Now that is how you dance to James Brown’s “Sex Machine.” Monica Bill Barnes presents Another Parade—a new work that celebrates and questions dance-making themes that have surfaced over the past ten years, including allusions to pop-culture, show business, absurdity and high drama—from March 4 to 8 at this year’s Harkness Dance Festival.
92YTribeca Snapshot: Janeane Garofalo and Paul F. Tompkins
Photo: Comedy Below Canal on February 12
They really look like they’re having fun, right? Janeane and Paul host a night of comedy every month at 92YTribeca (the next is March 12) but it’s not like we’re slouching in the meantime.
92Y Video: Bob Schieffer in Conversation with Leonard Lopate
Recalling the time three decades ago as a reporter for the Forth Worth Star-Telegram in Texas when he drove Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, at her request, to the jail Oswald was being held at—landing an exclusive interview with her, Bob Schieffer told an audience at the 92Y, “back then in those days, we never told people we’re newspaper reporters. I mean, if they thought we were cops, we just let them think that.”
It has been more than 40 years since that time, and though the ethics and practice of journalism have stayed relatively unchanged, the tools and utilities used to practice the craft have evolved as the technology has, and Bob Schieffer is embracing them, to an extent. Mediabistro recently quoted Bob in an article (no longer online) as saying, “Nobody knows where journalism is going. Nobody knows whether our students here at TCU will be working for newspapers, web sites, or television stations. So we’re going to make sure that everybody who works here is familiar with all the various platforms in journalism.”
For example, Bob is making use of Twitter, soliciting questions from his followers for an upcoming interview with US HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. But he does hold some reservations about the Internet, and blogs in particular. On stage at the 92Y with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate a few months ago discussing journalism, the media’s role in the build up to the Iraq war, the paralyzing effects money is having on politics in Washington, and a variety of other topics, Bob pondered the new face of journalism:
”we live in this world of the blog…the Internet is the first conveyor of news on a national scale that has no editor…this stuff pops up on the blogs, we don’t know where it’s from. We don’t know if it’s true, we don’t know if it’s false.”
He went on to consider the role of newspapers in news production, declaring that there will always be a need for newspapers like the New York Times who produce original and accurate news stories. But in five years, will people still be reading the New York Times on the train, holding a paper under their arms, he asked? Or will it all be read on Kindles and iPods? In the midst of this new technological revolution, “no one knows”. With the fate of the Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper with 150 years in service to the community that recently shut down, these are questions weighing heavy on the minds of many media professionals.
The 2008 election was historic—not only did we elect a black president, we crowned a lesbian Rhodes scholar as America’s queen of political commentary. Rachel Maddow took the media world by storm with her irreverence and intelligence, sending Marie Claire, New York magazine and countless bloggers into a girl-crush tizzy.
After years of policy-level AIDS activism and odd jobs that ran from the classic coffee shop gig to wearing an inflatable calculator costume, Rachel landed a show at Air America, the progressive talk radio syndicate started in 2004 to counterbalance the right-wing Rush Limbocracy of the radio waves. There, she honed an unapologetically liberal position from which to question Bush-era politics, and started getting invited to provide left-wing punditry on various media outlets. She told the New York Times about her rise:
If you want a left-right fight, in 2004 or today, there’s this roster of dozens, if not hundreds, of conservative talk-show hosts to book. On the left there’s Alan Colmes. Oh, wait a minute, he’s taken. I think I got booked, initially, by default.
In late 2008, she brought her Jon Stewartesque wit, her Bill O’Reillyish ferociousness and her Oxford Doctorate of Philosophy to primetime MSNBC, filling in for Keith Olbermann. Viewers responded to her knowing smile and her laser-sharp analyses, and MSNBC decided to make her a permanent fixture. On the dawn of getting her very own primetime show, The Nation raved:
What’s remarkable about Maddow’s ascension is not its velocity--Hurricane Katrina made Anderson Cooper in less than a week--but the shifts in media it may demarcate. Maddow is one of the few left-liberal women to bust open the world of TV punditry, which has made icons of right-wing commentators like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Unlike her beautiful, bilious conservative female counterparts or the cocksure boys-on-the-bus analysts, however, Maddow didn’t get here by bluster and bravado but with a combination of crisp thinking and galumphing good cheer.
And we all noticed--The Rachel Maddow Show doubled the ratings for the 9 pm time slot in just one month, and repeatedly beat out Larry King Live for that sexy 25-to-54-year old demographic.
Michael Cerveris, Christopher Shinn, Elisabeth Vincentelli
Hedda Gabler was first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and since then has become a mainstay of Broadway, with a long list of accomplished actors taking turns playing the iconic role of Hedda, including, but not limited to, Eleanora Duse, Eva Le Gallienne, Anne Meacham, Ingrid Bergman, Jill Bennett, Janet Suzman, Kate Burton, Kate Mulgrew, Annette Bening, Judy Davis, Cate Blanchett, and now Mary Louise Parker in playwright Christopher Shinn’s latest adaption on Broadway.
The role of Hedda Gabler, ”often regarded as the female Hamlet” has been widely described as a difficult role to play, and has been interpreted in multitude of ways, with Hedda alternately being portrayed as a villain, a heroine, a feminist, or a victim. New York magazine provocatively headlined a recent article on Shinn’s production, “The Curse of Hedda Gabler: Mary-Louise Parker is the latest to tackle the iconic role. Has she, finally, gotten it right?” They continued:
“They all want to play Hedda, the female stars of stage and screen unjustly deprived of characters in the canon with real stature—despite the fact that she is a borderline psycho who resists our sympathy, and that Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is an obstacle course over a minefield: creaky, exposition-laden, rife with the potential for unintentional laughs, bound by conventions of drawing-room realism.”
BroadwayWorld.com concluded, “It is a masterful performance in every way and is met point-for-point by Ms. Parker. When these two actors [Ms. Parker and Michael Cerveris] are together on stage, the electricity is almost palpable.”
Critics and reviewers of Shinn’s Hedda have been wringing their hands and twisting their words in an attempt to offer some sort of edible guidance for their readers who are expecting such. Doing you one better, on March 2, 92YTribeca will host Tony-Award-winning actor Michael Cerveris, who plays Jorgen Tesman, the husband of Hedda, Obie-Award-winning playwright Christopher Shinn and the New York Post’s new chief theater critic, Elisabeth Vincentelli, to discuss the latest adaption of this play, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the production and creative process involved.
Dr. Marc Weissbluth, sleep expert and author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, returns to the Y next week to share the science of slumber in two talks for parents, Sleep Smarts and Twins. The video above is from November 2007 when he hosted a panel of parents at the Y to talk about effective strategies for establishing healthy sleep patterns for their children—and themselves. These smiling parents are the best indicators of how good his advice is.
Adam Hirsch (Mashable), Caroline McCarthy (CNET), Nicholas Carlson (Silicon Alley Insider)
As you might imagine, a panel talk on “The State of the NYC Blogosphere” was heavily attended by bloggers and media types who blogged and Twittered every last breath of it. What were the big takeaways?
Lauren Cerand, PR specialist, took notes as she “live-tweeted”:
“The internet is much movie as newspaper. Newspapers created a biz model that existed for 100 years. So what’s next?”
“The recall on mobile ads is actually fantastic. News outlets need to come up with a novel content delivery vehicle.”
“Consumers are willing to pay for a package (WSJ, cable) or content (iTunes). Consumers will pay for entertainment but not text.”
“Solutions: better metrics, publishers should collude and create a new standard.”
“The online audience is vastly undervalued; maybe because online ads are terrible.”
“If u have any personality @ all & u have a pretty face, milk this (social media) for all its worth” ~ Alana Turner
“New York Blogosphere means everything & nothing all @ the same time.”
The discussion kicked off with Matt Buchanan, associate editor of Gizmodo, who quickly pointed out the imprecision of the term New York blogosphere. In order to stay afloat, Buchanan claimed, many of New York’s top blogs are steering toward nationalization. He cited Gawker as an example of a blog that has been, to paraphrase, rescued from the Brooklyn literary crowd in order to gain wider appeal. So is it still a New York blog? He didn’t know and neither do we.
Perhaps the most noteworthy piece of information came from Bryan Keefer, the director of product for The Daily Beast, when he answered a question from the audience on the potential for companies to use blogs to publish content about themselves. Keefer didn’t sound optimistic: “Audiences respond to authenticity … that’s Marketing 101.”
In fact, I much enjoyed adorable Nicholas Carlson’s spiel about how to write a headline. A senior editor of Silicon Alley Insider, he was funny without being snarky and seemingly quite smart about his twittering, new media world. The word aggregation was in high usage. But Carlson did say humorously, “It is a good idea to bring something original to the Internet from time to time.”
In 2002, the French Chambre Syndicale de Haute Couture invited Ralph Rucci to show his haute couture collection in Paris, the first American designer to receive an invitation to do so since Mainbocher in the 30’s. Born the son of a Philadelphia butcher, Rucci is described as a rock star among the chauffer-driven set by Style.com. Not a familiar name to those getting their dose of fashion news from Oscar ceremonies, Rucci recently told an audience at the 92nd Street Y that he doesn’t loan clothes out for awards ceremonies, and is “not talented” enough to make mass marketable clothes. Advertising very little, if at all, his clothes are revered by a quiet and very influential class of women who attend his shows, buy his pieces, and wear them in public.
Asked on stage at the Y by interviewer Iku Ude of aRude Magazine just how much of fashion is advertising as opposed to substance, Ralph hesitated to respond, choosing his words carefully before elaborating diplomatically. “I’m convinced,” he said ruefully, “that some of the greatest work is never seen because some of those great people don’t have the availability to advertise significantly. The incestuous relationship between a magazine and advertisers is not new, but it has become very intense.”
His latest show last week at the tents in Bryant Park received a standing ovation by those in attendance according to Shophound, who wrote:
It’s always good to end on a high note, and you can’t get much higher than the masterful Chado Ralph Rucci collection that hit the runway this afternoon. Rucci has the most skilled atelier in New York, and possibly the world, and he invites an audience that is ready to applaud spontaneously for a particularly impressive feat of workmanship, or just for a startlingly beautiful dress.
The video above features highlights from the September 2008 talk at the Y, when Rucci and Ude discussed a variety of topics, such as the importance of fabric and why his team do not use synthetics, his work with House of Lesage in Paris (which drives up the price of a garment at least five figures, and sometimes six), the direction of his label, and the very small number of factories left in the world that can produce luxurious and extraordinary fabrics, as well as the rapidly dwindling number of skilled craftspeople who can work with these fabrics by hand. Recalling that some of his team members have been working with him for over 20 years, Ralph declared that when they retire, there will be no one to replace them. Explaining further, he noted that three decades ago when he first started in the business, on 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th Street between 7th and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, there were “all sorts of…wonderful immigrants who were taught this talent in their homeland” who are no longer there, having retired or passed away. As an example of the utilities and shortcuts some designers use today in the face of this, he says, “that’s why you see Gucci still having the bits and all of this, it’s a camouflage for the lack of integrity that you can give the garment through handwork.”
L to R: Danny Gurwin, Deborah Grace Winer, Lillias White, David Zippel, Debbie Gravitte, Kate Baldwin, Kevin Earley. Photo Credit: Richard Termine
Stephen Holden of the New York Times has considerable praise for David Zippel’s It Started With a Dream Lyrics & Lyricists show at the Y over the weekend:
Mr. Zippel, charming, articulate and dutifully reverential to his forerunners, is a polished craftsman best known as the lyricist for the 1989 show “City of Angels,” the Raymond Chandler-style film-noir pastiche with a ’40s jazz score by Cy Coleman and a book by Larry Gelbart.
The show’s finest achievement, “You’re Nothing Without Me,” is a complex, witty verbal skirmish between Stine, a detective novelist struggling to adapt his book into a movie, and his main character and alter ego, Stone, in which they tear each other to shreds. As reality and fantasy clash and merge, the song describes the creative process as a Wellesian hall of mirrors in which the author’s sanity is at risk. The singers Danny Gurwin and Kevin Earley imbued it with the energy of a furious pitched battle.
From the same show, the clever “Double Talk,” sung by Mr. Earley, reflected Mr. Zippel’s admiration for the zany lyrics of the jazz trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. (It was preceded by Debbie Gravitte’s sultry rendition of “Twisted.”)
The evening, whose other singers included Kate Baldwin and the redoubtable Lilias White, offered tantalizing previews of three works in progress, two of which were stalled by the death of Coleman, who was writing the music, in 2004.
Johnny Temple is co-founder and publisher of Akashic Books, an indie publishing house with residence in Brooklyn among a collection of notable others like Archipelago Books, Archipelago’s nonprofit Ugly Duckling Presse, Soft Skull Press, and Spuyten Duyvil, all of whom have helped to create a small renaissance for book publishing in New York. Akashic, practicing what they define as “reverse-gentrification of the literary world” is publisher of the widely acclaimed Akashic Books Noir Series, and ”is in some ways the face of Brooklyn literary life.” (But don’t tell Gawker that!)
In an interview with the Village Voice, Temple explained, “In big publishing, the line is that people don’t read, and we’re all competing for the same dwindling pool of readers. That’s not true. We’re going out and finding new readers, and showing people that reading can be provocative and exciting.” Despite the crime reduction in NYC and a move away from the city depicted in police dramas of the 1980’s, writers creating narratives for this gritty genre that the Noir Series are part of, still find an abundance of material. As if making a point about how dark and murderous urban life can still sometimes be, the latest edition of the Brooklyn Noir series, Brooklyn Noir 3, contains only factual accounts of real crimes that took place in the borough.
Their Noir Series of moody crime narratives launched in 2004 with the first Brooklyn Noir penned by Tim McLoughlin as a love letter to his borough. Proving to be very popular, winning acclaim along the way, the series quickly took off in an international direction, with a current count of 30 additional titles in the groundbreaking series. Titles now include settings for a diverse set of cities across the globe such as Rome, Istanbul, Havana, Los Angeles and more, with each anthology written by authors who feel a kinship with their beloved city.
“Trinidad Noir… tells not only brilliant stories, but comes up with characters and language that we recognize as uniquely ours, even as we participate in this global cultural hegemony ... Trinidad Noir is even more important because it brings alive the country’s topography. From Toco to East Dry River, to all points on all coasts, the writing of the country’s contours comes alive in a way that suggests all that is rugged and beautiful and easy in the land, and all that that mirrors in the people. And when we get to what it mirrors in the people, a Trinidad people, then we are talking so many shades of history, that the speech and expectations are their own rugged topography. In the whole book we find expressed a layered and abiding pathos and celebration.”
Five authors from the series—Robert Antoni (Trinidad Noir), Elizabeth Nunez (Trinidad Noir), Maxim Jakubowski (Rome Noir), Feryal Tilmac (Istanbul Noir) and Aurelien Masson (Paris Noir)—take the Y stage on Feb 25 to discuss their books and the narratives that lay inside.
Boom Town: Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy go head-to-head as competitors in the oil business. Directed by Jack Conway.
Film: Estilo Hip Hop, co-presented with Tribeca All Access, with directors Loira Limbal and Vee Bravo in attendance along with Phil Bertelsen.
The long-running Manhattan Monologue Slam – part Masterpiece Theater, part American Idol – comes to 92YTribeca for a night of electrifying theater.
Thu, Feb 26
Guided Meditation with Robert Bernstein: This lunch-hour class provides an overview of the practice of meditation with a focus on practical issues and problems and will inspire you to make it a part of your daily life.
Straight outta DC comes Rocknoceros, a rootsy and rockin’ good times band made up of childhood friends Coach Cotton, Williebob and Boogie Woogie Bennie. Part of our B.Y.O.K. series.
Tonight is the first installment in a series of talks called NextUp NYC, where Mashable.com, NextWeb and 92YTribeca are teaming up to start the new generation of Meetup groups. Each NextUp will showcase the latest web technologies, startups, social media trends and hold discussions with prominent figures in the industry. The panel tonight—Matt Buchanan (Gizmodo), Alana Taylor (Mashable), Caroline McCarthy (CNET) and Nicholas Carlson (Silicon Alley Insider)—will tackle “The State of the New York Blogosphere” with a closing presentation by Bryan Keefer (The Daily Beast).
Here’s a quick preview of the evening’s theme in 140 characters or less, Twitter-style of course, from some of the panelists.
Caroline McCarthy: This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around.
Bryan Keefer: Broke. And generally thirsty.
Matt Buchanan: I was kinda just planning to weep on stage for approximately four minutes, then laugh hysterically for two.
The cast and creative team behind the Broadway hit, August: Osage County, recently took the stage at 92YTribeca for a behind-the-scenes look at the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play. As Flavorwire recently noted after attending Neil LaBute’s talk here, “the space is incredibly intimate” and it’s not uncommon for audience members to strike up a conversation with the talent like the two guys above and the legendary Estelle Parsons.
We had the pleasure of attending a performance, “In Formations” by Douglas Dunn & Dancers, this past summer at a week of free lunchtime performances on the Elevated Acre in Lower Manhattan, a hidden park up an escalator and nestled behind a non-descript building, resting above FDR drive. It was one of those transcendent moments experienced by tens of thousands of other New Yorkers we’re sure, when you are walking around the city on a bright summer day, looking for a corner of the city you never knew existed overlooking the East River for a free choreographed dance performance by a renowned dance company.
Douglas Dunn & Dancers, called a “downtown dance darling” by WNYC, formed in 1978 and was invited that year to perform at the Autumn Festival in Paris. Two years later, the Autumn Festival and The Paris Opera Ballet invited Dunn back to choreograph Stravinsky’s full length Pulcinella. Since then, Dunn, one of America’s most respected choreographers, has continued to create ”works that consistently expand our definitions of modern dance, imbuing formalistic rigor with psychological content, incisive wit and sly humor,” receiving fellowships along the way from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a number of others.
His “About” section lists a number of simple declarative statements about why they dance, and neatly sums up what we find so attractive about this company. “I dance to obliterate duration. I dance to dignify form as content. I dance to equalize figure & surround. I dance to put intuition in conversation with thought. I dance to demonstrate the great facility & ridiculous limits of the un-accoutered human body. I dance not to be stuck in one position. I dance in order to stand up straight. I dance because you don’t have to carry your instrument. I dance because I can’t wait to be asked. I dance to achieve a vital, non-heroic presence. I dance to shrink to an irreducible kernel of purified being. I dance to arouse things out there that have not yet done so to enter my mind. I dance to have a say in what I submit to. I dance to forget why I dance.”
As part of the annual 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, celebrating it’s fifteenth anniversary this year, Douglas Dunn & Dancers reprise Pulcinella. This special program combines this Dunn classic with a new work from the company then boss in man? featuring dancers Kira Blazek, Liz Filbrun, Jean Freebury, Paul Singh, and Christopher Williams and classical guitarist Tali Roth.
International Noir: Dark Fiction Knows No Boundaries: Meet authors Robert Antoni (Trinidad Noir), Elizabeth Nunez (Trinidad Noir), Maxim Jakubowski (Rome Noir), Aurelien Masson (Paris Noir) and Feryal Tilmac (Istanbul Noir). Akashic Books’ city-based Noir Series, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir, wins new awards every year and has grown to include urban locales across the globe.
Pulcinella: The Douglas Dunn and Company reprises Dunn’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, a work commissioned in 1980 by the Autumn Festival and the Paris Opera Ballet.
Pulcinella: The Douglas Dunn and Company reprises Dunn’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, a work commissioned in 1980 by the Autumn Festival and the Paris Opera Ballet.
Raising a Child with Soul with Slovie Jungreis-Wolff with Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis. Learn how some of the most difficult challenges that parents face—discipline, sibling rivalry, and fostering self-esteem—can be met through integrating the lessons of the Torah into the home.
Saturday Night Ballroom: Waltz, tango, fox-trot, quick-step, salsa, rumba and cha-cha to big band, contemporary and vintage music with the Sandra Cameron Ballroom Dancers.
Pulcinella: The Douglas Dunn and Company reprises Dunn’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, a work commissioned in 1980 by the Autumn Festival and the Paris Opera Ballet.
Pulcinella: The Douglas Dunn and Company reprises Dunn’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, a work commissioned in 1980 by the Autumn Festival and the Paris Opera Ballet.
Johnny Temple is co-founder and publisher of 
