cityArts April 19, 2009

CityArts NYC

New York’s Review of Culture

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PLÁCIDO DOMINGO’S VOICE WOWS AT MET’S 125TH.

In harrowing times, dance—from ballet to contemporary— remains all the more essential to inspire and transform

Jazz

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LENGTHY RESIDENCIES ARE RARE, BUT A FEW STUNNERS REMAIN.

Museums

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KIPPENBERGER MOCKS THE MODERN’S COLLECTION.

Gallery Beat

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JULIE EVANS, RICHARD KALINA AND GARTH EVANS.

Arts Agenda Mark Seliger

see DANCE on page 8

Classical Music

www.cityartsny.info

Lowering the Barre —and Raising It

BY JOEL LOBENTHAL Every night of the year scores of dance performances take place across the five boroughs.

You would never know this, however, from the amount of attention given to dance by most of the city’s media outlets. Even stranger, is that the glossy magazines have largely turned away from focusing on the buff, youthful bodies—refreshingly distinct, for the most part, from the gym-generated bulk and surgical embellishments of Hollywood—of our dancers.

It would have been difficult to imagine when I started publishing about dance more than 25 years ago that it would almost seem to have now become some sort of media scapegoat. I wonder if that somehow reflects a difficulty that American society might have dealing with an art form that is about physical display and allure, as well as athletic prowess, but is also constantly making allusions and aspirations to the spiritual, the incorporeal. We remain, after all, our Puritan forefathers’ children—at least to some extent. Are we hard-wired by cultural inheritance to consider the physical and spiritual as dichotomous?

Perhaps its meaningful that ballet—the most Western European of all movement forms—found one of its crowning iconographies in the philosophies of the East.

Petipa’s 1877 La Bayadëre, still performed by ballet companies around the world, contains one of the greatest ballerina roles: an Indian temple dancer whose duties traditionally fused the devotional as well as the carnal.

APRIL 2009

The Merce Cunningham dancers will celebrate the choreographer’s 90th birthday at BAM April 16-19 with a series of performances.

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GALLERIES, MUSEUMS, DANCE, THEATER AND MORE. A Manhattan Media publication

BOOKS

Love, Betrayal and Revenge Arthur Laurents reveals how he punished his peers mercilessly in his latest book

BY ADAM KIRSCH ny good playwright or director knows that what brings people to life on stage is their spontaneous reactions and thoughtless gestures, even more than their premeditated soliloquies. Arthur Laurents, who has 60-plus years of experience in both of those jobs, confirms the truth of this on every page of Mainly on Directing, his enlightening and unsparing new memoir. The slim book, a sequel and companion to his 2000 autobiography Original Story By, is full of well-rehearsed anecdotes about Laurents’ life in the theater, from the first plays he wrote in the 1940s to the revival of West Side Story he is now directing on Broadway.

But everything you really need to know about Laurents’ personality and his approach to directing is revealed in asides. There is the way he describes his battle with City Center over the budget for the 2007 Encores production of Gypsy, the classic musical for which he wrote the book: “It’s not difficult to awaken guilt about money in most opponents in the theatre.” Or the way he intended La Cage aux Folles, which he directed in 1983, to appeal not just to “gays and the gay-friendly,” but to “the enemy”: “It was the enemy I was after.”

Nor is it only stingy producers or Neanderthal audiences who are Laurents’ enemies and opponents.

Consider the moment in Mainly on Directing when Martin Pakledinaz, the costume designer Laurents worked with on the Gypsy revival, decides not to take the same job on his new West Side Story. Throughout the book, Laurents has praised Pakledinaz to the skies—his work is “exhilarating,” “brilliant,” “a bull’s-eye.” But when he chooses to work on a new musical based on Gershwin songs, rather than on West Side Story, Laurents writes that he was not just “disappointed and mystified: instead of anger, I felt sadness that a friendship I had enjoyed so much was over.”

He is completely oblivious to the non sequitur: Why should Pakledinaz’s professional choice mean an end to their friendship?

But with Laurents, it does. Disagreement means betrayal and betrayal deserves punishment. When the Gershwin show fails to

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materialize, leaving Pakledinaz “out of both jobs,” Laurents writes that he had “no reaction”: but his careful pointing out of this “poetic justice or injustice” is itself a reaction, and an eloquent one. It is the same when Laurents recalls the producer, never named but surely identifiable to all concerned, who insisted that the troubled musical Anyone Can Whistle would be saved if the star, Lee Remick, had a new dress. “Not too long after her lecture,” Laurents continues, “that producer was hospitalized with Alzheimer’s.” In a play, that is the line that would make the audience gasp as they realized how vengeful the speaker really is.

Laurents either doesn’t realize this or, more likely, doesn’t care. For the most important practical lesson in Mainly on Directing is that, in Laurents’ view at least, it is only by an offensively uncompromising belief in himself and his vision that a director can make a show work. And Laurents has a sincerely idealistic understanding of what success means in the theater. It does not just mean making money—though, as a professional worker in a pop genre, Laurents has nothing against making money and reaching wide audiences.

He scorns the avant-garde—“I also think that certain Samuel Beckett plays are the Emperor’s

Joan Marcus photo

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New Clothes”—and he is proud that on La Cage aux Folles, “everyone made money.”

But Laurents is also happy to acknowledge that that show, though it ran for four years and broke taboos in the depiction of gay men on Broadway, will not “go down in any books.” There is a higher level of theatrical achievement than what Laurents calls, not disapprovingly, “smoke and mirrors.”

There is also magic and emotion and elevation—even what Laurents is not embarrassed to call “love.” It was love for his late partner, Tom Hatcher, that led Laurents to direct the Encores’ Gypsy as a kind of memorial. And if that revival is a great success, shortly transferring to Broadway, it is because, “Love was driving everything. I’d never been happier in rehearsal, because of the mutual love affair with the company… When the company moved into the theatre, that love flooded the stage, poured over the footlights into the audience, which bathed in it and sent back waves of its own night after night…”

The paradox of this kind of love, Mainly on Directing shows, is that it provokes or demands some fairly unlovely behavior on the part of the director. If Laurents sees his colleagues as enemies and opponents, or still more often as opportunists and fools, it is because they do not share his love for the play or his ironclad determination to serve it well. This is especially true when the play is Laurents’s own handiwork, and supremely

so when the play is Gypsy, which Laurents rightly recognizes as the achievement that will make his name “go down in the books.”

So it makes sense that Laurents is especially harsh about directors, producers and other people he believes are botching his masterpiece. Foremost among these is Sam Mendes, whom the first chapter of Mainly on Directing is devoted to rubbishing. The book’s very first sentence quotes Scott Rudin, who produced Mendes’ 2003 revival of Gypsy, telling Laurents that “The show depends on you. You have the musical in your bones; Sam doesn’t. You have to put it there for him.”

Laurents goes on to concur with this judgment at some length, concluding that, as Rose says in the show, “You either got it or you ain’t,” and Mendes ain’t.

If there is some jealousy of a young, spectacularly successful director at work here, that is par for the course on Broadway. As Laurents says, “The world of entertainment is crowded with the insatiable who can’t receive all the credit they hunger for because it doesn’t exist.” Laurents, who will turn 91 in July, has earned as much credit from theatergoers as almost anyone, and Mainly on Directing adds another reason for them to be grateful.

Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals

By Arthur Laurents Knopf, 176 pp., $25

BOOKS

Words of the War

ŠFonds Bibliothèque du Cercle de la Librairie/IMEC

The Otto List of books banned by the Germans, organized into card ďŹ les by the Cercle de la Librairie (Booksellers’ Association). 1940. n Friday, April 3, The New York Public Library opened its doors for a special exhibit titled Between Collaboration and Resistance, an exploration of how French intellectuals—Sartre, Gide, Cocteau and dozens of others—responded to the Nazi rule in Vichy France (1940-1944).

While the categorization of these ďŹ gures is not as simple as the binary suggests, the exhibit displays an array of photographs, personal correspondences, manuscripts, books and posters in order to view the ways in which authoritarian rule contextualized the creative lives and work of those oppressed. “This was the most difďŹ cult period in modern times for French writers and artists,â€? says Robert O. Paxton, guest curator of the exhibit and professor emeritus at Columbia University. “A number of well-known writers produced interesting work during this period and were inuenced by its tensions and pressures.â€?

Some of these documents are on display for the ďŹ rst time through the help of the French archive, Institut MĂŠmoire de l’Edition Contemporaine. Underground writings from those on the resistance side, including Camus and Sartre, are displayed in glass cases throughout the dimly lit room. A black and white French ďŹ lm is projected along the back wall.

Other highlights include correspondences between the German and French; some letters request matters such as the readjustment of

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words in the French dictionary to more Naziapproved terms. Also traced in the exhibit is the government’s eventual excision of Jewish inuence among the French literati.

Most notably, parts of this collection portray the ways in which New York had a role in the lives of writers and artists living under the Vichy authority. Many oppressed resisters ed to New York City where they continued to produce work more freely. Resisters who ed, for example, founded Alfred Knopf’s Pantheon Books.

Also shown are the relationships that notable New Yorkers had with those on both sides—the resisters and collaborators.

Gertrude Stein was known to have admired Marshal PĂŠtain, Chief of State in Vichy France, but she was also on friendly terms with many resistance writers. These relationships are explored through displayed writings and work. “This exhibit is about freedom of expression,â€? Paxton says. “Today writers and journalists are being imprisoned for expressing their opinions, and it is worth considering other cases where freedom of expression was limited and challenged.â€? — Stephanie J. Lee

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Between Collaboration and Resistance, Through July 25, D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the New York Public Library, 5th Avenue & E. 42nd St., 917-275-6975, www.nypl.org.

April 2009

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THEATER

Just Add Moonshine Peter Mills wanted to adapt Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World —so he took it to Appalachia

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the show means more if it’s set in the United States. “There’s an interesting spin on the story when it’s seen from an American perspective,” she says. “It addresses our ideas about self-identity and the ability to tell a story about yourself and then become that person.”

As they satirize American identity, Mills and Reichel also want to honor Synge’s pitchblack comedy, which includes mob violence, coarse language and a character whose visible head wound is a major plot point. “From the first number,” Mills says, “we want to create a world that’s compelling, but that feels a little dangerous. But when you add music, it’s hard to maintain that tone. Since it’s a musical, there’s always this temptation just to charm people.”

To keep his edge, Mills has merged catchy tunes with bleak lyrics. (That’s usually how bluegrass works. Next time you hear “Rocky Top,” listen for the verse about murdering a revenuer.) Meanwhile, Reichel has worked to keep her cast from seeming too friendly.

This can be tricky, since one conceit has the onstage band playing smaller roles. A fiddle player pretending to be the bartender’s wife could easily seem campy. “We’re trying to stay away from Hee-Haw territory,” Reichel says.

“We’re watching these people tell a story, but their relationship to us isn’t sweet. Hopefully, these are characters that you like because they’re putting their nastiThe bluegrass band in Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge. ness and grittiness right in your face.”

Just a few days before opening, Mills and Reichel were original idea took shape.” still revising the production, and neither Reichel adds, “We’re always looking at felt it would be “finished” before audithese productions as the first stage for any of ences arrived. Some artists would collapse these shows. We’re never looking at the first under this pressure—Mills just started version as the final version, because for us, writing last fall—but the couple says they showing it in front of an audience is an imporprefer working this way. “It is a race to tant part of learning what we have.” the finish,” Mills admits, “but at the same time, having that deadline makes you work Golden Boy Of The Blue Ridge, presentso intensely that you really get everything ed by Prospect Theater Company, April you’re thinking in the moment right out 11 through May 3 at 59E59 Theaters, there. I find that with projects that you 59 E. 59th St. (betw. Park & Madison work on for a long time, or that you put on Aves.), 212-279-4200; Tues. 7:15; Wed.the shelf and come back to, it’s harder to Sat. 8:15; Sun. 3:15 (April 12, 7:15 only), find that place where you were when the $25.90-$37.

Cara Reichel

BY MARK BLANKENSHIP omposer-lyricist Peter Mills has wanted to write Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge since he was a Princeton undergrad. Or at least, that’s when he first tried adapting The Playboy of the Western World into a musical.

J.M. Synge’s classic satire eluded him, however, until he transplanted the plot—about Irish peasants idolizing a stranger who killed his father—to the Appalachian Mountains.

After he added moonshine and bluegrass, Mills wrote the show in less than a year.

Playing through May 3 at 59E59 Theaters, Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge not only embodies one of Mills’ long-deferred dreams, but also represents the rapid-fire process of Prospect Theater Company, which Mills co-founded with his wife Cara Reichel in 1999. In the last decade, the pair have created a staggering 10 original musicals, while simultaneously producing everything from classic plays to new works by other writers.

Each of Reichel and Mills’ musicals has developed quickly, with full productions usually arriving mere months after early workshops. Otherwise, the shows are nothing alike.

Mills sometimes writes alone, and sometimes he collaborates with outside writers or with Reichel, who also directs. His genres keep changing, too. Before tackling bluegrass in Golden Boy, for instance, he turned Euridipes’ The Bacchae into a rock concert (to some critical acclaim), and in 2006, he wrote the lyrics to Iron Curtain, a Cold War spoof modeled after classic Broadway musicals.

“I’ve found I have a knack for that type of pastiche-y assignment, where I challenge myself to write in a particular idiom,” says Mills from Prospect’s Midtown offices. “You can gain objectivity from that sort of study,” Reichel adds. “It allows you to research a particular world and identify the ways you can use its music dramatically.”

The context of bluegrass is crucial to Golden Boy. Mills says, “The Playboy of the Western World is a play that requires an unusual setting to be at all plausible. There’s a guy who comes along and says he’s killed his father, and the reaction is, ‘Wow, you’re the coolest guy ever.’ It seemed to me that Appalachia, with the tough, individualistic mountain men, and the type of outlaw society they had with their moonshine, would be a place that would respect a guy like that.”

Mills could have kept the musical in Ireland, but he says he’s more interested in bluegrass than Irish music. And for Reichel,

ARTS BRIEFS

Lights, Camera, Action ne of the side effects of classical music’s century-long recession into “high” culture is an inherited resistance to using lighting and visual designs to enhance the concert experience.

Go to almost any uptown concert or recital, and a soft dim is about all you’re going to get. No gobos. No strobe lights. Don’t even think about bifurcated lighting.

The idea—partly understandable, partly mere snobbery—is that the music should speak for itself. And often it does.

But pianist Christopher O’Riley, who has already prodded the classical world one step closer toward a camaraderie with popular music through his critically acclaimed transcriptions of rock songs, isn’t content to let the classical concert remain a purely aural experience.

Over the next five weeks, he returns to New York—and Columbia’s Miller Theater— armed with two visual artists who will provide live mixed-video accompaniment to three concerts, each pairing the music of Shostakov-

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ich, Debussy and Schumann with O’Riley’s own interpretations of songs by Radiohead, Nick Drake and Elliot Smith, respectively.

“I don’t understand why music should be divorced from visual imagery,” he says, acknowledging that, while there has been a trend over the years of having orchestras play to screenings of silent films, classical institutions still do not have a common practice of adding the kinds of high-voltage lighting and visual design elements that are taken for granted at rock concerts.

And while O’Riley has experimented with lighting his concerts for several years (since, actually, his first concert at The Miller six years ago, when the lighting crew asked if they could switch lighting between pieces), incorporating video projections is a first.

Stephen Byram, largely known for his graphic work for rock album covers, is one half of the live video duo.

He believes creative artists can take

advantage of corporate and arts establishments that have been weakened by the cultural and technological demands of the day.

“All the old structures seem to be imploding, collapsing,” he says not grimly, but with a sort of sage fascination. “It’s like we’re in the Wild West. If the old things aren’t working, let’s try something else.”

Jonathan Rosen, Byram’s partner in video, agrees.

“There’s nothing wrong with [the classical concert] becoming a different animal.”

And in the end, it isn’t that difficult to stoke the conservative crowd’s fear of the demise of tradition. Luckily for O’Riley, he’s developed a devoted fanbase that isn’t just comfortable with his new approach to the concert: They revel in it.

— Ryan Tracy Christopher O’Riley April 17 and May 1, Miller Theatre, 2960 Broadway (at W. 116th St.), 212-854-7799; 8, $7-$25.

Tickets start at $10.50 with discount code Noche1136

with a world premiere!

“One of the leading dancers of our time.”

—The New York Times

April 24 – May 3

209 West 42nd Street, just west of Broadway April 2009

CLASSICAL MUSIC

The Older the Better

BY JAY NORDLINGER he Metropolitan Opera opened its doors in 1883—but not at its current location. The house was at West 39th Street and Broadway. Lincoln Center, the company’s current home, opened in 1966. At any rate, the Met is celebrating its 125th anniversary this season. The Met is also celebrating the 40th anniversary of Plácido Domingo’s company debut. The brass decided to mark both occasions with a long gala, featuring a cavalcade of stars, chief among them Domingo.

(And when I say “brass,” I don’t mean the trumpets, French horns, trombones and tubas in the orchestra. They seldom get to make decisions, important as they are.)

Did Domingo deserve a gala of his own?

Probably. Did the Met deserve a 125th-anniversary gala without a sub-gala? Yes, I think so. The Met is far bigger than any star, even than Caruso or Callas (not that the latter sang much at the Met). But this dual-purpose gala turned out all right.

The conceit of the gala was a good one: We were going to revisit productions past— for example, in facsimiles of costumes and sets. Graphics from a projector kept us abreast of the decades, mainly through New York Times headlines. For the Met, it seems, New York has always been, and always will be, a one-newspaper town.

So, who were the stars in this cavalcade?

By and large, singers the Met had around— ones who were appearing in Met productions anyway. It was kind of a shame that the Met didn’t summon the company’s best and brightest—period. But the singers who were around were a good enough sampling.

Angela Gheorghiu, the Romanian soprano, came out to sing the Jewel Song from Faust, and she did so in a blond wig—which made me laugh a little. Years ago, La Gheorghiu’s refusal to don a blond wig (in a production of Carmen) caused a bit of a ruckus. Gheorghiu sang the Jewel Song adequately—but would do far better later.

In the beloved trio from Faust, Sondra Radvanovsky, the Verdi soprano, drowned out her two male partners, so big was her sound. That was a little discombobulating.

Shortly after, there were two tremendously formidable women onstage: the soprano Maria Guleghina and the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. They sang music from Aida. And when Blythe sings “Silenzio!” in that huge, beautiful voice, boy do you keep quiet.

A funny thing happened at the end of this

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excerpt: La Guleghina milked her bows quite a bit. (An opera star is entitled, particularly when she’s a soprano.) Unless I misread her, Blythe didn’t like this much.

John Tomlinson, the veteran British bass, did a wise and impressive turn as Boris Godunov (Boris’s death scene). The Met Opera Chorus showed its stuff in maybe the most beloved operatic chorus of all: “Va penserio” (from Verdi’s Nabucco). Juan Diego Flórez, the Peruvian tenor, appeared for “La donna è mobile.” He sang it neatly, with that little bleat of his. Seldom has the passagework at the end been so clean.

James Morris sang the king’s aria from Don Carlo: “Ella giammai m’amò.” He did what he could with the voice he has left, and his dignity never left him. And speaking of voices and dignity: Deborah Voigt was the soprano, one of them, in the trio from Der Rosenkavalier. I have written a lot about Voigt, and will speak only briefly now: She is having bouts of vocal distress. Something is wrong. She does not sing like herself. Some of us wish she would leave the stage and get her problems fixed.

And if they don’t get fixed? Big deal. She is one of the greatest singers we have heard, and she has nothing—nothing—left to prove.

Everything material dies out anyway.

I liked the young Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska in “O mio babbino caro.” Why? Straightforward, simple—unpretentious. That aria doesn’t need any pretentiousness, at all.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the Siberian tiger, sang an excerpt from The Queen of Spades. As usual, he was smooth as hell, and noble, too. I once heard Renée Fleming say that Hvorostovsky must have a third lung, so astounding is his breathing. True.

At one point in the program, we had a bit of a three-tenors act: Joseph Calleja, Aleksandrs Antonenko and Marcello Giordani followed one another in three arias by Puccini: “Che gelida manina,” “E lucevan le stelle” and “Nessun dorma.” Each one sang pretty badly—a pity (and a waste).

Natalie Dessay, the French coloratura star, sang a stretch from La Traviata—Violetta’s Act I music. She characterized this music in an unusual and interesting way. They call her a “singing actress,” as much as a singer, and that is right. But make no mistake: She can sing too, her theatrical gifts aside.

The most impressive voice on the stage?

It may well have been the oldest one: that of Plácido Domingo. Officially, he is 68. Some whisper he’s older. In any case, he is a bio-

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Of all the singers at the Met’s 125th gala, it was Plácido Domingo, the oldest (at a reputed 68), who was most impressive

Plácido Domingo singing Verdi’s Otello at the Met’s 125th anniversary gala.

logical and operatic marvel. And he did some top-quality singing in this gala.

Among his excerpts was one from Simon Boccanegra, in which he was the title character. This role is for baritone; Domingo is a tenor, of course—a super-tenor. But he started as a baritone, and some call him a “baritenor” now. He was superb in this excerpt. And it occurred to me, as I was watching him, that I had never seen him as a dad (which Boccanegra is). Baritones and basses are dads, and granddads. Tenors—Domingos—are lovers.

Partnering Domingo in this excerpt was Gheorghiu, whose singing was a model of refinement. She has a very high musical IQ. You can’t earn it; you’re just born with it, or not.

In Domingo’s last appearance of the evening, he gave us the death of Otello. This, almost surely, is his greatest role. And he lived up to his reputation in it, even at this stage of his career. I spoke to a young person after the gala, and she said, “I never had a chance to see Domingo’s Otello. I feel so lucky to have had even a taste of it.” Quite right.

You can’t have a gala without a conductor, and you can’t have an opera company without a conductor: and that was, and is,

James Levine. Unsurprisingly, he was superb in nearly everything he did. In the Magic Flute overture, he was supremely Mozartean; in the closing scene from Das Rheingold, he was supremely Wagnerian. His sheer musical understanding is remarkable. And if the score is third-rate—as it not infrequently is in opera—he elevates it, by dint of an uncompromising musicianship.

I sometimes wonder whether the Met and its audience know how lucky they are to have Levine as music director. Rarely does a great conductor spend his career in the opera pit.

Levine has had his symphonic podiums—he’s got Boston now—but he has never left the Met. So, the company’s administrators have their conductor going for them. What else do they have going for them? Well, some of us think we’re in a golden age of singing (and it can be hard to recognize this when you’re in it). If it is not golden, it is certainly a very good age. How can the Met screw things up?

Oh, in many ways. By lousy productions, for one thing—by attempting to ape Europe, and forfeiting the Met’s role as a home for the great operatic traditions. But we can talk about that another time…

Gurtman And Murtha

present

Abbey Simon “one of the most important, exciting and musically satisfying pianists of his generation.”

— The New York Times

Alice Tully Hall Lincoln Center April 21, 2009 at 8pm Benefit concert Music for Youth Foundation Program of works by BACH, CLEMENTI, BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN & RAVEL Tickets now available Alice Tully Hall Box Office 212-671-4050 or Lincoln Center CenterCharge 212-721-6500 or online at www.LincolnCenter.org April 2009

Joseph W. Polisi, President

Wednesdays at One Juilliard’s FREE hour-long lunchtime concerts return to Alice Tully Hall, B’way at 65th St. Apr 15 Juilliard Harps and Guitars Apr 22 Juilliard Chamber Ensembles Apr 29 Conductors with Orchestra May 20 Pre-College Chamber Music No tickets required; doors open 12:30

Juilliard Free Concerts at Alice Tully Hall Wed, Apr 15 at 8

Juilliard String Quartet Joel Smirnoff, Ronald Copes, Violins Samuel Rhodes, Viola; Joel Krosnick, Cello Final NYC performance by Mr. Smirnoff with the Quartet HAYDN Four Opus 20 Quartets Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Standby line forms at 7 Thurs, Apr 16 at 8

Special Guest Benny Golson and the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra Brandon Lee Conducts Benny Golson’s Hits Along Came Betty, Killer Joe, and more LIMITED FREE tickets available Mon, Apr 20 at 8

Emmanuel Villaume Conducts the Juilliard Orchestra Emily Daggett Smith, Violin BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto and works by MOZART & BIZET Standby line forms at 7 Wed & Fri, Apr 22 & 24 at 8; Sun, Apr 26 at 2 Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Juilliard

Verdi’s FALSTAFF Steven Wadsworth Directs Keri-Lynn Wilson Conducts the Juilliard Orchestra featuring singers from Juilliard Opera $20 at Juilliard Box Office or CenterCharge (212) 721-6500 • 1/2-price for students/senior, TDF only at the box office APR 23 – 26 • Clark Theater at Lincoln Center

Juilliard Senior Dance Production Juilliard dancers produce their own performances of honors choreography Standby line forms 1 hour before performances see www.juilliard.edu/seniordance

Juilliard Ensembles in Free Performances Mon, Apr 27 at 8 • Paul Hall at Juilliard

Jazz Emergent Tickets available 4/13 Tues, Apr 28 at 8 • Alice Tully Hall

Chamber Music Tickets available 4/14 Wed, Apr 29 at 8 Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Juilliard

Saidenberg Faculty Recital Judith LeClair, Bassoon; Robert Langevin, Flute; Nancy Allen, Harp; Jonathan Feldman, Piano Limited tickets available 4/15 Thur, Apr 30 at 8, Alice Tully Hall

Works by Juilliard Composers Jeffrey Milarsky Conducts the Juilliard Orchestra Limited tickets available 4/16 Mon, May 4 at 8, Alice Tully Hall

Biava Quartet Juilliard’s Graduate Resident Quartet plays works by HAYDN, GINASTERA, and GRIEG Limited tickets available 4/20

TICKETS at the Juilliard Box Office 155 W. 65th St. • Open M-F, 11AM-6PM (212) 769-7406 www.juilliard.edu

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Dance too is an art form that requires the viewer to decipher its anti-literalism and to reach his or her own conclusions. It makes the spectator deal routinely with ambiguity. In an era frenzied by the prospect or reality of shortterm gain, might there also be a prejudice against dance because it is inherently nonprofit due to the vast expense of maintaining works in repertory system?

But I believe that the complexities of dance make it all the more essential in our world and all the more to be cherished. And dance does continue to hold its own—and even thrive—outside of the media.

Criticism itself is a crucial component of the dance equation. When criticism functions the way that it should—which doesn’t happen all the time, needless to say—it supplies accountability. Companies can’t do it on their own, existing as they so often do in echo chamber insularity. Reality checks are healthy.

Critics who are the best line of defense against the expedient, penny-wise-pound-foolish approach to standards, style, aesthetic that is always a temptation to budget and timecrunching company heads.

In all likelihood, the current economic crisis may hurt the largest institutionalized companies with their steep overhead as much as the smaller and mid-size ones. If there is one possible upside to the crisis, it would be that it encourages company directors to really, really get real. The best way to attract audiences is by well-rehearsed performances by dancers who are suited to the roles they assume, but it doesn’t always work that way. Companies are prey to favoritism, lapses of judgment, ad hominem and ad feminem approaches to casting. The rest of the world may function largely the same way, but we’ve seen where that got us. How nice it would be to see artistry become the new and most effective dance world survival strategy.

New York City Ballet opens its annual twomonth spring season April 28 at the New York State Theater. Artistic director Peter Martins is a fantastic fundraiser, and NYCB would be the first company I’d expect to ride out the economic storm easily. Recently, the company announced that it will not be renewing the contracts of 11 corps de ballet dancers. That’s not a good sign. Ballet companies can never be too big: the more people able to be rotated into roles and corps de ballet positions, the less physical stress put on each individual. That means people are allowed to develop their talents, to not let physical survival become the primary goal.

Founded in 1948, NYCB has probably generated more controversy than any other ballet company. The aesthetic championed by founder George Balanchine originally seemed stringent and contrarian to many. Balanchine emphasized the ensemble as much as the star personality, while his choreography privileged musical response above the spinning of narrative. But long before his death in 1983, Balanchine had not

Paul Kolnik

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The New York City Ballet in Romeo and Juliet. only won over most of the critics—becoming the single most influential creator in ballet—but had also amassed a large and loyal audience.

They filled the State Theater, and knew both ballets and dancers backwards.

The company’s other area of controversy is the debate over whether Martins, who took over immediately following Balanchine’s death, has been a responsible custodian of the Balanchine legacy. My opinion on this does shift somewhat according to what NYCB performance I have just seen. But if I had to arrive at a sweeping statement, I’d say that while Balanchine was irreplaceable, nevertheless at its best, the current NYCB attains a level as high as was reached while he was alive—although not every performance the company gave under his aegis attained perfection either. But it’s also true that the company’s Jerome Robbins festival last spring made clear that at NYCB, the Robbins repertory is more consistently in optimum condition than is Balanchine’s. The same could be said for Martins’ own ballets. In this season of hope and renewal, let’s hope that NYCB will live up to its talent and potential.

Merce Cunningham, another dance giant, celebrates his 90th birthday April 16 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the world premiere of a new full-length work that runs through April 19. More than Balanchine’s, Cunningham’s work can seem forbidding at first exposure—or you may take to it instantly.

As a very young man, Cunningham danced with Martha Graham, and his work is in some sense a rebuke to her exploration of the archetypal and individual self. He levels conventional stage hierarchies and kicks over the traces of readily discernible meaning.

Audiences are willing to enter into the treasure hunt even without directions. The continued creative vitality and the ever-widening recognition of the master of discontinuity supplies proof, if it’s needed, that dance remains innovative and adult. (All the more unfortunate that three of its senior dancers aren’t having

their contracts renewed, although the company will remain 14-dancer strong.)

Like Balanchine, Cunningham lets formal movement design speak for itself. Unlike the Russian master, however, Cunningham thinks music and movement should go their own separate-and-equal ways. And he likes his musical accompaniment to be anything but decorous.

In Cunningham’s new piece, live music will be supplied by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, together with Takehisa Kosugi and Sonic Youth.

This month also sees the premiere of New York Theatre Ballet’s Dance/Speak: The Life of Agnes de Mille, performed at the Florence Gould Hall four times from April 17-25. It aims to tell De Mille’s story through dance and dialogue, encompassing excerpts from her dances for musical comedy and ballet stages, some of them rarely seen.

Those of you who are familiar with my writing probably know already that neither dance competitions nor galas are my favorite things to watch. Nevertheless the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) competition is to be commended for bringing star dancers to New York for its annual gala that we don’t get to see very often. They dance in the second half of the program, after we’ve seen students who’ve competed and won scholarships to schools around the world. Among the professionals performing at City Center on April 22 will be YAGP alumni.

From April 29-May 2, Trisha Brown’s modern dance company is at BAM with a program featuring the world premiere of L’Amour au théâtre and the U.S. premiere of Brown’s O złoÐony /O composite commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet in 2004, and performed

by Paris étoiles, Aurélie Dupont, Manuel Legris and Nicolas Le Riche. I watched them rehearse it in New York in 2004, when it seemed like an exercise in the kind of kinetic semiotics that the French adore. I’ll look forward to seeing it now onstage, articulated by these three by-all-means-I’ll-see-them-dancethe-phonebook dancers.

JAZZ

Shout it Loud, Every Week From the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra to Mingus Big Band, the residencies that matter most

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ist Billy Drewes, with strategic blasts of structure and punctuation from the 13 other musicians onstage. Trombonist John Mosca served as genial MC and artistic director Dick Oatts, on alto sax, also played fervently. If big band jazz seems to you an anachronistic art, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra may change your mind. Its 2009 Grammy Award for a recording titled, of course, Monday Night Live From the Village Vanguard, suggests the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra is not just for connoisseurs.

The Jazz Standard, downstairs at Danny Meyer’s barbeque restaurant Blue Smoke on East 27th St. between Lexington and Park, has been Monday host to the rotating Mingus Big Band, Mingus Orchestra and Mingus Dynasty only since last October, but it’s a perfect match of venue and act. Bassist-composer Charles Mingus, prior to his death in 1979, expressed his oversized personality in rugged, bluesy workshop-like sessions. His spirit and repertoire is kept alive through the efforts of his widow Sue Mingus, arrangers such as Sy Johnson and instrumentalists led by saxophonist Craig Handy and bassist Boris Koslov.

Also, Mingus would have savored the cuisine.

Compared to the Vanguard Orchestra,

the Mingus Big Band is a loose and bruisingly rowdy bunch, likely to change plans in the midst of a tune, indulge in intramural competition and get loud for loudness’ sake.

But true to Mingus’ own complexities, the 14-piece Big Band, like the 11-piece chamber Orchestra and the seven-man Dynasty, has a vulnerable side it exposes in exquisitely lyrical ballads. When I was last at Vanguard Jazz Orchestra the Standard, tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake muscled through “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” which Mingus now takes for granted, besides being a funny wrote for Lester Young, like a bull taking story-teller and playing slickly and with swing. care not to break anything in the china shop.

His sets retain some of the endearing qualiThe Big Band broke up the hush resulting ties of old radio shows: deceptively casual but from that tender performance with an “amen” thoroughly professional, folksy and hip, more like a gospel shout. substantial than one might expect, delightful.

One more every-Monday jazz gig demands Naturally, not all bands or gigs are so notice, though it involves fewer musicians. long-lasting, so fans of fusion are advised to Guitarist Les Paul, a wisecracking sage at age hear guitarist John McLaughlin, keyboardist 94, leads a trio at Iridium in Midtown weekly Chick Corea, saxophonist Kenny Garrett, and should not be missed. He’s been at the bassist Christian McBride and drummer center of America’s musical entertainment Brian Blade as the touring Five Peace Band since the 1920s, inventing the electric guitar at Jazz at Lincoln Center April 23-25. It could and a slew of recording techniques everyone be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

MidAmerica Productions Presents

AGLAIA KORAS pianist

“Compelling... sensitive and tasteful.”

–The New York Times

Beethoven and Chopin Plus Series Sunday, April 26 at 8:30 p.m.

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall Beethoven: Sonata No. 1, Op. 14 and Sonata in E Major, Op. 109 Schubert: Sonata in A Major, D. 959 Chopin: Nocturne No. 2 in E Major, Op. 9; Waltz No. 1 in D-flat Major, Op.64; Waltz No. 2 in C-sharp minor, Op. 64; Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor; Op. 39 Debussy: Selected Preludes Tickets $35; $20 students and seniors.

CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or www.carnegiehall.org Tickets also available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office West 57th Street and 7th Avenue.

photo by Christian Steiner

BY HOWARD MANDEL n Manhattan, a long-running engagement for any jazz band is rare, indicating that somebody is doing something right to draw audiences on a return basis. But besting all odds, Manhattan has two extraordinary big bands in residence at two of our best-established clubs, just a few blocks across town from each other, every Monday night.

The Village Vanguard, the fabled basement on Seventh Avenue South, has been weekly home since February 1966 to what’s now known as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Yes, the ensemble was launched 43 years ago by trumpeter-arranger Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis with a dozen-and-a-half players, most of them on their nights off from jobs in Broadway theater pits.

Over four decades the personnel have completely changed, yet the Orchestra’s strengths—virtuosic soloists, finely detailed arrangements and tight group execution—have remained consistent and its modernity has never flagged.

On a recent visit I heard “Central Park North,” one of the late Thad Jones’ cosmopolitan compositions, brought to irresistible life by the individual statements of blazing trumpeter Terrell Stafford and soprano saxophon-

April 2009

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MUSEUMS

Clowning Around

BY LANCE ESPLUND xposing, challenging and appropriating art (as opposed actually to making art) is de rigueur. And Martin Kippenberger (1953-97), the hard-living and increasingly influential German artist who died of liver cancer at the age of 44, is the irreverent man of the moment. Kippenberger, a flimflam artist and provocateur—a clownof-all-artistic-trades who sends up everyone and everything—is a renaissance man in a boundary-blurring world where nothing is sacred, everything is suspect and art and life are inseparable. A vagabond and a wunderkind, Kippenberger was an interesting, unstoppable character who did everything in excess: He drank too much, did too many drugs, globe-trotted, threw lavish parties and made art prolifically and compulsively. He was also not afraid to embarrass himself or to fail—both of which, in art and life, he did repeatedly.

The Museum of Modern Art’s Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, organized by Ann Goldstein of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where the show originated, and Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, is the first American retrospective devoted to the artist. It is a coronation.

But, more than that, it is a loving, canonical embrace of the cult of personality and of Kippenberger’s particular style of art-as-attack—art-as-thumb-in-the-eye-of-art. This exhibition, perhaps a harbinger of things to come, signifies a clear shift from the recent canonization of cult personalities such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, whose glitzy art, though repugnant, holds to a certain level of craft—something Kippenberger couldn’t care less about. Certainly craft is overrated; but The Problem Perspective hits a new aesthetic low.

The first work you encounter on the museum’s sixth floor is the self-portrait “Spiderman Studio” (1996), in which a life-size wire sculpture of a crouching Spider-Man is ready to leap out of Matisse’s 1930s studio in the south of France.

Kippenberger’s sculpture, we are informed, challenges the myth of the artist as superhero. Aesthetically, it is a pile of junk. But the artwork’s real offense is its juvenile and academic conception. You have to wonder what MoMA’s curators intend when their featured artist on the sixth floor is berating the artists in the museums’s permanent collection.

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In other areas of this wide-ranging exhibition—piled high with drawings, paintings, books, photographs, posters, ephemera, sculptures and installations—Kippenberger mocks/emulates Géricault, Picasso, late Guston, Salle, Beuys and Richter—as well as every ism from Modernism up through Post-Modernism. Abhorring seriousness, Kippenberger repeatedly turned mythology on its head, and he appears to have had a particular distrust of the Romantic impulse.

He is so broad and thorough—and so talentless—in his attack, that it is difficult to know if he is spotlighting the highfalutin airs of art or his own inabilities as a painter and sculptor. Kippenberger didn’t appear to know the difference. Perhaps he was moving too fast to care. As far as art and artists go, his motto seems to have been: “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”

Kippenberger was not without wit, irony and, occasionally, charm. (Nobody is bad all of the time.) He had just enough academic aptitude as an illustrator to have been, if born in another time, a successful 1950s cartoonist or ad man. His twisting, rubbery lampposts, one of which is titled “Street Lamp for Drunks,” which bend and step or weave through walls like impertinent cartoon characters, made me smile. So did the sparkling, end-of-an-era bon mot “Disco Bomb” (1989), simply a mirrored disco ball, with a neon-orange wig attached, lying like a severed head on the gallery floor.

The largest and most engaging work on view is Kippenberger’s vast, last installation “The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’” (1994), which, filling the museum’s atrium, resembles a sprawling flea market set up on an indoor soccer field. The installation, bookended with stadium bleachers, comprises slide projectors, video monitors and dozens of pieces of sculpturally altered furniture—mostly tables and chairs, but also children’s highchairs, lifeguard’s stations and umpire’s platforms— paired off in makeshift office arrangements where interviews could be performed. It is based on “The Nature Theater of Oklahoma,” the last chapter of Kafka’s unfinished and abandoned first novel, Amerika.

At the end of Kafka’s novel, the book’s young hero, European immigrant Karl Rossmann, arrives at a gigantic WPA-like recruitment project, where “everyone is welcome” to join the Oklahoma Theater. There Rossmann is greeted by hundreds of women, dressed as angels, blowing golden trumpets. After a typi-

Jason Mandella

MoMA anoints Martin Kippenberger by mounting the first American retrospective of his work

“The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika,’” 1994 installed at MoMA through May 11. cally Kafkaesque interview process, Rossmann is employed by the Oklahoma Theater, where he hopes to recover security, freedom, even perhaps his homeland and parents.

But as the hopeful hero is traveling by train to his new job in Oklahoma, the novel’s opening image lingers—that of Rossmann’s arrival by boat in New York’s harbor. There he was welcomed by the Statue of Liberty, who greeted him not with a lighted torch but an upright sword.

It is the brandishing of that Kafkaesque sword that we feel most prominently in Kippenberger’s art. But the novel’s existential propulsion, governed by an optimistic

will to endure at any cost, is nowhere to be found in Kippenberger’s nihilistic circus.

For Kippenberger, incompletion, confusion, evasiveness and destruction are exactly the point. He was intent on skewering art and the artistic impulse. He wanted to expose art’s weaknesses. But there is no weakness in art per se. There is only weakness in weak art. It is one thing to acknowledge the cult of personality, as this retrospective does (artists can be interesting fellows); but when great artists die we still have their work, regardless of the character who made it. With the late, great Mr. Kippenberger, all we have left is the personality.

ARTS BRIEF Extras,” a survey of work by the late British video artist Derek Jarman, which includes 18 films rarely available in the United States and “Light Chamber (Part 2),” a rooftop installation by Christian Holstad described as “part bunker and part high-end spa,” which incorporates a colonic machine and a tanning bed. In a nod to the building’s previous occupants, X also has on view for the duration of its programming a loan from the Dia Art Foundation: the site-specific light work “untitled” by Dan Flavin, installed in the buildings’ stairwells.

While Alemani hasn’t finalized the Summer phase of the initiative, she described her vision as including more ephemeral, perhaps performance-based, work. “These are more traditional exhibitions,” she says of the Spring phase. “What we want to do for the Summer is turn the space upside down and do the exact opposite.” Alemani’s plan to open up the space with a looser, more dynamic show for Summer is driven not just by aesthetics, but by function, too: the building has no air conditioning.

— Erica Orden

X Marks The Spot he Dia Center for the Arts has disappeared from Chelsea, but a new arts initiative has taken its place, albeit temporarily. Housed in the building Dia once occupied at 548 W. 22nd St., the not-for-profit organization X, which opened its doors on Mar. 7, features exhibitions, site-specific installations, performances and lectures focusing on contemporary art, in particular on artists who have been under-represented in Chelsea’s traditional commercial galleries. “There are 400 galleries that do the same job,” says curatorial director Cecilia Alemani, “so we really want to open it up to a different group of artists that really don’t get any exposure in New York.”

X, which has a one-year rent-free residency in the building while the property’s management decides its long-term plans for the space, is organized into four phases by season. The current Spring phase features an installation by multimedia artist Mika Tajima called “The

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Three distinct showsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Charles BurchďŹ eld, Lois Dodd and James Castleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;reveal that humble methods can be best

BY JOHN GOOD uite possibly, your very ďŹ rst effort at painting involved an image of a house, and it came out looking crudely geometric and as frontal as a face. This childhood attempt may not have been very naturalistic, but it was probably pleasingly forthrightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and perhaps even a bit iconic in its simplicity.

And as every grown-up artist discovers, greater sophistication does not always guarantee a more compelling house. Happily, the artists in three solo shows currently in town are wise to this fact. Their workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all of it prominently featuring housesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;shows how keen observations and intense temperaments are sometimes best expressed through humble methods. Though very different in approach and background, Charles BurchďŹ eld (18931967), Lois Dodd (b. 1927) and James Castle (1900-77) all fashion strange and memorable visions of buildings with elemental means.

The nearly three-dozen watercolors in DC Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Charles BurchďŹ eld: 1920: The Architecture of Painting present the artist at a pivotal point in his career. After graduating from the Cleveland School of Art, the artist produced landscapes reminiscent of Fauvism in their intense colors and brisk, reductive rendering.

By the years covered in the exhibition (1918-

1920), though, his work had turned somber in both color and subject matter, depicting stark rows of houses and industrial scenes in a palette dominated by silvery lights and darks. In these the quirky luminosity of his earlier work has gone underground; buildings, streets and peculiarly stunted trees now breathe with a quiet, animistic intensity. When three homes, arrayed in a row like jars on a shelf, stare back at us from â&#x20AC;&#x153;February Thawâ&#x20AC;? (1920), their vacant windows resemble deep-set eyes.

Despite their subdued hues, these are fully colorful paintings, capturing concrete sensations of light and air. In â&#x20AC;&#x153;House and the Snowâ&#x20AC;? (c. 1920), the snow covering the shadowed side of a roof takes on an absorbent medium-violet hue, perfectly pitched against the expansive, yellow-tinged sky and heavily modeled snowdrifts in front. With the same vivacious restraint, BurchďŹ eld ďŹ xes upon the other strange moments: the headlight of a locomotive approaching in a distant hillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tunnel; giant kilns huddling in a factory yard like teepees; a lone cabin, tiny in the distance, bisected by a foreground branch. Again and again there appears the motif of smoke winding extravagantly above the procession of buildings.

In later years, as he secured renown as an American Scene painter, BurchďŹ eld turned to more realistically detailed scenes of industrial April 2009

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and rural America, and then finally to the flamboyantly stylized foliage and skies of his late period. The Architecture of Painting, which will travel to the Columbus Museum of Art and the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY, catches the artist at a telling crossroads, when somber subjects tease us with glimpses of vibrant interior lives. ver the decades, Lois Dodd has gained much acclaim for paintings of landscapes, gardens and interiors that combine a cool technique of simplified planes with warmly offbeat observations. Her six large canvases currently on view at Alexandre Gallery reveal a startlingly different subject: a house ablaze.

A statement by the artist modestly reveals that the structure was in fact deliberately burned to the ground by the fireman of Cushing, Maine to make room for a new structure. Her paintings tell their own visual story, however, fully

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conveying the fierceness of the event.

Ms. Dodd’s probing curiosity has always manifested itself pictorially, in the observed paradoxes of nature. These paintings are no exception: one finds it in the way a forest background turns into a uniform wall of deep khaki-green, inflected by a pattern of squiggles, or the manner in which a building’s angling foundation traps a triangle of ground against the canvas’ corner. But above the crisp containments of hue in these paintings’ lower portions—where the building is still intact—the images erupt in high-contrast, billowing notes of fire (pure oranges and yellows) and smoke (black, deep violet, greenish-blue, brown-green.) Here gesture prevails over geometry, and yellowpacked windows palpably convey a fireball contained—momentarily—by the building’s thin shell. In “Burning House, Night, with Fireman” (2007), the house has been reduced almost to skeletal darks. Its backlit grid holds the center amidst oranges tumbling upward,

ELSIE TALIAFERRO HILL Pangaea April 9 through June 6 Reception Thursday, April 16, 6 to 8

acid-pink smoke drifting down, and the diagonal ray of water from a fireman’s hose. Beyond, the forest abides as it might on any evening, as a self-contained, clumpy silhouette — a foil for a scene at once fearsome and beautiful. ames Castle’s drawings have gained increasing attention over the last decade or so, and for good reason. Vision and Touch marks Knoedler’s fourth exhibition devoted to the artist, with more than 30 small drawings—all undated and untitled, and on view for the first time—revealing his unique mixture of robustness and delicacy, awkwardness and resolve.

Born deaf, Castle never learned to speak, read, sign or write. He preoccupied himself on his family’s Idaho farm by endlessly drawing views of its buildings and interiors. His unique medium consisted of stove soot mixed with his own saliva, applied with surprising refinement to scraps of paper and cardboard. Some of his drawings consist of cryptic charts of numbers or letters, which he understood to be potent symbols even though unable to read. He bound many of these images into small booklets that he stashed in various places about the farm.

While these circumstances make him the quintessential outsider artist, his drawings are far more than merely charming or quirky. They have an eloquent rigor far beyond their touching attention to perspective and proportions.

Despite their blunt and smeared renderings, they show an extraordinary gift for subtleties of tone and the pictorial weighting of elements.

While some of these scenes have fantastic elements, like gargantuan trees or totemic towers, the drawings revel in real sensations of illumination. In one interior, a door—barely

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off-white—cracks open to reveal a nearby house, its pure paper-white exterior punctuated by the abrupt, inky dark of a window shutter; the sequence of tones wondrously sums up contrasting worlds of interior/exterior light. In another, the footboard of a bed casts the faintest shadow on a wall, while a sturdy row of coats hanging above paces out the pale, lengthening bedspread. My own favorite, produced on the notched and creased surface of an unfolded carton, depicts a room whose walls are covered floor-to-ceiling with a busy, checkered wallpaper. At the center a door has swung wide to reveal a diverse landscape of trees, fence, and pathway. As with Bonnard’s drawings, the rendering seems at once idiosyncratic and supremely focused – a vibrant, knowing coalescence of a bewildering number of observations.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Castle’s art is its lack of recognizable antecedents.

While Burchfield and Dodd’s paintings have clear roots in modernism, Castle’s work represents, in a sense, a culture of one. But the work of all three moves us, finally, for the same reason: for the chance of watching artists domesticate their environments through remarkable images.

Charles Burchfield at DC Moore Gallery through April 25, 724 5th Ave. (betw. W. 56th and W. 57th Sts.), 212-247-2111.

Lois Dodd at Alexandre Gallery through April 25, 41 E. 57th St. (at Madison Ave.), 212-755-2828.

James Castle at Knoedler & Company through April 25, 19 E. 70th St. (betw.

5th & Madison Aves.), 212-794-0550.

GALLERY BEAT By Mario Naves Reviews of three current art shows Julie Evans: Lesson from a Guinea Hen

Pangaea, 60x36 inches, oil on canvas, 2008

NABI GALLERY 137 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 | 212 929 6063 | www.nabigallery.com 12

City Arts NYC

You’d be hard-pressed to find contemporary art as meticulously executed and tenderly honed as Julie Evans’s works-onpaper on display at Julie Saul Gallery. Using acrylic, gouache, colored pencil and what looks to be a superfine grade of glitter, she creates free-floating abstractions that nod to the New York School’s improvisatory verities, but gain their authority and allure from Indian art. Evans absorbed its methodologies and traditions while studying miniature painting in New Delhi. She isn’t slumming in the conventions of non-Western art. She’s a devotee who became the real thing.

Each drawing begins as an isolated puddle of color that is subsequently augmented by imagery: mandalas, botanical motifs and oddments of pattern. Evans reconciles extremes: splashy automatism and deliberate ornamentation; modestly scaled formats and expansive vistas; meditative reveries and The Big Bang. (With Julie

Evans’ art, you’re never sure whether you’re looking at the cosmos or into a microscope.)

Her punctiliousness as a draftsman compels close inspection of, say, a bead-like trail of circles or an elegant distillation of waves.

The sprightly leaves of a “sprout”—arabesques rendered in pink, pinkish-cream and green—are almost unbearably sharp and slender. Evans, you think, must have the sharpest pencil in the world.

Her palette—filled, as it is, with radiant lemon yellows, musky greens and clarified oranges—is, by turns, electric and silky, crisp and delicate. Given that significant areas of uninflected paper are retained, the drawings aren’t unified by the chromatic sumptuousness typical of the paintings: Color plays second banana to drawing.

Perhaps that’s why the works-on-paper feel more like displays of virtuosity than a world given heft. When one of our premier colorists downplays her gift, the resulting art can’t help but lose something of its reason

for being. Evans’ paintings are outrageously ravishing; the drawings are merely exquisite.

The distinction serves as a reminder that our best artists are often their own toughest competition.

Julie Evans: Lesson from a Guinea Hen at Julie Saul Gallery, through April 11.

535 W. 22nd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-627-2410.

Richard Kalina: New Paintings and Watercolors The abstract artist Richard Kalina thinks a lot about painting—maybe too much given the programmatic nature of his art—but he’s not afraid to have fun. His canvases and drawings, on display at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., combine Minimalist structures, craft reminiscent of vernacular traditions and a wiry strain of Pop. Imagine the love child of Donald Judd and a colonial era quiltmaker who’s been weaned on 1950s design and you’ll have some idea of what Kalina’s quixotic enterprise might look like.

Kalina eschews chance, and follows a stringent and fairly unforgiving strategy.

Working on linen, he measures and masks gridded compositions; regulated squares of exposed linen and jagged white lines establish the foundation of each composition.

These grounds are punctuated by segmented ovals, squares and roving diagonal bands rendered in collaged sheaths of rice paper painted in a vibrant range of tones. Shifts in color and scale bring about jarring and sometimes jaunty variations in rhythm and space. “Pearl of the Indies” (2009) and “A Marriage of Convenience” (2008)—Kalina’s titles are allusive, bordering on gnomic— pull and pop at the eye in an aggressively cheerful manner. Brigid Riley meets Daffy Duck.

Kalina is most assured as a colorist when his palette is antiseptic: the brilliant field of

Garth Evans’ “The Corner of Your Eye”

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aquamarine in “A Marriage of Convenience” suits his brainy vision better than the Kleelike range of autumnal tones in “A Western Passage.” Synthetic becomes him. Having said that, whatever color Kalina lays down is invariably saturated, clean and radiates light.

Stained glass windows are an immediate association.

The idiosyncrasies in Kalina’s work are more apparent in the drawings wherein he comes across like a PoMo Saul Steinberg dissecting the language of abstraction.

These pieces are dry and witty, but they lack the high-flown pictorial rhetoric of the paintings. Sober he may be and not a little pretentious, but Kalina is whimsical as well.

It’s a happy combination.

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212.366.5368 | markelfinearts.com

Richard Kalina: New Paintings and Watercolors at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., through May 2. 514 W. 25th St. (betw.

10th & 11th Aves.), 212-941-0012.

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Garth Evans: Sculpture from the Late 1980s The uncanniest aspect of Garth Evans’ angular sculptures from the late 1980s, on display at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, is their skin. Cobbled together largely from cardboard, Evans’ geometric forms are painted and then covered in resin, creating dense and lustrous patinas. Tactility is an inherent component of the sculptor’s art, but Evans elicits from it a not altogether rational empathy: The pieces, we intuit, have the capability to experience touch. It’s an illusion, of course; that it’s a powerful one goes to Evans’ knack for endowing inert materials with the stuff of life.

The planar forms of Evans’ pieces bring to mind Constructivism, particularly in the deft interplay of volume and void, but the work has more in common with classical sculpture as filtered through the distilled formal vocabularies of Brancusi, Henri Moore and Hans Arp. Evans’ box-like effigies stretch, flex and, in the case of “The Corner of Your Eye” (1989), flamboyantly contort with convincing sinew. Figurative associations are confirmed by titles—“Frog,” say, or “Mrs. Turpin’s Pig” and “New Born”—but the work’s droll animism is the result, not of literary reference points, but the artist’s exacting calibration of angles—in their speed, especially. Evans’ achievement is all the more remarkable in how paint is integrated into his structures. No arbitrary overlays of color here: Just flesh made resonant and particular.

Garth Evans: Sculpture from the Late 1980s, through April 25 at Lori Bookstein Fine Art, 37 W. 57th St., 3rd fl. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-750-0949.

646.486.7004 | howardscottgallery.com

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212-206-8080 | acagalleries.com

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SNEAK PREVIEW Wednesday May 13, 6–9pm Individual preview tickets $60 includes wine, hors d’oeuvres, repeat admission

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XV April 2009

13

arts agenda Galleries 33 Bond Gallery: Philippe Nuell. Through May

9, 33 Bond St. (betw. Bowery & Lafayette St.), 212-845-9257, www.33bond.com.

ACA Gallery: Layered Luminescence: The Art of Egg Tempera. Paintings by Doug Safranek, Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov, Robert Vickrey and Fred Wessel. Through May 2, 529 W. 20th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-206-8080, www.acagalleries.com.

A.I.R. Gallery: Moon Spell by Haejin Yoon & Negotiating Space, a series of animated shorts. Through April 26, 111 Front St. #228 (betw. Adams & Washington Sts.), Brooklyn, 212-255-6651, www.airgallery. org Alexandre Gallery: Lois Dodd’s Fire; Night: small scale paintings by gallery artists and friends. Through April 25, 41 E. 57th St. (at Madison Ave.), 212-755-2828, www. alexandregallery.com.

Arsenal Gallery: Urban Woodlands by Mary Reilly. Through April 30. 5th Avenue at E. 64th St. (in Central Park), 212-360-8163, www.nyc.gov/parks/art.

Bonni Benrubi Gallery: Josef Hoflehner’s Seeing the Calm. April 16 through June 23, 41 E. 57th St., 13th Fl. (at Madison Ave.), 212888-6007, www.bonnibenrubi.com.

Bowery Gallery: Temma Bell. Recent paintings. April 21 through May 16. Barbara Goodstein’s Landscapes. Through April 18, 530 W. 25th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 646-230-6655, www.bowerygallery.org.

Bruce Silverstein: Cloud 9 featuring Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston. A series of cloud photography from the 20th century. Through April 25, 535 W. 24th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212627-3930, www.brucesilverstein.com.

Cheim & Read: Louise Fishman. Paintings by the artist. Through May 2, 547 W. 25th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-242-7727, www.cheimread.com.

Clamp Art: Expectations of Adolescence by Blake Fitch. Archival pigment prints. Kids Behaving Badly, photographs by numerous artists. Through April 25. 521-531 W. 25th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 646-2300020, www.clampart.com.

Betty Cuningham Gallery: Core by Jake Berthot, Forrest Bess, Alfonso Fratteggiani

Bianchi, Suzan Frecon, John Lees, Robert Therrien, Alison Wilding and Christopher Wilmarth. A group exhibition with the directive of finding a mysterious, psychological or personal center. Through May 2, 541 W. 25th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-242-2772, www.bettycuninghamgallery.com.

David Findlay Jr. Fine Art: Four by Four. Paintings by various artists. Through April 26, 41 E. 57th St. (at Madison Ave.), 212-4867660, www.davidfindlayjr.com.

DCKT: William Swanson’s Architectonic.

Through May 2, 195 Bowery (at Spring St.), 212-741-9955, www.dcktcontemporary.com.

Drawing Center: Unica Zürn: Dark Spring.

Opens April 17. FAX. Opens April 17, 35 Wooster St. (betw. Broome & Grand Sts.), 212-219-2166, www.drawingcenter.org.

Elizabeth Harris Gallery: Maja Lisa Engelhardt.

The Third Day. April 23 through May 30, 529 W. 20th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-463-9666, www.eharrisgallery.com.

Exit Art: Vertical Gardens. Through May 23, 475 10th Ave. (at W. 36th St.), 212-9667745, www.exitart.org.

First Street Gallery: Urban Remains by David Hewitt. Through April 25. “Sense and Absence” by Dana Saulnier. Opens April 28, 526 W. 26th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 646-336-8053, www.firststreetgallery.net.

Flomenhaft Gallery: Mira Lehr: New Works.

Mar. 12 through April 25, 547 W. 27th St., suite 308 (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212268-4952, www.flomenhaftgallery.com.

Freight and Volume: Ali Smith. Paintings by the artist. Through May 16, 542 W. 24th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-691-7700, www.freightandvolume.com.

G.R. N’Namdi Gallery: Selected works from G.R. N’Namdi Gallery. Featuring Frank Bowling RA, Nanette Carter, Ed Clark, Gregory Coates and more. Through April 20, 526 W. 26th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212929-6645, www.grnnamdi.com.

Gagosian Gallery: Picasso: Mosqueteros by Pablo Picasso. An exhibition looking at rarely seen late works. Through June 6th, 522 W. 21st St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-741-1717, www.gagosian.com.

Gallery 151: Artists of the Parsons Master of

Fine Arts Program. Opens April 23, 350 Bowery (at Great Jones St.), 212-675-5311.

Goedhuis Contemporary: Fang Jun. Calligraphy by the artist. Through May 15, 42 E. 76th St. (betw. Madison & Park Aves.), 212-8384922, www.goedhuiscontemporary.com.

Greenberg Van Doren Gallery: A collection of Paul Graham’s photographs from 19812006. Mar. 18 through May 2, 730 5th Ave., 7th Fl. (at W. 57th St.), 212-4450444, www.gvdgallery.com.

Grey Art Gallery at NYU: Sculpture and Drawings by Arthur Carter. A benefit exhibition for the Grey Art Gallery. April 16-29, 100 Washington Sq. E., 212-998-6780, www. nyu.edu/greyart Henry Gregg Gallery: The Paintings and Photography of Pedro Abreu. April 16 through May 8, 111 Front St., suite 226 (betw.

Washington & Adams Sts.), Brooklyn, 718408-1090, www.henrygregggallery.com.

Horticultural Society of New York: Plants & Mammals by Carol Bove with Jane Lariviere. Opens April 15, 148 W. 37th St. (betw.

Broadway & 7th Ave.), 212-757-0915, www.hsny.org.

Howard Greenberg Gallery: Edward Steichen. Select photographs made by Edward Steichen between 1915-1923. Through May 16, 41 E. 57th St., suite 406, 212-334-0010, www.howardgreenberg.com.

Ippodo Gallery: Tohru Matsuzaki. Bowls, trays, coasters, serving dishes and plates from exclusively Japanese materials.

Through May 9, 521 W. 26th St. (betw.

10th & 11th Aves.), 212-967-4899, www. ippodogallery.com Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd.: Kawase Shinobu’s Flowering Waves of Celadon/Kaseiha. Japanese ceramics from the 20th century. Through April 20, 39 E. 78th St., 4th Fl. (at Madison Ave.), 212-860-7070, www.mirviss.com.

Jonathan LeVine Gallery: Gary Taxali’s Hindi Love Song. Through May 2, 529 W. 20th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-2433822, www.jonathanlevinegallery.com.

June Kelly Gallery: Recent sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett. Through May 3, 591 Broadway #3C (at W. Houston St.), 212226-1660, www.junekellygallery.com.

Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery: Obstructions. Paintings by various artists. April 21

through May 31, The Fuller Building, 41 E. 57th St. (at Madison Ave.), 212-644-7171.

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts: (Re)treat by Sarah Smelser. Monotype works on paper.

Through May 30, 529 W. 20th St. (betw.

10th & 11th Aves.), 212-366-5368, www. markelfinearts.net.

Knoedler & Company: American Icons and Early Work by Mimmo Rotella. April 30 through July 31, 19 E. 70th St. (betw. 5th & Madison Aves.), 212-794-0550, www. knoedlergallery.com.

L&M Arts: Project Space: Donald Judd Colored Plexiglas. Through April 18. John Chamberlain: Early Years May 5 through June 27, 45 E. 78th St. (betw. Madison & Park Aves.), 212-861-0020, www.lmgallery.com.

Lana Santorelli Gallery: Thaw. Focusing on the natural world that is about to reawaken.

Through April 18, 110 W. 26th St., 212-2292111, www.lanasantorelligallery.com Laurence Miller Gallery: Wanderings by Ray K. Metzker. A series of black and white photographs from 1968 through 2008.

Through May 2, 20 W. 57th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves), 212-397-3930, www.laurencemillergallery.com.

Lehmann Maupin: The Dance of the Machine Gun & other forms of unpopular expression, by Hernan Bas. Oil, acrylic and mixed media paintings on linen. April 23 to July 10. 201 Chrystie St. (at Stanton St.), 212254-0054. www.lehmannmaupin.com.

L&M Arts: Project Space: Donald Judd Colored Plexiglas. Through April 18, 45 E. 78th St. (betw. Madison & Park Aves.), 212-8610020, www.lmgallery.com.

Lohin Geduld: Anne Neely: Where There’s Water. Through April 25. Nicolas Carone: Figuration to Abstraction. April 30 through May 30, 531 W. 25th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-675-2656.

Lori Bookstein Fine Art: A selection of late 1980s sculpture by Garth Evans. Mar. 24 through April 25, 37 W. 57th St., 3rd Fl. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-750-0949, www.loribooksteinfineart.com.

Lubin House: In Pursuit of the Exotic: Artists Abroad in 19th-Century Egypt and the Holy Land from the Dahesh Museum.

Through April 30, 11 E. 61st St. (betw. 5th & Madison Aves.), 212-826-0320, www.

CityArts NYC

New York’s Review of Culture www.cityartsny.info

Send all press releases, notices and announcements to cityarts@manhattanmedia.com For advertising information, call 212.268.0384 or email advertising@manhattanmedia.com

14

City Arts NYC

syr.edu.

Luhring Augustine Gallery: David Musgrave’s

Solo Exhibit. A collection of drawings and sculptures. Through April 18. Albert Oehlen. April 25 through May 30, 531 W. 24th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-2069055, www.luhringaugustine.com.

Marlborough Gallery: Luis Gordillo. One of the most influential Spanish artists over the past 40 years displays his work. Through April 25, 40 W. 57th Street (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-541-4900, www.marlboroughgallery.com.

Marianne Boesky Gallery: Rear Projection by John Waters. Photographs and sculpture.

Through May 2, 509 W. 24th St. (betw.

10th and 11th Aves.), 212-680-9889. www. marianneboeskygallery.com.

Martos Gallery: Lyle Starr. April 30 through June 6, 540 W. 29th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-560-0670, www.martosgallery.com.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery: Part One: Painting. A collection of paintings from various artists. Through May 16, 24 W. 57th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-247-0402, www.miachaelrosenfeldart.com.

Mitchell Innes & Nash: Allan D’Arcangelo. The pop artist’s work form the 1960’s-1980’s.

April 2 through May 2, 534 W. 26th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-744-7400, www.miandn.com.

Momenta Art: Suddenly, by Mira Schor. Paintings on Canvas. Through April 20, 359 Bedford Ave. (betw. S. 4th and S. 5th Sts.), Brooklyn, 718-218-8058. www.momentaart.org.

National Arts Club: East-West exhibit. April 20-May 2, 15 Gramercy Park South (at E. 20th St.), 212-674-8824, www.nationalartsclub.org.

Noho Gallery: Jeanne Butler’s Sigma: White.

Jeanne Subtle layers using transparent whites with, graphite, paper and textiles evoke quiet tension. April 14 through May 9, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-367-7063, www.nohogallery.com.

NurtureArt: Interface: Nature. Through May 9, 910 Grand St. (betw. Catherine & Olive Sts.), Brooklyn, 718-782-7755, www. nurtureart.org.

Pace MacGill Gallery: The Long Arms of Convenience: Selections from the Collection of Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs. April 2 through May 2. Chuck Close. April 30 through May 30, 32 E. 57th St., 9th Fl. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.), 212-7597999, www.pacemacgill.com.

Pace Wildenstein: Alex Katz: Fifteen Minutes.

April 24 through June 13, 32 E. 57th St., 3rd Fl. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.), 212421-3292, www.pacewildenstein.com.

Paul Kasmin Gallery: Ian Davenport. The artist uses highly-physical techniques to create his artwork. April 2 through May 2, 511 W. 27th St. (at 10th Ave.), 212-563- 4474, www.paulkasmingallery.com.

Prince Street Gallery: entwined roots by Rani Carson. Casein paintings on stretched cotton. April 25 to May 16, 530 W. 25t St., 4th Fl. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 646-2300246. www.princestreetgallery.com Robert Mann Gallery: Mary Mattingly’s Nomadographies. 210 11th Ave. (betw. W. 24th & W. 25th Sts.), 212-989-7600, www.

robertmann.com.

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts: Bruce Pearson. New

paintings and drawings that are based in text which have been transformed to the point of near indecipherability. Through April 18, 31 Mercer St. (at Grand St.), 212226-3232, www.feldmangallery.com.

Sarah Meltzer Gallery: YOU AURORA BOREALIS ME by Sarah Cain. Mixed Media. New Drawings by Doug Wada.

Drawings on paper. Through May 2, 525531 W. 26th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-727-9330. www.sarameltzergallery.com Sidney Mishkin Gallery: Andy Warhol’s Photographs. Photographs awarded to Baruch College by the Andy Warhol Foundation and Photograhic Legacy Program in 2008.

135 E. 22nd St. (at Lexington Ave.), 646660-6652. www.baruch.cuny.edu/mishkin SOHO20: Riding the Tectonic Plates: Drawing Acts by Even Ingalls. Large-scale drawings on paper. Through April 25, 511 W. 25th St., 6th Fl. (betw. 10th and 11th Aves), 212367-8994. www.soho20gallery.com.

Specific Object Gallery: Robert Barry’s One Billion Colored Dots. Through April 24, 601 W. 26th St. (betw. 11th & 12th Aves.), 212-242-6253, www.specificobject.com.

Sundaram Tagore Gallery: Judith Murray’s Continuum. April 26 through May 23. 547 W. 27 St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212677-4520, www.sundaramtagore.com.

Tibor de Nagy Gallery: Changing Scenes by Jane Freilicher. Oil paintings on linen.

Through April 18, 724 Fifth Ave. (betw. E. 56th & E. 57th Sts.), 212-262-5050. www. tibordenagy.com.

Throckmorton Fine Art: Sacred Architecture in the Americas. Images of notable ruins from the pre-Columbian era by an accomplished group of photographers. April 23 through June 20, 145 E. 57th St., 3rd Fl. (betw. 3rd & Lexington Aves.), 212-223-1059, www. throckmorton-nyc.com.

Tracey William, Ltd.: Simryn Gill: Interiors. A collection of small spheres from elements found around artist’s studios. Through May 2, 313 West 4th St.(betw. Bank & W. 12th Sts.), 212-229-2757, www.tracywilliamsltd. com.

Viridian Artists Inc.: Recent Paintings and Drawings. Japanese artist Tazuko Fuji’s and Oi Sawa will be presenting painting, sculpture and Sawa’s oil pantings on tin.

Through May 2, 530 W. 25th St., #407 (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-414-4040, www.viridianartists.com.

White Box: Andrew Rogers’ Odysseys and Sitings. Through May 13, 329 Broome St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-7142347, www.whiteboxny.org.

White Columns: 40th Anniversary Benefit Auction. May 16, 7 p.m. Artists from over 80 countries will be on display prior to the auction. Exhibit, April 24 through May 16, 320 W. 13th St. (betw. W. 4th & Hudson Sts.), 212-924-4212, www.whitecolumns.org.

Auction Houses Doyle New York: Important Estate Jewelry, April

21, 10 a.m., Doyle + Design, April 22, 10 a.m., Rare Books and Autographs, April 27,

A Long Island Tradition for 83 Years

The Premier Source for Estate & Fine Jewelry

An ultra-exclusive sale featuring the world’s most famous jewelry brands at a discount of 40-70% off the retail price.

Open to the Public: THURSday, May 7-SaTURday, May 9, 2009 10am-7pm Lighthouse International 110 E. 60th St. (btw. Park & Lexington Aves.)

BE THERE EaRLy, GET FIRST dIBS! Private Evening Sale*: WEdNESday, May 6, 2009 5-8pm *Includes cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

Ticket proceeds benefit Lighthouse International.

Please visit www.thehushsale.com for more information.

Hint, hint: Mother’s Day is May 10!

ALL SALES FINAL CREDIT CARDS ONLY

www.thehushsale.com April 2009

15

10 a.m., Important English and Continental Furniture and Decorations, May 6, 10. 175 E. 87th St. (betw. Lexington & 3rd Aves.), 212-427-2730, www.doylenewyork.com.

SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES: Early Printed Books, April 21, 1:30, Autographs, April 23 1:30.

The Ritter Collection of Modern Illustrated Books and Livres D’Artiste, May 5, 1:30. 104 E. 25th St. (betw. Park & Lexington Aves.), 212-254-4710, www.swanngalleries.com.

ART EVENTS SOFA NEW YORK: The 12th International Sculp-

ture Objects & Functional Art Fair features over 50 galleries offering furniture, textiles, jewelry and more. April 16 through 19, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave. (betw. E. 66th & E. 67th Sts.), 800-563-7632, www. sofaexpo.com.

CRAWL FOR ART: Fundraising gallery crawl as part of Spring Fever Festival. April 18, meets at Astor Place & Lafayette Street, www. breedingground.com; 11 am.

TRIBECA OPEN ARTIST STUDIO TOUR: Now in its 12th years, TOAST is a free, self-guided tour through the studios of more than 100 artists working in the neighborhood. April 25 through 28, locations vary, www.toastartwalk.com.

PUBLIC ART FUND: Hosts a lecture by German artist Christian Jankowski. April 29, Tishman Auditorium, The New School, 66 W. 12th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-9804575, www.publicartfund.org; 6:30, $5.

BAMART AUCTION: Kehinde Wiley hosts the fifth annual silent auction. April 29 through May 11, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave. (at Ashland Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, www.bam.org.

HAUGHTON INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR: An international fine art fair featuring paintings, drawings and sculpture from Renaissance to contemporary by European and American artists. May 1 through 5, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave. (betw. E. 66th & E. 67th Sts.), www.haughton.com; times vary, $20.

DUMBO FIRST THURSDAY: Participating galleries in Dumbo launch new exhibitions each month. May 7, participating galleries including Amos Eno, A.I.R., Gloria Kennedy, Smack Melon, Kris Graves Projects and Umbrage Editions, www.twotreesny.com; 6, FREE. ONE STEP BEYOND: A late-night dance party with live music, a complementary space show and cocktails. May 8, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at W. 79th St., 212-769-5100, www.amnh.org; 9, $20.

NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL: Curated by Jody Quon, William A. Ewing, Chris Boot and Jon Levy, the festival features four main exhibits, eight satellite exhibits, photos awards and a review pavilion. May 13-17, 37 Main St. (at Water St.), Brooklyn, www. nyphotofestival.com.

NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL TRIBAL & TEXTILE ARTS SHOW: Fine arts, artifacts, antiques, carpets

and textiles are available at the 15th annual show. May 14-17, 69th Regiment Armory, Lexington Ave. (at E. 26th St.), 310-4552886, www.caskeylees .com

16

City Arts NYC

MUSEUMS AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS: Exhibi-

tion of Works by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Honors and Awards. May 21 through June 14, 633 W. 155th St. (betw.

Broadway & Riverside Dr.), 212-368-5900, www.artsandletters.org

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM AT LINCOLN SQUARE:

The Treasure of Ulysses Davis features sculpture from the Savannah, Georgia Barber. Kaleidoscope Quilts: The Art of Paula Nadelstern. Opens April 21, 2 Lincoln Sq. (at W. 66th St), 212-977-7170, www. folkartmuseum.org.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea. The first major exhibition of Caillebotte’s work in New York for more than 30 years.

Open through July 5, 200 Eastern Pkwy. (at Washington Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-6385000, www.brooklynmuseum.org.

CHELSEA ART MUSEUM: The Empty Space: Jean Miotte in the 70s. A collection of paintings.

Through May 9, 556 W. 22nd St. (at 11th Ave.), 212-255-0719, www.chelseaartmuseum.org.

COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: The exhibition Fashioning Felt explores the varied uses, designs and innovations in this ancient fabric. Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection Through Sept. 7, 2 E. 91st St. (at 5th Ave.), 212-849-8400, www.cooperhewitt.org.

THE FRICK COLLECTION: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum.

Through May 10, 1 E. 70th St. (betw. 5th & Madison Aves.), 212-288-0700, www. frick.org.

JEWISH MUSEUM: The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River by Peter Forgacs and The Labyrinth Projects, a multimedia exhibition about the displacement of ethnic minorities. Through Aug 2. Mary Koszmary (Nightmares): A Film by Yael Bartanal. Through Aug. 27, 109 5th Ave. (betw. E. 92nd & E. 93rd Sts.), 212-4233200, www.thejewishmuseum.org.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution. Through May 24.

Fifty works of art demonstrating the art and patronage of the early Choson dynasty are presented in Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400-1600. Through June 21, 1000 5th Ave. (at E. 82nd St.), 212-535-7710, www. metmuseum.org THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: Recent Acquisitions. Opens April 17, 225 Madison Ave. (at E. 36th St.), 212-685-0008, www. themorgan.org.

MUSEUM OF ART AND DESIGN: Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. Features 50 international artists who create works from ordinary and everyday objects. Totally Rad: Karim Rashid Does Radiators, a showcase of 30 exciting modern radiator designs.

Through May 17, 2 Columbus Cir. (at Broadway), 212-299-7777.

MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE: Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges. Opens May 1. Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited. Opens

LA FAMIGLIA DIMITRI

You’ve already enjoyed Ringling Bros. and Cirque, now it’s time for some true clowning around. With nods to vaudeville, burlesque and the traditional big top, La Famiglia Dimitri brings their quirky show to New Vic until April 19. Helmed by Clown Dimitri, a beloved Swiss cultural icon and one-time colleague of Marcel Marceau, get ready for hi-wire hijinks and musical mischief.

Through April 19. New Victory Theater, 209 W. 42nd St. (betw.

7th & 8th Aves.), 646-223-3010; various times, $8.75-$35.

May 1, 36 Battery Pl. (at 1st Pl.), 646-4374200, www.mjhnyc.org.

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK: Growing and Greening New York. A look at how New York can change for a greener future.

Through April 22. Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson.

Through September, 1220 5th Ave. (at E. 103rd St.), 212-534-1672, www.mcny.org.

NATIONAL ACADEMY MUSEUM: The 184th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. Features the new work of 186 artists including the renowned Tom Nozkowski, Pat Steir, John Moore and Mark Greenwold.

April 16 through June 10, 5 E. 89th St. (at 5th Ave.), 212-996-1908 NEUE GALERIE: Brucke: The Birth of Expressionism in Dresden and Berlin, 1905-1913.

Through June 29, 1048 5th Ave. (at E. 86th St.), 212-628-6200, www.neuegalerie.org.

NEW MUSEUM: The Generational: Younger Than Jesus. The work of 50 artists from 25 coun-

tries, all under the age of 33, will be on display. Through June 14, 235 Bowery (at Prince St.), 212-219-1222, www.newmuseum.org.

QUEENS MUSEUM OF ART: Queens International.

Through April 26. Kia: Organic Abstract.

Through April 29. O Zhang. Through May, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, 718-5929700, www.queensmuseum.org.

RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART: Nagas: Hidden Hill People of India. Through Sept. Stable as a Mountain: Gurus in Himalayan Art. Through July 13, 150 W. 17th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-620-5000, www.rmanyc.org.

STUDIO MUSEUM OF HARLEM: Collected. Propositions on the Permanent Collection presents fourteen different takes on the permanent collection. Kulup Linzy: If It Don’t Fit features 20 videos from the artist over the last seven years. Through June 28, 144 W. 125th St. (betw. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. & Malcolm X Blvds.), 212-864-4500.

Classical Music and Opera Chanticleer in Dendur: This all male vocal en-

semble performs works by William Billings, Juan de Lienas, Samuel Barber and a new work by David Conte. April 15, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave. (at E. 82nd St.) 212-535-7710; 8, $70.

Nelson Freire: This Brazilian pianist has an international career that spans 50 years—he performs Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Debussy in the Met’s PianoForte series.

April 18, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave. (at E. 82nd St.) 212-5703949; 8, $45.

Philharmonic Ensembles at Merkin Concert Hall:

A more intimate ensemble made up of New York Phil members plays chamber music by Kellaway, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Strauss.

April 19, Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, 129 W. 67th St. (betw. Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.), 212-501-3330; 3, $32.

Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater:

Artistic Director Dona D. Vaughn presents Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. April 22, 24, 26, John C. Borden Auditorium, 601 W. 122nd St. (at Broadway), 917-493-4428; times vary, $12-$20.

Juilliard Vocal Arts: Artistic Director Brian Zeger presents Verdi’s Falstaff, directed by Stephen Wadsworth. April 22, 24, 26, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 155 W. 65th St. (betw.

Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.), 212-7216500; times vary, $10-$20.

Curtis Symphony Orchestra: Paavo Järvi,

music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducts the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in an all-Russian program. April 28, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave. (at W. 57th St.), 212-632-0540; 8, $16-$50.

Musicians from Marlboro: The touring group from Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival performs works by Nielsen, Kirchner, and Schubert. May 1, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave. (at E. 82nd St.) 212-5703949; 8, $40.

Hopeless Romantics, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble Series: The core group of the

Orchestra of St. Luke’s performs work by Brahms and Clara and Robert Schumann in the first of a three concert series. May 6, The Morgan Library, 225 Madison Ave. (at E. 36th St.), 212-594-6100; 7:30; $45 Mahler Symphony Cycle: Conductor Daniel Barenboim concludes his season-long Carnegie Hall Perspectives series this spring, joining fellow conductor Pierre Boulez in leading the Staatskapelle Berlin in a complete cycle of Mahler’s symphonies.

May 6 though 17, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave. (at W. 57th St.), 212-632-0540; times vary, $43-$136.

Itzhak Perlman and the Perlman Music Program:

The world-renowned violinist appears with student “aspirants” to perform chamber music by Mendelssohn and Debussy. May 9. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave. (at E. 82nd St.) 212-570-3949; 8, $65.

Charles Neidich: Clarinet virtuoso plays with oboist Heinz Holliger, members of the Ze-

hetmair Quartet and others. April 22, 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at E. 92nd Street, 212-415-5550; 8, $25.

Jazz Omar Sosa Quintet & Jenny Scheinman: Sosa’s

unique Afro-Cuban Jazz has been at the forefront of jazz for more than 10 years.

April 7 through 12, The Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. (betw. 6th Ave. & MacDougal St.), 212-475-8592; times vary, $20-$30.

The Blue Note 7: Classic Blue Note Recordings re-envisioned. April 14 through 19, Birdland. 315 W. 44th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-581-3080; 8:30 & 11, $40.

Mulgrew Miller Trio: One of the most celebrated modern jazz ensembles. April 17 through 19, Smoke, 2751 Broadway (at W. 106th St.), 212-864-6662; times vary, $30.

Bossabrasil Festival: The third annual festival celebrating the sounds of Brazil. Featuring Emilio Santiago, Dori Caymmi and more.

April 21 through 25, Birdland. 315 W. 44th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-581-3080; 8:30 & 11, $30-$40.

Michel Camilo: Grammy Award winning Dominican jazz pianist. April 21 through 26, The Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. (betw.

6th Ave. & MacDougal St.), 212-475-8592; times vary, $20-$35.

Louis Hayes Quartet: One of the most recorded jazz drummers in history, Louis Hayes has appeared on hundreds of records and worked with John Coltrane and Sonny Rol-

lins. April 24 & 25. Smoke, 2751 Broadway (at W. 106th St.), 212-864-6662; times vary, $30.

John Pizzarelli: Renowned jazz guitarist and radio-host of “Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli.” April 28 through May 3, The Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. (betw. 6th Ave. & MacDougal St.), 212-475-8592; times vary, $30-$45.

Chris Potter’s Underground: Grammy-nominated tenor saxophonist. May 1 through 3, Jazz Standard, 116 E.27th Street (betw. Park & Lexington Aves.), 212-576-2232; 7:30 & 9:30, $25.

The Art of the Duo: A two-part series featuring Ray Drummond and Peter Leitch examines the history of New York jazz and the music that came from the legendary Bradley’s club. May 8 & 29, BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers St. (betw. Greenwich & West Sts.), 212-2201460; 8:30, $25.

Frank Wess Nonet: The renowned tenor saxophonist plays with Frank Green, Ted Nash, Scott Robinson, Luis Bonilla and more. May 12 through 17, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway (at W. 60th St.), 212-721-6500; 7:30 & 9:30, $30.

Film New York African Film Festival: In its 16th

year, the fest covers the theme of “Africa in Transition,” and many films explore South

April 2009

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ART MARKET MONITOR M

arch was a month filled with expectation for the art market.

The overwhelming success of Christie’s Yves Saint Laurent sale in Paris in late February led straight into two very different—but equally important, in their own way—art fairs in March. Even as world financial markets plumbed a new bottom, the existence of steady sales in both venues gave hope that the art market could build momentum through the spring. But New York City’s photography week laid some rumble strips down on the road to recovery.

Let’s start with the Armory Show, which proved there was still a market for art. Even though the show lacked spectacular work by recent market stars, there was still plenty of selling going on. It just took place in the lower price ranges beneath the mid-five-figure level. One dealer remarked that sales were dead between $50,000 and $125,000: a price point that attracts the HENRY crowd, the so-called High Earners, Not Rich Yet demographic that has the most to fear in today’s economic climate.

LISTINGS continued from page 17 Africa’s second democratic election in 15 years. April 8 through 14, Film Society of Lincoln Center, 165 W. 65th St. (betw.

Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.), 212-8755601, www.filmlinc.com; times vary, $11.

FIRST LIGHT: Satyajit Ray: This series celebrates the career of this Indian auteur, focusing on his early works from the 1950s to ’80s, which largely explore ongoing tensions between the East and West and transitioning to modernity in Indian life. Through April 30, Film Society of Lincoln Center, 165 W. 65th St., 212-875-5601, www.filmlinc.com; times vary, $11.

THE CRUEL STORIES OF NAGISA OSHIMA: Series of the radical and controversial films of Japan’s Godard, Oshima explores societal taboos in his films, such as post-war Japan’s underground criminal activity and capitalistic excess. April 1 through 14, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. (at Ashland Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, $11.

At higher levels, there were plenty of buyers but they were all looking for bargains.

At least one well-connected art advisor was spitting-nails angry just after the fair because a Wall Street Journal reporter had let an unknown buyer claim in print that he was getting half off the dealer’s list price at the fair.

Armed with this piece of spurious market intelligence, clients were forcing the art adviser to low-ball Anish Kapoor sculptures left and right, which got no one what they wanted.

Top dollar was easier to pry out in Maastricht at, The European Fine Art Fair (or Tefaf to the denizens of the art world), perhaps because that fair caters to the already rich. Anchored by the Old Master painting market—even as it embraces a broad range of Impressionist, Modern, Contemporary, Photography and even 20th-Century decorative art dealers—Tefaf saw the best action in Antiquities where dealers reported higher totals than even 2008.

Back in New York, the end-of-the-month photography bonanza began with the AIPAD show at the Park Avenue Armory and

ended with four separate auctions of photographs and photography books at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Phillips de Pury and Bloomsbury auctioneers. “The tables have finally turned,” said Rick Wester, a dealer who has extensive auction house experience with Christie’s, Phillips de Pury and Bloomsbury, “between the dealers and the auction houses.”

Across the board at the auctions, the big ticket items struggled to find buyers while the active sales below $30,000 were heavily taxed by the buyer’s premium. Combined, the four auctions took in $6 million but almost 25 percent of that (Bloomsbury only charges a 22 percent commission and the buyer’s premium drops from 25 to 20 percent at $50,000 for the others) total is an additional premium paid above the hammer price.

“The auction houses have really painted themselves into a corner with the buyer’s premium,” Wester explained.

But that’s not the only reason photography sales favored the fair this year. After several very good years in the photo market, there’s a certain saturation level in the collector base.

Buyers have either decided to sit this season out or already own their trophy Irving Penn, Mapplethorpe, Avedon or Ansel Adams.

At the fair, there was a greater variety of images and photographers on offer.

Wester, who has returned to the ranks of dealers with his Rick Wester Fine Arts gallery, also came back to AIPAD for the first time in more than a decade. “AIPAD was as wonderful as it has ever been,” Wester said.

“I wasn’t prepared to do the business that we did. I didn’t expect to sell anything but it was rejuvenating just to talk to so many people who wanted to buy—even if they couldn’t right now.”

With more time to decide on a work and the dealer’s ability to be flexible with terms or even price, AIPAD was the beginning—and even the consummation of many deal-related conversations. Besides, said one art adviser as he left Christie’s auction, the photography world doesn’t like to do too many deals in public, it’s just too visible.

KINO! AT THIRTY: New Cinema from Germany:

different countries. April 22 through May 3, various locations, 212-941-2400, www. tribecafilm.com; times vary, $8-$15.

MICHAEL KIDD RIDES AGAIN!: A compilation of rare footage from the late choreographer’s career on Broadway and film in addition to a live panel of dancers, including those from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Guys and Dolls. April 6, St. Luke’s Theater, 308 W. 46th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212239-6200, www.telecharge.com; 8, $35.

offshoot perform two shows, New Works and Repertory Favorites. April 15 through 26, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-405-9082, www.alvinaliey.org; times vary, $45.

JACK FERVER: Death is Certain: This contemporary performance from choreographer Jack Ferver looks at the primal and desperate ways we try to resist things. The piece is set to an original score to be performed live

by John McGrew of Apollo Run. April 16 through 18, Danspace Project, 131 E. 10th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), 212-674-8112, www.danspaceproject.org; 8:30, $18.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM AT 90: Celebrating the legendary choreographer’s 90th Birthday on April 16th, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performs a world premiere set to music by John Paul Jones and Sonic Youth.

April 17 through 19, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. (at Ashland Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, www. bam.org; times vary, $20-$75.

MoMA to screen a documentary about the founding organization of the New German Cinema movement as well as celebrated films that have defined the movement, including works by Fassbinder, Herzog and Tykwer. April 22 through 30, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-708-9400, www.moma. org; $10.

MIKE NICHOLS: Celebrated film and stage director Nichols will have a selection of his films screened at MoMA, including The Graduate, Angels in America known films, Carnal Knowledge and Catch-22. April 14 through May 1, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-7089400, www.moma.org; $10.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: Initially founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff to revitalize lower Manhattan after September 11th, in the fest’s eighth year, it will screen 86 features from a total of 33

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DANCE RIOULT: Pieces featuring Pascal Rioult’s world-

premiere set to Mozart, in addition to works choreographed to Bach, Stavinsky and more will be performed. April 14 through 19, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at W. 19th St.), 212-691-9740, www.joyce.org; 2 & 7:30 $19-$49.

AILEY II: The young dancers of this Alvin Ailey

—Marion Maneker

EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Joseph Alexiou, Stephanie Lee

PRESIDENT/CEO Tom Allon tallon@manhattanmedia.com

MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com

PRODUCTION MANAGER Mark Stinson

CFO/COO Joanne Harras jharras@manhattanmedia.com

ART DIRECTOR Jessica Balashak SENIOR ART CRITIC Lance Esplund SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC Jay Nordlinger SENIOR DANCE CRITIC Joel Lobenthal CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Mark Blankenship, Brice Brown, Adam Kirsch, John Good, Howard Mandel, Marion Maneker, Mario Naves, Ryan Tracy

ADVERTISING DESIGN Heather Mulcahey GROUP PUBLISHER Alex Schweitzer aschweitzer@manhattanmedia.com PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin ggavin@manhattanmedia.com SENIOR ADVERTISING CONSULTANT Kate Walsh kwalsh@manhattanmedia.com

MARKETING DIRECTOR Tom Kelly tkelly@manhattanmedia.com City Arts NYC is a division of Manhattan Media, publishers of New York Family magazine, AVENUE magazine, Our Town, West Side Spirit, New York Press, City Hall, Chelsea Clinton News, The Westsider and The Blackboard Awards.

Dance/Speak: The Life of Agnes de Mille:

The New York Theater Ballet celebrates its 30th year with the story of choreographer Agnes de Mille’s struggle for success in the American theater. Through April 25, Florence Gould Hall, 55 E. 59th St. (betw.

Park & Madison Aves.), 212-307-4100; times vary, $25 and up.

Stephen Petronio Company: In celebration of its 25th Anniversary Season, the company premieres a piece inspired by the power of severe weather and one’s own internal “storms,” set to a live commissioned score by the Young People’s Chorus of NYC. April 28 through May 3, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at W. 19th St.), 212-6919740, www.joyce.org; times vary, $19-$49.

Trisha Brown Dance Company: A contemporary artist in the mediums of ballet, opera and visual arts, Brown, commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet, presents a classical/modern piece set to a score by Laurie Anderson.

April 29 through May 2, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. (at Ashland Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, www.bam.org; 7:30, $16-$45.

Coppélia: New York City Ballet stages one of the most renowned comic ballets choreographed by George Balanchine, which dates back to the 19th century. April 29 through May 3, David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center, 212-870-5570, www.nycballet.com; times vary, $20-$105.

Ros Warby, Monumental: The Australian choreographer presents a performance piece combining dance and film, as one dancer will perform in front of a 35mm film projection, while integrating two icons of classical ballet: the swan and the soldier. April 30 through May 2, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-924-0077, www.dancetheaterworkshop.com; 7:30, $10/$15.

Theater Accent on Youth: A revival of the Samson

Raphaelson comedy from 1934 about a love triangle between a playwright, his secretary and the leading man. Directed by Daniel Sullivan, the cast includes David Hyde Pierce, Charles Kimbrough, and Lisa Banes. Opens April 29, Samuel J. Friedman Theater, 261 W. 47th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-239-6222.

Everyday Rapture: Little Mermaid star Sherie Rene Scott plays a Mennonite who leaves the homestead for New York City. The show includes music by David Byrne and U2. Opens May 3, Second Stage Theater, 307 W. 43rd St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-246-4422.

Irena’s Vow: Moving uptown from an offBroadway run is Dan Gordon’s play based from a true story. Tovah Fledshuh portrays Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish Catholic housekeeper of a Nazi officer who hid 12 Jews from the camps in her employer’s coal cellar.

Walter Kerr Theater, 219 W. 48th St. (betw.

Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-582-4536.

The Merchant of Venice: Propeller, the British, all-male Shakespeare troupe who put on several productions at BAM in 2007 returns to play this classic piece on justice. From

May 6 to 17, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. (at Rockwell Pl., Brooklyn), 718636-4100.

The Norman Conquests: Originally debuting in 1975 on Broadway, these three comic plays by Alan Ayckbourn portray a frenzied family weekend while Norman, played

by Stephen Mangan, tries to seduce three different women. Opens April 23, Circle in the Square Theater, 235 W. 50th St., 212-239-6200.

An Oresteia: Poet Ann Carson created this new interpretation of an ancient Greek revenge tragedy surrounding the fall of the House of Atreus, to be directed by Gisela Cardenas and Paul Lazar and featuring choreography

by Annie-B Parson. Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-677-4210.

Our Town: Director David Cromer takes on Thornton Wilder’s famed show. Through September, Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St. (at 7th Ave. South), 212-868-4444.

The Philanthropist: Christopher Hampton’s 1970 comedy about a professor who is much too nice stars Matthew Broderick. Directed

by David Grindley. Opens April 26, American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Ave.), 212-718-1300.

Reasons to Be Pretty: The third in a series of plays about the American obsession with beauty, this show by Neil LaBute will be directed by Terry Kinney of the off-Broadway production, while Marin Ireland and Steven Pasquale join some of the original cast members. Lyceum Theater, 149 W. 45th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.) 212-2396200; $31.50-$111.50 Waiting for Godot: Nathan Lane heads the all-star as Estragon in this Samuel Beckett play that has searched for meaning since 1953—Bill Irwin plays Vladimir, John Goodman plays Pozzo and John Glover as Lucky. Opens April 30, Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St. (betw. Broadway and 8th Ave.), 212-719-1300.

Zooman and the Sign: A random act of violence affects a community afraid to protest, written by Charles Fuller and directed by original cast member Stephen McKinley Henderson. Signature Theater Company, 555 W. 42nd St. (at 11th Ave.), 212-2447529.

Book Events Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities author

speaks with Harvard professor and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. April 12, Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W. 17th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-620-5000, www.rmanyc. org; 6, $25.

Jeff Koons: The artist celebrates the release of two books of his work. April 13, The Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway (at E. 12th St.), second floor, 212-660-6643; 7, FREE. The Death of Boom Culture: David Simon, creator of The Wire, joins Walter Benn Michaels, Susan Straight and Dale Peck to discuss the vision of contemporary storytelling. New York Public Library’s South Court Auditorium, 5th Avenue and E. 42nd Street, 917-275-6975, www.nypl. org; 7, $25.

April 2009

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