed by the leading characters of Shakespeare’s play, nor are his texts set to music—even the songs from the original play that were later famously set

by Mendelssohn are cut here. Masque-like interludes punctuate the drama, presenting allegorical commentaries on love, sex, fidelity and marriage, themes central to the play.

Director Jonathan Kent began the play in period Restoration spectacle mode with the cast in full crinoline, wig and waistcoat. As the action shifted into the forest, the costuming mixed periods (mostly mid-20th century and glam rocker) and the realistic palace walls shifted away from the platform stage. A circular opening in the floor facilitated magical appearances and disappearances. Fantastical images ranged from the sublime (Phoebus revealed suspended in the clouds riding on a golden-winged Pegasus) to the ridiculous (the entire chorus dressed in plush bunny costumes madly copulating onstage).

Lyon returned in various guises while Lucy Crowe revealed a gleaming, pure soprano as Juno. In the Shakespeare play, the men were generally more impressive than the women: Finbar Lynch as Oberon, Desmond Barrit as Bottom and Jotham Annan as Puck scored personal successes. Tenor Roger Burt bridged the operatic and theatrical divide, singing “en travesty” as the bashful shepherdess Mopsa and acting Flute, one of the “rude mechanicals.” Kim Brandstrup’s choreography stressed athleticism.

The conflation of opera and classic drama reminded me of Richard Strauss’ unsuccessful first version of Ariadne auf Naxos that was inserted as an interlude into a German adaptation of Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. The opera fans were bored by the Moliere play; the theater fans were bored by the Strauss opera. And the evening went on too long for both. Kent’s production clocked in at nearly four hours, yet due to the excellence of the disparate dramatic and musical elements united in an extravagant visual spectacle, I was never bored.

By Frank D. Gilroy Directed by Amy Wright

Limited Engagement Begins April 9

AT NEW YORK CITY CENTER STAGE II www.pearltheatre.org

All programs, artists, dates, and prices subject to change. Photos: Valery Gergiev by Decca-Marco Borggreve, Igor Stravinsky courtesy Getty Images. © 2010 New York Philharmonic. All rights reserved.

BY ELI JACOBSON Founded in 1979, Les Arts Florissants has become famous for rediscovering the French baroque repertoire, particularly the operas of Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. In its frequent visits to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, however, it has explored Monteverdi and Handel operas as well. Henry Purcell was the focus of the latest residency, with one little side excursion to Charpentier. The first presentation was a double bill of two one-act operas, Charpentier’s 40-minute-long Actéon (c. 1684) followed by Purcell’s masterpiece Dido and Aeneas (1689), as the inaugural event of the new BAM Opera Festival, organized by William Christie, founding director of Les Arts Florissants. These pieces are disparate in language and style, yet parallels were created, linking characters and themes from one opera to the other.

The vengeful Juno of the Charpentier opera, sung with over-the-top flair by Welsh contralto Hilary Summers, reappeared trailing the same black veils as the destructive Sorceress in the Purcell. Themes of forbidden eroticism and ill-fated romantic attraction that the gods must destroy were embodied in this figure.

The same grove where Acteon is transformed into a stag and killed as punishment for seeing the goddess Diana bathe nude also serves as the fateful spot where Dido and Aeneas hunt and consummate their love. The lines from Dido and Aeneas evoking the death of Actéon were sung by the same singer, Katherine Watson, who had previously performed Diana. She and Ed Lyon, the Actéon, recreated the fatal pas de deux that climaxed the French opera. Charpentier’s style is spare and restrained, with declamatory speech-based vocal lines. The Purcell moves from rollicking sailor songs to stark tragedy, evoking a wide spectrum of vivid emotions.

Director Vincent Broussard’s production emphasized intimacy, physicality and interaction in a stripped-down staging utilizing one mirrored wall. The soloists and chorus often moved through the aisles of the BAM Harvey Theater, drawing the audience into the action. The singers were young, attractive and lithe, displaying great vocal and physical flexibility. Sonya Yoncheva’s gravely beautiful Dido and the expressive tenor Lyon made moving victims of fate.

Purcell’s score for The Fairy Queen (1692), a semi-operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is more often performed in concert form, shorn of its spoken drama framework. Here in a full production for its American premiere—combining theater, opera and dance—we finally see these numbers in context. Purcell’s songs and

Stephanie Berger

BAM’s inaugural Opera Festival begins with a spirit of fun

GERGIEV/STRAVINSKY The Russian Stravinsky: A Philharmonic Festival April 21–May 8 3 Weeks Only!

The New York Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev, one of the most electrifying maestros of our time, reveal the Russian pulse inside the many masterpieces of Stravinsky. nyphil.org/stravinsky

For tickets call 212 875 5656 or visit nyphil.org or Avery Fisher Hall Box Office The Russian Stravinsky is generously sponsored by Yoko Nagae Ceschina and the Kaplen Foundation. Supported, in part, by The Trust for Mutual Understanding. Programs of the New York Philharmonic are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

April 6, 2010 | City Arts

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DANCE

Piloting by Twyla The new dance-a-thon performed to a Frank Sinatra playlist makes clear, once again, that concert dance, not popular theater, is the right place for Tharp John Selya, Holley Farmer and Matthew Stockwell Dibble in Come Fly Away.

By Joan Marcus

BY JOEL LOBENTHAL Twyla Tharp’s parents owned a drivein in California, and throughout Tharp’s choreographic career her work has begged the question: Is she more intent on analyzing, mining and deconstructing billboard culture— or is she trying to snag an invitation to its senior prom? I suppose both, but at her best, what she has done in her dance pieces is use popular idioms to construct her own personal, unique language. By contrast, mass-market venues only exacerbate her avid need for approval, and a lack of dialogue puts an undue burden on her shortfalls as a storyteller or as constructor of full-fledged dance characters.

I’ve always felt, however, that if Broadway were still host to the musical revue, a series of episodic “turns,” that might have been an ideal métier for her.

I enjoyed her latest Broadway dancea-thon despite its weaknesses. Tharp is credited with book, concept, direction and choreography, yet it remains as step-smith that Tharp excels, and here she does excel. There is exciting and brilliant dancing over the course of the show.

Come Fly Away is set in a nightclub with a bandstand, and the dancers occupy an ambiguous imaginative space between nightclub patrons and acts on the nightclub floor. The first half of the show gives us love patches and rivalries, a series of extremely familiar narrative pretexts. There’s a sophisticated lady, a vamp, an ingénue who’s practically knock-kneed with wonder at it all… you get the picture.

The second half takes up right where the first half ended, but in the interest of some kind of mood-heightening (almost à la Balanchine’s ballet Liebeslieder Walzer), it goes downright daffy as people start taking

off their clothes. What transpires looks like a National Lampoon take on Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Tharp proceeds on very thin ice here, but she and her performers skillfully sail through to a safe harbor: a double finale of “My Way” and “New York, New York.”

Tharp has remained loyal to her concert dance roots by employing veterans of ballet and modern dance and holding them to a very high standard. And her 15-member cast dares to even be a little too perfect to be echtBroadway. So many of the greatest Broadway dance stars, no matter how skilled, have deliberately preserved a hint of the amateur.

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What they did in effect was lob a wink at their public that said, “Don’t think you couldn’t get up and do this right next to me, if you really wanted to…” That bonded them with their audiences, bridging the divide that arises from a professional performer doing something that the average Joe and Jill enjoy as a pastime.

On the other hand, that’s not quite true of veterans Keith Roberts and John Selya, each of whom have been part of Tharp’s performing cadre for years. Both began with American Ballet Theatre more than two decades ago. Here they do balletic steps but neither dancer is currently in the shape to do these steps with the precision to which classical ballet aspires. And yet that doesn’t matter at all: They blend rough hewn with linear definition and decant a singular vintage.

It’s not the nominal plot points but Tharp’s dissection of the ballroom adagio that seems like the real subject of Come Fly Away. Tharp’s work is highly cognizant of the way that ballroom and ballet have been locked in an embrace for decades, nowhere more so than in Russia. The radical ballet of the first years of the Revolution incorporated the spectacular

aerialism of cabaret performers, which in turn owed something to the battling sex-combatants of French Apache dance. Under Stalin, the acrobatic throws and catches remained, but with anything erotic proscribed; it wasn’t until the late-1950s that the Soviet adagio returned to a more slinky and slithery character.

Tharp is credited with book, concept, direction and choreography, yet it remains as step-smith that Tharp excels, and here she does excel.

Tharp clearly has the Russian adagio information under her belt, and she’s also studied the staccato seductions of Jack Cole and other Broadway/Hollywood/nightclub practitioners of the Mood Indigo epoch. For all her respect for the genre antecedents, she’s able in Come Fly Away to make duets that look distinctly her own without relying unduly on mannerism. Here Tharp is able to show us the imprint of the master. < Come Fly Away. Open run, Marquis Theater, 1535 Broadway, 877-250-2929; $66.50-$126.50.

JAZZ

Kings County’s Music Kings

Pharoah Sanders

Pinning down the Brooklyn jazz map

BY HOWARD MANDEL Pushpins in the map for jazz in Brooklyn are more numerous than Google would lead you to believe. The music is now heard with some regularity in several clubs and performance spaces in Park Slope (Barbés, Puppets, Tea Lounge), Williamsburg (Zebulon, the Music Hall), Red Hook (Jalopy Theater), Gowanus (Issue Project Room) and along the burgeoning hipster blocks of Cortelyou Avenue in Ditmas Park (Solo, Sycamore and Vox Pop).

But the roots of the borough’s jazz, where action is concentrated during the 11th annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival throughout the month of April, run from Flatbush up Fulton Avenue through the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ocean Hill to Bushwick. This is the area that gave birth to Max Roach and Randy Weston some 80 years ago, which experienced a renaissance along with the rest of King’s County when real estate prices made Manhattan unaffordable for so many musicians and likely audience members during that nearly forgotten ramp-up to the Great Recession just a couple years ago.

Having begun March 27 with tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders spreading his trademark deep and squealing sound at Boys and Girls High School, the grassroots Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival comprises 40 events in churches, parks, community centers, BAMCafé, the Brooklyn Historical Society, Borough Hall and the New York Aquarium at Coney Island—besides the bars, restaurants and even shops serving the largely AfricanAmerican community. With headliners including trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah (at Sistah’s Place April 10), Pucho and his Latin Soul Brothers (Jazz 996 April 16), electric free-funk bassist Melvin Gibbs (at Weeksville Heritage Center April 17) and the New Cookers (at BAMCafé April 23)—a group named for the famed 1965 Art Blakey live recording that pitted brassmen Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard against each other), there’s representation of most every jazz subgenre and several free events.

Full disclosure: In the course of reporting these events, I was invited to participate in a fest discussion on “Where Is Jazz Going?” at Medgar Evers College on April 11. But

of at least equal (probably more) interest in this programming is the promise of fresh discoveries, including the CBJF All-Stars at Sugar Hill Restaurant April 15; singer Denise King at Parlor Jazz April 17; and the Youth Jazz Jamboree/Wellness Day at the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza April 24.

Rediscoveries may be gratifying, too: ancestral pianists Eubie Blake and Thomas A. Dorsey are remembered at Herbert Von King Park April 10; pianist Doug Carn, a soul-jazz hero of the 1970s, make a rare reappearance at Sistah’s Place April 17; and the music of Cal Massey, a composer/keyboardist for John Coltrane, is celebrated at Brooklyn College April 22.

“We present all types of jazz—traditional, swing, hard bebop, avant-garde, contemporary, Latin and Haitian jazz and spoken word,” says artistic director Jeff King, another saxophonist with a big roar. Inclusion is key to building a groundswell, as Jitu Weusi, administrative director of the fest’s presenting organization, the Central Brooklyn Jazz Coalition, acknowledges: “We’re a membership group, and promote jazz as a family thing, focusing on women who are playing, on young people in the schools, on

events outdoors during the summer and different jazz activities during the Kwanzaa season.”

Weusi, a former New York public schools assistant principal, cites “a great growth of jazz in Brooklyn. It’s expanding on all levels, and there’s more acceptance of jazz in higher places, where it never was before. I attended a swearing-in ceremony for a local City councilman and Ravi Coltrane was performing there.” Weusi predicts there will be more clubs as the economy improves, but for now is pleased that Brooklyn borough president

CONTINUED on page 17

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Voices of American Music music & footage of Charles Ives · Eubie Blake · Aaron Copland Duke Ellington · John Cage · Jacob Druckman Steve Reich · Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Tickets $15-25 · Yale in New York Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall

April 6, 2010 | City Arts

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AttheGALLERIES in some future time showing what human beings’ appendages looked like. They are so unnervingly life-like that one can almost imagine the bodies and personalities that would go with them. They also project an innocent beauty that derives from their vulnerability. Great masters drew hands to better depict them in their paintings; Abakanowicz sculpts them as if they were beings unto themselves.

She sculpted the four different-sized burlap legs in “From the Anatomy Cycle: Anatomy 18” with the same underlying intention. She forces us to examine ourselves as composed of different parts, which in a sense have a life—or death—all their own.

A headless aluminum figure sits at attention in the fierce “Armament,” as if in an electric chair, his skin creased and lined with wear and his body impressed with beams or slats. She did not need to include a head and face to convey the full horror of the figure’s dilemma. Her splendid “Steel Bird on Pole II” at first seems lyrical in comparison to her other works, but its attachment to the base defines it condition more than the wide expanse of its wings.

She sees the world as harsh and unforgiving all the while relishing her investigations, engaging us fully in her discoveries. (Valerie Gladstone) Through Apr. 24, Marlborough Gallery Chelsea, 545 W. 25th St., 212-463-8634.

Hans Hoffman, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock: Neighbors in a Great Experiment

“Flying, Shipping and Selling,” by Carrie Marill.

Carrie Marill: Visual Aides

Unspecific Objects

Jen Bekman Gallery’s current exhibit offers a look at the cost of consumerism—past, present and future. All the best modern inventions and comforts are present in the works if you look for them. High fructose corn syrup, Whole Foods and natural gas all play roles and are interspersed with images and scenes, decades old, suggesting simpler times.

The works displayed in Visual Aides are based on illustrations used in classrooms in the 1950s.

Though they’ve been altered and added to by the artist, their original educational intent remains clear: to teach kids about the world around them, including aspects of industry and nature.

Marill found the drawings while traveling in France in 2006, according to press materials. She then reproduced them onto watercolor paper and “updated them to reflect current events that relate to the state of our environment and how humans anthropomorphize the planet.”

“Site of All the Greatest Stuff” is probably the best example of the message Marill wants to get across. A factory spews smoke against the backdrop of rolling hills and messages dot the bucolic landscape, marking future development of the land. One, “Site of Proposed Sweetest High Fructose Corn Syrup,” reminds us that we want it all—the rolling hills and fresh air and the high fructose corn syrup that so many have come to know and love.

In “Flying, Shipping and Selling,” the word “Paris” is struck through on a shipping vessel, replaced instead with “China.” Another vessel is labeled “Whole Foods.” It all reminds us as consumers to stop and think about the origins of what we consume and how money and values are inextricably tied together. (Carl Gaines)

Minimalist art often confounds the viewing public. In his seminal 1965 essay “Specific Objects,” Donald Judd explained: “It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate.

The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting.” Much clearer.

The Thierry Goldberg Projects’ exhibit Unspecific Objects brings together six artists— Martin Basher, Jona Bechtolt, Daniel Ellis, Rashawn Griffin, David Scanavino and Takayuki Kubota—who were all charged with the task of reinterpreting Judd’s brand of reductionism. Think of it as minimalism 6.0.

The included works aren’t just regurgitated versions of Judd’s polychrome steel boxes, they’re pieces that speak to the future of minimalist art.

Using both classically minimalist materials (concrete and Dan Flavin-esque fluorescent lights) and those outside the movement—TV screens, posters and fabric—these pieces rejuvenate a deceptively stark artistic genre.

Griffin’s “The Haberdasher” greets the viewer with a plaid fabric-clad canvas suspended from the ceiling. Presumably, the piece is merely a textile rectangle, a work that is “neither painting nor sculpture.” But the other side reveals a Rauschenbergian combine. This covert canvas jumbles images of huts, flowers, copulating beetles and a torn book page. It’s unexpected and a harbinger of good things to come in this small exhibit.

“Untitled (Rope Cast)” by Scanavino is more reminiscent of traditional minimalist art.

This sculptural diptych features a deep rope impression that slithers through two plaster blocks like a fossilized worm. Though sparse materially, this piece is surprisingly referential,

Through May 8, Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring St., 212-219-0166.

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bringing to mind Duchamp’s “3 Standard Stoppages.” What appears to be a haphazard cast is in fact quite deliberate.

A cumbersome television slumps in the corner of the gallery’s second room. The TV’s blank screen fills repeatedly with the familiar colors of a broadcast test pattern. For each sliver, there is an accompanying tone that fills the space with a vaguely ominous cacophony of sound.

Minimalism concentrated on medium and the object, much like these works do. But these artists are challenging the past rather than being slaves to it. And for the most part, they are doing it quite successfully. (Bonnie Rosenberg) Through Apr. 18, Thierry Goldberg Projects, 5 Rivington St., 212-967-2260.

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculpture Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz has been creating works of mesmerizing power since the 1960s, both horrifying and electrifying viewers with her depictions of human beings, animals, birds and objects in every kind of strange, unnatural and occasionally beautiful state of being. Intrigued by the contrast between organic vitality and death, she throws all preconceived ideas to the wind, searching for the deeper connections of life and death. This show brings together 15 works from her new cycle, “Anatomy,” in which she arranges single and multiple sculptures of human limbs formed in burlap—arms, hands, legs and feet—onto wood beams supported by steel armatures. It also includes three life-size figures in cast aluminum, eight large figures in plaster and wood, ranging in height from 5 to almost 9 feet, and three tall sculptures of birds in flight, soaring high, attached to steel poles.

The burlap hands in “From the Anatomy Cycle: Anatomy 22” lie with fingers partially curled on a piece of wood, like a display that might occur

Among the most diverse of movements, Abstract-Expressionism embraced both Hans Hofmann’s invocation of an art “paralleling nature” and Jackson Pollock’s famous riposte, “I am nature.” Ameringer McEnery Yohe’s three-person exhibition includes notable paintings by both artists, but most surprising are works by the third: Lee Krasner, who was overshadowed in life by both Hofmann and husband Pollock.

Installed in the gallery’s small but brightly lit back space, the selection of eight paintings revolves around a single incident in the early 1940s, when all three lived on Eighth Street. As recounted in Jed Perl’s accompanying essay, Krasner was eager to introduce Pollock, her new flame, to her teacher Hofmann. Jackson presented the older artist with his small painting “Greetings,” which hangs in the show.

Pollock and Hofmann are each represented by just two paintings, which means that the exhibition celebrates historical moments rather than probing their individual developments. Pollock’s struggle to articulate is poignantly evident in both his “Greetings” and “Grey Center.” Compared to the great, free-fall, coalescing rhythms of his “classic,” late ‘40s canvases, their scratching, staccato marks are frank but slightly tentative. Hofmann’s tightly coiled “Fairy Tale” and exuberantly gestural “White Flash” reveal a savvy colorist expanding, without quite breaching, European traditions of composition.

In this company, Krasner’s four paintings stand

“Volcanic,” by Lee Krasner. © 2010 Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York.

building—by moving one edge of James Rosati’s colossal yellow sculpture “Lipincott” into view.

In real life, the statue sits at a different end of the plaza and is not visible from the chosen standpoint.

Though its constituent parts are real, the motif tilts in the direction of an architectural fantasy. Using the devices of fantasists before him, Caranicas sets two anonymous figures at the edge of the plaza. No narrative attaches to them. They serve as accessories to the scene, whose diminutive presence emphasizes the scale of their surroundings.

The single upright beam of Mark Di Suvero’s pick-up-stick sculpture, actually installed on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall, is put into play holding the edge of two New Jersey scenes. The sculpture’s red beam braces the right side of “Ozone 13,” a scan of the Meadowlands from afar. It shifts to the left of “Ozone 14,” a dappled panorama of a container farm seen from the turnpike. In both works, it puts color on the periphery with a clarity and conviction unavailable to the unaided human eye.

For all that the sky grips the center of these paintings, it is not his subject. Caranicas looks at the sky the way Canaletto viewed the River Thames from Richmond House or London through the arch of Westminster Bridge. The apparent simplicity of his motifs disguises true conceptual sophistication—visual wit—and a gift for putting art historical devices to contemporary purposes. (MM)

“Ozone 13 (Xanadu),” by Paul Caranicas.

out not only in number but also for their intimations of growth and invention. More than many of the countless American painters who had fallen under Picasso’s spell, Krasner catches something of his plastic dynamism in her “Seated Figure,” in which notes of deep red convincingly anchor larger, fanning planes of white against lime-greens and aqua blues; Krasner has absorbed not just the mannerisms of Analytical Cubism, but its original vigor. Her elegantly geometric abstraction from 1942, almost mandala-like in its curling swathes of green and ochre, suggest a passing interest in symbolic forms. Two stormy canvases from the early ’50s, patchworks of ragged strokes, capably evoke Ab-Ex’s all-over, enveloping space. For me, their rhythms border on the labored, prompting the question: For how long could any painter regenerate, on cue, a vision of the transcendent? (And did she suffer as much as Pollock from his burgeoning fame?) Within the context of this small show, though, her paintings compellingly summarize the arc of a painter’s experience from understanding, to questioning, to sensing, to finding.

Also, be sure to check out, in the gallery’s front space, nearly 30 drawings produced by Hofmann during car trips in the ’30s and ’40s. Detached from his turgid color and brushstroke, his line beautifully and simply locates the churning tiers of trees and buildings of a California hillside. (John Goodrich) Through Apr. 17, Ameringer McEnery Yohe, 525 W. 22nd St., 212-445-0051.

Mark Milroy: Portraits and Landscapes Mark Milroy is walking in the footsteps of giants, following the path cut by portrait artists such as Alice Neel, Chaim Soutine and Vincent van Gogh. Milroy, however, leaves the well-worn trail by adding subtlety to his expressionist portraits and dense landscapes, now on exhibition at the Kirkland Gallery. Though vivid and commanding, his paintings are emotionally calm.

The subjects, staring intently at us or looking away, are generally seen full-bodied, sitting front and center on chairs or couches. The simple settings are reminiscent of early colonial portraits.

Despite the expressionist handling of paint and the exaggerated features, we can feel the sitter’s private desire to be understood, not simply recorded. And though they are the subjects of the paintings, they are not able to dominate our attention, which is equally attracted to the colorful patterns seen in the carpets, clothing, or the contrasting walls and furniture.

Milroy’s subjects, both human and plant, are props in a sense, used to portray his interest in color, texture and pattern. His brush strokes are fluid and turbulent, but not showy. His sitters are not stars, so they carry no emotional baggage. The landscapes are puzzles of graceful, interlocking shapes. And his colors, though bold, are not obnoxious. In fact, no detail in the work screams “Look at me!” Instead we are left to calmly consider Milroy’s balanced intersection of paint, composition and personality. (Julia Morton) Through Apr. 30, Kirkland Gallery, 601 Lexington Ave., 212-446-4801.

Paul Caranicas: On the Edge II Paul Caranicas’ minimalist landscapes—if that is what they are—rank among the most interesting paintings on the contemporary scene. They testify to the strength and appeal of a fresh eye. And they remind us that freshness is a quality of mind, one that has nothing to do with conventional idiosyncrasy.

Caranicas frames his paintings to the advantage of peripheral vision. He skirts the center of our field of view and explores—no, celebrates—the wealth of overlooked shapes that exist off the center of our gaze. The expressive forms of his motifs are adjacent to the center of the canvas but not in it. Neither are they necessarily on the spot where he puts them.

Like a painter of cappricci, Caranicas plays with architectural forms in combination with each other.

Their location and the distances between them suit compositional needs, not Mapquest.

“Ozone 18” presents the view from under The Egg, a monumental performing arts center in Albany’s Empire Plaza. Caranicas alludes to its unprecedented shape—as much a sculpture as a

Take, for example, “Yellow Cake.” An oil no more that 18-inches square, it approaches monumentality in its uncluttered forms and austere geometric staging. A formal trio composed of a standing man and two seated women surround a luminous cake, its rounded perfection consistent with the solid masses around it. How formidable— and delicious—her use of color is here. Beautifully nuanced warm grays in the background set off cool silvery tints on the man’s clothing. A subdued tabletop sets vermillion plates aglow. Their spectrum heat is balanced and controlled by the variegated yellow of a woman’s blouse on one side and the reticent deep red of the other.

The women look directly at the viewer; the man, facing front, turns his eyes away. His glance off-stage signals uneasiness. The subtlety of it is more convincing and effective than obvious attempts at disquiet that appear elsewhere (i.e. bees dotted across the canvas of “Hive”).

Speed is a sophisticated and fastidious painter.

The pose of the self-taught artist provides cover for hollow intention. Her faux-naif persona permits great leeway to frolic, but it comes at a price. Oddity for its own sake is entertaining but ultimately aimless. Speed is capable of grandeur, if she wants it. (Maureen Mullarkey) Through Apr. 30, Gerald Peters Gallery, 24 E. 78th St., 212-628-9760.

Through May 1, Bernaducci. Meisel Gallery, 37 W. 57th St., 212-593-3757.

Bruce Dorfman: Windsock: Paintings in Combined Media

Julie Speed: Not From Here

This riveting exhibition of more than 20 works gives viewers a terrific opportunity to appreciate the breadth of Dorfman’s achievement.

Collected by major institutions and long lauded by critics, he is at the top of his game after painting for more than 50 years. The sea pervades his eight, big, breathtaking paintings, capturing its moods, force and rhythms. The show’s title, Windsock, in fact, refers to the conical textile tube designed to indicate wind direction and speed. He evokes almost hallucinatory images of masts and sails, using a radiant and scrupulously subtle palette and representing with a few thick lines the horizon separating sky and water. A passionate fan of Melville’s Moby Dick, he expresses in these works the sense of primitive energy central to the novel, in a most understated and direct manner.

But it would be a mistake to take these powerful assemblages on only one level. Just as Dorfman places strip upon strip of materials on almost all of his paintings, often adding thin pieces of wood or metal, he goes beyond abstract representation to delve into the emotional resonance affected by the interrelationships of shapes, colors and scale, very much like Mark Rothko. In “WoodRose,” the rich browns and tans contrast with harmonious shades, a sliver of blue peeking through two lines of red and white, a circle of brown like a warm sun floating above a warm brown sea.

He uses royal blue, more traditionally associated with the sea, in “Windsock,” this time, plunging thick diagonal shapes of orange, gray, brown and black into its depth, two pieces of metal lying across the whole, like the outline of a sail.

Within the blue, one discerns shadow-like currents or the echo of submarine beings. His smaller works do not share the theme of the sea, instead each one a world unto itself. “Still Life” looks like a tightly wrapped bouquet of flowers, the blue, purple, pink and black petals pushing up from the gray and rust containers in an exhilarating display of life. The far starker “Torso,” composed of black, white and beige diagonal shapes, asserts a strong physical presence, a descendant of Franz Kline. At a time when beauty seems to have mostly disappeared from contemporary art, Dorfman holds firm, reminding us with his mastery of what we so sorely miss. (VG)

With so much contemporary figuration built on photography, it is refreshing to meet a painter who puts away the camera. Julie Speed is as much a showman as a painter; the inscrutability and frequent magic of her compositions makes the camera irrelevant.

Born in Chicago in 1951, Speed is a lifelong lover of drawing, an evident fact that likely contributed to her impatience with art school. She dropped out early on and makes no bones about it. After a string of oddball jobs, she landed in Austin, Texas, in 1978. As she tells it, she threw herself into studio life and spent the next 30 years teaching herself to paint. The wife of drummer Fran Christina, she gained national recognition when the three-eyed figure of her “Setting the World on Fire” appeared on the cover of Grammy award-winner Shawn Colvin’s A Few Minor Repairs.

That third eye plus other anatomical oddities— a missing digit or an additional finger or two, an extra arm here and there—reappear in this show, her third at Gerald Peters in New York. A catchy album cover, however, is one thing; an enduring image is something else. Playful appropriation (from Bosch, folk art, Mantegna, Cranach, you name it) only goes so far. But when Speed transcends fey urges to idiosyncrasy, she produces marvelous, enigmatic compositions.

“Yellow Cake,” by Julie Speed.

Through May 1, Kouros Gallery, 23 E. 73rd St., 212288-5888.

April 6, 2010 | City Arts

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©2010 William Kentridge

MUSEUMS

Processing the Process Artist

William Kentridge’s “Portage,” 2000 at MoMA.

William Kentridge is as much on display as his drawings in the current MoMA exhibition

BY LANCE ESPLUND But Kentridge is most well-known for the erhaps the most compelling film ever animation of his drawings into narrative films, made about the artist’s process is whose crude, choppy qualities—smudges, Herni-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 The bruised grays, frenetic lines—and musical Mystery of Picasso. Filming translucent accompaniment suggest the pre-Technicolor, canvases from behind, Clouzot allows us to pre-talkies world of early film. Although his see the pictures build and evolve on the screen work is not particularly deep, the twitching, as Picasso paints them. Over the course of gritty surfaces of his animations—reminiscent the 78-minute documentary, we watch 20 of of earlier, simpler times—are captivating just Picasso’s compositions, in both real-time and the same. fast-motion, magically come to life. Nudes, To make his animations, Kentridge treats bullfights, artists and models, as if already fully each drawing as a running storyboard. He formed, pour out of Picasso seemingly faster draws and erases; he heavily works and than he can put them to canvas. In Clouzot’s reworks the image, filming the picture each film, we are not witnessing the creation of step along the way, as it and the narrative pictures but rather—as if Picasso’s imagination evolves. He invents fictional stories and had taken animated form—the artist’s characters, including the recurring Soho meditation on the themes of life and painting.

Eckstein, a cigar-smoking industrialist suit I was reminded of the film as I who reigns over, devours and regurgitates the contemplated the mystery of William world. Kentridge also revisits obtuse themes, Kentridge, the South African artist whose subjects, symbols and metaphors—including sweeping retrospective, William Kentridge: Five cats, floods, sex, cages, skeletons, violence, Themes, is currently at MoMA. The show is racial oppression, rhinoceroses, constellations, organized, in close collaboration with the artist, exodus, the artist in the studio and a by independent curator Mark Rosenthal and by showerhead that transforms into a gallows.

MoMA’s Klaus Biesenbach, Judith Hecker and And he can be evocative and imaginative.

Cara Starke. It comprises more than 120 works— The show’s open exhibition spaces including drawings, prints, books, theater models, have the energy of a fairground animated films and roommidway; and the darkened, size film installations—most flashing galleries of film that of of which have the subject of the artist’s working process carnival sideshows. at their core.

Kentridge mostly makes drawings and At one point in a film, two lovers’ tongues collages. He also does performance art. More grapple and intertwine, merging into one recently, however, he has gained notoriety being. In an installation piece, he comically as the designer and director of two operas, uses an espresso cup as a looking glass to namely Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2005) peruse an encyclopedia. And in The Magic and Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, which Flute, the artist appears, draws a bird and then opened in March at the Metropolitan Opera. transforms into the bird he has drawn.

Working models for his operas—Punch and Five Themes’ engine is its numerous and Judy Theater meet Edward Gorey—combine competing lineup of noisy dark rooms of film elements of puppetry, robotics, film, music, and animation, which surround open areas animation and games of chance, and are among filled with works on paper—what feel mostly the best works on view in the exhibition. like a supporting cast of film stills. The show’s

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open exhibition spaces have the energy of a fairground midway; and the darkened, flashing galleries of film that of carnival sideshows. But somehow it all fits. Kentridge is a born showman and a process artist. His work, encompassing a dreamy, murky area between the early 20th and the early 21st centuries, seems to touch upon nearly the entire trajectory of modernism. Kentridge can juggle numerous screens in a single gallery and still give the room an experimental, even timeless, Futurist or Surrealist mood.

Over the last three decades, Kentridge’s subjects have varied widely, from the cultural history of post-revolutionary Russia, the atrocities of apartheid in South Africa, the spread of colonialism and the delusions of the Enlightenment to the documentary exploration and aggrandizement of his own studio practice. But the true theme of Kentridge’s art is how he makes it.

Kentridge’s work—in offering us a behind-the-scenes view of the artist’s process—promises the viewer that it will bring him or her closer to how an artist thinks. He opens the doors to his studio and exposes his working method. Initially, one is awed by his candor. And because of the bare-bones nature of Kentridge’s art—which is rough around the edges, filled with angstridden erasures, indecisions and linear meanderings—an aura of authenticity surrounds his oeuvre and, like the bravura of the Abstract Expressionists, is almost as large as the work itself. In the art world’s current climate of irony, poseurs and slick, Pop-art-derived paintings, Kentridge’s drawings and films suggest an approach to picture making that harks back to the existential elisions of Cézanne and Giacometti.

I enjoy Kentridge’s films, theater models and installations. But Kentridge doesn’t fully explore themes or produce form; mostly he finesses surfaces. And because he pushes process center stage, his mannerisms tend to overwhelm his weighty subject matter. The animated films, seemingly more about the

artist than the art, could have as their subjects just about anything. This puts Kentridge more in the realm of entertainer or performer, if not exhibitionist, than that of artist. But there is a larger issue—or elephant—in MoMA’s retrospective: Like that of his female counterpart, the celebrated artist Kara Walker, who tackles themes of slavery and racial oppression with antebellum-style silhouetted cutouts and animations, the main problem with Kentridge’s artwork is that he can’t draw.

Neither drawing nor film, and without a clearly discernable narrative, Mr. Kentridge’s animated illustrations straddle at least two worlds without committing to either. He presents us with pictures that have been moved—but not necessarily with moving pictures. He gives us narrative without the benefit of a clear storyline, and he provides us with video but not video art. The results are a mishmash art form that is driven more by an obsession with facility—bells and whistles— than by clear-headedness and solid drawing.

Rather than create a new genre, his art occupies a no-man’s land that betrays the artist’s limitations in both still and moving mediums.

In The Mystery of Picasso, the artist is a showman, flexing his artistic muscle for the screen. Picasso acknowledges his role as a performer and the canvas as that of an arena. He also acknowledges that—although watching a painter paint can be about as interesting as watching the grass grow—he alone has the creative fortitude to provide a true glimpse into the creative process and the evolution of a picture. Yet, even in that film, Picasso allows the artwork—the generation of a picture—to be the star. What’s missing from the mystery of William Kentridge is the mystery itself, the work’s raison d’être: The artistic process is center stage, but we are only truly interested in an artist’s process when, as with Picasso, it generates results. <

William Kentridge: Five Themes. Through May 17, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

THEATER

Joan Marcus

Keira Keeley and Patch Darragh in Roundabout’s The Glass Menagerie.

A Cracked Menagerie The Roundabout’s revival of ‘Glass Menagerie’ is top-heavy with vision

BY MARK PEIKERT Never before has The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ autobiographical memory play, seemed quite so autobiographical.

For the Roundabout’s current production, director Gordon Edelstein has taken Williams’ production notes for the published version, in which Williams advises future directors to shy away from approaching the play with too much realism, and run with them. And so we have Tom (Patch Darragh) workshopping the play we’re seeing in a rundown hotel room.

Instead of addressing the audience with his opening soliloquy, Edelstein has Darragh reading it from a page fresh out of his typewriter; when Tom’s mother and sister enter the room, Darragh mutters their dialogue along with them before retreating to the sidelines with a notebook to take notes.

The effect is far from realism, but a great deal more distracting than Williams perhaps intended for this play about the fragility of both hope and the human spirit.

If the performances overcame the directorial vision imposed upon the play, it would be a different story, but with one major exception, the actors are always a shade or two off. Darragh takes his cue from Williams himself and presents us with a Tom who is so effeminate that we’re unsure of whether or not the gentleman caller he’s bringing to dinner is for his crippled sister Laura or himself. And when he tells his mother that he spends all his free time at the movies, one is reminded that Williams once wrote a short story about gay men cruising in the balconies of movie theaters. Keira Keeley’s Laura is so terminally shy that she seems simple, unable

to cope with even the simplest of human tasks.

There are no gradations to her shyness; she’s as awkward among her family as she is with Tom’s co-worker Jim (Michael Mosley), the gentleman caller on whom the family’s hopes are pinned. Mosley nails the period language, but comes across as such a blowhard that he seems more like a motivational speaker hired

by Tom to bring his sister to life than a regular guy over for dinner.

Then there’s Judith Ivey as Tom and Laura’s mother, Amanda, a character so firmly entrenched in audience’s minds as the perfect one for aging dramatic actresses that there’s a certain anti-climactic aspect to the performance during the show. Only in retrospect do certain things stand out in your mind (perhaps fittingly for a memory play): the way Ivey conveys Amanda’s desperation to live gracefully by using her company laugh as a trowel to smooth over the rough patches when reality intrudes; her terrible daintiness when she greets Jim in an ancient dress from her youth; her unhinged desperation when she discovers that Jim is effectively already engaged, shattering her dreams of a chance for Laura and a vicarious shot at a new ending to her own story. Ivey towers over the rest of the play in a way that makes us forgive the directorial trespasses and the off-kilter performances, but regret the lost chance at making this revival into something blinding. Perhaps this Menagerie will become something greater in the memories of theatergoers.

The Glass Menagerie Through June 13, Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300; $75–$85.

April 6, 2010 | City Arts

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ArtsAGENDA GALLERY OPENINGS

Gallery listings courtesy of

GAGOSIAN GALLERY: David Smith. Ends Apr. 10, 555

W. 24th St., 212-741-1111.

440 GALLERY: Karen Gibbons: “Sweet Home.” Opens

Apr. 8, 440 6th Ave., Brooklyn, 718-499-3844.

CLIC GALLERY: Christopher Payne: “Asylum.” Opens

Apr. 13, 255 Centre St., 212-219-9308.

CROSSING ART GALLERY: “Beyond the Colony of

Kitsch.” Opens Apr. 6, 136-17 39th Ave., Queens, 212-359-4333.

EASY STREET GALLERY: Slinger: “Repeater.” Opens Apr. 10, 155 Grand St., Brooklyn, 718-388-8257.

FEATURE INC.: Jesse Bransford: “The Jungle (for Norma).” Opens Apr. 8, 131 Allen St., 212-6757772.

FREDERIEKE TAYLOR GALLERY: “10th Anniversary Invitational Part II.” Opens Apr. 8. Christy Rupp: “Wake Up and Smell the Benzene.” Opens Apr. 8. Forth Estate: “Recent Works.” Opens Apr. 8, 535 W. 22nd St., 6th Fl., 646-230-0992.

GALLERY HENOCH: Eric Zener. Opens Apr. 15, 555 W. 25th St., 917-305-0003.

GASSER GRUNERT: Rebecca Morgan: “Where I Have Lived and What I Live For.” Opens Apr. 8, 524 W. 19th St., 646-944-6197.

JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY: Date Farmers: “Smother Your Mother.” Opens Apr. 10. Eric White, Nicola Verlato & Fulvio Di Piazza: “Three-Handed.”

Opens Apr. 10, 529 W. 20th St., 212-243-3822.

KATHARINA RICH PERLOW GALLERY: Stephen Pace: “Selected Paintings.” Opens Apr. 3, 980 Madison Ave., 3rd Fl., 212-644-7171.

LEHMANN MAUPIN: Lee Bul. Opens Apr. 8, 540 W. 26th St., 212-255-2923.

LOMBARD-FREID PROJECTS: Nina Yuen: “White Blindness.” Opens Apr. 15, 531 W. 26th St., 212-967-8040.

MIKE WEISS GALLERY: Elisa Johns: “Huntress.” Opens Apr. 8, 520 W. 24th St., 212-691-6899.

PACEWILDENSTEIN: Joel Shapiro: “New Work.” Opens Apr. 17, 534 W. 25th St., 212-929-7000.

RONALD FELDMAN FINE ARTS: Jason Salavon: “Old Codes.” Opens Apr. 8, 31 Mercer St., 212-2263232.

SKYLIGHT GALLERY: Andy Sovia, Lucinda Luvaas & Randolph SanMillan. Opens Apr. 8, 538 W. 29th St., 2nd Fl., 646-772-0472.

VISUAL ARTS GALLERY: “Classical Myths Transformed.” Opens Apr. 9, 601 W. 26th St., 15th Fl., 212-592-2145.

WALLY FINDLAY GALLERIES NEW YORK: Arianna Caroli: “Asian Harmony.” Opens Apr. 7, 124 E. 57th St., 212-421-5390.

GALLERY CLOSINGS AFFIRMATION ARTS: “31 Women in Art Photography.”

Ends Apr. 17, 523 W. 37th St., 212-925-0092.

A.M. RICHARD FINE ART: Andrew Garn: “Lost Amazon:

Nature’s Discontents.” Ends Apr. 18. Christy Rupp: “Toxic Molecules.” Ends Apr. 18, 328 Berry St., 3rd Fl., Brooklyn, 917-570-1476.

AMERINGER|MCENERY|YOHE: Hans Hoffman. Ends Apr. 17, 525 W. 22nd St., 212-445-0051.

AXELLE FINE ARTS: Patrick Pietropoli. Ends Apr. 17, 535 W. 25th St., 212-226-2262.

BARRY FRIEDMAN LTD.: Ian Ingram: “Divining.” Ends Apr. 17. Kukuli Velarde: “Patrimonio.” Ends Apr. 17, 515 W. 26th St., 212-239-8600.

CLAMPART: “The Museum of Unnatural History.”

Ends Apr. 10, 521-531 W. 25th St., 646-2300020.

CREON GALLERY: Chris Twomey: “Astral Fluff: Carnal Bodies in Celestial Orbit.” Ends Apr. 17, 238 E. 24th St., 646-265-5508.

DC MOORE GALLERY: Mark Greenwold: “Secret Storm: Paintings 1967-1975.” Ends Apr. 17, 724 5th Ave., 8th Fl., 212-247-2111.

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

GAGOSIAN GALLERY: Alexander Calder. Ends Apr. 10,

522 W. 21st St., 212-741-1717.

GEORGE BILLIS GALLERY: Roland Kulla, Stanley Gold-

stein & Maddy Le Mel. Ends Apr. 17, 555 W. 25th St., 2nd Fl., 212-645-2621.

HEIST GALLERY: Dustin Wayne Harris: “Cake Mixx.”

Ends Apr. 18, 27 Essex St., 212-253-0451.

HENDERSHOT GALLERY: Hadassah Emmerich: “La Charmeuse de Serpents.” Ends Apr. 17, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 504, 212-239-1210.

LEHMANN MAUPIN: Nari Ward: “LIVESupport.” Ends Apr. 17, 540 W. 26th St., 212-255-2923.

LESLEY HELLER WORKSPACE: Lisa Corinne Davis: “Bona Fide Disorder.” Ends Apr. 18. “Ocketopia.” Ends Apr. 18, 54 Orchard St., 212-4106120.

LYONS WIER GALLERY: Anthony Lister: “To Catch a Time Traveler.” Ends Apr. 19, 175 7th Ave., 212-242-6220.

MICHAEL MUT GALLERY: “Renewal.” Ends Apr. 18, 97 Ave. C, 212-677-7868.

MIYAKO YOSHINAGA ART PROSPECTS: Erika deVries: “An Enlarged Heart.” Ends Apr. 17, 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-268-7132.

MOUNTAIN FOLD: Peter Sutherland: “The Prophet Dube.” Ends Apr. 17, 55 5th Ave., 18th Fl., 212255-4304.

OPEN SOURCE GALLERY: Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau: “Painting China Now.” Ends Apr. 7, 255 17th St., Brooklyn, 646-279-3969.

PACEWILDENSTEIN: Joseph Beuys: “Make the Secrets Productive.” Ends Apr. 10, 534 W. 25th St., 212-929-7000.

PAULA COOPER GALLERY: Sam Durant: “Dead Labor Day.” Ends Apr. 17, 534 W. 21st St., 212-2551105.

SLOAN FINE ART: Diane Barcelowsky: “So the Story Goes.” Ends Apr. 17. Edwin Ushiro: “At Night, Lights Fell and Loved Ones Returned Home.”

Ends Apr. 17, 128 Rivington St., 212-477-1140.

SPACE WOMB GALLERY: “Spontaneous.” Ends Apr. 18, 22-48 Jackson Ave. #1, Long Island City, 917-670-1342.

STEPHEN HALLER GALLERY: Larry Zox: “Paintings.”

Ends Apr. 10. Sam Jury: “Nothing Is Lost.” Ends Apr. 15, 542 W. 26th St., 212-741-7777.

STEVEN KASHER GALLERY: “Andy Warhol: Unexposed Exposures.” Ends Apr. 10, 521 W. 23rd St., 212966-3978.

STUDIO-X NEW YORK: Greta Hansen & Cheryl WingZi Wong’s Warm Engine: “Trans Siberia.” Ends Apr. 16, 180 Varick St., Suite 1610, 212-9892398.

SUE SCOTT GALLERY: Tom McGrath. Ends Apr. 17, 1 Rivington St., 212-358-8767.

SUSAN ELEY FINE ART: “Illuminated 7 Adored: Paintings & Prints by Deirdre O’Connell & Fumiko Toda.” Ends Apr. 18, 46 W. 90th St., 917-9527641.

SVA GALLERY: “Post No Bull.” Ends Apr. 10, 209 E. 23rd St. TEAM GALLERY: Ryan McGinley: “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” Ends Apr. 17, 83 Grand St., 212-279-9219.

TYLER ROLLINS FINE ART: Pinaree Sanpitak: “Quietly Floating.” Ends Apr. 17, 529 W. 20th St., 10W, 212-229-9100.

VON LINTEL GALLERY: Valerie Jaudon. Ends Apr. 17, 520 W. 23rd St., 212-242-0599.

MUSEUMS ABRONS ART CENTER: Kim Badawi: “The Taqwacores:

Muslim Punk in the USA.” Ends Apr. 30, 466 Grand St., 212-598-0400.

A piece by Date Farmers, now at Jonathan Levine Gallery.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: The Butterfly

JEWISH MUSEUM: “Curious George Saves the Day:

Conservatory. Ends May 31. “Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World.”

Ends Aug. 15. “Lizards & Snakes: Alive!” Ends Sept. 2, Central Park West at West 79th Street, 212-769-5100.

ASIA SOCIETY AND MUSEUM: “Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea.” Ends May 2, 725 Park Ave., 212-288-6400.

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC: “Archive Exhibition.”

Ends June 30, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Ave., 3rd Fl., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100.

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY: “Tivoli: A Place We Call Home.” Ends Aug. 29. “It Happened in Brooklyn.” Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-222-4111.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: “To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt.” Ends May 2. “Kiki Smith: Sojourn.” Ends Sept. 12. “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanity Fair of 1864.” Ends Oct. 17, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000.

CHELSEA ART MUSEUM: Kotaro Fukui: “Silent Flowers & Ostriches.” Ends Apr. 17. Yibin Tian: “Our New York.” Ends Apr. 17, 556 W. 22nd St., 212-255-0719.

COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: “Quicktake: Tata Nano - The People’s Car.” Ends Apr. 25, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400.

THE DRAWING CENTER: Iannis Xenakis: “Composer, Architect, Visionary.” Ends Apr. 8, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.

THE FRICK COLLECTION: “Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery.” Ends May 30, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700.

JAPAN SOCIETY: “Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection.” Ends June 13, 333 E. 47th St., 212-832-1155.

The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey.” Ends Aug. 1.

“Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber and Gottlieb.” Ends Aug. 1. “The Monayer Family: Three Videos by Dor Guez.” Ends Sept. 7, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200.

THE KITCHEN: Leslie Hewitt: “On Beauty, Objects and Dissonance.” Ends May 10, 512 W. 19th St., 212-255-5793.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: “Vienna Circa 1780: An Imperial Silver Service Rediscovered.”

Apr. 13-Nov. 7. “The Drawings of Bronzino.”

Ends Apr. 18. “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage.” Ends May 9. “Tutankhamun’s Funeral.” Ends Sept. 6, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: “Letters by J.D. Salinger.” Ends Apr. 11. “Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves.” Ends May 2. “Rome After Raphael.” Ends May 9, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008.

EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO: “Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement.” Ends May 9, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272.

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION: “BLAB!: A Retrospective.” Ends May 1, Society of Illustrators, 128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560.

MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN: “Dead or Alive.” Apr. 27-Oct. 24. “Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey.” Ends May 2. “Portable Treasuries: Silver Jewelry From the Nadler Collection.” Ends Aug. 8, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-299-7777.

MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE: “Traces of Memory.”

Ends Aug. 15. “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.” Ends Dec. 2010, 36 Battery Pl., 646437-4200.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: “Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century.” Apr. 11-June 28. “Tim Burton.” Ends Apr. 26. “William Kentridge: Five

AUCTIONS

Aaron Sutten

Themes.” Ends May 17. “Marina AbramoviÐ: The Artist Is Present.” Ends May 31. “Picasso: Themes & Variations.” Ends Sept. 6, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

NATIONAL ACADEMY MUSEUM: “The 185th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art.” Ends June 8, 5 E. 89th St., 212996-1908.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: “Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America.”

Ends June 27. “HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor (Part I).” Ends Aug. 1, 1 Bowling Green, 212-514-3700.

NEW MUSEUM: Curated by Jeff Koons: “Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection.”

Ends June 6, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222.

NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY: “The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society.” Ends July 4, 170 Central Park West, 212-873-3400.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY: “Candide at 250: Scandal and Success.” Ends Apr. 25. “In Passing: Evelyn Hofer, Helen Levitt, Lilo Raymond.” Ends May 23. “Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 16092009.” Ends June 26, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, West 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, 917-275-6975.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS: “The Jazz Loft Project.” Ends May 22, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630.

NOGUCHI MUSEUM: “Noguchi ReINstalled.” Ends Oct. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308.

RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART: “Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures.” Ends Aug. 9.

“Visions of the Cosmos.” Ends May 10. “What Is It?” Ends June 14. “In the Shadow of Everest: Photographs by Tom Wool.” Ends July 26.

“Bardo: The Tibetan Art of the Afterlife.” Ends Sept. 6, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000.

SKYSCRAPER MUSEUM: “China Prophecy: Shanghai.”

Ends Apr. 11, 39 Battery Pl., 212-968-1961.

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: “Paris and the Avant-Garde: Modern Masters From the Guggenheim Collection.” Ends May 12. “Malevich in Focus: 1912-1922.” Ends June 13. “Hilla Rebay: Art Educator.” Ends Aug. 22, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500.

STUDIO MUSEUM: “Collected. Reflections on the Permanent Collection.” Ends June 27. “VidéoStudio: New Works from France.” Ends June 27.

“Harlem Postcards.” Ends June 27, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500.

Richmond Ballet members in Misa Criolla, coming to The Joyce.

Three Decades with Irving Penn: Photographs from the Collection of Patricia McCabe. Apr. 14, 5. Selections from the Baio Collection of Photography. Apr. 15, 10 a.m. Photographs. Apr. 15, 2.

Photographs Sold to Benefit Friends in Deed. Apr. 15, 2, 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212-636-2000.

DOYLE NEW YORK: American Furniture and Decorative Arts. Apr. 13, 10 a.m., 175 E. 87th St., 212-4272730.

POSTER AUCTIONS INTERNATIONAL: The PAI offers more than 500 lots of rare, vintage posters in its 50th semi-annual auction of Art Nouveau and Art Deco masterpieces. The showroom is open for view to the public Apr. 9-May 1. The auction takes place May 2, Posters Please, 601 W. 26th St., 212-787-4000.

ROGALLERY.COM: Fine art buyers and sellers in online live art auctions. 800-888-1063, www.rogallery.com.

SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES: The Otto Penzler Collection of British Espionage and Thriller Fiction.

Apr. 8, 10:30 a.m., 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.

CHELSEA ART GALLERY TOUR: Guided tour of this week’s

top 7 gallery exhibits in the world’s center for contemporary art. Apr. 10, 526 W. 26th St., 212946-1548; 1, $20.

MUSIC & OPERA ALICE TULLY HALL: Conductor Alan Gilbert leads

the Juilliard Orchestra in concert, celebrating Lincoln Center’s 50th anniversary. Apr. 12, 1941 Broadway, 212-671-4050; 8, free.

BAM: BAM presents Falla and Flamenco, a special day-long event celebrating Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Apr. 17, Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4129; 8, $20+.

BAMCAFÉ: BAM hosts free music every Friday night as part of BAMcafé Live. Queen Aaminah.

Apr. 9. MORLEY. Apr. 16. 11th annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival: The New Cookers. Apr.

23. Emilio Teubal & La Balteuband. Apr. 30, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-4129; 8, free.

DIXON PLACE: The Lounge at Dixon Place hosts an evening of free music performances featuring Circuit Bending, a new music series where artist turn toys, electronics and gadgets into musical instruments. Amanda Ervin. Apr. 7. Craig Flanagan. Apr. 14, 161A Chrystie St., 212-2190736; 7, free.

ISAAC STERN AUDITORIUM: Carnegie Hall hosts a performance of “the city & the sea: The Music of Eric Whitacre meets the poetry of ee cummings.”

Apr. 17, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-2477800; 2, $20+.

JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS THEATRE: Flamenco artist Maya de Silva leads her Flamenco Revolución, a company of 12 musicians and dancers, in performances honoring the Senior Flamenco Singers of NY. Apr. 16-18, 120 W. 46th St., 212-868-4444; times vary, $12+.

JCC MANHATTAN: The JCC and the Delancey Cham-

´

March 30-April 24

Richard LaPresti

CHRISTIE’S: Christie’s Interiors. Apr. 6 & 7, times vary.

ART EVENTS

BOWERY GALLERY  530 W 25 ST, NYC  6462306655  www.bowerygallery.org · tue-sat 11-6

Tickets $10 - $35 212.721.6500 or lincolncenter.org Alice Tully Hall Box Office, Broadway at 65th Street April 6, 2010 | City Arts

15

KATHY BUIST

ArtsAGENDA

Light Upon the Deep

Through April 24

Colinas Rojas, oil on canvas, 48x84, 2010

NABI GALLERY 137 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001, 212 929 6063, www.nabigallery.com

Through April 18 Gallery 1: Lisa Corinne Davis Gallery 2: “Ocketopia” curated by Austin Thomas Artists: Deborah Brown, Elisabeth Condon, Rico Gatson, Libby Hartle, Brece Honeycutt, Jane Kent, Grace Knowlton, Molly Larkey, Jim Osman, Judith Page, Kevin Regan, Adam Simon, David Storey, Kay Thomas.

Reckless Delineation, 2009 Oil on panel 48” x 42”

by Lisa Corinne Davis

54 Orchard Street NY, NY 10002 212 410 6120 lesleyheller.com

PENNY KRONENGOLD Horses, Carousels, Child’s Play March 30- April 24, 2010 Gallery Hours: Tues.-Sat. 11-6

First Street Gallery 526 West 26th Street, Suite 915 New York, NY 10001 T: 646-336-8053 F: 646-336-8054 www.firststreetgallery.net

Head to a Museum, Explore All Mediums and Even Learn French!

Contemporary, Modern, Multicultural Art for Kids Mention this ad Gallery & Museum tours • Tim Burton for All Ages through April 24th

Expose • Enrich • Express • Create

and receive $50 off Summer/Fall Registration.

www.ClairesCreativeAdventures.com • 646-755-7733 “The best art program in the City.”

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

ber Orchestra present two chamber operas as part of a Holocaust remembrance concert. Apr. 11, 334 Amsterdam Ave., 646-505-4444; 3, $15+.

LITTLE CHURCH AROUND THE CORNER: Mezzo soprano Linn Maxwell presents “Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light,” a new one-woman musical play about the 12th-century German Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, the first-known woman composer in history. Apr. 9 & 10, 16 & 17 and 23 & 24, 1 E. 29th St., 212-868-4444; 8, $15.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic’s second “Contact!” program. Apr. 17, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

METROPOLITAN OPERA: Armida: Soprano Renée Fleming stars as the vengeful sorceress who reigns over an enchanted island prison. Apr. 12-May 15.

La Traviata: Angela Gheorghiu reprises her acclaimed interpretation of Violetta. Ends Apr. 24, West 62nd Street (betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.), 212-362-6000; times vary, $20+.

THE METROPOLITAN ROOM: Raymond J. Lee performs “An Evening of Broadway & Pop.” Apr. 12, 34 W. 22 St., 212-206-0440; 7, $15+.

PARK AVENUE CHRISTIAN CHURCH: Virtuoso Voices with soprano Jennifer Greene and bass Andrew Cummings performs in a program of art songs

by Strauss, Schubert, Debussy and VaughanWilliams. Part of Arts at the Park. Apr. 10, Park Avenue Christian Church, 1010 Park Ave., 212868-4444; 8, $10.

PAUL HALL: Monica Huggett, violinist and artistic director of Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, leads the Juilliard415 Ensemble, Juilliard’s new early music student ensemble, in a performance. Apr. 14, Juilliard School, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, 212-769-7406; 8, free.

PLAYERS THEATRE: Composer-in-residence Michael Poast presents his Color Music as part of the Music on MacDougal Series. Apr. 12, 115 MacDougal St., 212-475-1449; 8, $10+.

PUBLIC ASSEMBLY: Black Brooklyn Renaissance presents Hip Hop Hybrids, a showcase of the borough’s cutting edge hip-hop artists, many of them women. Apr. 15, 70 N. 6th St., 718-6250080; 9, $10.

WEILL RECITAL HALL: Ensemble ACJW performs Barber’s “Summer Music,” Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, Stefan Wolpe’s Piece for Trumpet and Seven Instruments, and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” Suite for Thirteen Instruments. Apr. 13, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 7:30, $25+.

WMP CONCERT HALL: WMP partners with the Sphinx Organization for a fund-raising concert featuring violinist Melissa White and cellist Tony Rymer.

Apr. 9, 31 E. 28th St., 212-582-7536; 7:30, $10+.

ZANKEL HALL: Soprano Dorothea Röschmann performs her recital, accompanied by pianist Malcolm Martineau. Apr. 12, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 7:30, $44+.

JAZZ ABRONS ART CENTER: The acclaimed Ben Allison Band

performs. Apr. 11, 466 Grand St., 212-598-0400; 3, free.

DIZZY’S CLUB COCA-COLA: Dizzy’s hosts several performances as part of the Sing Into Spring Festival.

Leny Andrade & Romero Lubambo. Apr. 6-11.

Catherine Russell & Friends. Apr. 12. Juilliard Jazz Quintet with Ron Carter, Benny Green, Carl Allen, Ron Blake & Eddie Henderson. Apr. 13-18, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9595; times vary, $15+.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN IN JAZZ: The organization hosts its annual Women in Jazz Festival, which showcases and honors women in jazz with homage to the centennial celebration of Mary Lou Williams.

Apr. 18, 23 & 24, Various Locations, 212-5607553; times vary, $25+.

ISAAC STERN AUDITORIUM: Carnegie Hall hosts the Phil Mattson Vocal Jazz Festival. Apr. 9, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8, $20+.

THE METROPOLITAN ROOM: Jazz vocalist Meryl Romer performs. Apr. 18, 34 W. 22 St., 212-206-0440; 7, $20.

SYMPHONY SPACE: Symphony Space presents Seeing Jazz with George Wein, featuring jazz impresario George Wein alongside young virtuoso vibraphonist Stefon Harris. Apr. 8, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 7:30, $20+.

ZANKEL HALL: James Moody’s 85th Birthday Party concludes Carnegie Hall’s three-part Shape of Jazz series. The party features Moody, the celebrated jazz saxophonist, pianist Renee Rosnes, bassist Todd Coolman, drummer Adam Nussbaum, clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and trumpeter Randy Brecker. Apr. 7, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8:30, $36+.

DANCE ABT II: The classical company of 12 young profes-

sional dancers under the artistic direction of Sylvia Waters performs as part of the 1.2.3.

Festival. Apr. 13-22, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $25+.

BALLET BUILDERS: Choreographers for this 20th anniversary season of Ballet Builders are Deanna Carter, David Fernandez, Ja’Malik, John-Mark Owen and Pedro Ruiz. Apr. 9-11, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St., 212-868-4444; times vary, $30.

DANCE NEW AMSTERDAM: Bill Shannon and Dance New Amsterdam present three months of programming by Shannon Public Works. Apr. 18-June 18, 280 Broadway, 2nd Fl., 212-6258369; times vary, $12+.

DEBRA WANNER DANCE: Debra Wanner’s newly formed company presents four dance works. Apr. 15-17, Chen Dance Center, 70 Mulberry St., 2nd Fl., 212-349-0126; 7:30, $15+.

LAURA PAWEL DANCE COMPANY: Pawel presents the premiere of “Easy for you to say,” and from the repertory, “Better Than Being Guillotined” and “There Might Be Mangoes.” Apr. 9-11, The Flea Theater, 41 White St., 212-352-3101; times vary, $15+.

MIRO MAGLOIRE’S NEW CHAMBER BALLET: Magloire continues his 2009-10 series with works by guest choreographer Deborah Lohse, Magloire and a premiere by company member Emery LeCrone.

Apr. 17 & 18, City Center Studio 4, 130 W. 56th St., 212-868-4444; 8, $22.

RICHMOND BALLET: The company, under the artistic direction of Stoner Winslett, returns to The Joyce Theater. The two mixed programs will feature three ballets each and vary nightly. Apr. 6-11, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $10+.

SOUND CHECK: The American Tap Dance Foundation presents the second-annual “Sound Check” tap dance series. Apr. 14-18, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St., 212-924-0077; times vary, $15+.

TRANSCENDANCEGROUP: The newest contemporary dance company in New York City, under the direction of Gabriel Chajnik and artistic mentorship of Hector Zaraspe, holds its first performance. Apr. 12 & 13, Manhattan Movement of Arts, 248 W. 60th St., 646-385-8496; 8, $32.

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY: Performing twice nightly, the company revives “Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503,” a work created in 1980 and not seen since 1996. Apr. 7-11, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W. 37th St., 212-868-4444; times vary, $25.

ZVIDANCE: The company, led by Israeli-born artistic

THEATER

Broadway run. Open run, Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45th St., 212-239-6200.

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK: Shakespeare’s play is presented by New York Classical Theatre in a sprawling production staged throughout the 3.5acre World Financial Center. Bring cushions!

Apr. 6-11 & 13-18, World Financial Center, 220 Vesey St., 212-945-0505.

666: The Yllana comedy theater troupe makes its

HELL AND HIGH WATER, OR LESSONS FOR WHEN THE SKY FALLS: MultiStages presents the world premiere

Off-Broadway debut in a tale of death row debauchery. Opens Apr. 15, Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, 212-307-4100.

ASYLUM: Dixon Place presents the world premiere of the darkly comic autobiographical story of a teenage pot head seeking enlightenment who checks himself into a psychiatric hospital before dropping out of high school. Written and performed

by James Braly. Apr. 16-May 22, Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., 212-219-0736.

BAWDY: Join the fishnet-clad Jesse Luttrell as he hosts Off-Broadway’s biggest little vaudeville, an everchanging, burlesque-themed romp. Apr. 10, The Triad Theatre, 158 W. 72nd St., 800-838-3006.

BILLY ELLIOT: This Tony-winning adaptation of the 2000 film chronicles a young British boy’s desire to dance ballet in a poverty-choked coal-mining town. Open run, Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45th St., 212-239-6200.

CHICAGO: The long-running revival of Kander and Ebb’s musical about sex, murder and celebrity continues to razzle-dazzle. Open run, Ambassador Theatre, 219 W. 49th St., 212-239-6200.

CREDITORS: Director Alan Rickman reunites his London cast for the U.S. premiere of playwright David Greig’s black comedy adaptation of August Strindberg’s original story centering on a bitter marital experience. Apr. 16-May 16, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., 718-636-4129.

ENGAGING SHAW: Abingdon Theatre Company continues its 17th season with the New York premiere of John Morogiello’s new Off-Broadway play following the real-life courtship and battle of wits between socialite Charlotte Payne-Townshend and playwright George Bernard Shaw. Apr. 9-May 2, Dorothy Strelsin Theatre, 312 W. 36th St., 212-868-2055.

FUERZA BRUTA: Look Up: A visual dance-rave, techno-ride, Latino walking-on-the-ceiling fiesta from Buenos Aires. Open run, Daryl Roth Theatre, 101 E. 15th St., 212-239-2600.

G.B.S.: Rich and Sam meet up at the airport. They haven’t seen each other in years and have practically nothing in common. But their father is lying in a coma and the least they can do is find out why. Ends Apr. 10, The Kirk Theater, 410 W. 42nd St., 212-279-4200.

HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical: Diane Paulus’ celebrated revival of the 1967 hippie-centered musical continues its rocking

of Jamuna Yvette Sirker’s satirical account of the playwright’s experiences during Hurricane Katrina. Ends Apr. 18, Hudson Guild Theater, 441 W. 26th, 212-868-4444.

IN THE HEIGHTS: This heartfelt and high-spirited love letter to Washington Heights features a salsa and hip-hop flavored score by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Open run, Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St., 212-221-1211.

JOHN BALL’S IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT: Joe Tantalo directs Matt Pelfrey’s adaptation of the award-winning book. Ends Apr. 25, 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., 212-279-4200.

JOHN BULL’S OTHER ISLAND: Project Shaw continues with an Irish comedy of passion and Potcheen

by George Bernard Shaw. Apr. 19, The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South, 212-352-3101.

MEMPHIS: A New Musical: Set in the titular city during the segregated 1950s, this musical charts the romance between a white DJ and a black singer as rock-and-roll begins to emerge. Open run, Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St., 212-239-6200.

NEXT TO NORMAL: A woman and her family struggle to cope with her bipolar disorder in this emotional, Tony-winning musical. Open run, Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., 212-239-6200.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: Prep yourself for the forthcoming sequel by seeing (or re-seeing) Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Gothic musical romance.

Open run, Majestic Theatre, 245 W. 44th St., 212-239-6200.

SOUTH PACIFIC: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical in its first Broadway revival. Ends Aug. 2010, Lincoln Center Theater, 150 W. 65th St., 212239-6210.

THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES: The Pearl Theatre Company presents Frank D. Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prizewinning play that explores a family’s struggle to reconcile the disappointments of the past in post-war America. Apr. 9-May 9, New York City Center Stage II, 131 W. 55th St., 212-581-1212.

THE TEMPERAMENTALS: The new American play tells the story of two men as they fall in love while building the first gay rights organization in the United States. Ends May 9, New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St., 212-239-6200.

THIRST: Memory of Water: Jane Catherine Shaw presents her newest puppet theater work. Ends Apr. 11, La MaMa E.T.C., First Floor Theater, 74A E. 4th St., 212-475-7710.

director Zvi Gotheiner, continues its year-long 20th anniversary celebration with the world premiere of “ZOOM,” the company’s most ambitious work to date. Apr. 7-10, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St., 212-924-0077; times vary, $16+.

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Carmen Cicero In the Still of the Night New Paintings

9 April –11 May 2010

JUNE KELLY GALLERY 166 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012/212-226-1660

JAZZ from page 9 Marty Markowitz supports the CBJF with funds from the Brooklyn Tourism and Visitors office, though truthfully this fest seems aimed at local residents and maybe some visitors from across the East River.

Not all Brooklyn jazzers belong to this Coalition—yet—and have organized themselves otherwise to leverage the strength of numbers.

The artist-run Brooklyn Jazz Underground and non-profit Connection Works have launched an ongoing jazz residency at Korzo, a German eatery in “south Park Slope,” with gigs every Thursday night featuring two bands in 9:30 and 11 p.m. sets. Coming up April 15, mellow flutist

Michel Gentile’s trio opens, followed by bassist Chris Lightcap’s band Bigmouth, with exemplary tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver.

The Brooklyn venues may not be as glitzy as the Blue Note, as fabled as the Village Vanguard or as elite as Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center. But being in Brooklyn, they are ever more likely to be where jazz musicians who aspire to those Manhattan joints begin. And it’s always fun to catch players on their way up.

The complete schedule, times and prices are available at CentralBrooklynJazzConsortium.org.

April 6, 2010 | City Arts

17

PainttheTOWN

By Amanda Gordon

BAKER’S TOAST

photos: Amanda Gordan

Patrons were game for waltzing at New York City Opera’s spring gala. After all, the opera company’s staunchest supporters have danced their way through some pretty tough situations, in front of a public that has sometimes felt like the judges’ panel on Dancing With the Stars.

But a year into George Steel’s tenure at the helm, the white gloves were back on—and more than a million dollars was raised—to toast City Opera’s chairwoman since 2004, Susan Baker, a former banker who loves opera, dogs, Shakespeare, peonies and fans (on this night she carried one with a lace pattern).

“Susan and I have been on a long journey of Soprano Jennifer Zetlan, New York City Opera personal growth, learning about air rights, orchestra pits general manager and artistic director George Steel and and renovations,” said New York City’s commissioner of mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne cultural affairs, Kate Levin, from the podium. “There (left and right) Bianca Kawecki in have been slings and arrows along the way… but her commitment two looks. She said her first, the has been extraordinary. To the lady with the fan.” cream dress, was too tight; when it Baker thanked all for “an effervescent evening of music, dance got uncomfortable, she changed. and camaraderie” and celebrated with a waltz with her husband.

The night was also a welcome to new friends, among them Jonathan Sheffer, a new board member, and Bianca Kawecki, the chair of the Young Patrons Circle, who boasted that young patrons had filled two tables and that the group’s membership goals had already been met for the year.

“I loved the waltzing,” Kawecki, a fundraiser for Henry Street Settlement, said. “I just wish the younger guys who danced with me were better at it. I saw people twice or three times my age whipDuke Dang of the Works and Process series and ping around the dance floor.” choreographer Shen Wei

BROOKLYN BOOSTERS “We had great speeches,” said Brooklyn Arts Council’s president, Ella Weiss, at the end of the council’s benefit at The Bell House. Michael Armstrong had shared some of his favorite council moments: seeing $350,000 in grant money passed out to 250 artists at Borough Hall, and watching a Suzan-Lori Parks play at a theater supported by the council before anyone had heard of Parks.

Jane Walentas had focused on the 1920s carousel she spent 22 years restorMaddy Rosenberg of Central Booking, Gravelle Pierre of Kris Graves ing, which will be installed in a Jean Projects, Ethany Uttech of Brooklyn Arts Council and Central Booking Nouvel-designed pavilion in Brooklyn artist Anne Gilman.

Bridge Park. Other highlights: the performance by the Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra, and meeting artists whose work was auctioned at the benefit, such as Scott Henstrand, who told his winning bidder she could use the puzzle pieces in his assemblage as coasters. Next up from the council: a new group, BK Art Lovers; and Hip Hop Hybrids, a music showcase emceed by Tah Phrum Da Bush on April 15 at Public Assembly in Williamsburg.

Tamara McCaw of BAM and NYC Comptroller John Liu

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

Brooklyn Arts Council President Ella Jane Walentas Weiss and artist Philomena Marano

NOTES AND NEXTS Bands of bright colors, daubed with what look like drips of fresh paint, will decorate Jeff Koons’ art car for BMW, which will debut at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in June before taking a spin at Le Mans. Is the Jeff Koons Nascar Go Kart next? … At City Opera, Robert Verdi had a tip on dressing for the waltz: “Less dress,” he said.

“Less volume and fabric.”

And Bobby Flay told us what dish he’d want to defend if the tables were turned on his Food Network television show Throwdown with Bobby Flay: His shrimp and roasted garlic corn tamales from Mesa Grill. Who would be the Stephanie March and Bobby Flay challenger? “Guy Fieri.” And in case you were wondering: Flay and his wife, Stephanie March, don’t waltz. “Not until Jay-Z writes some waltz music,” the chef said… Save the date! The National Dance Institute gala on Apr. 19 honors the director of the documentary gem Every Little Step, James D. Stern… The theater company Elevator Repair Service —finally bringing GATZ to New York in the fall—has a smash line-up for its May 3 benefit, hosted by Oskar Eustis: readings by Fred Armisen, Frankie Faison, Frances McDormand and Lili Taylor.

For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@ rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos

Sarah Merians Photography and Video Company

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For more information, visit onpark.avenueshows.com or call 646.442.1627 General Admission: $15

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Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges our season sponsors:

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J A LC .O R G / S U B S

Wynton Marsalis Photo by Julie Skarratt