Washington City Paper (February 27, 2015)

CITYPAPER Washington

Free Volume 35, no. 9 WashingtonCityPaPer.Com February 27–marCh 2, 2015

food: Tableside prep reTurns 27

Housing: THe group THaT runs d.c. general 7

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INSIDE

COOKING

14 call and response With help from advocates and survivors, D.C. police have improved their handling of sexual assault cases.

By christina cauterucci

4 chatter district line

7 Housing Complex: The sad story of Relisha Rudd, one year later 10 City Desk: You put your weed in there.

12 Gear Prudence 13 Savage Love 25 Buy D.C.

d.c. Feed

27 Young & Hungry: Food prep leaves the kitchen.

32 Grazer: GCDC vs. Melt Shop 32 Underserved: Catching Flies at Daikaya Izakaya

arts

35 Yield of Dreams: A new doc on kids sold short by scholarships 37 Arts Desk: Tallying the local art scene’s score 37 One Track Mind: Harness Flux slides to unlock 38 Curtain Calls: Klimek on Lieutenant of Inishmore 39 Short Subjects: Gittell on Human Capital 40 Sketches: Capps on “Mood Boards” at Furthermore 42 Discography: Fischer on XYZ’s XYZ

city list

45 City Lights: Curren$y’s more than just pot smoke.

45 Music 52 Theater 53 Film

54 classiFieds

DESIGNING DRAWING WRITING BAKING RECORDING

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washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 3

CHATTER

in which some readers become legal experts on immigration and public education

In Your Dreams

ductive.” And the name-calling had only just begun. Can’t we all just get along?

Maybe we’ll look back and remember this as the week our readers lost their minds, nearly taking us along with them. Somehow the Internet tossed up on our calm shores a commentariat so uncharacteristically combative, we’re still recovering from whiplash. What happened, guys? We have so much love for you, but the conversation just went off the rails.

Response to Aaron Weiner’s cover story (“Living the Dream”) on the scholarship program TheDream.US got especially nasty. Specifically, it appears some commenters had taken it upon themselves to defend the nation’s borders by railing against “illegal immigrants” in the comments section of our site. Much of it we found too offensive to print here, but John Smith calmly captured the zeitgeist, saying of Sadhana Singh, the Guyanese student and scholarship recipient featured in the story: “Let’s focus on the real issue here unfairness. She should be deported. Plus of course it is against the law for her to be here, that is if the law was enforced and it hasn’t been since Democrats lied about the fence to Reagan.” It’s on you, Democrats, that this woman is getting an education funded by a scholarship set up to help those ineligible to receive federal money. It’s on you! But of course the us-versus-them camp had its opponents, too: cminus rose to the general defense of families whose kids are on a path like Singh’s. “How about we keep an ambitious and hard-working family like the Singhs,

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and instead send Guyana some lazy and ignorant native-born Americans?” Then carlos the dwarf piled on: “You gotta love the people who would turn a child into a criminal for something her parents did. Heartless, cruel, and counterpro-

Title Nein. After reading Will Sommer’s piece on Councilmember Mary Cheh’s doubts over the legality of a public school for black and Latino boys (“Minority Report”), a surprising number of commenters seemed to think the school in question would be “black only,” providing their expert legal opinion that this would be illegal. Zestious bravely waded into the comments section about half a dozen times with more or less the same message: “it’s NOT an ‘all-black’ school, it’s an ‘all boys’ school in Ward 7/8. An ‘All black’ school that receives Federal funding would be unconstitutional.” Mg3440 gets a gold star for keeping it civil while pointing out that “Mary Cheh is raising a valid concern about the ‘Empowering Males’ initiative. Unless equal resources & opportunities are available to females, the program almost certainly violates Title IX. If the district wants to keep the program, it’s going to have to admit females or make a comparable program available for females. That’s the law. Get over it.” Tough love, Mg3440. And then there’s this claim: “Mary Cheh is just looking for publicity,” wrote RV. Finally, noodlez gave his caps lock key a workout and showed some love for Will Sommer: “GOT DAMN THE BAMMA JUST SUBMITTED PROBABLY THE BEST ARTICLE AND PIECE OF JOURNALISM HE WRITTEN ALL YEAR.” Bama has one M, noodlez.

Want to see your name in bold on this page? Jump into the comments at washingtoncitypaper.com. Or send letters, gripes, clarification, or priase to mail@washingtoncitypaper.com.

publiSheR: Amy Austin ediToR: mike mAdden MANAgiNg ediToRS: emily q. hAzzArd, sArAh Anne hughes ARTS ediToR: christinA cAuterucci food ediToR: jessicA sidmAn CiTy lighTS ediToR: cAroline jones STAff WRiTeRS: will sommer, AAron wiener STAff phoTogRApheR: dArrow montgomery CoNTRibuTiNg WRiTeRS: john Anderson, mArtin Austermuhle, jonettA rose BArrAs, ericA Bruce, sophiA Bushong, kriston cApps, jeffry cudlin, sAdie dingfelder, mAtt dunn, sArAh godfrey, trey grAhAm, louis jAcoBson, steve kiviAt, chris klimek, ryAn little, christine mAcdonAld, dAve mckennA, BoB mondello, mArcus j. moore, justin moyer, triciA olszewski, mike pAArlBerg, tim regAn, reBeccA j. ritzel, Ally schweitzer, tAmmy tuck, joe wArminsky, michAel j. west, BrAndon wu iNTeRNS: jAmes constAnt, morgAn hines oNliNe deVelopeR: zAch rAusnitz digiTAl SAleS MANAgeR: sArA dick buSiNeSS deVelopMeNT ASSoCiATe: kevin provAnce SAleS MANAgeR: nicholAs diBlAsio SeNioR ACCouNT exeCuTiVeS: melAnie BABB, joe hickling, AliciA merritt ACCouNT exeCuTiVeS: lindsAy BowermAn, chelseA estes, mArk kulkosky MARkeTiNg ANd pRoMoTioNS MANAgeR: stephen BAll SAleS eVeNTS MANAgeR: heAther mcAndrews SAleS ANd MARkeTiNg ASSoCiATe: chloe fedynA CReATiVe diReCToR: jAndos rothstein ART diReCToR: lAuren heneghAn CReATiVe SeRViCeS MANAgeR: BrAndon yAtes gRAphiC deSigNeR: lisA deloAch opeRATioNS diReCToR: jeff Boswell SeNioR Ad CooRdiNAToR: jAne mArtinAche digiTAl Ad opS SpeCiAliST: lori holtz iNfoRMATioN TeChNology diReCToR: jim gumm SouThCoMM: Chief exeCuTiVe offiCeR: chris ferrell iNTeRiM Chief fiNANCiAl offiCeR: glynn riddle CoNTRolleR: todd pAtton Chief MARkeTiNg offiCeR: susAn torregrossA CReATiVe diReCToR: heAther pierce diReCToR of CoNTeNT/oNliNe deVelopMeNT: pAtrick rAins Chief TeChNology offiCeR: mAtt locke Chief opeRATioN offiCeR/gRoup publiSheR: eric norwood diReCToR of digiTAl SAleS ANd MARkeTiNg: dAvid wAlker loCAl AdVeRTiSiNg: wAshington city pAper, (202) 332-2100, Ads@wAshingtoncitypAper.com Vol. 35, No. 9, febRuARy 27-MARCh 2 2015 wAshington city pAper is puBlished every week And is locAted At 1400 eye st. nw, suite 900, wAshington, d.c. 20005. cAlendAr suBmissions Are welcomed; they must Be received 10 dAys Before puBlicAtion. u.s. suBscriptions Are AvAilABle for $250 per yeAr. issue will Arrive severAl dAys After puBlicAtion. BAck issues of the pAst five weeks Are AvAilABle At the office for $1 ($5 for older issues).

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DISTRICTLINE

748:

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Housing Complex

Operator Error

one year after a homeless child vanished, critics say it’s time for the nonprofit that runs the shelter to go.

In July 2013, The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness received a letter from the D.C. Department of Human Services office responsible for investigating facilities for the homeless. The letter contained the results of the annual inspection of the family shelter at the former D.C. General Hospital, which TCP operates.

The inspectors found eight deficiencies in the long-troubled shelter. Most were what you’d expect in an aging facility: broken toilets, leaking pipes, water damage. Others were more disconcerting: Half the electrical outlets in the common areas were missing required child-protective covers, and a room containing confidential client records was unlocked.

And then there was deficiency No. 7: “Criminal background checks do not include Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) records checks.” Fourteen randomly selected personnel files, the report stated, contained no evidence of the FBI and MPD checks required by the Child and Youth Safety and Health Omnibus Amendment Act of 2004.

Less than eight months later, an 8-yearold resident of D.C. General disappeared, apparently abducted by a shelter janitor with a criminal history that included felony convictions for burglary and breaking and entering.

This Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of the last time that girl, Relisha Rudd, was seen. A month after she disappeared, police found the body of her suspected abductor, Kahlil Tatum. Relisha is feared dead, and the police investigation remains open.

It’s not clear that compliance with the 2004 law would have prevented Relisha’s disappearance, given that the law didn’t

Darrow Montgomery/File

By Aaron Wiener

The Community Partnership has run D.C. General since 2010. classify the janitor’s role as a “safety sensitive position” and didn’t prohibit him from working in close proximity to children. But TCP’s tenure managing D.C. General has seen enough instances of negligence and alleged abuses of power by shelter staff for critics to call for the city to terminate its contract with the organization.

“We’ve lost any confidence in The Community Partnership,” says Rev. Mike Wilker, senior pastor of the Lutheran Church of

the Reformation on Capitol Hill. Wilker and other leaders of the Washington Interfaith Network have met with hundreds of D.C. General residents and advocated for better management of the shelter. “It’s our judgment that The Community Partnership is broken, and that the problems at The Community Partnership are so fundamental, we don’t think they can be fixed.”

“It’s basically a failure,” says Naila Dorsey, who lived at D.C. General with her three

children for four months last year. “They never worked up to what we needed, as far as families in there that needed assistance.”

Two of the three leading candidates for mayor last year said they would terminate TCP’s contract for management of D.C. General. The third, now-Mayor Muriel Bowser, said at an Oct. 2 debate, “This is a big contractor who has failed to do the job that needs to be done to keep children like Relisha safe.” But she stopped short of calling for TCP to be replaced, saying instead that she’d conduct a “top-down review.”

Bowser spokesman Michael Czin says that review is in its early stages.

TCP not only runs D.C. General, but also oversees the District’s full homeless services program, known as the continuum of care, much of which it contracts out to other providers. The nonprofit organization has become nearly synonymous with homeless services in D.C., leading the continuum of care since 1994.

“We’re taking a good look at the contract with TCP,” says Laura Zeilinger, Bowser’s appointee to direct DHS, who’s serving as acting director while she awaits D.C. Council confirmation.“TCP has been a partner to the city for decades to deliver homeless services. At times when the District has abdicated all responsibility on homelessness, they’ve been the homeless services provider.” Zeilinger, who worked as a DHS deputy director from 2008 to 2011, says she has not yet made a decision on the “shelf life” of the TCP contract but is looking at ways to “build in some accountability measures.”

The organization has close ties to the D.C. government. Michele Williams, who manages the city’s efforts to assist homeless families as the Family Services Administrator at DHS, worked at TCP for seven and a half years before joining DHS in February 2014. Mayor Vince Gray’s dep-

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 7

DISTRICTLINE uty mayor for health and human services, B.B. Otero, who oversaw that administration’s homeless services, has served on TCP’s board of directors. TCP Executive Director Sue Marshall has donated nearly $5,000 to D.C. political candidates in the past decade, including $1,000 each to mayoral rivals Gray and Adrian Fenty in the 2010 primary. At public hearings, Marshall often sits with D.C. government officials as they deliver testimony. (Marshall and TCP Chief of Policy and Programs Tom Fredericksen did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

“There’s been a really blurry line between the D.C. government and The Community Partnership,” says Patty Mullahy Fugere, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. “It’s been hard to tell where the government ended and the Partnership picked up. They haven’t been treated as a normal contractor, and there hasn’t been the kind of oversight and accountability that you’d expect.”

TCP isn’t really a normal contractor. The organization wasn’t supposed to be the direct service provider at D.C. General. That job belonged to a group called Families Forward, until revelations of serious infractions came to light. According to residents, employees at the shelter routinely propositioned female residents for sex, sometimes implying that residents would only receive things like extra blankets and juice for their children if they had sex with a staff member.

In April 2010, the Fenty administration fired Families Forward. TCP, which administered Families Forward’s contract for D.C. General, took over day-to-day management, ostensibly until a new operator could be found. Five years later, TCP is still running the shelter.

“The Partnership never was a shelter provider, ever,” says Fugere. “It had overall management responsibility, and they were left holding this disaster when Families Forward got axed.”

In 2011, the city opened the contract for D.C. General to a competitive bid. TCP was the only respondent. Since then, the city and TCP have extended their contract three times without opening it to bids. In the current fiscal year, TCP has a $71 million contract with the city, of which $13 million is for management of D.C. General.

Recent troubles at D.C. General are disconcertingly reminiscent of the problems under Families Forward. According to a Washington Post investigation last year, residents complained that staff members had

sexually assaulted them, photographed them while they showered, and tried to pay them for sex.

Dorsey says the shelter is beset by physical problems, from water leaks to faulty toilets—similar to the issues reported after the 2013 inspection. In the past year, according to Fugere, TCP has made it more difficult for homeless residents’ attorneys to enter the shelter and help them advocate for their rights. On at least one occasion when the Washington Legal Clinic was trying to conduct advocacy training, Fugure says, shelter management scheduled a mandatory meeting for residents at the same time.

DHS spokeswoman Dora Taylor says access to the shelter has become more restrictive in the past year due to “heightened security measures implemented for the safety of the residents.”

Dorsey and Wilker also say residents complain of intimidation and threats from staff if they don’t accept placement into rapid rehousing, a program that moves families from shelter into long-term housing. The city has an incentive to speed up those moves, given that D.C. General was already maxed out when the winter began and the city has been forced to put hundreds of families in motel rooms in order to comply with the District law requiring shelter for the homeless during freezing conditions. City officials hoped to maintain or exceed the pace they set last summer, when 64 families per month left shelter for housing; instead, just 43 families per month left from October to December. Families are wary of accepting placements into units they think they won’t be able to afford at the end of the subsidy, which is guaranteed for just four months, or into neighborhoods they consider unsafe or that are far from their children’s schools.

TCP oversees the rapid rehousing program, where there have likewise been complaints about its performance. Some rapid rehousing participants have faced eviction proceedings after TCP failed to pay the subsidy portion of the rent. Anna Purinton, an attorney with Legal Aid, says she’s seen several clients face eviction because TCP didn’t make payments.

“We would see someone who would say, ‘I have rapid rehousing through Catholic Charities or Community of Hope or some organization,’” Purinton says, referring to groups that provide case management for rapid rehousing participants but aren’t responsible for the rent payments. “And we’d have to explain, ‘It’s not really them.’ Then we started realizing it was all TCP.”

8 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Finally, advocates have criticized TCP for lax enforcement of its fraternization policy, because shelter staff members were aware that Tatum was spending time with Relisha but failed to report the violation. TCP recently updated its fraternization policy to stipulate that a staff member with knowledge of a violation of the policy who does not immediately report that violation “will be terminated immediately.” In its response to questions from the Council in anticipation of an upcoming oversight hearing, DHS also states that it has made changes to its procedures to better track whether minor residents are present at night, but emphasizes that “the shelter has no authority to make parenting decisions.” Taylor says, “DHS and shelter providers understand that families residing in shelter are not in the custody of the government.”

“I think we are taking as many steps as we can reasonably take,” says Zeilinger, “while still respecting that people need to be able to live and parent and have some liberties in a way that’s appropriate and safe.”

TCP does have its defenders, or at least sympathizers. Few people claim D.C. General is a well-run, safe home for children.

But some city officials have argued that it simply can’t be, even with the best operator, due to structural problems and financial limitations, and that TCP is performing well given the circumstances.

In July, three months after Relisha’s disappearance, David Berns, who had retired the month before as Gray’s DHS director, told the Post, “Within the confines of an inadequate building structure, I think our contractor is doing a good job with the maintenance, in the cleanliness, in the staffing, in the oversight.” Two months later, Berns’ successor Deborah Carroll told the paper, “We have a tremendous amount of confidence in The Community Partnership. It is probably one of the best-run shelters in the country.”

Yvette Alexander, who chairs the Council’s human services committee, thinks the city’s right-to-shelter law denies TCP the flexibility needed to improve conditions.

“The way that the laws in the District of Columbia are set up, I think they’re doing an adequate job,” she says. “But I think the challenge is, with our right-to-shelter laws, it puts us in a position that our hands are tied in a lot of cases, in terms of controls.”

Alexander’s predecessor as committee chair, Jim Graham, acknowledges that TCP is “not the solid gold nonprofit of the world.” But he says running D.C. General is

“an impossible task with the resources allocated,” and he maintains that TCP is doing a better job than Families Forward did.

Fugere says some people have given TCP a pass because of the large, outdated facility in which it must operate the shelter. “But I’m not so sure that the pass is really deserved,” she says. “Even given the challenges of the physical plant, I think there are a lot of things that could be done that haven’t been done that would make the shelter a more positive experience for families.”

Advocates have argued for more extensive training for all shelter staff, including people like janitors, that prepares them to work with residents who have experienced trauma, and for better security and maintenance of the facilities.

In October, Gray released a plan to close D.C. General and replace it with a network of smaller shelters around the city. That won’t happen quickly or easily, but most people who work with D.C. General feel confident that its smaller successors will be easier to manage.

Still, Fugere says another year or more of TCP management should be avoided, since “a year of good management would make a big difference for families.” The prospect of a D.C. General shutdown in the next couple of years could prevent the city from investing in the shelter, which in turn might dissuade other potential operators. Alexander, for one, is reluctant to pour money into a facility that’s slated for clo-sure. “We have to get to the point where we’re going to invest more money in the shelter or invest more money in getting people out of the shelter,” she says. “And I’d rather invest more money in getting people out of the shelter.”

Wilker and other TCP critics are heartened by Bowser’s appointment of new department heads with extensive experience in homeless services, including Zeilinger, who served as executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness prior to joining the Bowser administration. But they say they’ll continue pressing Bowser to replace TCP. To Wilker, therein lies the one silver lining of the Relisha Rudd tragedy. “It was when Relisha was abducted that spurred us to action,” he says. “Every day we work on this, it’s in memory of Relisha, and because we’re still concerned about the other chilCP dren that may still be at risk.”

Got a real-estate tip? Send suggestions to housingcomplex@washingtoncitypaper.com. Or call (202) 650-6928.

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DISTRICTLINE City Desk

Tomorrow’s history today: This was the week it was really legalized.

Barely Legal

As of Feb. 26, pot is legal in the District, with a few caveats. House Republicans sent a threatening letter to the mayor’s office tuesday, but the city is moving forward with the law. We’re declaring this a weed holiday, so here are our dos and don’ts for celebrating. —Emily Q. Hazzard

Do

Why possess it when you can own it? Adults 21 and over are allowed up to two ounces.

Fashion yours into a trendy floral crown, then go bid “good day” to a police officer. Someone will definitely try to steal the weed off your head, however.

Get really high! You can only consume

ery party guest brings their two ounces, you can probably stay baked for about a week.

Don’t

Smoke in public or drive while high. Still illegal.

Take your weed on a romantic picnic, just the two of you. No

marijuana on federal property, which includes lots of D.C. parks and public spaces.

it legally in a home, but tell everyone you’ve ever met what you’re doing, then tweet an “I’m so high” selfie to MPD Chief Cathy Lanier.

Possess it in public housing. D.C. police won’t arrest you, but they’re required to report

Get really high with your friends! If ev-

some brownies.

drug use in public housing facilities to federal authorities.

Annoy your landlord. If your rented residence is non-smoking, use a vaporizer, or bake

Say thanks. Your local elected officials are standing up to Congress to enact a controversial law. Now that you can legally give (not sell) another adult up to one ounce, fruit baskets seem passe.

Be a bad parent. Adam Eidinger, chairman of the D.C. Cannabis Campaign, said it best: “If you’re in the same room as your kids, you shouldn’t be smoking pot with them. It’s inconsiderate to them.”

Be a minor. D.C. police will confiscate kids’

pot under two ounces and avoid arrests, but any more will get you in more trouble.

Start growing your plants. ComfyTree (a marijuana education company) offers a year of support for home growers, so if you get stuck growing your three mature or six immature plants, there’s help.

Try to sell or buy it. When pot changes hands, you can pay with a hug, a handful of dirt, or the solemn promise that you’ll build your supplier a really, really great streetcar, but nothing of actual value can be exchanged in payment.

Put down the pipe and get back to advocacy. Initiative 71 doesn’t have any rules

about taxing or regulating pot, so advocates are working on that now.

Get cracking on your business plan. Entrepreneurs will want to be ready before the city tackles tax and regulate legislation.

Step one: “It’s like [Uber/ Snapchat/ Tinder/other] but for weed!” Step two: Profit!

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Gear Prudence: I know it’s illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk in the “central business district” in downtown D.C. But where exactly is that? And how are people supposed to know where the borders are? Any tips? —Seemingly Indiscriminate Demarcation Enrages Walkers And Lessens Knowledge Dear SIDEWALK: In more draconian times, the perimeter was marked by the very Game of Thrones method of displaying on pikes the heads of those caught trespassing on downtown sidewalks. While the more bloodthirsty pedestrians (to say nothing of the pike lobby) would love this method to return, there is no visual warning to a cyclist about to enter the “no sidewalk cycling” zone. You could avoid the problem entirely by never riding on any D.C. sidewalks, but the law doesn’t oblige to you do that, and neither does GP. DDOT has a map of the “no sidewalk cycling” area on its website, but that’s not exactly useful when you’re already out on the road.

The boundaries are basically south of Massachusetts Avenue NW/NE to D Street SW/SE and from 23rd Street NW to 2nd Street NE. Here’s a fun way to remember this: Pedestrians will be SoMaD if you ride on the sidewalk here. Repeat that 23 times to yourself, —GP and you’ll never forget.

Gear Prudence: I’ve been a Bikeshare member since 2011, and it was really important for getting me into biking. Now I own my own bike, and my annual membership is up for renewal.

I’ve been using Bikeshare less and less, so I don’t know if it’s worth it anymore. Should I just let it expire? —Considering Abandoning Bike share Involvement Dear CABI: You still like Bikeshare, and you have a history, but it’s just not the relationship you once had. And not having to rely on the Bikeshare fleet to get around has plenty of advantages, including freeing up bikes for the rest of us. “It’s not you, it’s me” is a lame breakup line, but it’s also pretty spot on. It’s OK; Bikeshare wasn’t exclusive with you anyway.

However, a membership is a nice insurance policy if you’re ever without your own bike. If the upfront cost of the annual membership is too much, consider the Day Key option. Since you already have a key, it only costs $7 for a 24-hour rental membership. Each subsequent time you use your key, it’s another $7 for another 24 hours, so it can start getting expensive if you use it a lot, but this is definitely the best choice for an irregular user in a pinch. —GP Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who blogs at talesfromthesharrows.blogspot.com and tweets at @sharrowsdc. Got a question about bicycling? Email gearprudence@washingtoncitypaper.com.

SAVAGELOVE I have been reading your column for years, Dan, and now I’m writing you for the first time to ask for a favor. I met this dude online in December and I felt like we had a good connection. He “dumped” me, though, because he was busy and was going through career shit and lived halfway across the country from me. I think a dude telling you he’s too busy for you is bullshit—because boobs—so I encouraged him to tell me the truth.

He insisted he wasn’t shining me on: Busyness and career shit and distance were the truth, he said. Now it turns out that I will shortly be moving within easy dating distance of this dude. I still think about this guy a lot. I feel like I could connect with him emotionally and sexually in a really blissful way. He reads your column. Would you be a pal and tell this dude to date me already?

—Girl On The Move Before I turn to GOTM’s problem—such as it is—a quick note about why I chose her letter: I’m sick as a dog and so hopped up on Theraflu and DayQuil and Chinese tinctures that I probably shouldn’t be operating advice machinery at all today. But deadlines are deadlines. So I’m going to respond to some easy questions this week—low and over the plate— and leave the situational ethics, rulings on whether a particular infidelity is permissible, and advice for stressed-out parents of budding young sadists for another column.

To the dude GOTM met online in December: You should date her.

To GOTM: Okay, I told the dude to date you. You’re welcome. But moving within dating distance solves only one of the three issues he cited when he “dumped” you. The distance problem has been resolved, but the career shit and busy shit endure—if those are the real reasons he dumped you. The courteous dumper often points to career, schooling, distance, etc., to spare a dumpee’s feelings. When a blindsided dumpee presses the courteous dumper for the real reason(s)—as you did, GOTM—the dumper almost always doubles down and insists that career, school-

ing, distance, etc., are the real reason(s). Only in rare cases does the dumper say, “Okay, that wasn’t the truth. I totally lied. The real reasons I’m dumping you are [something devastating, something you can’t unhear, something the dumpee was right to spare you from in the first place].”

So, GOTM, you say you urged him to tell you the truth and he insisted that distance, career, busyness were the real reasons he couldn’t date you. But even if you somehow solved all three problems—moved closer, got him a better job, hired him a personal assistant—odds are good that he still wouldn’t be interested in dating you. So I’m telling him to date you, GOTM, per your request, but I’m going to close by telling you to brace yourself for the “no” that’s probably coming your way.

—Dan Shame on you for recommending adultery as a solution to a husband who can’t satisfy his wife!

Satisfying a woman is easy! I learned it from a book! You just tickle the clitoris continuously with as light a touch as possible until she comes, as many times as you like. Sorry, I forget the name —Bad Advice Destroys of the book.

I’m not sure which column you’re objecting to—I’ve recommended adultery to so many husbands and wives over the years that I’ve lost track—but I’m pretty sure the book you’re referring to is God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy —Dan

by Mike Huckabee.

I’m a 33-year-old man in a monogamous relationship with a 32-year-old woman for eight months.

In the beginning, she was really passionate and required sex all the time. But I noticed that she was the first woman I was ever with who didn’t like to give pleasure with normal sex, by which I mean vaginal intercourse. Instead, she was only interested in sex that directly pleasured her. She didn’t think about my pleasure while I satisfied her with cunnilingus or helped her to masturbate herself. After six months, I was losing interest, so I asked her

why it was like this. After that talk, I had to leave for work, and after a month, we met again. Her sexual desire for me had disappeared, while my desire for her had only grown. My two questions: (1) Does she have another man? (2) Is our relationship over? Please let me know what you think.

—Too High Too Low 1. I couldn’t tell you.

2. Looks that way. And if the genders were reversed—if you were a woman dating a man who didn’t care about your pleasure and only wanted blowjobs and help jacking off— no one would hesitate to tell you that your lover was selfish and that this relationship —Dan needed to end.

I’m a high-school sophomore. I’m a mostly closeted gay, having come out only to some of my friends, but my best friend was the first one I told. I’ve had a crush on him since sixth grade.

Sometimes he acts very gay with me: He’s stroked my hair and leaned on my shoulder, some light rubbing of feet, etc., usually with me reciprocating. Most of this was before he knew I was gay.

But just a month ago, at a sleepover, we had to share a bed, and basically the entire night I was the closest I have ever been to a non–family member. Yet he continues to protest that he is straight. My question: Do you think he is gay or at least questioning? —Crushing On Bestie Your best friend could be gay, COB, or he could be one of those New Model Straight Boys, aka a straight boy so secure in his heterosexuality that he’s comfortable with what the sex researchers call “homosocial intimacy,” e.g., leaning on a male friend’s shoulder, stroking a male friend’s hair, rubbing a male friend’s feet (a form of homosocial contact that this homo isn’t comfortable with), etc.

If your friend is gay, COB, he may not have come out yet for all sorts of reasons (he’s not ready, his parents might freak, he’s not sure if he’s gay or bi or what). Or your friend may know he’s gay but hasn’t come out to you

I’ve recommended adultery to so many husbands and wives over the years that I’ve lost track. because he knows how you feel about him (crush since sixth grade) and he doesn’t feel the same way about you (he likes you only as a friend). So he tells you he’s straight to spare your feelings, COB, because then the rejection isn’t so personal.

But only your friend knows what he is for sure, and right now he says he’s straight. Respect his sexual identity, COB, just as he respects yours—sleepovers and homosocial in—Dan timacy notwithstanding.

Send your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 13

Ca &

14 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

all

response

By Christina CauteruCCi

the D.C. police response to my sexual assault was better than I’d hoped.

Here’s why.

I hate taking my phone out on dark streets, but I was hungry. My partner and I had just wrapped up a vigorous karaoke session for a buddy’s birthday at Muzette, and we were late to meet another group of friends at a bar I’d never heard of.

“Lyman’s Tavern? Do they have food there?” I asked, searching for a menu on my iPhone. I stood close to my bike, which was locked up outside the karaoke bar at 18th Street and Kalorama Road NW, trying not to flash my most expensive personal possession to the hordes descending on Adams Morgan for a late-September Friday night turn-up.

That’s when I felt a hand on my ass. Not a grab, not a slap, but a slow, intimate caress, the kind a lover would give her partner. And that’s what I assumed it was—I didn’t even look up from my phone, so wrapped up was I in my hopeful search for tater tots or tacos.

“Hey, get away from her!” my partner yelled. I whipped around and found my-

self face to face with a man I didn’t know.

I shoved him; he stumbled back. “Get the fuck away from me,” I screamed. “Sorry, I just fell,” he slurred, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “No, you didn’t,” I said. “If you don’t walk away right now, I’m kicking you in the balls.” He shrugged.

I kicked him in the balls.

“If you don’t get away from me, I’m calling the cops,” I said. There was more yelling, more shoving, and with a final push from my partner, the man crossed Kalorama, where he tried to strike up a conversation with a group of young women gathered on the corner.

“That man touches girls’ asses!” I yelled at them. “He’s a creep!” My partner and I got on our bikes and headed east.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been touched in public without my consent; it wasn’t even the first time it’d happened to me on that four-block stretch of 18th Street. (The most

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 15

recent incident was some months prior, when a heavy-breather started tickling the back of my neck as I housed a jumbo slice at Pizza Mart.) My friends and I had dubbed the strip a danger zone after a round or two of homophobic taunts—some grossed out, some turned on—on our way to find food after the occasional queer dance party at Chief Ike’s. We’d steel ourselves for the worst as we turned onto 18th Street, avoiding eye contact with groups of bros. “Safety in numbers,” we’d laugh to each other, only half joking.

But I don’t know—maybe it was the last song I’d sung at Muzette (Gossip’s “Standing in the Way of Control,” my personal power anthem), or maybe I’d dealt with one more violation than my body could handle.

Because this time, I wasn’t ready to brush off the incident like so much dirt from my jeans. On my bike heading toward Lyman’s, whose menu or lack thereof no longer interested me, I got angry.

What must it be like, I wondered, to be a straight man in public? How lovely must that streetside invisibility feel, that blissful unawareness of who’s looking at what part of you and what they might say or do as you pass? I thought of the way my insides harden when I step outside, how I automatically tuck my ass in when I walk at night, willing it and my breasts not to shake as I move. I thought of some strange man walking around Adams Morgan, touching women with impunity like he owns them and that space. It’s not an just an inconvenience.

It’s not just gender-based oppression at work. It’s a crime.

So when I got off my bike in Petworth, I called the police.

Among those who care for victims —nurses, social workers, activists—the Metropolitan Police Department has had a reputation for mishandling sexual assault cases for decades. Some prevailing concerns came into the spotlight in 2007, when a Howard University student sued

It wasn’t the first time I’d been touched in public without my consent; it wasn’t even the first time it’d happened to me on that four-block stretch of 18th Street.

16 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

the D.C. police and the hospitals at Howard and George Washington for, among other acts of malpractice and negligence, denying her a rape kit, a test for date-rape drugs, and an in-person interview after she suspected she’d been sexually assaulted. The plaintiff had reason to believe she’d been drugged and raped at a party, but since she didn’t remember the attack, the police questioned her account. Court documents and press scrutiny revealed that MPD officers would routinely fail to document that a rape kit had even been given if it didn’t yield a strong enough case.

Sara Darehshori, senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, also took note of D.C.’s reported number of sexual assault cases (suspiciously low) and corresponding arrest rate (suspiciously high), which suggested that MPD was underreporting cases or not classifying them accurately if officers didn’t think they’d lead to arrests. In 2011, she began interviewing D.C.-based health care workers and organizations that support sexual assault survivors about their experiences with the police. “Sometimes you have something you think is interesting, and it turns out to be a dud,” Darehshori says. “But this was one referral after another. Everyone had a horror story, and everyone knew someone else who had a horror story.”

In January 2013, Darehshori published a report, “Capitol Offense: Police Mishandling of Sexual Assault Cases in the District of Columbia,” which, through anecdotes from survivors and painstaking records research, paints a damning picture of a police force ill-equipped to properly investigate sexual assault cases. “I thought they must have changed things since [the 2007 lawsuit],” Darehshori says. “I was very surprised to find that any change they’d made was pretty cosmetic.” In her research, she found that after the litigation, instead of not writing anything down after some rape kits were administered, officers would classify the cases as “miscellaneous” rather than “sexual assault,” meaning they wouldn’t get a case number and would not be investigated further. Survivors spoke of detectives who’d pass judgment or belittle them, and officers who’d incurred some truly appalling complaints received no disciplinary action.

Nurses recalled seeing victims endure an invasive four-hour medical exam, only to find that the police weren’t taking the case anywhere. They’d watch calm women go into a room with detectives and come out sobbing.

MPD, it seemed, was adding to their trauma in many cases, not mitigating it.

MPD disputed much of the report’s content. “Human Rights Watch—their report was, for lack of a better word, inaccurate,” says Assistant Chief Peter Newsham. “It was tabloid-style reporting.” According to Newsham, of the 22 best practices Darehshori recommended in the January 2013 report, 19 were already in effect at MPD. But some of those best practices were only enacted after HRW informed MPD of Darehshori’s recommendations and the results of

her research in May 2012, before the finished report was made public. (These included requiring detectives to return a victim’s phone call within two days and allowing the victim a sleep cycle between her initial police report and being re-interviewed by a detective.) And Darehshori found that, without public transparency and external accountability mechanisms, many of those policies sure sounded nice, but they had no teeth.

At the time, D.C. was one of the worst cities in the country in terms of sexual assault reporting (that is, implausibly low reporting rates and high arrest rates). It ranked low in qualitative measures, too. Before Darehshori began her research, she looked into the sexual assault protocol of the Miami police force, which reported similarly dubious statistics, but got the sense that the problems there were mainly administrative.

There weren’t scores of people anxious to share their stories of how they’d been disrespected, mistrusted, and suffered emotional harm at the hands of the police. In D.C., Darehshori barely had to make one phone call before a colossal wave of responses came crashing down.

I’d followed the hubbub around the HRW report when it landed, and I’m well-versed in the logic of victim-blaming and misogyny in systems of authority, so I wasn’t expecting much when I called the police to report the dude who groped me in Adams Morgan. Mostly, I wanted to help the police compile accurate statistics—tick off another mark next to “nonconsensual butt touch” in the Adams Morgan column, and maybe they’d ramp up their anti-harassment campaigns or assign more cops to patrol the area, I thought. It was a symbolic gesture for my own sanity, too; the man might have violated me in front of dozens of people on a crowded street, but at least I did more than call him a nasty name and kick him in a sensitive spot.

What I thought would be a simple phone call turned into a full police investigation followed by comprehensive victim support.

Here’s how the police responded to my sexual assault in September 2014.

I couldn’t find MPD’s non-emergency number, so I called 911. “This is not an emergency, but I need to report a crime,” I told the operator, who promptly transferred me. I gave a full report to the officer on the line—what happened where and when; what the perpetrator looked like—and was told to stay put. In just a few minutes, an officer on duty in Petworth showed up at the intersection where I stood and took another statement from me.

She seemed confused by the fact that I was standing on a corner in Petworth when the incident happened in Adams Morgan.

Multiple MPD officers would tell me that victims should stay as close to the crime scene as possible when making a police report. Since I’d left the area, the Petworth officer had to call and coordinate with the Adams Morgan-area unit after taking my

“Everyone had a horror story, and everyone knew someone else who had a horror story.” statement; had I stayed, they could have responded faster. (Still, I don’t regret leaving the 18th Street strip, which I’ve long considered an unsafe space, as fast as my fixie could carry me.)

The Petworth officer phoned in my report to someone and told me to wait for a detective from the Sexual Assault Unit. This, I think, is when my fascination with the police process—a function of too many hours spent watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as a teenager—began to overtake the actual trauma of my assault.

Fifteen or so minutes later, an unmarked sedan pulled up, and a detective in a shirt and tie stepped onto the curb. His name was Douglas Carlson, and he asked me to repeat the details of the incident again. There are outdoor security cameras all over 18th Street, Carlson said, so there was a good chance one of them had caught the perpetrator on video. He took a photo of me and my partner so he could try to identify us in a tape, if there was one. At that point, I thought to worry about what I was wearing (a see-through T-shirt that revealed my bra) and whose hand I was holding (my very genderqueer girlfriend). If this cop had any predilections toward victim-blaming or homophobia, he wouldn’t have to dig deep

to find a reason to snub my report.

But whatever the police equivalent of bedside manner is, Carlson had it.

He drove us back to Adams Morgan, a soft bluegrass station playing on the radio, and made comfortable small talk the whole way. When I told him I’d fought the creep off, he asked if I’d gotten a proper kick in. “Good,” he said, when I affirmed my hit to the balls. “I’m going to make sure my daughter knows self-defense when she grows up and starts dating men,” he paused, “or whoever she chooses.”

Carlson said that, like me, he holds that stretch of 18th Street in low esteem. He says he’s pulled the security tapes from outside the McDonald’s at Columbia Road so many times, all the cashiers know him by sight. We rolled down the strip in Carlson’s car, and he told me to look for the guy who groped me. No dice. I showed him exactly where and how I was standing when the crime took place so he’d know what to look for in any footage. washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 17

On the ride back to Petworth, Carlson heard from the Adams Morgan cops: They’d stopped a guy who matched the description I provided, right down to the camouflage cargo shorts and gunked-up right eye, for some other stupid move he’d made earlier in the day. The part of me that worried my description wasn’t exactly right, that I’d be the reason another innocent black man got stopped by the cops, relaxed a bit. Carlson had my partner step out of the car (police protocol, for privacy) while he took a final, official statement from me, recorded on his phone. He asked about my night, and whether I’d had any alcohol or drugs. “I have to ask this,” he said, and assured me my answer would have no effect on how he investigated my report. “Just one beer,” I told him.

Carlson’s questions about the assault were pointed and precise: Which hand did the perpetrator use to touch me? Was it a pinch, a slap, or a rub? How many fingers were on me? It felt like an uncomfortable, bloodless kind of dirty talk, made worse by the fact that I didn’t know the man asking intimate questions about my body. My heart raced, my stomach turned, and this was just a grope—I can only imagine how violating interviews with rape survivors must be.

After a separate interview with my partner, Carlson told us he usually drives victims home, but since we had our bikes, we should text him when we got there. By the time I got through the door, he’d already left me a voicemail: The Adams Morgan cops who’d stopped my perpetrator earlier in the day said the dude claimed to have pinkeye.

“Since you said you touched him, make sure

you take any precautions you need to,” Carlson said. I took a shower and went to sleep.

2008 was an inflection point for MPD’s handling of sexual assault cases. That’s when, in the wake of the 2007 lawsuit, D.C.’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program, which employs medical professionals specifically trained to perform forensic exams and enter rape kits into evidence, moved from Howard to Washington Hospital Center. MPD also “re-emphasized” its Sexual Assault Response Team—a group that includes representatives from MPD’s sexual assault unit, the U.S. Attorney’s office, SANE, the DC Rape Crisis Center, and other interested parties—which hadn’t been meeting as regularly or sharing as much information among members as it should have, according to Newsham.

But last summer, D.C. sexual assault activists and survivors scored a bigger victory, a landmark piece of legislation that not only stands to improve the victim experience but, perhaps more importantly, establishes means for transparency and accountability that should prevent persistent bad practices from seeping through the ranks of MPD. Susan Mottet, the president of the D.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women, had read Amanda Hess’ 2010 Washington City Paper cover story on the 2007 lawsuit against MPD and the Howard and GW hospitals, which described a disturbing lack of coordination and concern for victims’ well-being in D.C.’s sexual assault protocol. “I could not sleep that night [after I read the article],” Mottet says. “I’m a policy professional; I’ve worked on a lot of jus-

tice issues. But for some reason, I was just like, ‘This cannot happen in my backyard while I’m here.’” When the HRW report was published in 2013, Mottet saw an opportunity. She took Darehshori to the Wilson Building to explain the report’s findings to councilmembers and their staffs, an effort Mottet hoped would result in remedial legislation despite MPD Chief Cathy Lanier’s denial of wrongdoing.

After commissioning law firm Crowell & Moring to evaluate the HRW report, D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells and Chairman Phil Mendelson introduced the Sexual Assault Victims’ Rights Amendment Act in June 2013. The bill was written to grant survivors the right to have an advocate from the Network for Victim Recovery of DC present during all medical exams and interviews with law enforcement or prosecutors, which would both deter some of their more egregious behaviors (victim-blaming, slutshaming, and the like) and give the victim a party solely interested in his or her well-being, as opposed to finding a suspect or piecing together a case for prosecution. It also demanded an expedient processing of rape kits and forbade hospitals from charging victims for them.

But local anti-rape activists spotted a few weak spots. They saw the bill as their best shot at comprehensive reform for MPD’s sexual assault investigation process, and they didn’t want to settle for anything less than perfect.

Representatives from DCRCC, Collective Action for Safe Spaces, and DC NOW came together (they’d eventually call themselves the DC Justice for Survivors Campaign)

Which hand did the perpetrator use to touch me?

Was it a pinch, a slap, or a rub?

How many fingers were on me?

18 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

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They saw the bill as their best shot at comprehensive reform for MPD’s sexual assault investigation process, and they didn’t want to settle for anything less than perfect. and settled on three proposed amendments.

First, they wanted to eliminate a provision that would have allowed police to waive victims’ rights to an advocate. They also wanted to establish a third-party consultant to oversee the law’s implementation and report on MPD’s progress. And inspired by successful programs in Baltimore and Philadelphia, the coalition recommended that the Sexual Assault Response Team examine randomly chosen cases on a regular basis to give MPD input from organizations that work primarily with survivors.

With the 2014 mayoral election approaching, the activists had leverage; NOW lobbied Wells with an endorsement as bait. But Lanier is a popular public figure, so future mayoral candidates were leery of running afoul of her—and word got around that she’d try to quash any bill that came through.

Led by survivors of sexual assault, advocates set their sights on a hearing on Dec. 12, 2013. Paramount to their strategy was testimony from survivors, who could speak to the trauma of their assaults— and, in many cases, revictimization at the hands of the police—better than any ally 20 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

or expert ever could. Each organization recruited and prepared survivors willing to testify about their experiences, whether on the stand, by proxy, or using a pseudonym and a written statement.

Along with attorneys, hospital staff, and experts on police best practices, many survivors testified at the hearing, sharing personal stories that backed up their reasons for recommending the three amendments.

Marisa Ferri, a survivor and campaign organizer with DC JSC, was one. “When I was raped back in 2011, l thought it was the most traumatic experience of my life,” she testified. “But I was wrong. What was more traumatic was the way MPD treated me after being raped…the sexual assault detective who interviewed me suggested that while my words were saying no, my actions were saying yes. Like many victims, I froze when I was attacked. The officer told me that was really consent. She also told me that if the assailant were arrested, he would probably lose his job, implying that l would be ruining his life, as if the assault didn’t have any impact on mine.”

After the hearing, DC JSC members

worked with Wells’ office to write a stronger bill, which included all three proposed amendments. It was rumored that other amendments were floating around—one would have negated the need to process a rape kit if the suspect admitted to having sexual contact with the victim but claimed there was consent; another would require police officers to notify the victim that revealing the results of a rape kit might compromise the case’s integrity by swaying his or her memory of what happened. Mottet visited councilmembers to argue those amendments down before they were even proposed. DC JSC circulated a letter among supporters, gathering more than 400 signatories, dozens of whom publicly self-identified as survivors, to back up its platform.

Then-Mayor Vince Gray signed what Mottet calls “the perfect bill” into law last June. “As progressive as [D.C. is], this was the hardest bill I’ve ever gotten passed in my life, hands down, and it should have been an easy lift,” Mottet says. In other cities and states where police have come under criticism for their handling of sexual assault cases, officials were embarrassed

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enough to make sweeping policy changes without waiting for a legislative mandate. In D.C., MPD went on the defensive. (“MPD has always been open to legitimate constructive criticism especially when it comes to improving our ability to effectively investigate sexual assaults,” Newsham wrote in an email. “MPD did take issue with the report because it was unfair and inaccurate.”)

Sherelle Hessell-Gordon, DCRCC’s executive director, spent her first day on the job at the December 2013 hearing. Since then, she says, MPD officers have “improved in soft skills: sensitivity, overall experience, how they interact and communicate.” DCRCC led three months of training for the Sexual Assault Unit last year to share their intimate knowledge of survivors’ experiences.

One of the biggest impediments to MPD’s improvement in its treatment of sexual assault survivors was standard police protocol, which was applied without nuance or acumen. Investigators taught to probe for inconsistencies in interviews were accusing victims, whose memories of assaults were often foggy or nonexistent due to the effects of trauma or intoxicants, of making false allegations. “When I first came on the police department 25 years ago, if you lied to a detective and you’re a victim, the first thing the detective would do is challenge you,” Newsham says. “They didn’t realize that with sexual assault victims, they weren’t lying—they just didn’t have an accurate recollection.” That was the old mindset, he says, and it doesn’t fly now. The older officers in the unit who can’t shake those habits, Newsham says, either have to change their ways or prepare to be replaced.

The Monday after I filed my police report, a victim specialist at MPD called to check on me. Was I feeling okay? Did I need to talk to someone? Could she send me an email with some resources in case I changed my mind?

Yes, no, yes please.

She forwarded me a list of victims’ rights, a pamphlet about expenses MPD covers (lock changes, lost wages, replacements for clothes held as evidence), and contact information for emergency shelters and support organizations like Ayuda, which serves immigrant survivors. There was a database of counseling programs attached, too, and a flyer for a domestic violence support group.

Later that week, I got a call from Carlson—he’d identified a suspect based on my description and the Adams Morgan cop’s record, and he wanted to see if I could pick the guy out of a photo spread, a paper version of a line-up. I told him my schedule, and he came to my house with his partner, Detective Elbert Griffin, one morning before I left for work. They showed up on my doorstep in Bloomingdale in shirts and ties, making jokes about how the neighborhood’s changed in their years at MPD. (“You’d be literally stepping over dead bodies” on North Capitol 22 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Street a decade back, Griffin said.)

The import of this photo spread was not lost on me. Not only was it imperative to the investigation and a potential point in favor of my credibility (though my story was never called into question, I still felt obligated to prove I was telling the truth), but my accusation would assign guilt to a specific person, a face with a name and a life, not some amorphous description. It was the detective’s job to match my initial description to a suspect; now, the burden was on me.

I’d run through my memory of that night in Adams Morgan over and over, re-envisioning the face I saw when I whipped around and shoved. I’d only had one beer, but I started to fear that my memory had gone cloudy—I’d never felt an adrenaline rush like that before, and it had wrapped around every sense, every corner of my body. The detectives sat with me at my kitchen table and put a sheet of paper facedown in front of me. Don’t pay attention to facial hair, lighting, or clothing, they said, just faces. I turned it over to find a grid of portraits—taken from mugshots, drivers’ licenses, high-school yearbooks, and such, but edited onto identical white backdrops— each with the same short dreadlocks as the man who’d groped me. I thought one face would jump out at me, and I’d feel something stir in my stomach. It didn’t. But there was only one face that looked anything like that man. I circled and initialed the picture with the pen and told the detectives I was 80 percent sure it was him. The magnitude of what might happen next (an arrest, prosecution, potential jail time for this guy) sat with me. I cried.

I didn’t hear from MPD until four months later, on Jan. 22, when I got a phone call from the Office of Victim Services. The representative asked how I was doing, reminded me of the programs and victims’ reimbursement MPD offers, and asked if I’d be willing to take a phone survey about my experience. The yes-or-no questions were thoughtful and qualitative: Did I feel that the officer listened to me? Did he show appropriate concern?

Did I feel that he judged me, disbelieved me, or blamed me for my assault? (When I asked Newsham about the survey, he told me MPD started this evaluation of victims’ feedback in 2012, and the results get forwarded to Lanier.) When I said I hadn’t heard from my detective in a few months, the representative promised to follow up.

An hour later, Carlson called with an update on his investigation.

MPD’s diligence and concern for a sexual assault I considered to be comparatively minor astounded me. After the horror stories I’d heard about doltish detectives and overburdened, disorganized bureaucrats, I’d expected the worst. “What you’re now experiencing is what I believe are the effects of [our activism],” HessellGordon says.

“Every now and then, survivors reach out

to me. And ever since there’s been this increased scrutiny [on MPD], I’ve only heard positive stories,” Darehshori says of the two years since she published the HRW report.

“In the old days, it was hard to find anyone who’d had anything but a really traumatic experience with the [D.C.] police.” Darehshori has a vision of D.C. as a model for other cities with similar problems with police response to sexual assault cases, both in the specific legislation that passed and how it’s been implemented. She’s already shared D.C.’s story with Tallahassee’s police chief and the mayor of New Orleans.

Still, I know my experience, positive though it was, was singular to me. I’m white and middle-class; I have multiple degrees and know my rights; I’d only had one drink and wasn’t doing anything illegal when I was assaulted. I was reasonably confident that the police would not mistreat me, so I felt comfortable calling 911 in the first place. “Different communities are impacted [by sexual assault] at a greater rate,” Hessell-Gordon says. “It’s not so easy for some people to not only go report, but then go to hospital, or go to therapy, or have access to do any of those things.”

The HRW report, for example, included accounts from advocates and medical staff who’d seen police officers dismiss or verbally abuse sex workers when they reported a sexual assault. Some harped on whether or not money had been exchanged between the victim and perpetrator, and if so, they wouldn’t pursue the case. Others told the victim their report would be worthless because they were high, or because their line of work would discredit them in front of a jury.

Catherine Paquette manages outreach programs for HIPS, a local nonprofit that promotes sex worker health and safety, and has heard disturbing stories from clients who’ve called the police after being assaulted. A common theme: Sexual assault unit detectives took victims’ cases seriously and treated them with dignity, but beat cops—the first to respond after a 911 call— used discriminatory language or blamed them for their attack. One of Paquette’s clients, a black transwoman, was recruited by police as a witness against a man who’d sexually assaulted her, a serial rapist who was targeting sex workers. The client says that soon after she declined to testify, she was arrested in a prostitution sting and held in jail until she agreed to help prosecute her assailant.

Through its measures for increased MPD accountability and transparency, the law passed by the D.C. Council last year has laid the groundwork for a more effective, victimcentered approach to investigating sexual assaults. But past and present members of DC JSC say their work is far from done. The law left a big question mark where juvenile victims of sexual assault are concerned— it only applies to adult survivors. And police are only part of the problem; the U.S. Attorney’s Office has discretion over which

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The law passed by the D.C. Council last year has laid the groundwork for a more effective, victim-centered approach to investigating sexual assaults.

But... [the] work is far from done. cases get prosecuted and how. Even if a detective believes a victim’s report and conducts a thorough investigation, a prosecutor might not bring it to court if she thinks a jury won’t buy it. “There are societal stereotypes that persist in jury pools, but also within police and prosecutors,” Darehshori says. “They should be trained to recognize and resist them.” In her research, Darehshori found that some prosecutors would ignore cases that didn’t fit the common stereotype of a violent assault from a stranger; in reality, most sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone who knows the victim, and there’s often alcohol involved. It’s the prosecutor’s job to educate the jury, not just drop hard cases.

Another future battle: throwing out the line of criminal code that classifies certain rapes as misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of six months in prison. D.C. and Alabama are the only two jurisdictions in the U.S. where misdemeanor rape exists. In D.C., it’s called misdemeanor sexual abuse, and it covers any sexual act performed on another person when the perpetrator should have known that he or she didn’t have the victim’s consent. In practice, this covers anything from my ass-grope on the street to raping someone who is, due to their own or a third party’s actions, unconscious. (Rape-as-misdemeanor not disturbing enough for you? Consider that in 17 states, this type of sexual assault, which involves no use of force or threat, isn’t classified as a crime at all.) Mottet has spoken

with several councilmembers about making rape a felony in all cases. “No one’s championed it yet,” she says. “I need to keep prepping them.”

For now, DC JSC is focused on monitoring the new law’s implementation, particularly the Sexual Assault Task Force it created to recommend best practices and further reform. The task force has been meeting behind closed doors and keeping its records sealed, which raised concerns among activists. On Feb. 12, DC JSC testified in favor of greater transparency at a council hearing on MPD’s Office of Victim Services. That office now plans to open task force meetings to the public on a quarterly basis to take comments on any research or reports it generates.

Beyond that, DC JSC is making survivorcentered policies the new norm in MPD’s sexual assault response. It’s something victim-services organizations learned a long time ago: If you want to better serve survivors, listen to what they have to say. DC JSC’s activism has been a pathway to healing for many survivors who’ve organized their peers for legislative action or testified at a hearing. “We’re doing things for ourselves—we’re not just waiting for people to advocate on our behalf. We’re not going to people and asking for permission to have an opinion on what’s happened in our lives,” Ferri says. ‘It’s so gratifying to see people stepping up outside the traditional mechanisms and saying...‘We’re going to make that opinion heard.’” Now, it seems, MPD CP is finally listening.

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Dinner and a Show

Tableside preparations are making a comeback at D.C. restaurants servers and the maitre d’ were the stars of restaurants, rather than the chef and his cooks. Josu Zubikarai, chef and coowner of forthcoming Spanish restaurant SER (Simple Easy Real), recalls when he started working in restaurants decades ago that being a waiter was a career, not just a job. As such, the work involved a level of skill and professionality beyond taking orders and bringing the check. Knowing how to prepare a dish tableside was part of that: “I remember working with a server who used to peel an orange tableside without touching the orange with his fingers.”

But as jobs that require those kind of skills have disappeared over the years, so have the tableside preparations. Res-

Darrow Montgomery

March 2. “I just don’t want them to feel like robots,” he says of the waitstaff. “They memorize the menu and blah, blah, Everyone nearby stares when China Chilcano’s concolón blah, they tell you, and they don’t even know.” arrives at the table. A server sets up a tray on a stand with a sizSER will offer several dishes prepared or finished tablezling clay bowl filled with aji amarillo-flavored fried rice, fatside, including paella and iberico ham hand-carved in front ty pork belly, sweet Chinese sausage, pickled turnip, shiitake of guests. This is not just a matter of show—although that’s mushroom, soft eggs, and bok choy. certainly part of it—but of quality. “When you cut in the ma“Let me show you, please,” the server says as he lifts up the chine, you cut always sideways. When you do it with a knife, bowl with a white towel like a sommelier presenting a bottle you go longways,” Zubikarai says of the ham. “To me, it’s toof Bordeaux for inspection. tally different. The texture and everything.”

Next, he picks up a small saucepan filled with soy sauce Zubikarai also plans to have a cart that comes around to and oyster sauce and pours the hot liquid over the dish. Ustables to prepare salads. The cart will display three to four ing two spoons, he folds the rice different lettuces, a range of vegetaon top of itself, cutting the tender bles, a choice of proteins, and severpieces of pork belly, releasing the al vinaigrettes that diners can mixooze of the egg yolks, and scraping and-match how they want (or with the burnt bits of rice from the botrecommendations from the server). tom. As he works, he explains each SER also plans to eventually serve a component like a TV cooking show salt-baked fish that’s presented and host. For the finale: a sprinkling of deboned in front of diners and poschicharrons on top. sibly even mashed potatoes that are This is the 2015 twist on debonmixed with olive oil and garlic in a ing Dover sole in the dining room mortar with a pestle at the table. or tossing a Caesar salad tableside.

At China Chilcano, there was nevWhile the French guéridon style of er even any question that the conservice is a throwback to a time when colón would be served tableside. “You waiters wore white gloves and dress have to,” says head chef James Gee. “It’s just so beautiful, why would you codes demanded a jacket and tie, a not?” And as with Jaleo’s tableside new generation of chefs are bringpaella, it’s important that someone ing back the show with a modern scrapes up the crispy bits at the botflair. Mintwood Place and DBGB Kitchen and Bar have revived the tom and mixes it all together. Plus, at baked Alaska, set afire with a buleast some tableside service has long tane torch at the table, while Amerbeen a hallmark of José Andrés’ restaurants, from the sangria at Jaleo to ica Eats Tavern assembles beef tartare (locally sourced, of course) in the guacamole at Oyamel.

The sudado de pescado at Chifront of diners. Others restaurants na Chilcano arrives with similar paare presenting dishes tableside in Rice With a View: China Chilcano serves a fried rice dish called concolón tableside. nache. The slow-poached red snapper new ways. Sure, half the Mexican is enveloped in a puffed-up bubble of restaurants in town now serve tableside guacamole. But others are carving Spanish ham, grinding taurants have turned more casual and minimalist, and the grip clear parchment tied with a golden ribbon. The server tugs and brewing coffee, and mixing cocktails at the diner’s side. of classic French cuisine has loosened. The stuffy idea of a both ends of the ribbon in unison, releasing an aromatic Rose’s Luxury chef Aaron Silverman has even said he plans waiter who calls you “madame” preparing crepes Suzette has seafood cloud of steam. Then, the server adds a small carafe to make tableside preparations a prominent part of his forth- fallen hopelessly out of fashion over the last few decades. of leche de tigre or “tiger’s milk”—a lime-based marinade coming fine dining restaurant.

Zubikarai wants to bring back this previously dying artform used for ceviche—over the fish and crowns it with herbs and Tableside preparations and finishes come from an era where in a more casual setting at SER, which opens in Ballston on marigold flowers. The presentation came from Minibar,

By Jessica Sidman

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 27

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DCFEED(cont.) which served a truffled beech mushroom “risotto” glimmering in gold dust in a clear parchment bubble.

Also coming soon to the Peruvian-ChineseJapanese restaurant: fresh fruit frozen pops called marcianos that are served tableside in a portable cooler box like they’re hawked on the streets of Lima.

For Gee, this new style of tableside service is much more about fun and the “ta da” moment than the pomp and circumstance associated with the old French style of service. It’s also less of an intrusion: “We don’t want to sit there for 20 minutes and debone a fish,” Gee says. “Are you supposed to watch? Are you supposed to have your conversation while this guy’s standing over your shoulder?”

To avoid that awkwardness, Oval Room has taken a more interactive approach. When the fine dining restaurant reopened in July after a $1 million renovation, it introduced a showy tableside coffee preparation. The staff sets up a tray with the siphon, a Bunsen burner, cups and saucers, cream and sugar, and two glass containers of coffee beans.

Diners can then pass the coffee beans around and smell them. Once they make their selection, the beans are ground at the table with a hand-cranked Hario Skerton burr grinder.

While the coffee is brewing, the staff shares anecdotes like how the siphon was the most commonly used way to brew coffee in the United States until the 1920s, when the automatic drip machine was invented.

The idea was to do something after the main course that would “spice up the part of the meal that is generally not very exciting,” says bartender Tyler Philips, who’s behind the coffee program. He also argues that having someone prepare the coffee in front of diners ensures its quality. If it’s prepared behind the scenes, you don’t know if it’s been sitting there for 10 minutes or if it was rushed. “If the server’s tableside, then he has no choice but to brew a good cup of coffee…

He has to do it correctly because they’re all looking at him,” Philips says.

Philips also likes the idea of the front and back of the house sharing responsibility for the quality of the food. It puts everyone on the same team.

The coffee demonstration is also part of Oval Room’s newfound effort to create a conversation-provoking, viral dining experience. “We want people asking questions, people seeing things,” general manager Simon Stilwell said when the restaurant was preparing to reopen in July. “We want people stopping and taking videos of it or using social media.”

Philips thinks the tableside preparation also results in higher tips—“without a doubt.”

The service isn’t cheap either: a four-cup siphon is $20, and two cups are $12. (Cocktails

are the same price.) “It’s a pretty effective way to both raise the tip percentage and also the raise the amount of the check,” Philips says.

As for why restaurants are rediscovering all this now, it seems to fit the current ethos of knowing where your food comes from and how it’s prepared. It’s become the norm for restaurants to bring the table to the kitchen by building seats with a view of the saute station. Why not bring the kitchen to the table?

Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab managing partner Michael Rotolo also chalks it up to the ebb and flow of trends. “A lot of restaurants in New York are going back to the ’60s, ’70s classic era dishes,” he says.

“Everything is cyclical and that was such a great era of restaurateuring.”

At Joe’s, which opened in D.C. just over a year ago, clusters of Alaskan king crab are broken down and snipped up with shears for an audience. The restaurant also does a very classic tableside Dover sole. Neither preparation existed at the original Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami; both were first adopted shortly after the Chicago location opened 15 years ago.

Bombay Club manager Naresh Israni likewise sees this style of service as part of a general trend back to classics. “A lot of old school things are coming back: tableside preparations, old school cocktails like the Sazerac and Rusty Nail,” Israni says. “Even the spirits. Bourbon is back in fashion. Rye is back in fashion.” He also suggests that in a booming dining scene, restaurants want to put in the extra effort to stand out.

While it’s nothing new, Bombay Club makes a big production out of its “cobra coffee.” Israni, a self-proclaimed “master” of the boozy after-dinner drink, starts by caramelizing sugar, which is used to coat the flutes the coffee is later served in. He then adds Scotch to the pan, setting it aflame, and extinguishes it with Colombian coffee from a French press.

Finally, he takes a long strip of orange peel (meant to look like a cobra), holds it above the pan, and pours a flaming ladle of Cointreau down the peel, igniting it as well. The drink is finished with whipped cream. Bombay Club brings diners into the lounge to see it, because of the fire hazard in the carpeted dining room.

Israni says he still prepares 15 to 20 cobra coffees every weekend. It’s one thing the Indian restaurant just can’t take off the menu, because it draws customers back again and again.

“Whether it’s new or it’s old, if you give a dining experience, as they say in our business, instead of just giving them good food… no matter where you’re located, they will come CP back for that experience.”

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

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DCFEED

what we ate last week: Marinated mussels with preserved lemon and pomegranate, $8, Kapnos Taverna Satisfaction level: 3.5 out of 5 what we’ll eat next week: Marrow burger with pepperjack on a challah bun, $15, Mason Social Excitement level: 4 out of 5 3 out of 5

Grazer

Grilled Cheese Throwdown D.C. is now home to two grilled cheese shops—GCDC and just-opened Melt Shop—located only five blocks from each other. GCDC, which opened last April, comes from a local father-son team, while Melt Shop has five other locations in New York. So, where should you spend your hard-earned cheddar? Y&H rated the restaurants’ classic grilled cheeses, Buffalo chicken grilled cheeses (the one signature sandwich they have in common), tater tots, and namesake sauces. —Jessica Sidman

GCDC

Melt Shop

1730 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

CLASSIC GRILLED CHEESE GCDC lets you build your own sandwich with a choice of breads, cheeses, and veggies for a flat price. It’s not a great deal if you only choose American cheese on white bread. Crispy edges of cheese that spilled out of the sandwich are a nice touch, but otherwise, this is as basic and blah as it gets.

Two magic words: cheese sauce. Melt Shop tops many of its offerings with the queso-like goo, including its “classic” sandwich with American cheese on white bread.

The sauce gives this dish an advantage by keeping the insides gooey even after the American cheese congeals.

Price: $6.75

Price: $4.55

+2

+4

BUFFALO CHICKEN GRILLED CHEESE The blend of cheddar and Wisconsin blue cheese with Frank’s RedHot sauce is so salty it’s hard to taste anything else.

Bits of raw onion provide some textural and flavor contrast, but the spicy chicken is cut up into small pieces that drown in salty cheese between the slices of white bread.

Price: $8.75

The fried chicken isn’t very crispy, but a whole piece of meat trumps niblets. The sandwich is also a lot thicker and heftier in general, and while it’s also salty, it’s not nearly as salty as its competitor. The pepper jack outshines the blue cheese sauce on this sourdough sandwich.

+1

Price: $8.41

+4

TATER TOTS These puck shaped tots are only as big as a stack of four quarters, meaning there’s not a lot of room for fluffy insides. While they’re crispy on the edges, they’re also strangely chewy and dense.

These nuggets are everything tater tots should be: light and fluffy on the inside, golden and crisp on the outside. They practically melt in your mouth. Bonus points for the sprinkling of parmesan.

Price: $2

Price: $2.95

+3

+5

SIGNATURE SAUCE GCDC Sauce: This combo of mayo, Dijon mustard, honey, and red pepper extract is sweet and mustardy.

It’s a good balance to an over salty sandwich.

+3

9 32 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

TOTAL POINTS

Melt Sauce: The recipe is “secret,” but the mayo-based condiment basically tastes like tartar sauce. But if you want some on the side, it will cost you 69 cents extra.

+3

16

Underserved

The best cocktail you’re not ordering

1901 L St. NW

What: Catching Flies with Bushmills 10-year whiskey, Lindera Farms elderflower vinegar, lemon, and orange blossom honey Where: Daikaya Izakaya, 705 6th St. NW Price: $10 What You Should Be Drinking Remember when your mom said “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?” Well, you can make a charming cocktail if you use both. The idiom is the inspiration for Daikaya’s Catching Flies, which contains elderflower vinegar from Virginia’s Lindera Farms and an orange blossom honey syrup that the Daikaya team makes in house.

The buzz-inducing ingredient is Bushmills 10-Year Irish Whiskey. Bar Manager Jameson Huckaba (whose first name makes him the perfect person to talk about Irish whiskey) says Bushmills is partially aged in sherry casks, lending a buttery richness. “It also adds some body, some real substance to this cocktail,” he says.

Why You Should be Drinking It Don’t be another Daikaya patron who overlooks Catching Flies because it contains vinegar, or you’ll miss out on a zesty drink full of personality. “The vinegar is really throwing people off,” Huckaba says. Though culinary in nature, vinegar is having a real cocktail moment because it’s an alternative way to get acidity into a drink. Many bars have been concocting vinegar-based shrubs, but the direct incorporation of vinegar is noteworthy.

The acidity lends itself to pairing with some of Daikaya’s dishes. “Catching Flies stands up to our fattier dishes, like the chawanmushi egg custard,” Huckaba says. “The cocktail cuts through it, almost like a palette reset every time you take a sip.” Think of it like pairing an acidic wine like Sauvignon Blanc with a creamy wedge of Brie cheese.

—Laura Hayes

Is the Glass half full?

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March 3–24

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: PICASSO CERAMIST AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Exclusive U.S. exhibition!

Mar. 4–22 | Atrium & Atrium Foyers

GRUPO CORPO (BRAZIL)

Mar. 6 & 7 | Eisenhower Theater

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Mar. 8 | Concert Hall

COMPAÑÍA MARÍA PAGÉS (SPAIN)

Utopía

Mar. 11 & 12 | Eisenhower Theater

EUGENIA LEÓN (MEXICO)

Eugenia León y Las Voces de Mujeres, Voces del Pueblo

Mar. 14 & 15 | Eisenhower Theater

Photo by David Douglas Duncan © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

A three-week, multidisciplinary, international festival showcasing the many cultures of Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking peoples, and their impact around the world

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CARMEN SOUZA (CAPE VERDE)

Live at Lagny Jazz Festival Tour

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IBERIAN SUITE: global arts remix is curated by Alicia Adams, Vice President of International Programming

Tickets on sale now!

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For complete festival information, visit KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG/IBERIA IBERIAN SUITE: global arts remix Presented in cooperation with the governments of Portugal and Spain Presenting Underwriter HRH Foundation Festival Benefactors include the Portuguese Secretary of State for Culture, Ambassador Elizabeth F. Bagley, Natalia and Carlos Bulgheroni, Amalia Perea Mahoney and William Mahoney, and David and Alice Rubenstein Major Sponsors include Arte Institute, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, EDP, Fundação Luso-Americana, Marca España, SPAIN arts & culture, ThinkFoodGroup, and Wines of Portugal

34 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

This exceptional selection of more than 140 of Pablo Picasso’s ceramic pieces reveals Picasso’s experimentations with this art form, how he explored opportunities to break creative boundaries and challenged himself in innovative ways. This exhibition is the first of its kind to be shown in the U.S.

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CPARTS

Just when we thought GoldLink couldn’t get any doper, he collaborates with Rick Rubin and samples Missy Elliott. washingtoncitypaper.com/go/doper

A new documentary probes the shortcomings of a scholarship program in Southeast D.C.

By Andrew Lapin Local hotel magnate Stewart Bainum had benevolent intentions when he went to Fairlawn in 1988 and promised a bunch of money to middle school students. That was how area resident Martece Gooden Yates wound up attending Kramer Middle School—“a school that no one wanted to go to, unless you just had to,” she says.

Bainum sponsored the second D.C. chapter of the national I Have A Dream Foundation, which offers college scholarships to those who graduate from high schools in low-income neighborhoods. Kramer was the second-lowest-performing junior high school in the District during the city’s crack and murder epidemic of the 1980s. Its struggles were what attracted Bainum, who offered scholarships to three Kramer homeroom classes: the top, middle, and bottom of the school’s academic ranks.

Yates had planned on attending a better school until a representative from the Commonweal Foundation, Bainum’s privately funded philanthropic endeavor, told her family about the scholarship. Yates’ academic promise, paradox-ically enough, secured her spot at one of the worst schools in the country.

Yates and the other 66 “Dreamers,” as the foundation calls its students, are the subjects of Charlottesville filmmaker Betsy Cox’s documentary Southeast 67, which will premiere tomorrow, Feb. 27, at the D.C. Independent Film Festival.

The film is funded by Commonweal, and was originally intended as a short piece for internal use related to a 2012 follow-up study of the class.

But Cox saw potential in the Dreamers’ stories for a richer narrative that could find an audience outside the foundation, once freed from the stipulations of a for-hire video project.

She sought and received permission to fashion a feature documentary divorced from Commonweal’s editorial control.

“It’s a very specific story about a specific group of kids at a specific time in a specific community,” Cox says. “But their experience, I think, can so easily be extrapolated out to other communities. I think there are certain things that are universal about kids growing up in communities that are impoverished.”

Cox says the film incidentally brought her career “full circle.” While Bainum’s class of Dreamers was attending Kramer, Cox was making a film about a different D.C. class of Dreamers for another employer. Her team often heard stories of the “Kramer Dreamers” and the support Bainum was giving them. Cox built her production company, Red Spark

Photo by Nancy Andrews/the Washington Post via Red Spark Films

Yield of Dreams Films, into an outfit specializing in local nonprofits and social advocacy, so it was a natural stop when Commonweal came calling years later.

For the feature-length Southeast 67, Cox interviewed a small handful of Dreamers and spent more than a year tracking down footage from the area in the late ’80s that didn’t involve a crime scene.

After months of searching, Cox’s team turned up footage from a Keep Your School: A few grand and encouragement isn’t always enough.

British filmmaker for an unfinished documentary, including a profile of the Dreamer program, sit- only be on the hook for $4,000 in tuition funds—still a generting in storage in Portugal. The team supplement- ous offer by any stretch, but not always a full ride. Because the ed these visuals with statistics about children born in scholarships were earmarked specifically for higher education poverty, which flash on the screen between Dreamer use, any Dreamer who did not begin college within 18 months testimonies, reminding viewers of the real-world odds of graduation and accumulate at least $4,000 in higher ed expenses within six years forfeited whatever part of the scholarthey were up against.

The resulting film is probing and often critical of the I Have ship hadn’t been spent.

Southeast 67 seems to critique the naïveté of education A Dream program’s structure. By the year 2000, when Bainum’s scholarships were to have finished paying out, only six nonprofits that think all kids need to succeed is some enor seven members of the Dreamer class had graduated col- couragement, when in fact many need a bevy of concrete resources just to get through school. Viewers might conclude lege. Southeast 67 doesn’t feature any of them.

Instead, the film profiles three Dreamers who, for various that, in this film, Commonweal has vountarily funded its reasons, did not do what the foundation wanted them to do: own public reckoning.

“I was not trying to glorify the program,” Cox says. “In use the scholarship money to earn a college degree. Tenille Warren, one of the subjects, graduated from the Duke El- fact, the educators at the end of the program—I think they lington School of the Arts with dreams of being a fashion de- would have said they didn’t feel it was a success. They really signer but decided to work full time instead so she could make had hopes that they would be able to get 100 percent of the enough money to move out of Southeast. By the time she cir- kids to graduate [from high school].” cled back to college, in 2009, it was too late to use the Dream One of those educators was Phyllis Rumbarger, who scholarship, which had to be used within six years of high worked as a mentor for the Dreamers. Along with fellow menschool graduation. (She is currently enrolled at the Fashion tor Steve Bumbaugh, Rumbarger went to great lengths to help the Dreamers: staying at school into the evenings most Institute of Technology in New York.)

Yates graduated from high school and began a semester at days to give them somewhere to go, taking them on field trips, the University of the District of Columbia with Dream sup- and, later, driving them to visit college campuses. Many of the port, but her mother’s crack addiction and her own pregnancy Dreamers thought of her as a second mom.

Rumbarger demurred when I asked her if I Have A Dream pushed her to delay college while she took care of her family.

Now, she’s enrolled in Trinity University’s nursing program was a success. “How do you measure success?” she said. Program administrators learned early on that achieving a 100 without help from the Dream program.

What wasn’t made clear to the Dreamers at the time was percent graduation rate would be impossible in the area, that the national program’s structure only required benefac- given the many social and economic obstacles the students tors to match the average cost of in-state public school college faced. So even though the Dream team had to outwardly tuition. In D.C., that meant a semester at UDC, so regard- abide by the national foundation requirements and push for less of where the students wound up in school, Bainum would high school graduation, its internal goals shifted: “Love of washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 35

CPARTS Continued

learning, perseverance, don’t give up, be a good citizen.”

Upon graduation, some Dreamers ended up attending out-of-state colleges and were surprised to learn they’d still have to take on debt to get their degree. Most didn’t make it far enough to discover this, though. “Our first girls were having babies at 14,” Rumbarger says. “You had students who were arrested. Our first death was in ninth grade—he was killed on the streets. The schools were the worst in the country, and this was the worst of the worst schools, and many of their parents were young teenagers when they were born. Poverty was rampant; violence was rampant. How are you even prepared?”

One way was to offer more to students than a promise. Bainum gave his Dreamers benefits that students in other I Have A Dream chapters didn’t have, including summer jobs at his hospitality chains HCR ManorCare and Choice Hotels International. (Yates was one of his Dreamer employees.) In an effort to help some students escape rough home lives, Bainum also paid for tuition at Mount Vernon Academy, a private Seventh-day Adventist boarding school in Ohio he’d attended as a child.

But the question of I Have A Dream’s success hung over a Commonweal-sponsored “sneak preview” screening on February 6 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, where Dreamers who weren’t able to use the scholarship money still had over-

whelmingly positive things to say about the program. During the post-screening Q&A, several kids in the audience, many the children of Dreamers, asked variations on the same question: Did the program make a difference? One asked if the Dreamers thought they would be in jail if not for the program.

Onstage, Antwan Green laughed. The Dreamer and Southeast 67 subject had spent time in jail after dropping out of 11th grade at Mount Vernon Academy, which he’d attended in part to escape life in the homeless shelters where his mother raised him. “I was with the program before I got in trouble,” Green said. In promotional materials Commonweal handed out at the screening, Green maintained that being a Dreamer “changed my life.” Today, Green owns ASG Trucking in Essex, Md., and has earned his GED. Commonweal staff enjoyed Southeast 67, according to spokeswoman Erica Dyson. “We found the film compelling,” Dyson wrote in an email, adding that it “highlighted where we succeeded as a program, and where we could have possibly done more, had we fully understood the extent of [students’] circumstances.” Bainum, who died a year ago this month, never got to see the finished film.

After 1988, Commonweal never sponsored another Dream program. (One chapter remains in D.C., sponsored by Immanuel Presbyterian Church in McLean, Va.) Rumbarger, who worked for the organization in various positions including

executive director until her 2009 retirement, feels there were too many flaws in the structure. She would have preferred to start working with students earlier than middle school and budget program funds for student mental-health care.

But seeing how few Dreamers had college degrees in the follow-up study drove Rumbarger to form Fulfilling the Dream, a new foundation dedicated to raising scholarships for Dreamers and their families. “I’ve seen their struggles,” she says. “I’ve seen their educational debt. I’ve seen their commitment to their children, and their children are in good charter schools and are doing their homework and studying… How can you not help them?” Her foundation’s first goal is to help Dreamers, but she ultimately hopes to award scholarships to “any underserved poor students,” without any GPA requirements. Commonweal has also begun offering scholarships for Dreamer children.

Yates, whose mother has since gone clean, is looking to find a new definition of success through her participation in the film.

“At the end of the day, if this film can help one person, then my mom and I have totally done our job,” she says. “Our goal is to just help others who are probably going through CP some of the same things we were going through.”

The film premieres February 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Barracks Row Theater Church. $5.

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The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma

Sun, Mar 1, 5pm Kennedy Center THIS WEEKEND!

Cristina Pato

Spanish bagpipe star & Silk Road Ensemble veteran blends pop, Celtic, and Latin music and more

Sat, Mar 14, 8pm Sixth & I Historic Synagogue

Zakir Hussain is co-presented with GW Lisner Auditorium. Performances at Sixth & I are made possible by the Abramson Family Foundation and an anonymous gift.

The Silk Road Ensemble is made possible by Gary Mather and Christina Co Mather.

36 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Zakir Hussain

Celtic Connections Tabla virtuoso leads innovative Indo-Celtic ensemble

Tue, Mar 17, 8pm GW Lisner Auditorium

DakhaBrakha

Soaring vocals and pounding rhythms from the Ukrainian band that took Bonnaroo by storm

Thu, Apr 2, 8pm Sixth & I Historic Synagogue

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CPARTS One Track Mind

Harness Flux Collected Singles (Remastered)

Standout Track: No. 2, “Slide to Unlock,” a blend of ringing guitar and simple percussion reminiscent of early Sonic Youth, from local indie-rock act Harness Flux’s latest release, Collected Singles (Remastered). John Masters, the solo artist behind Harness Flux, has played around town with bands like the Cheniers and Metropolitan and started performing on his own in 2012. His performance moniker is derived from two different Pavement songs, but it took on further meaning when he considered the transient state of many D.C. bands. “Now that I’m a solo artist, I can harness that flux,” he says. “I never really have to break up.”

Musical Motivation: The song’s name references the lock screen message on an iPhone, an appropriate title, since several pieces of the song were saved on Masters’ electronic devices. Recorded live in Masters’ Shaw home, the song first came to life on his phone, where he regularly types lyrics or records hummed melodies that enter his head. “In a way, it’s like you slide to unlock all those pieces,” he says.

There’s No Need to Shout: Masters points to “Slide to Unlock” as an example of the recording prowess he’s gained since creating music on his own. He gave his guitar an alternate tuning and added more layers; Masters’ earlier songs were more simple, featuring just vocals and guitar, but on Collected Singles (Remastered), live drums give his tracks an organic, warmer sound. “I hope to keep adding more to it,” Masters says, “but I’m not in a rush to put out —Caroline Jones more stuff.”

Listen to “Slide to Unlock” at washingtoncitypaper.com/go/slidetounlock.

Final Score

The D.C. art scene, a cultural sector that looked ready to ride the wave of boomtown change that came to the city in the early 2000s, instead seems wiped out by it. Now that the District’s years-long growth spurt is coming to an end, it’s worth looking at what the art scene gained from the influx of new residents and —Kriston Capps development capital—and what it lost.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

WPA: When the Washington Project for the Arts opens its doors later this year, it will give the D.C. art scene an unlikely perch in the heart of one of the city’s busiest corridors.

With 1,500 square feet of storefront office and gallery space at 8th and V streets NW (plus a long-term lease), WPA could emerge as D.C.’s creative anchor.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION CAMPUS MASTER PLAN: The Smithsonian would seem to be an unlikely wellspring of cuttingedge architecture, but its leaders showed admirable foresight by commissioning the progressive Danish firm Bjarke Ingels Group to redesign and renovate a wide swatch of National Mall adjacent to the Castle. Now we just need to wait a couple of decades for the work to wrap up.

(E)MERGE ART FAIR: With a few years under its belt, the (e)merge Art Fair is beginning to look like an annual tradition for D.C., one that brings artists, exhibitors, and performance to Southwest each fall.

JURY’S STILL OUT

ARTS AND INDUSTRIES BUILDING: Until Congress gets its act together and pass-

THEM’S THE BREAKS

11TH STREET BRIDGE PARK: OLIN and OMA, two of the best design firms in the world, collaborated on the vision for a bridge park spanning the Anacostia River. There are lots of hurdles left to building the new bridge, not the least of which is raising funds toward the total $45 million projected cost.

INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSION: Last week, many art reporters and critics (myself included) questioned Mayor Muriel Bowser’s decision to spike a development deal to turn the deteriorating Franklin School into a center for contemporary art. The mayor’s taking heat for her capricious decision, but that might not be enough to rescue the ICE plans from deep freeze.

THE HIRSHHORN BUBBLE: While it was never entirely clear how much D.C. residents would’ve benefited from the seasonal lectures planned for the so-called Bubble—a temporary pavilion designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro to bubble up through the center of the concrete-donut Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden—it was plain what the city lost when the plans were abandoned: It would’ve been the funnest architectural intervention on the East Coast.

MONROE STREET ARTS WALK: At a glance, the Monroe Street Market looks like another example of art-washing. That’s when developers give below-market rates to studios in order to draw creative types to new developments, then boot the artists when retail comes around. But by partnering with CulturalDC, the Brookland development may have built a truly sustainable arts-anchored development.

CAPITAL FRINGE: When the fine-art gallery Connersmith left its massive Trinidad whitecube space, it registered as a major loss for the city’s arts culture. But the news that the art dealers sold to the Capital Fringe Festival meant that the space would be preserved for weird and woolly arts and performance.

have moved on. Thankfully, there are still a handful hanging around, namely Hamiltonian and Transformer.

es a working budget, one of the finest buildings on the National Mall will remain closed.

The hope is that a budget will one day allocate the funds to turn it into a museum celebrating the culture, arts, and history of Latino Americans—but with a deadlocked government, it’s only a dream.

Aaron Wiener

arTs desk

Who will replace Christoph Eschenbach as the National Symphony Orchestra’s director? washingtoncitypaper.com/go/nso

DUPONT UNDERGROUND: Of the projects that aim to turn old D.C. infrastructure into new cultural and civic amenities (think New York’s High Line), Dupont Underground is the most secure—its planners recently signed a five-year lease with the city. But turning an underground trolley station into an arts hub is going to take $35 to $60 million, a tall order.

1515 14TH ST. NW: While Adamson Gallery and Hemphill Fine Arts still call the 14th Street NW building home, G Fine Art and Curator’s Office left the building in recent years.

Most of the art galleries that were once an engine for revitalization near Logan Circle

THE CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART: The only thing that’s worse than losing one of the oldest private museums in the nation (and one of the best museums in the city) is to know that it’s being cited as an example for why the Institute for Contemporary Expression cannot succeed in the Franklin School.

It will be years before the city fully recovers from the loss of the Corcoran.

THE NATIONAL MALL: No, the Mall’s not going anywhere. But events that call the Mall home—from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to the National Council of Negro Women’s Black Family Reunion—are finding that they’re no longer welcome. And with Mall stakeholders increasingly siding with Mall conservation interests over Mall usage advocates, some big-tent event planners like the National Book Festival and the Solar Decathlon are moving on.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 37

TheaTerCurtain Calls bloody good show The Lieutenant of Inishmore

By Martin McDonagh Directed by Matthew R. Wilson At Constellation Theatre to March 8

RAVES FOR ENGLAND’S MOST STORIED RIVALRY “A showdown fit for a queen…

a DELICIOUS puzzle” —The Washington Post

“Norris and Twyford

are BRILLIANT... full of torrential passion” —DC Theatre Scene

“A political thriller that bends for nobody

...ELECTRIFYING” —City Paper

ON STAGE NOW THROUGH MARCH 8 202.544.7077 | folger.edu/theatre 38 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Photos by Teresa Wood

Kate Eastwood Norris as Mary, Queen of Scots Holly Twyford as Queen Elizabeth

Eight-year-old Constellation Theatre Company is sponsoring both a blood drive and a pet adoption fair in the next five days—carbon offsets, so to speak, for the ravages of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, BritishIrish enfant terrible Martin McDonagh’s blood-soaked, kitty-littered Here, Kitty: No cats or humans were maimed 2001 farce. That’s “kitty-littered” as in littered with dead cats, although littered might be extravagant given that they’re performances: Broad, barrel-chested Thomhandily outnumbered by the dead humans. as Keegan (doing a note-perfect imitation of No real kitties were harmed, so far as I could frequent McDonagh collaborator Colin Fartell, during the performance I saw (nor hu- rell’s squeaky Dublin brogue) as Padraic, the mans, probably). The pair of live cats who sadistic nutter, and elfin Megan Dominy as made cameo appearances did not look at all Mairead, a 16-year-old pellet-gun sniper who delighted to be there despite the enthusiastic advocates for animal rights by shooting cows’ eyes out so they can’t be sold. There’s more applause they got.

A ‘90s-set parody of violent extremism— than one way to skin a cat, is the expression I if such a thing can be subjected to parody— would use if this were not a play wherein an outbreak of cat-skinning feels distinctly likely, this yarn concerns a sociopathic member of an Irish National Liberation Army splinter if not inevitable.

Don’t worry: We’re treated to a protracted group who interrupts his principled torture of a Belfast pot dealer to rush home to Galway human-limb-removal sequence instead. Exwhen he receives word his cat, Wee Thomas, hausting work, particularly if you’ve only got has taken ill. Wee Thomas’s prognosis is rather regular-old consumer-grade tools and kitchen worse than that, it turns out: Slick, lumpy frag- cutlery to work with.

Q: Okay, but how was the play, Mrs. Linments of what I think are meant to be his brain are spilling out of prop designer Sarah Con- coln? A: Funny! ‘Tis, as I say, a farce, wherete’s feline dummy when Chris Dinolfo’s in Padraic’s aged father, Donny (Mark Lee Davey carries it onstage. He knows whose Adams), and his flunky Davey (Dinolfo), try to cat it is that’s leaking effluvia all over delay Padraic’s discovery of Wee Thomas’ dehim, and he’s just smart enough to fear its mise for as long as possible, while a trio of Padraic’s former comrades in the movement try to owner’s wrath.

Inishmore is not the most existentially dis- get the drop on him. Padraic’s barbaric methquieting of McDonagh’s plays, but physi- ods are giving Irish terrorism a bad name, so cally it’s the gnarliest: On the occasion of its he’s got to go.

When it isn’t indulging in Grand Guignol U.S. premiere in New York nine years ago, the Washington Post’s David Segal filed a piece bloodletting, Inishmore is another platform for about the logistical challenges of mixing the McDonagh’s Tarantino-esque love of myopic prodigious quantities of stage blood demanded outlaws and scholarly impatience with comfor each performance and of mopping it all up mon language. There’s nothing like genuduring the brief interval between matinee and ine human feeling on display here; it’s just a evening shows. Constellation’s production, di- high-toned Looney Tune, and it delights in rected by Faction of Fools founder Matthew absurdity and punishment in the same way R. Wilson, rises to the the occasion with some those classic cartoons do. When Dominy’s unexpertly timed blood-spatter effects (designed derage Mairead comes on to Keegan’s Padby Casey Kaleba, who also collaborated with raic, she wonders if his reluctance is because Wilson on the fight choreography) but turns he prefers boys.

“There are no boy-preferrers involved in down the volume: There’s more viscera sloshing around inside an adorable kitty cat or a hu- Irish terrorism!” he recoils. Neil Patrick Harman skull shot point-blank with a high-cali- ris’ Academy Awards bit with Selma star David Oyelowo bombed, but he wasn’t wrong: A ber revolver than that, you might find yourself saying, if you’re a particularly attentive stu- lot of lines really are funnier with an accent.

—Chris Klimek dent of shoot-’em-ups. (Hi!) Still, you’d have to be a particularly ungenerous sicko to come away from this Inishmore 1835 14th St. NW. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheatre.org disappointed, given its terrific central pair of

FilmShort SubjectS

DOM FLEMONS

Founding member of the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dom Flemons brings his trio to the Artisphere Dome Theatre in support of his second solo album, American Songster.

Crash Test Crummy: Once again, an earnest message falls short.

For Love and Money Human Capital Directed by Paolo Virzì American cinema has a long, successful history of watering down and re-packaging European novels and films, but Italian filmmaker Paolo Virzì’s Human Capital is a rare example of art adaptation flowing in the other direction. Based on an American novel dramatizing the impact of the global recession on several wealthy families, it was a massive hit in Italy, sweeping the country’s version of the Oscars. But watching the film through American eyes, something gets lost in translation.

The film opens in the suburbs of Milan with a case of vehicular manslaughter; a waiter is riding his bike home from a function when he’s driven off of the road. Virzì shows us the preceding six months through the eyes of several protagonists. There’s Dino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a middle-aged real estate agent who foolishly sinks his money into a hedge fund run by the millionaire father of his daughter’s boyfriend; Carla (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), the millionaire’s aging trophy wife, struggling for meaning while trying to get a nonprofit theater off the ground; and Serena (Matilde Gioli), Dino’s daughter, who breaks up with the millionaire’s son and falls for a troubled outcast.

It’s like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon by way of Paul Haggis’ much-maligned Crash, and its impact is closer to the latter. Hu-

man Capital strives earnestly to say something important about income inequality and class warfare. Dino’s naked desire to be part of the upper class motivates him to take unnecessary risks with his finances, but it’s hard to care about him. His thirst for wealth causes him to neglect his daughter and new wife (played marvelously by Valeria Golino), and when his inevitable comeuppance occurs, even the most understanding viewer will smirk at his downfall.

The women in the film are far more sympathetic in their futile search for love and connection. Tedeschi imbues the archetype of the millionaire’s bored housewife with a raw vulnerability as her fling with a local drama teacher brings a spark of passion into her drab existence. Serena is only a minor character in the first two thirds of Human Capital, but her romance with a mentally unstable orphan in the final reel deftly captures teenage love in all its simple and destructive passion.

But Virzì’s narrative tracks reduce these characters to mere props, and the film to a competent but minor murder mystery.

The gimmicky, time-jumping structure of Human Capital may be novel in Italy, but here, Quentin Tarantino and his imitators have been using it for years. Had the story been told chronologically, it would have been an effective human tragedy. Instead, it reaches for a profound statement on subjectivity and disconnectedness in a modern world that it never quite grasps.

—Noah Gittell Human Capital opens February 27 at E Street Cinema.

FEB 28 AT 8PM / DOME THEATRE

GERARDO CONTINO

Y LOS HABANEROS

Former lead singer of Cuban salsa group NG La Banda, Gerardo Contino and Los Habaneros are known for their refreshing take on salsa and timba tunes and impressive rhythm section.

“Los Habaneros features an elite lineup of some of New York’s most highly regarded musicians in Latin music and beyond.”—Timba.com

MAR 13 AT 8PM / BALLROOM

www.artisphere.com

1101 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22209 Free parking weekdays after 5pm + all day on weekends Two blocks from the Rosslyn Metro Follow us: @Artisphere Like us: ArtisphereVA washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 39

GalleriesSketcheS Collage envy “Mood Boards” At Furthermore to March 7

UPCOMING EVENTS

Sun, 3/1 at 7:00pm Noir at the Bar Ten female writers read crime fiction Tues, 3/2 at 6:30pm Two Dollar Radio & Curbside Splendor an evening of independent fiction Wed, 3/4 at 6:30pm Billionaires Darrell West Tues, 3/10 at 6:30pm The Valley John Renehan Wed, 3/11 at 6:30pm Disgruntled Asali Solomon Sun, 3/15 at 7:00pm Cat out of Hell Lynne Truss 1517 CONNECTICUT AVE. NW 202.387.1400 // KRAMERS.COM

workspace self-portrait.

Bill Newman submitted the best set of odds and ends: tape from an old video copyprocessor, a device that enabled him to print static images from live television onto thermal paper. Long rolls of receipt-quality paper printed with black-and-white protoscreengrabs look almost like a printout from the mind’s eye. (A very 1980s mind’s eye, mind you.) Not every artist’s notebook dump

Shadow. Texture. Magnetic. Precise.

Mood boards have got a lot of that going on.

Concepts and descriptors married to images to evoke a vision. Line. Form. Like a word cloud that takes the form of a cluster of pictures. Structure. Elegance. Mood boards run right up to the border of business but still fall narrowly within the territorial borders of creativity. They’re collages whose audience is the client, not the viewer.

So when Furthermore’s José Ruiz and James Huckenpahler asked half a dozen artists and friends to draft up some mood boards, they didn’t necessarily expect them to come through with, you know, mood boards.

What they delivered instead is an exhibit that puts process ahead of product. If Furthermore was a business school, these mood boards would be six case studies.

Molly Springfield sent the gallery the images she collects as research for her photocopy-like drawings of text and documents. (Disclosure: Springfield is a friend of mine.) I recognized the pictures from her studio: structural diagrams from the Mundaneum, for example, an early 20th-century analog Internet constructed by the Belgian information scientist Paul Otlet. It was up to Huckenpahler to arrange these snippets of text and schematics in a grid and print them. That’s one approach to a mood board.

Natalie Campbell responded with clippings and Natalie Campbell’s collection drawings that had graced her office space. The mood here is scattershot. makes for a compelling piece, but the format Ads and cartoons cut out of magazines, some alone sells Newman’s presentation. lines from Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, “Mood Boards” is not too far off from a layout—for whatever reason—of pictures “Personal Effects,” a show Huckenpahler of Watt W. Webb, a Cornell University bio- and Ruiz put together in September 2013. medical engineer. Who knows? Adrian Par- For that exhibit, the co-curators asked artsons, on the other hand, created something ists to contribute an object that they hold to suit the purpose: a collage of effects from dear. “Mood Boards” is fuzzier: The artists his desktop, much of it related to the Corc- answered a call and also decided what quesoran School of the Arts and Design, where he tion to answer. Which explains why Billy Colis a digital strategist. Parsons’s mood board bert responded with four corny oil portraits is more deliberate, but it’s the same sort of while David Page surrendered a table’s worth

40 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

of sculptural-looking instruments and implements. Furthermore is an artist’s art-space, and for the people running it, the how is every bit as important as the what.

Furthermore isn’t alone in its deep and abiding interest in how artists do what they do. Local photographer E. Brady Robinson’s new book, Art Desks, is an effort to document a part of the process that goes unseen. Published last fall by Daylight Books, Art Desks couldn’t be any plainer: Robinson has photographed the desks of artists, curators, writers, collectors, historians, and other figures from the art world. By doing so, she’s drawn up a map of the art scene, a sort of working visual field guide to the visual-art ecosystem.

There’s the modest desk of Margulies Collection curator Katherine Hinds: no computer, one notepad marked with three artworld names (Frank Stella, Alec Soth, Mary Ellen Mark), one notepad covered with details about a Chinese take-out place.

There’s the spare desk of Curator’s Office dealer Andrea Pollan: MacBook, art magazines, notebook, desk phone. Then there’s the messy desk of photographer Victoria Gaitán: sticky notes, plastic toys, girly photos.

Maybe no one has ever registered the burning desire to peer into the professional life of art historian David Ward or gallerist Jennifer Schwartz.

Art Desks is nevertheless irresistible, like seeing a collection of photos of people’s bedrooms or medicine cabinets. Perfect clickbait, in that sense, but maybe more resonant: I felt the urge to see my desk out there in a photo book, too. (And also to tidy it, to put a better face forward. Would that be cheating?)

The gallery is the stage, but it’s also the sideshow. So much of the work happens somewhere else, and artists love to look behind the curtains to see how it’s done. Viewers might not think they share that urge, but given the chance, they might not be able to —Kriston Capps help themselves.

52 O St. NW, Suite 202B. Free. (202) 3301219. furthermorellc.com

How to Sell Your Book A one-day bootcamp with award-winning author Marita Golden

March 21 • 10:00 am to 5pm • Thurgood Marshall Center • 1816 12th St. N.W. This intensive day-long workshop will answer the most frequently asked questions about the publishing industry and how to get your book published. Tuition is $170.

AMONG THE TOPICS TO BE COVERED: • How to write a query letter • Hot to write an effective “pitch” for your story • How to write a book proposal • How to find the right agent • Why self-publishing is gaining acceptance • The truth about writers, publishers and money • Discussion and critique of participant’s projects Special Guest:

Anna Sproul-Latimer Literary Agent with Ross Yoon Agency

To register visit www.maritagolden.com click workshops

VISIT US AT CFA.GMU.EDU

Mark Morris Dance Group

Danú

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28 AT 8 P.M. SUNDAY, MARCH 1 AT 4 P.M. “There is no other choreographer today with Morris’s unbound imagination and the skill to realize it onstage.” (The Washington Post) This wonderful program includes two works set to music

by Lou Harrison: Pacific, by Mark Morris, being performed by MMDG for the first time, and Grand Duo, called “intoxicatingly thrilling” by the Seattle Times; Words, a new dance set to Songs Without Words by Mendelssohn; and The “Tamil Film Songs in Stereo” Pas de Deux. $48, $41, $29

20th Anniversary Tour FRIDAY, MARCH 6 AT 8 P.M. To celebrate 20 years of spirited music-making, this awardwinning band from the Emerald Isle, along with two of its former band mates, returns to the CFA stage to perform a glorious blend of ancient Irish music and fresh new songs. “Impressive, immersive…and unmistakably Irish.” (Strings Magazine) $46, $39, $28 ff

DIRECT FROM BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

Tango Buenos Aires Song of Eva Perón

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 AT 8 P.M. Warm up your winter with some sizzling Tango! It’s in the 70’s and 80’s in Buenos Aires this month, so come share some of that heat with Tango Buenos Aires, one of Argentina’s great tango companies. With their graceful skill and “sometimes playful, sometimes dramatic … sensual couplings” (The Washington Post), Eva Perón’s story has never been so passionately told! $48, $41, $29

ff = Family Friendly performances that are most suitable for families with younger children

TICKETS 888-945-2468 OR CFA.GMU.EDU

Located on the Fairfax campus, six miles west of Beltway exit 54 at the intersection of Braddock Road and Rt. 123. washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 41

MusicDiscography Unchain Spiv’S heart XYZ XYZ Radical Elite

a trashy slow dance but doubles as a miniature epistemology of breaking up, with Svenonius tracing the thin line between it’s-over insouciance (“Don’t call me/I’ll call you”) and outright despair (“Don’t call me, I can’t stand it”).

When it comes to matters of the heart, in fact, XYZ is at its most compelling. On the loungey, tin-grooved “Where Do You Come From?”, Svenonius’ lyrics have the jumpy menace of a bureaucrat in a Terry Gilliam film—“Are you from the jungle, where no man’s been?/Or from the bottom of the sea?

Did you spend your life swimming?”—but he coos the words like he’s addressing an intimate. And in the licky, rickety “Would You Do It?” he wonders: “Can you do it? Yes you can. But will you do it for a friend?” He pulls another amorous switcheroo in “Drum Machine:” “I needed someone to run their fingers through my hair,” he laments, before yelping, “I had nothing! But now I have a drum machine.” In these songs he could be address-

Bands led by Ian Svenonius tend to elapse according to five-year plans—“like Stalin,” the frontman once pointed out. With his main groups Nation of Ulysses, the MakeUp, Weird War, and now Chain & the Gang, Svenonius has left few capitalist hypocrisies unpacked, and even fewer beatnik tropes untweaked. But amid and in between each revolutionary campaign, he’s found time for some extracurricular rabble-rousing. The rahrah radicalism of Cupid Car Club, the performative glam decay of David Candy, and the shimmying doom improv of Felt Letters rank among the more focused installments of Svenonius’ quarter-century punk-preacher project, Lover Craft: and they have a worthy But will a drum successor in XYZ, Spiv’s machine cuddle sexy, centered collaborayou at night? tion with Memphis Electronic, aka Didier Balducci of the French acts NON! and Dum Dum Boys.

Compared to the roaring, minimalist rock ’n’ roll of Chain & the Gang’s, uh, Minimum Rock ’n’ Roll, XYZ’s spiffed-up, very Francophonic electro and cool temperature are a surprising backdrop for Svenonius’ deadpan-radical shtick. (Spiv supplies the vocals, Balducci the beats, guitars, and throbbing, unsettled electronics.) But the Svenonius on offer isn’t singing about degentrifying the neighborhood. His concerns are, for the most part, more interior, or at least as interior as a guy who once wrote a song called “For Practical Purposes (I Love You)” can get.

Throughout XYZ’s self-titled debut LP, listeners can probe as deeply as it suits them. “Hangin’ From a Tree” jit- ing a lover or a co-conspirator or a piece of ters like early psychedelic electronic music, gear, and you can imagine Svenonius—or at with a bit of Cramps-like crunch. “Bubble- least the capitalism-smashing frontman he gum” is super-streamlined greaser electro, plays on his albums—asking similar things with a catchphrase-y chorus (“You’re the of them all. At Spiv’s politburo sockhop, it’s one/Bubblegum”), surfy rhythm guitars, all one revolution. —Jonathan L. Fischer and fat, moaning bass synths, but it’s interested in pulling apart the teenage-trou- Listen to “Bubblegum” from XYZ at washingtblemaker myth. “Don’t Call Me” plays like oncitypaper.com/go/bubblegum.

42 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

MARCH H 2015 1 SUN H DJ Lightbolt and Adriel Luis

DJ Lightbolt and poet/curator/visual artist Leuis take you on a clever sonic journey inspired by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble’s musical explorations with The Slick Road Mix.

FREE PERFORMANCES

2 MON H Duke Ellington School of the Arts

365 DAYS A

YEAR

EVERY DAY AT 6 P.M. NO TICKETS REQUIRED *Unless noted otherwise

Spend an evening with the school’s Dance and Literary Media & Communications departments as they present a multidisciplinary work, American Innocents, about the youth of today.

IBERIAN SUITE: global arts remix Presented in cooperation with the governments of Portugal and Spain Presenting Underwriter HRH Foundation Festival Benefactors include the Portuguese Secretary of State for Culture, Ambassador Elizabeth F. Bagley, Natalia and Carlos Bulgheroni, Amalia Perea Mahoney and William Mahoney, and David and Alice Rubenstein Major Sponsors include Arte Institute, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, EDP, Fundação Luso-Americana, Marca España, SPAIN arts & culture, ThinkFoodGroup, and Wines of Portugal

3 TUE H Coral Cantigas (U.S.)

Directed by Diana Sáez, this local chorus performs many styles of Latin American, Spanish, and Caribbean choral music.

4

WED H Metales M5 (Mexico) Mix the shenanigans of the Blues Brothers with the seriousness of the Canadian Brass and you have Mexico’s leading brass quintet.

DAILY FOOD AND DRINK SPECIALS. 5–6 P.M. NIGHTLY H GRAND FOYER BARS

Live Internet broadcast, video archive, artist information, and more at kennedy-center.org/millennium For more information call: (202) 467-4600 TAKE METRO to the Foggy Bottom/GWU station and ride the free Kennedy Center shuttle departing every 15 minutes until midnight.

GET CONNECTED!

Become a fan of Millennium Stage on Facebook and check out artist photos, upcoming events, and more!

FREE TOURS are given daily by the Friends of the Kennedy Center tour guides. Tour hours: Monday thru Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m.–1 p.m. For information, call (202) 416-8340.

PLEASE NOTE:

There is no free parking for free performances.

The Kennedy Center welcomes persons with disabilities.

The Millennium Stage was created and underwritten by James A. Johnson and Maxine Isaacs to make the performing arts accessible to everyone in fulfillment of the Kennedy Center's mission to its community and the nation.

Additional funding for the Millennium Stage is provided by The Isadore and Bertha Gudelsky Family Foundation, Inc., The Meredith Foundation, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A.J. Stolwijk, U.S. Department of Education, and the Millennium Stage Endowment Fund.

The Millennium Stage Endowment Fund was made possible by James A. Johnson and Maxine Isaacs, Fannie Mae Foundation, James V. Kimsey, Gilbert† and Jaylee† Mead, Mortgage Bankers Association of America and other anonymous gifts to secure the future of the Millennium Stage.

Education and related artistic programs are also made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts and the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.

5

THU H Claudia Acuña (Chile) The singer/songwriter presents a special program in honor of late Chilean composer/folkloristVioleta Parra.

6

FRI H Papo Vázquez and his Pirates Troubadours

11 WED H Al Andalusyun – Arabic Andalusian Ensemble featuring Hadi Eldebek (Lebanon/U.S.)

Al Andalusyun re-creates the age-old heritage and transcendent art of poetry and music of Andalusia with oudist Eldebek joined onstage by other musicians.

12

THU H Nathalie Handal and Hanna Khoury (U.S./Palestine)

5 P.M. SALSA CLASS; 6 P.M. PERFORMANCE

22

SUN H Timba Street with DC Casineros (U.S.)

Timba Street sports a modern Cuban salsa-fusion of Son Montuno, Cuban Rumba, and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Leading this dance party is the worldrenowned DC Casineros. Free salsa class at 5 p.m.

In a performance combining music played by violinist Khoury with Handal’s writings, they’ll explore the vast Arab influences in Iberian arts and culture.

I N T H E T E R R A C E T H E AT E R

5 P.M. TANGO CLASS; 6 P.M. PERFORMANCE

23 MON H American Ballet Theatre

13

FRI H Manhattan Camerata: Tango-Fado Project with Binelli-Ferman Duo (Argentina/Portugal/ Uruguay) Explore the connections between Argentine tango and Portuguese fado with the world music chamber orchestra, fado singer Catarina Avelar, and the acclaimed Binelli-Ferman Duo. Free tango class at 5 p.m.

14

SAT H Leticia Moreno and Christoph Eschenbach

(Spain/Germany) Violinist Moreno joins NSO Music Director/ pianist Eschenbach for Turina’s Poema de una Sanluqueña, and NSO members play Granados’s Piano Trio, Op. 50.

15

SUN H Hiromi Suda (Japan) The vocalist brings her singular and innovative sound in a performance of Brazilian music.

Presented with the support of the Embassy of Japan and the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

16

MON H The Gift (Portugal)

The acclaimed alternative rock band has performed with The Flaming Lips and at South by Southwest.

Presented in collaboration with Arte Institute.

17

TUE H Sofia Ribeiro and Luísa Sobral (Portugal/Colombia) Two of today’s top female Portuguese musicians perform a double bill.

Presented in collaboration with Arte Institute.

at 75—A Documentary Film*

The Kennedy Center hosts the world premiere screening of Steeplechase Films’ feature-length documentary celebrating the rich history and legacy of America’s first ballet company. Directed by Ric Burns.

24

TUE H Le Bruit Court Dans La Ville

Direct from Quebec, the trio brings meticulous accompaniment on the guitar, a pulsing accordion, grit-and-polish vocals, and a fiery fiddle to create soaring harmonies.

25

WED H Natalia Zukerman and The JT Project

Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Zukerman teams up with the jazz/soul/R&B group for a night of jazz, soul, and great guitar.

Part of Songwriters: The Next Generation, presented by The ASCAP Foundation.

26

THU H Jameson Rogers and Sarah McDonald

Mississippi-based singer/songwriter Rogers and Brooklyn-based jazz composer, vocalist, and French hornist McDonald perform original works.

Part of Songwriters: The Next Generation, presented by The ASCAP Foundation.

I N T H E FA M I LY T H E AT E R

27 FRI H Comedy at the Kennedy Center* Stay tuned for a special guest!

28

(Puerto Rico/U.S.) The trombonist, composer, and Grammy® nominee has performed jazz, Latin, Afro-Caribbean, and classical music for more than 35 years.

18

7

This performance was made possible through the generous support of the World Bank Group.

The D.C.–based collective of musicians and vocalists breaks down the barriers of jazz, funk, Latin, Brazilian, Afrobeat, R&B, soul, hip-hop, and modern gospel.

19

29

SAT H Moreira Chonguiça

(Mozambique) The internationally renowned saxophonist and ethnomusicologist makes his U.S. debut along with his Moreira Project.

B E G I N S AT 5 P. M .

8

SUN H Piano Marathon Cubano: Jorge Luis Pacheco, Harold López-Nussa, and Aldo López-Gavilán

Three of Cuba’s top jazz pianists perform a lively two-hour marathon concert with one, two, or all three onstage at any given time.

Presented in collaboration with FUNDarte.

9 MON H Sílvia Pérez Cruz and Raül Fernández Miró (Spain) Singer Cruz and pianist Miró present a unique blend of fado, jazz, and flamenco.

10

TUE H Romero Lubambo and Hernán Romero (Brazil/Spain)

The dynamic musical pairing features two acclaimed classical guitarists.

WED H José André (Bolivia)

The nine-year-old blind pianist and Latin jazz phenomenon makes his U.S. debut along with two D.C.-based jazz musicians.

THU H António Zambujo

(Portugal) The acclaimed fado singer merges cante alentejano with traditional fado, bossa nova, Brazilian popular music, and jazz.

Presented in collaboration with Arte Institute.

SAT H Samuel Prather’s Groove Orchestra

SUN H Family Night: Voices Rising

Members of the all-female chorus, founded upon feminist principles, raise their voices in joy and solidarity.

20 FRI H Rodrigo Leão (Portugal)

30

MON H Very Be Careful (VBC)

Straight from Los Angeles, the group performs Colombian vallenato music—a traditional cumbia sound centered around the accordion with percussion and bass.

Presented in collaboration with Arte Institute.

31

TUE H Senri Oe

The multi-instrumentalist is a founding musician of the well-known Portuguese ensemble Madredeus as well as the indie-rock band Sétima Legião.

5 P.M. SAMBA CLASS; 6 P.M. PERFORMANCE

21

The Japanese pop star and actor turned NYC-based jazz pianist makes his Millennium Stage debut.

SAT H Brass Ensemble São Paulo (Brazil)

Presented with the support of the Embassy of Japan and the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

The ensemble makes its U.S. debut with a program of South American rhythms including songs made famous by Carmen Miranda, popular songs from Carnaval, and more. Free samba class at 5 p.m.

*Free general admission tickets will be distributed in the States Gallery (Family Theater Lobby for Ron Funches) starting at approximately 5:30 p.m., up to 2 tickets per person.

Presented with the support of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Governo do Estado de São Paulo, Consulado Geral dos Estados Unidos em São Paulo, Ministério da Cultura do Brasil, and Governo Federal do Brasil.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHH ALL PERFORMERS AND PROGRAMS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 43

44 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITYLIST

Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

SearCh LISTIngS aT waShIngTonCITYpaper.Com

Music

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

Rock

UNLIMITED: THE MUSIC AND LYRICS OF STEPHEN SCHWARTZ

Friday 9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Railroad Earth. 7 p.m. $27. 930.com. bethesda blues and Jazz 7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda. (240) 330-4500. The Fabulous Hubcaps. 8 p.m. $25. bethesdabluesjazz.com.

2461 18th St., NW Washington, DC 202-667-5370

“Where the Beautiful People go to get

Ugly.”

birChmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Mike and the Mechanics, Steve Poltz.

7:30 p.m. $65. birchmere.com.

“One of the 25 best bars in America”

Comet Ping Pong 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 364-0404. Two Inch Astronaut, Alarms & Controls, French Horror. 10 p.m. $12. cometpingpong.com.

- Playboy Magazine

Redheads always drink 1/2 price Shiner Bock!

the hamilton 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000. JD McPherson, Dylan Pratt. 8:30 p.m. $20–$30. thehamiltondc.com.

LIVE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT

roCk & roll hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-ROCK. Swami John Reis & The Blind Shake, Le Yikes Surf Club.

9 p.m. $12. rockandrollhoteldc.com.

Thu: Ladies Night

u street musiC hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Wolf Alice. 7 p.m. $15. ustreetmusichall.com.

(No Cover For Ladies)

Patrick Alban & Noche Latina

Funk & R&B blues alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. A’ngela Winbush. 8 p.m. (Sold out) & 10 p.m. $43. bluesalley.com. troPiCalia 2001 14th St. NW. (202) 629-4535.

Water Seed, SugarBad. 7 p.m. $10. tropicaliadc.com.

ElEctRonic Flash 645 Florida Ave. NW. (202) 827-8791. Carl Craig. 10 p.m. $5–$12. flashdc.com. u street musiC hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Sharam, Sarah Myers, Rosenberg. 10 p.m. $12. ustreetmusichall.com.

Jazz bohemian Caverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Tim Green. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $20–$25. bohemiancaverns.com. twins Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Kelly Shepherd. 9 p.m. & 11 p.m. $15. twinsjazz.com.

BluEs zoo bar 3000 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 2324225. Swamp Keepers. 9 p.m. Free. zoobardc.com.

Folk sheraton Premiere 8661 Leesburg Pike, Tysons Corner. (703) 448-1234. DC Bluegrass Festival. 4 p.m. $15–$95. sheratontysonscorner.com.

Latin & World Beat

Hats off to Stephen Schwartz for penning some of musical theater’s best-loved hits of the past 40 years. From Pippin’s welcoming “Join Us” to every aspiring diva’s favorite song to belt, Wicked’s “Defying Gravity,” his songs have achieved such a level of cultural permanence that you’ve probably heard them even if you’re not a Broadway regular. While Signature Theatre preps a one-night tribute to its spiritual overlord, Stephen Sondheim, its resident company, No Rules Theatre, collaborates with Catholic University’s Rome School of Music to debut a revue that highlights Schwartz’s oeuvre. While he’s remembered first as a stage composer, he fell in with the Disney crowd in the mid-‘90s and wrote memorable lyrics for songs from Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Enchanted. If you’ve ever sung with all the voices of the mountain or painted with all the colors of the wind, it’s him you’re thanking. Enjoy his songs in a pared-down context, without any fear of evil witches or tone-deaf cultural appropriation. The show runs Feb. 20 to 28 at the Catholic University of America’s Ward Recital Hall, 620 Michigan Ave. NE. $5–$30.

—Caroline Jones (571) 527-2159. norulestheatre.org. howard theatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Brand Nubian, Kool G Rap. 8 p.m. $22.50–$35. thehowardtheatre.com.

DJ nigHts blaCk Cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. New Order Dance Party. 9:30 p.m. $10. blackcatdc.com.

saturday Rock

blaCk Cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Trash Talk, Ratking, Lee Bannon. 9 p.m. $15–$18. blackcatdc.com.

Comet Ping Pong 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 364-0404. Hatfield McCoy, Wanda Perkins Band, The Grey A. 10 p.m. $12. cometpingpong.com. dC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. 2:54, Honeyblood. 9 p.m. $10–$12. dcnine.com. the hamilton 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000. Big Something, Nappy Riddem. 8:30 p.m. $15–$20.

Hip-Hop

9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Railroad Earth. 8 p.m. $27. 930.com.

Funk & R&B

Fillmore silver sPring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Ra The MC, Awthentik.

7:30 p.m. $13. fillmoresilverspring.com.

bethesda blues and Jazz 7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda. (240) 330-4500. Tom Principato Band. 8 p.m. $25. bethesdabluesjazz.com.

barns at wolF traP 1645 Trap Road, Vienna.

(703) 255-1900. Big Sam’s Funky Nation. 8 p.m. $24. wolftrap.org.

Fri: The Johnny Artis Band R&B, Rock and Roll

Madam’s House Party On The Second Floor-Featuring DJ India 10:00pm

Sat: Sweet Suzi & the Sugafixx R&B, Rock and Roll Saturday Opening Act: Robert Lighthouse Acoustic Blues

7:00pm - 9:00pm Madam’s House Party On The Second Floor-Featuring DJ India 10:00pm

Sun:Down Stacy Brooks Home Blues Mon: One Nite Stand Reggae, Funk & R&B Tue: TheR&B, Johnny Artis Band Rock and Roll Wed: The Human Country Jukebox Band Open Mic-8pm Second Floor

Sun, Tues & Thurs

Second Floor: Drunkaoke (Karaoke with Two Drink Minimum)

www.madamsorgan.com

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 45

----------

Blues Alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. A’ngela Winbush. 8 p.m. (Sold out) & 10 p.m.

(Sold out) $43. bluesalley.com.

3701 Mount Vernon Ave. Alexandria, VA • 703-549-7500

HowArd THeATre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Luke James, BJ The Chicago Kid, George Tandy Jr. 7:30 p.m. $25–$55. thehowardtheatre.com.

For entire schedule go to Birchmere.com Find us on Facebook/Twitter!

Tix @ Ticketmaster.com 800-745-3000

Feb 27

MIKE+THE MECHANICS

1811 14TH ST NW

Steve Poltz

www.blackcatdc.com

NAJEE Mar 1 British invasion tour 2015

@blackcatdc FEB / MAR SHOWS

28

feat. Peter asher, Denny Laine,

Chad & Jeremy. Billy J. Kramer, Mike Pender’s searchers, terry sylvester Cindy BETH HART Alexander 4&5 GAELIC STORM 6&7 Rachelle FeRRell

3

8 Watch

aWards 2015

NEW ORDER DANCE PARTY

FRI 27

UNDER THE SHEETS

FRI 27

BURLESQUE (21+)

SAT 28

Washington area community theater honors

jesse cook the Quebe 10 Asleep At the wheel sisters 11 An Evening with seth Avett & jessicA leA mAyfield 9

leo kottke

12

DAVE ALVIN & PHIL ALVIN & THE GuILTy ONEs mid atlantic 14 Harmony sweepstakes regionals 16 Tommy emmanuel 17 Marcus Miller 13

18

LIZ LONGLEY

Brian Wright

ELEL AVERS

The Oak Ridge BOys 21 tom rush 22 reginaCarter’ssouthernComfort 23 LLoyd CoLE 20

As seen in “Glee”!

“See jane Sing”

24&25

An Evening with

jane lynch reed 26 todd Snider Foehl 27 Dailey & Vincent 28 The Dan BanD 29 Angie Stone Apr 2 Avery*SunShine 3 10,000 Maniacs 4 Cleve FranCis 7&8 Brian CulBertson 10 KeiKo Matsui 11 Al StewArt Rachael 12 Shawn Colvin Sage 13 Tower of power 14 Zappa plays Zappa

LEDISI With Special Guests

Intimate TRUTH TOUr THE

RAHEEM DEVAUGHN LEELA JAMES

Saturday, March 21, 8pm Dar Constitution Hall

Tickets On Sale Now through Ticketmaster.com/800-735-3000

THE JULIANA HATFIELD THREE CURSIVE SOLD OUT HOUSE OF SWEETBOTTOM BLUES & BURLESQUE (21+)

MURDER BY DEATH O’DEATH

SAT 7

SAT 7

RICH MOREL’S HOT SAUCE

THU 12

MAGIC MAN

EVERY WEEKEND AT 7PM

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

TEN FORWARD SICK SAD WORLD A HAPPY HOUR "HAPPY" HOUR 1 STAR TREK:TNG TWO DARIA EP. PER WEEK

ROMULAN ALE SPECIALS

EPISODES PER WEEK MYSTIK SPIRAL DRINK SPECIALS

NOW OPEN at 5:00 pm M-F for HAPPY HOUR!

RED ROOM & LUCKY CAT PINBALL

TAKE METRO!

WE ARE LOCATED 3 BLOCKS FROM THE U STREET/CARDOZO STATION

TO BUY TICKETS VISIT TICKETFLY.COM

46 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

Twins JAzz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Kelly Shepherd. 9 p.m. & 11 p.m. $15. twinsjazz.com.

mAdAm’s orgAn 2461 18th St. NW. (202) 6675370. Sweet Suzi & Sugafixx. 10 p.m. Free. madamsorgan.com. zoo BAr 3000 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 2324225. Bruce Ewan. 9 p.m. Free. zoobardc.com.

‘BECOME WHAT YOU ARE’ 21ST ANNIVERSARY TOUR

FRI 6

BircHmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Najee. 7:30 p.m. $45. birchmere.com.

BluEs

BLKKATHY

FRI 6

Jazz

DANCE PARTY / DRAG SHOW

MON 2

WED 4

FlAsH 645 Florida Ave. NW. (202) 827-8791. Robert Dietz. 8 p.m. $8. flashdc.com.

BoHemiAn cAverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Tim Green. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $20–$25. bohemiancaverns.com.

GAY//BASH!!

The Far West

ecHosTAge 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Infected Mushroom, Figure, Dotcom, Far Too Loud. 9 p.m. $25. echostage.com.

TRASH TALK RATKING

SAT 28

TUE 3

ElEctronic

Folk ArTispHere 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. (703) 8751100. Dom Felmons. 8 p.m. $18. artisphere.com. gypsy sAlly’s 3401 K St. NW. (202) 333-7700.

Skribe. 7 p.m. Free. gypsysallys.com. The Riverbreaks, Letitia Van Sant & The Bonafindes, Sam McCormally. 9 p.m. $10–$12. gypsysallys.com. sHerATon premiere 8661 Leesburg Pike, Tysons Corner. (703) 448-1234. DC Bluegrass Festival. 7 p.m. $15–$95. sheratontysonscorner.com.

Hip-Hop Fillmore silver spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. K Camp, Goldlink, Chaz French. 8 p.m. $35. fillmoresilverspring.com.

Sunday rock

BircHmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Peter Asher, Denny Laine, Chad & Jeremy, Billy J. Kramer, Mike Pender’s Searchers, Terry Sylvester. 7:30 p.m. $75. birchmere.com. rock & roll HoTel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-ROCK. Suuns, Disappears. 8 p.m. $14. rockandrollhoteldc.com. wArner THeATre 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000.

Hall and Oates, Mutlu. 7:30 p.m. $73–$148. warnertheatre.com.

Funk & r&B Blues Alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Wayna. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

THe HAmilTon 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000. Dr. John. 7:30 p.m. $75–$95. thehamiltondc.com.

Jazz BeTHesdA Blues And JAzz 7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda. (240) 330-4500. Branford Marsalis Quartet.

7:30 p.m. $60–$120. bethesdabluesjazz.com.

BluEs BArns AT wolF TrAp 1645 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. James Cotton. 7 p.m. $25. wolftrap.org.

World pATrioT cenTer 4500 Patriot Circle, Fairfax. (703) 993-3000. Ricardo Arjona. 7 p.m. $59–$139. patriotcenter.com.

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

“CIVILIZED” The white-collar 9-to-5 job is regularly portrayed as a conventional part of most Westernized societies. But without context, the idea seems arbitrary, even absurd. This subtext comes across in Jamie Uys’ South African comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy and Godfrey Reggio’s visual poem Koyaanisqatsi, and it’s the theme of local artist Ben Tolman’s latest show at Flashpoint, “Civilized.” Tolman, an American University graduate, finds inspiration in how modern life, with all its repetitive motions, ultimately limits us. In one drawing, a cross-section of a skyscraper reveals scores of nude human figures reading books, typing on computers, and shopping for clothes. In another (shown), an aerial shot reveals how a neighborhood, with its uniform domiciles and symmetrical streets and power lines, looks more like the face of a microchip than a place where little humans would live. Though the structure of our capitalist-consumer society will likely shackle your life and humanity forever, you can at least pretend to break free from its restraints by thinking through Tolman’s work. The exhibition is on view Wednesdays through Saturdays noon to 6 p.m., to March 28, at Flashpoint Gallery, 916 G St. NW. Free. (202) 315-1305. culturaldc.org.

—Tim Regan

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 47

Hip-Hop 9:30 Club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Aesop Rock with Rob Sonic, DJ Abilities. 7 p.m. $20. 930.com. bossa bistro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

Gabriel Teodros, the 1978ers. 9 p.m. $10. bossproject.com. www.bethesdabluesjazz.com

f

e

b

r

u

a

r

y

Monday

THE BAD PLUS

Rock

th 26

cathy ponton King band feat. curtis pope f 27 the fabulous hubcaps Sa 28 tom principato band m a r c h

birChmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Beth Hart, Cindy Alexander. 7:30 p.m. $55. birchmere.com.

Sunday march 1

the branford marSaliS Quartet

FEB 27

JOHN EATON

blaCk Cat baCkstage 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. BlkKathy, Lowercase Letters. 7:30 p.m. $12. blackcatdc.com.

Verizon Center 601 F St. NW. (202) 628-3200.

Maroon 5, Magic!, Rozzi Crane. 7:30 p.m. $29.50– $125. verizoncenter.com.

TOMMY CECIL, BASS

Piano Solos and Jazz Duets

(shows at 3p & 7:30p)

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

WedneSday march 4

rare earth th 5

soulcial hour band Sunday march 8

midge ure

FEB 28

BIG SAM’S FUNKY NATION GENERAL ADMISSION

(Solo acouStic) Plus

margot macdonald

Su 15 W 18

new riders of the purple sage the drifters friday march 20 & Saturday march 21

maggie roSe

Sunday march 22 “WhiplaSh” nominated for 5 oScarS: Best Picture, Best suPPorting Actor, Writing, Film editing & sound mixing

MAR 5

AUSTIN LOUNGE LIZARDS Clever satire-laden Americana

MAR 7

VATSALA MEHRA

Vibrant Indian singer, known as the “Ghazal Queen”

7p - “WhiplaSh”

film Short vieWing (20 minuteS)

730p - hank levy legacy band performance

f 27 th 2 W8

franK solivan & dirty Kitchen plus bumper JacKsons a p r i l chucK redd the chris grasso trio w/ sharon clarK

MAR 11

BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO GENERAL ADMISSION DANCE

thurSday april 9

the fabulouS thunderbirdS FeAT. KiM WiLson

MAR 19

LUCY KAPLANSKY & RICHARD SHINDELL The Pine Hill Project

7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD (240) 330-4500

Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams

SEE FULL SCHEDULE AT

Two Blocks from Bethesda Metro/Red Line Free Parking on Weekends 48 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

WOLFTRAP.ORG

MALPASO DANCE COMPANY Now that Cuba is more accessible to Americans, it may be easier for us to understand life on the island—not from photos of the Castro brothers or Hemingway’s fond reminiscences of mojitos that flowed like water, but from contemporary Cubans who’ve spent their entire lives there. One such group of Cubans who tell the stories of their homeland is the Malpaso Dance Company, which formed in 2013 and combines elements of modern dance with the Latin styles that developed on the island, like rumba, cha-cha, and salsa, giving their performances the lively feel of a night at a Havana club. At its Dance Place performance, the company will present the D.C. premiere of a new work by Artistic Director Osnel Delgado set to music by Arturo O’Farrill. The electric and sensual arrangements will leave you ready to book a ticket down south. Malpaso Dance Company performs at 7 p.m. at Dance Place, 3225 8th St. NE. $15–$30. (202) 269-1600. danceplace.org.

—Caroline Jones

CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

THE ROBERT L. FELLER AND RUTH M. JOHNSTON FELLER COLLECTION

The National Gallery of Art knows a thing or two about preservation. In addition to the many works on view in its public galleries, countless others are tucked away at its conservation division in Landover. Since the hardcore historians and restorers work in relative isolation in order to best protect the art, we peons don’t get to see the pieces until they’re in proper condition. But for those curious about the conservation progress, the NGA is mounting a new show drawn from the book collection of noted conservation scientist Robert L. Feller. In addition to his volumes exploring the science of color and history of paint, visitors can see Feller’s journals from his 1966 trip to Florence, Italy, where he worked with conservators responding to the city’s flood. Aspiring and amateur art historians will enjoy this peek into the world of one of the field’s great masters. The exhibition is on view Mondays through Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, 6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. (202) —Caroline Jones 737-4215. nga.gov.

Funk & R&B

Hip-Hop

Blues Alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Snuhgie. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. Free. bluesalley.com.

howArD theAtre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Curren$y. 8 p.m. $30–$65. thehowardtheatre.com.

Tuesday

Wednesday

Rock

9:30 CluB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Gang of Four, Public Access T.V. 7 p.m. $30. 930.com.

BirChmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Beth Hart, Cindy Alexander. 7:30 p.m. $55. birchmere.com.

BlACk CAt BACkstAge 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Elel, Avers. 7:30 p.m. $12. blackcatdc.com.

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Ewert and the Two Dragons, Save The Arcadian. 8 p.m. $10–$12. dcnine.com.

Rock

BethesDA Blues AnD JAzz 7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda. (240) 330-4500. Rare Earth. 7:30 p.m. $35–$40. bethesdabluesjazz.com.

BlACk CAt 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. The Julianna Hatfield Three. 7:30 p.m. $20. blackcatdc.com.

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Saints Of Valory, Wind and the Wave. 9 p.m. $10–$12. dcnine.com.

electRonic

Fillmore silver spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Bush, Theory of a Deadman. 7:30 p.m. $50.50. fillmoresilverspring.com.

u street musiC hAll 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. Sweater Beats, Kastle, Manila Killa. 10 p.m. $12. ustreetmusichall.com.

Blues

Jazz

Blues Alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Billy Thompson Band. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $20. bluesalley.com.

BohemiAn CAverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Howard “Kingfish” Franklin. 7:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $10–$15. bohemiancaverns.com.

S H AW - H O WA R D METRO ACCESS O F F GREEN LINE

620 T ST. NW WASHINGTON DC, 2001 202.803.2899 THEHOWARDTHEATRE.COM

VALET PARKING + SELF PARKING ON INTERSECTION OF 7TH & T ST FULL DINNER MENU EVERY SHOW NIGHT

JUST ANNOUNCED

5/1- ILOVEMAKONNEN

6/19-GINGER BAKER

3/19- BLITZ THE AMBASSADOR

3/22- Y’ANNA CRAWLEY

3/28-KENNY LATTIMORE

5/19-TECH N9NE

5/22-MOBB DEEP

5/15- WHITE FORD BRONCO

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 27TH

UPCOMING SHOWS

HIP HOP LIVS & 93.9 WKYS PRESENT

BRAND NUBIAN & KOOL G RAP

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28TH MAJIC 102.3 PRESENTS

LUKE JAMES & BJ THE CHICAGO KID GEORGE TANDY JR. / RO JAMES

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28TH

SUNDAY MARCH 1ST

3/7 3/11 3/12 3/13 3/14 3/20

LATE SHOW EXQUISITE GHANA INDEPENDENCE BALL LUCIANO FUNK PARADE KICKOFF POINT BREAK LIVE

BALTSOUNDMANAGEMENT PRESENTS

PEARIS J W/ JUS PAUL, J BEALE, TP & RAW ELEMENT RAUL ROMERO DE LOS NOSEQUIEN Y LOS NOSECUANTOS

RED BARAAT’S

FESTIVAL OF COLORS

THE CORNEL WEST / THEORY

FRIDAY MARCH 6TH

TUESDAY MARCH 3RD

RAHSAAN PATTERSON

CURREN$Y

WEDNESDAY MARCH 4TH

SATURDAY MARCH 7

RAW DC PRESENTS:

LATE SHOW

THE PRINCE & MICHAEL JACKSON EXPERIENCE

THURSDAY MARCH 5TH

LES NUBIANS

76 DEGREES WEST BAND

GRANDEUR

DC’S LARGEST LOCAL ARTIST

MAYSA LATE FAMILIAR FACES TITLE FIGHT & LA DISPUTE KID CREOLE & THE COCONUTS TEMPTATION PRESENTS: WERQ OUT! 3/29 A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC OF MOTOWN 4/2 DAVID CHOI / TESS HENLEY

3/21 3/21 3/25 3/26 3/27

THE WORLD FAMOUS HARLEM GOSPEL CHOIR

EVERY SUNDAY !

4/3 ONE MORE TIME THE TRIBUTE TO DAFT PUNK 4/7 NORTHEAST GROOVERS 4/8 MORGAN HERITAGE 4/10 INCOGNITO 4/11 MIXTAPE 4/25 KEITH SWEAT: ALBUM RELEASE SHOW (BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!) 4/30 SHEILA E.

$45 GETS YOU ALL YOU CAN EAT SOUTHERN STYLE BUFFET AND ENTRY TO THE SHOW

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 49

D.C.’s

UPTOWN BLUES

w/

Open Mic Blues JaM Big Boy LittLe every Thursday

Fri. Feb. 27 Swamp KeeperS Band Sat. Feb. 28 BiLL ewan the red harmonica King Fri. Mar. 6 over the Limit Sat. Mar. 7 Big Boy LittLe Band Fri. Mar. 13 SooKey Jump BLueS Band Sat. Mar. 14 SmoKin’ poLecatS

awesomest events calendar. washingtoncitypaper.com/ calendar

(across from the National Zoo)

LIVE

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

JD

McPHERSON

W/ DYLAN PRATT FEB 27

washingtoncitypaper.com

W/ NAPPY RIDDEM SATURDAY FEB 28

$3 PBR & NATTY BOH ALL DAY EVERY DAY

Birchmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Gaelic Storm. 7:30 p.m. $35. birchmere.com.

u street music hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 5881880. MATOMA, Solidisco. 10 p.m. $12. ustreetmusichall.com.

Kennedy center millennium stage 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Metales M5. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

Jazz

music center at strathmore 5301 Tuckerman Lane, Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Paddy Moloney & The Chieftains. 8 p.m. $35–$78. strathmore.org.

Thursday rock

dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Desert Noises, Paperhaus, Linear Downfall. 9 p.m. $10–$12. dcnine.com. the hamilton 600 14th St. NW. (202) 787-1000.

Jimmie Vaughan, Jonny Grave. 7:30 p.m. $30–$40. thehamiltondc.com.

Blues alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Alex Bugnon. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

Bohemian caverns 2001 11th St. NW. (202) 2990800. Jamie Broumas. 7:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $23–$28. bohemiancaverns.com.

country 9:30 cluB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Pat Green.

7 p.m. $35. 930.com. hill country live 410 7th St. NW. (202) 556-2050.

Hot Club of Cowtown. 9:30 p.m. $18–$22. hillcountrywdc.com.

World Birchmere 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Gaelic Storm. 7:30 p.m. $35. birchmere.com. howard theatre 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Red Baraat. 8 p.m. $20–$40. thehowardtheatre.com.

UNDERGROUND COMEDY

DOORS OPEN AT 730PM | SHOW STARTS AT 830PM F R I D AY, F E B 2 7 T H

CORI DIALS PRESENTS GOTH GIRLS FUN DOORS AT 8PM SHOW AT 10PM S A T U R D AY, F E B 2 8 T H

HOT NIGHT PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS BURLESQUE DOORS OPEN AT 8PM SHOW AT 10PM M O N D AY, M A R 2 N D

DISTRICT TRIVIA NO COVER

T U E S D AY, M A R 3 R D

LAST RESORT COMEDY NO COVER DOORS OPEN AT 7PM SHOW STARTS AT 8PM

W E D N E S D AY, M A R 4 T H

PERFECT LIARS CLUB DOORS OPEN AT 6PM SHOW STARTS AT 730PM TRIVIA STARTS AT 730PM NO COVER T H U R S D AY, M A R 5 T H

UNDERGROUND COMEDY

HOWIE DAY

NO COVER DOORS OPEN AT 7PM SHOW STARTS AT 8PM

SAT, MAR 7

F R I D AY, M A R 6 T H

AMA AMERICAN LATIN MUSICIANS

DRKWAV FEAT JOHN MEDESKI, SKERIK

DOORS OPEN AT 8PM

S A T U R D AY, M A R 7 T H

NEIL GAIMON “SANDMAN STRIPS” BURLESQUE DOORS OPEN AT 8PM SHOW STARTS AT 10PM $15 S U N D AY, M A R 8 T H

RAINBOW PROJECT CABARET DOOR AT 730PM $25 AT THE DOOR

THEHAMILTONDC.COM

ElEctronic

*all shows 21+

FRI, MAR 6

AND ADAM DEITCH

World

T H U R S D AY, F E B 2 6 T H

“SPIRIT OF SATCH” DR. JOHN INTERPRETS LOUIS ARMSTRONG JIMMIE VAUGHAN & THE TILT-AWHIRL BAND W/ JONNY GRAVE

Bossa Bistro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

Feedel Band. 9 p.m. $10. bossproject.com.

600 beers from around the world Downstairs: good food, great beer, $3 PBR & Natty Boh’s all day every day

SUN, MAR 1

THUR, MAR 5

TRIVIA EVERY M O N D AY & W E D N E S D AY

$10 BURGER & BEER MON-FRI 4 P M -7 P M

FRIDAY

BIG SOMETHING

twins Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. William Chan. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. $10. twinsjazz.com.

Fillmore silver spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Logic. 8 p.m. $30. fillmoresilverspring.com.

dixieLand direct Jazz Band

202-232-4225 zoobardc.com

Funk & r&B

Hip-Hop

Sundays miKe FLaherty’S

3000 Connecticut Avenue, NW

Bossa Bistro 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

Proyecto Jazz. 9 p.m. $5. bossproject.com.

1523 22nd St NW – Washington, DC 20037 (202) 293-1887 - www.bierbarondc.com @bierbarondc.com for news and events

50 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: TUESDAY

CURREN$Y

Before most Curren$y performances, a cloud of weed smoke signals the artist’s arrival, so his visit to the Howard Theatre right after D.C. is scheduled to legalize pot is a timely one. The New Orleans-bred rapper’s penchant for getting high is well known to listeners, but his appeal extends beyond that particular passion; the jester carves out a niche in modern hip-hop by mixing his razor-sharp wit with a goofy sense of humor. His smooth drawl and delivery are punctuated by random pop-culture references that range from sitcoms like Family Matters and Full House to the more infamous moments from MTV’s The Real World. Curren$y’s catalog, while vast (he’s been releasing tracks since 2002), lacks huge hit singles. But don’t try to explain that to his fans—judging from the audience’s tendency to recite each track lyric-for-lyric, you’d swear he’s dominated the airwaves. Curren$y performs at 8 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. $30–$65.

—Julian Kimble (202) 803-2899. thehowardtheatre.com.

washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 51

FROM THE CREATOR OF ‘FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS’

“

ONE OF THE FLAT-OUT FUNNIEST FILMS IN AGES! ”

HILARIOUS!” “ HILARIOUS ” HILARIOUS! “ HILARIOUS ” HILARIOUS! “ HILARIOUS ” HILARIOUS! “

PRESENTS

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THE BEST COMEDY OF THE YEAR!” WWW.WHATWEDOINTHESHADOWS.COM

WASHINGTON, DC Landmark’s E Street Cinema (202) 783-9494

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ANNAPOLIS BALTIMORE Bow Tie The Harbour 9 Charles (410) 224-1145 (410) 727-FILM

BETHESDA Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema (301) 652-7273

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM ®

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“SIX TALES OF APOCALYPTIC REVENGE. THE YEAR’S MOST FEARLESSLY FUNNY FILM.” -Richard Corliss, TIME MAGAZINE FROM PRODUCERS

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EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENTS START FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27 Washington, DC Arlington Bethesda LANDMARK’S LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA AMC LOEWS SHIRLINGTON 7 BETHESDA ROW CINEMA (202) 783-9494 (888) AMC-4FUN (301) 652-7273

VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.WILDTALESMOVIE.COM

Bohemian Caverns Tuesdays Artist in Residency Roy Haynes Tribute B FE

DC’s Legendary Jazz Club

Established in 1926 2001 11th ST NW - (202)299-0800

Valentine’s DayWeekend

Aaron “Ab” Abernathy w/ Nat Turner Fri Feb 13th

Howard “Kingfish” R Franklin MA

Tim Green th th Fri & Sat Feb 27 & 28

Jamie Broumas Thur Mar 5th

Akua Allrich Fri & Sat Mar 6 & 7

Loide

th

th

Eric Deutsch

th

Sat Feb 14

Aruan Ortiz

Lenny Robinson

Sun Mar 8th

Kenny Wesley Sun 3/22 Fri & Sat Feb 20 & 21 Sun 3/29 Ethnic Heritage Ensemble Joel Harrison th

st

nd

Sun Feb 22

Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra Mondays @ 8pm

"This group is something special." ~ Mike West (CityPaper)

Jeremy Pelt Fri & Sat

rd

th

Apr 3 & 4

www.BohemianCaverns.com

52 february 27, 2015 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

ThE MCLOVINS

Summer camp relationships have an uncanny way of extending beyond camp boundaries. Some people make lifelong friendships, others marry—and some form jam bands.

That’s the case with the McLovins, a Hartford, Conn., four-piece that started making music in 2009 after meeting at various local music camps. Since all four members have different tastes in music, their compositions vary from simple folk-rock arrangements like “Samson” to more meandering jams like “Tokyo Tea”; live shows are dotted with extended covers of Phish tracks and roots anthems like the Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek.” And while the idea of a jam band might conjure thoughts of tie-dye-plastered baby Deadheads who reek of patchouli, the McLovins sound more like Dispatch than Jerry Garcia & Co. They’ve toured their mellow melodies across New England’s college campuses and small clubs over the past five years and now bring their act further south. Head to Gypsy Sally’s ready to hear long guitar breaks punctuated by tambourine rattles and a few sing-alongs.

The McLovins perform with the Beirds at 8 p.m. at Gypsy Sally’s, 3401 K St. NW. $10–$14.

—Morgan Hines (202) 333-7700. gypsysallys.com.

Hip-Hop Fillmore Silver Spring 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Logic. 8 p.m. $30. fillmoresilverspring.com.

TheaTer

Back to methuSelah George Bernard experiments with science fiction in this satirical romp that journies from the Garden of Eden to far into the future.

Washington Stage Guild at Undercroft Theatre. 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. To March 15. $20-$50. (240) 582-0050. stageguild.org.

BeSSie’S BlueS MetroStage revives this musical look at the 20th century, which won six Helen Hayes Awards when it debuted at Studio Theatre 20 years ago. Playwright Thomas W. Jones II directs and choreographs the production that tells the story of the blues from the perspective of singer Bessie Smith. MetroStage. 1201 N. Royal St., Alexandria. To March 15. $55-$60. (703) 548-9044. metrostage.org. cherokee One white and one black couple seek rejuvenation in nature and head to a campsite in Cherokee, North Carolina. But when a group member disappears and a strange local makes the remaining members consider living off the grid forever, their plans and lives quickly change. John Vreeke directs Lisa D’Amour’s companion to Detroit, which played at Woolly last season. Woolly Mammoth Theatre. 641 D St. NW. To March 8. $40-$68. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net.

FrankenStein Faction of Fools puts its signature Commedia take on Mary Shelley’s gothic novel about a mad inventor and the monster he brings to life. Gilbert C. Eastman Studio Theatre. 800 Florida Ave. NE. To March 1. $5-$30. (202) 737-7230. capitalfringe.org.

Frozen 10-year-old Rhona disappears and the actions of her mother and killer are followed over the next several years by psychiatrists. Delia Taylor directs this pro-

duction of Bryony Lavery’s script. Anacostia Playhouse.

2020 Shannon Place SE. To March 1. $25-$35. (202) 544-0703. anacostiaplayhouse.com. houSe oF DeSireS In this play written in the 17th century by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, four characters squabble over mistaken identities and failed romances.

Director Hugo Medrano sets his version in 1940s Mexico and incorporates mariachi music into this farce that considers the will of women during a period when they were subjected to a strict moral code. GALA Hispanic Theatre. 3333 14th St. NW. To March 1. $20-$50.

(202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org. kiD victory Legendary composer John Kander collaborates with playwright Greg Pierce on this world premiere musical about a young boy who returns home a year after disappearing and his struggle to reenter society. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To March 22. $29-$94. (703) 8209771. signature-theatre.org. king heDley ii In the ninth play from August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle,” King Hedley returns from prison determined to open a business. But when a scheming conman threatens to reveal long held family secrets, King’s plans are threatened. Timothy DOuglas directs this look at the daily struggles of a community in the 1980s. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To March 8. $40-$90. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org. laSt oF the WhyoS A gang leader in 1880s New York travels 100 years into the future to confront his future self in this mysterious and cinematic play. Rebecca Holderness returns to Spooky Action to direct this play by Barbara Wiechmann. Spooky Action Theater.

1810 16th St. NW. To March 1. $10-$35. (301) 9201414. spookyaction.org. the lieutenant oF iniShmore When the black cat of a mad Irish liberation fighter is killed, his neighbors try to replace it without his knowledge. But when they wind up with an orange cat instead, the thoughtful couple has to contend with a world of machine guns

and terrorism. Matthew R. Wilson directs Martin McDonagh’s dark but gleeful comedy. Constellation Theatre at Source. 1835 14th St. NW. To March 8. $20-$45. (202) 204-7741. constellationtheatre.org.

Film

Mary Stuart Holly Twyford and Kate Eastwood Norris star in this new production of Frederick Schiller’s play that chronicles the final days and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Folger Elizabethan Theatre. 201 E. Capitol St. SE. To March 8. $40-$75. (202) 544-7077. folger.edu.

off against his ex-girlfriend as they both try to trick a billionaire. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

the MetroManiacS Alexis Piron’s classic farce involves poets, pseudonyms, disguises, and many intertwining relationships. Shakespeare Theatre Company presents the play as part of its ReDiscovery Series.

Lansburgh Theatre. 450 7th St. NW. To March 8. $20-$100. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org.

Much ado about nothing This latest wordless production from Synetic Theater sets the story of confirmed bachelor Benedick and his equally stubborn and single counterpart Beatrice in 1950s Las Vegas. Paata Tsikurishvili directs the company’s 11th “Silent Shakespeare” adaptation. Synetic Theater at Crystal City.

1800 South Bell St., Arlington. To March 22. $15-$95.

(800) 494-8497. synetictheater.org. othello WSC Avant Bard presents a new production of Shakespeare’s tale of love, hate, and jealousy, the only major tragedy by the Bard that the troupe hasn’t performed. Theatre on the Run. 3700 S. Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington. To March 1. $30-$35. (703) 2281850. arlingtonarts.org. the teMpeSt Taffety Punk presents another allfemale Shakespeare production as part of its Riot Grrrls series. Company member Lise Bruneau tells the story of an overthrown duke and a mysterious monster in this new version of Shakespeare’s magical company.

Taffety Punk at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. 545 7th St. SE. To Feb. 28. $15. (202) 261-6612. taffetypunk.com.

FocuS Will Smith and Margot Robbie star in n this comedic caper about a conman who faces

“RADIANT...THRILLING...POWERFUL!” -THE VILLAGE VOICE

“

RIVETING!

”

-Bilge Ebiri, VULTURE

SLICK, STYLISH...

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“

the trial oF ViViane aMSaleM An n gett: Israeli woman tries to divorce her husband and faces opposition from the ultra-religious marriage laws in this courtroom drama starring Ronit Elkabetz. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

-Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

to all that Otto Wall (Paul Schn goodbye neider) is thrown back into bachelorhood after his wife surprises him with a divorce. An interesting take on the 30-something singles scene from the writer of JUNEBUG. Avalon Theatre. 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW. (202) 966-6000. theavalon.org. huMan capital Rich Italians and their imitan tors interact in this acclaimed Italian film that was nominated for the Academ Award for Best Foreign Language Film. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

“EXCELLENT!” “ELECTRIFYING!” -ROGEREBERT.COM

“A GREAT FILM!”

n

Film clips are written by Caroline Jones

A FILM BY PAOLO VIRZI

HUMAN CAPITAL

-PLAYBACK

the lazaruS eFFect Overly ambitious doctors figure out how to bring patients back from the dead and things shockingly don’t turn out so well in this horror film directed by David Gelb and starring Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, and Donald Glover. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

What We do in the ShadoWS Flight of the Conchords creator Jemaine Clement co-stars and codirects this comedy about four vampires struggling to survive as roommates and defend the humans they come across and start to feel fondly for. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information)

-FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

A FILM BY CÉLINE SCIAMMA

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STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27 WASHINGTON, DC

VIRGINIA

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STARTS FRIDAY, 2/27 LANDMARK THEATRES

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“THE DIRECTOR’S MOST TWISTED, MOST

DELICIOUSLY ENTERTAINING FILM. ”

-THE PLAYLIST

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

RED BARAAT Brooklyn’s Red Baraat knows how to rock a party, and Thursday night, the band will celebrate the Hindu springtime event known as Holi, or the Festival of Colors. Holi occurs on the last full moon of the lunar month Falgun, when revelers dance and throw colorful chalk-like powders at friends. Red Baraat’s nine-piece brass and percussion combo is led by dhol drummer Sunny Jain, who incorporates his fondness for bhangra, jazz, funk, and go-go into the up-tempo tracks. Though the band takes inspiration from traditional music, its members are not traditionalists: On its new album, Gaadi of Truth, it mixes sounds through processing pedals, inserts some rapped verses about racial profiling, and includes a song remixed by Karsh Kale, who adds programmed beats inspired by music from South Asia, the U.K., and the U.S. The new release also includes more melodic tracks that call to mind flamenco music and the soundtracks of Bollywood and Spaghetti Westerns. Live, these tunes will offer celebrants a breather in an otherwise energetic performance. Red Baraat performs at 8 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. $20–$40. (202) 803-2899.

—Steve Kiviat thehowardtheatre.com.

“SO CRISPLY DIRECTED, FURIOUSLY PACED AND

GLEEFULLY PERFORMED.”

-JON FROSCH

“

WICKEDLY FUNNY. ”

-ERICA ABEEL

EVENTUALLY STARS BURN OUT.

A FILM BY

JULIANNE

DAVID CRONENBERG

MOORE

MIA

JOHN

WASIKOWSKA

WITH

CUSACK

ROBERT

AND

PATTINSON

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START FRIDAY, FEB. 27

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WEST END CINEMA

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washingtoncitypaper.com february 27, 2015 53