Tales from Three Cities

Not that I have necessarily been seeking them out, but stories about gentrification (and hyper-gentrification, which appears to be where we are now) have been increasingly crossing my field of vision.

Los Angeles (Boyle Heights specifically) - a group of tenant activists claim that an influx of artists and shops perceived to be art-adjacent (and arguably investment properties disguised as art spaces) are harbingers of community-eviscerating gentrification already in the works.

Photo: Timo Saarelma

San Francisco - a much less nuanced tale of landlords literally (allegedly) burning down dwellings in order to get rid of protected tenants. Appalling.

Closer to home, an event at the great Housing Works bookstore cafe in New York - drawn to that while hunting down information about the announced closing of the Sunshine Cinema.  It's a launch for the book version of the fabulous-while-infuriating Vanishing New York, complete with a performance by friend and fellow-traveler Penny Arcade.  This is happening next Thursday, July 27 - see you there.

Yo La Lucier

Continuing adventures in music.

The Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Hall.

Yo La Tengo performing the music of Alvin Lucier.  Bringing it to the molecular level, taking microphones to the scale of microscopes.

Georgia on the triangle. Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra. Who knew so little would yield so much?

James on the balloon.  Actually all three of them did this piece, Heavier Than Air, joined by Lucier himself! It involved them speaking memories into the balloons, which acted as a sonic lens focusing the sound, so it was clearer when aimed in your direction, and more diffuse when aimed somewhere else. (According to the program the balloons were filled with heavier-than-air carbon dioxide, which I'm guessing is a fancy way to say people inflated the balloons by blowing into them.)

Ira on the guitar, calling an audible.

I didn't get a pic of him playing the teapot. Take my word for it.  Nothing is Real.

There was a dual guitar microtone duel, and they did some YLT songs too.  They played, we listened. Damn good. 

Of course, that's just my opinion.

Nights in the Museum

Did a reading at MASS MoCA (which venue, in the larger sense, I've mentioned here many, many times) a couple Thursdays ago.  The American Premiere of The Interview, by Guillaume Leblon and Thomas Boutoux, to go along with Leblon's exhibition at the museum.

Photo by James Voorhies as far as I can tell

Photo by Art Evans

The experience provided me with a crash self-taught course in contemporary art, at the very least.  I sometimes feel like I know what I'm talking about when it comes to such things, then I'll run across a script like this one and realize that I don't know shit.  It was a great experience for me working on the piece with the artist, his wife, the other actor (plus the very game film intern we roped into being part of the show), and all the amazing, fantastic people at MoCA.

As if that weren't enough, we made a weekend out of it; I visited the museum exhibitions - most of them multiple times.  They're always good, you should go.  The Izhar Patkin work in the big room was especially moving, to me.

And we got to catch the residency/work-in-progress The Colorado, (also referred to as "Water Songs: Ha Tay G'am") a film and music project exploring the heartbreaking developments in the Colorado River Basin, and by extension the environmental catastrophes facing, umm, the entire planet.  Amazing.  Murat Eyuboglo is making the films; William deBuys is consulting on the science; a number of composers (Brittelle, Adams, Prestini, Worden, possibly others when all is said and done) scoring the music performed by the brilliant Roomful of Teeth; they all worked fast to put together the show we saw last Saturday.  I'm talking fast: they all showed up on Monday to talk, look at footage, write, and edit; the musicians arrived on Thursday morning; and the presentation was Saturday night.  The project won't be finished until 2015 (I think), keep an eye out for it.

Moving on from MoCA, I just want to mention the Cynthia Hopkins show A Living Documentary that happened at New York Live Arts this past Thursday.  Cynthia's one-woman theater/music piece about creating performance and trying to make a living (or even stay alive) doing it, in a universe where all the funds seem to go to production equipment and architectural 'improvements,' while shockingly little goes to the artists (arguably because the artists continue to give it away, or sell it cheap).  Lot going on there - funny, moving, creative, upsetting, exciting, inspiring, enraging.  It only played for a few days in that incarnation, glad I was able to catch it.

As Essential as Groceries

The title of this post is paraphrased from Dr. Fowler's paraphrasing of Amiri Bakara in the opening moments of this clip (with thanks to Poets and Writers Inc. for drawing attention to that video).



The clip has about 7 minutes of interview footage, and includes great perspective from Baraka on the importance of speaking and hearing poetry, as well as simply reading it off a page.  Early on, it also has this pearl of Truth:

The reason they cut the arts always is because the people that run the world don't want you to be conscious, because otherwise you'd resist. You couldn't possibly be living like we live if you understood what they were doing, you know, you'd fight them.  So the arts is always expendable.  Anything that makes people conscious of what the world is, and what it could be, is always expendable.

Baraka goes on in this interview to discuss how an artist needs to live and work on this earth, in this actual world, the physical universe of people and things, rather than retreating into an imaginary, idealized, self-constructed cave or tower, of ivory or any other color.

This world has plenty that is nearly uncontrovertibly craptastic in it [which, in case it's not obvious by now, is one of the most important reasons why art and poetry out loud are as essential as food].  But one of the things I'd argue is good about these internets is that, in addition to the cat videos and endless rants, you can find a trove of material at a moment's notice about Amiri Baraka, the Black Arts Movement, and delve into a rabbit hole of your own devising.

For now, I'm leaving you with a couple clips of Baraka reading his work.  One, a relatively recent live performance video with Rob Brown, courtesy of The Sanctuary for Independent Media.



And this other, even more powerful and controversial (if that's possible) earlier poem - audio only, with a still photo - Black Art, with Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Sonny Murray, Henry Grimes, and Louis Worrell.  Required listening.



Rest in Power.

Sad Song

I might have more to say about this later, but for now suffice to say what I've said before: I love the man and his work. He'll be more than missed.



Have been listening to Lou and Lou-related tunes all day.  Put on Berlin first thing this morning, and even though I knew it was coming, when I got to this song I was stopped in my tracks.  This performance might not be the cleanest of all time (who wants clean?), but it was recorded in the city they named the record after, and I like it.  (Thanks crazyritchie, whoever you are.)

Too young, to be sure.  But if it can be said of anyone, Lou Reed LIVED.  And if we want to take him at his word when he says "My week beats your year" then he lived to be well over 3,600 years old.  Methuselah can suck it.

Goodbye Lou.

Do Not Mourn

Maxwell's
CBGB
The Bottom Line
Mudd Club
The (original) Knitting Factory
The (original) Kitchen
The (original) Cutting Room
Brownie's
The (real) Birdland
The Five Spot
Nada con Todo
The (real) Fillmore East
The Bouwerie Lane Theater
The (original/real/jury's still out) Bowery Poetry Club
Gerde's Folk City
Max's Kansas City
Franklin Furnace
Tramps
The Limelight

Thinking of the last days of Maxwell's and night falling on Hoboken, I made up a quick, off-the-cuff, extremely incomplete list of some of the performance spaces in the area that are no more.
And so it goes...

Maxwell's Closing Night Block Party

I didn't get to all those places; some were gone before I ever made it here.  But I went to some of them quite a bit, and performed in a few.  And of course, New York/New Jersey is not alone in seeing this kind of transition: in my one-time-home-and-still-close-to-my-heart city of Boston, I can think of 2 or 3 places just in Kenmore Square.

This is what happens.  And it breaks your heart.  But then you have to put your heart back together, get up and find/build new spaces and make new work.

I think that's pretty much it.

The Stranger to Kindness

Well, there's it's been on the Upcoming Events sidebar for several weeks, but now The Stranger to Kindness is up and running at the Kraine Theater, and you should go see it.

We opened on Thursday night; it went well - good house, people quite liked it as far as I could tell. It's a lovely show, if I may say so myself. I'm very much enjoying working with director Heather Cohn for the first time (and don't mind mentioning here that I really enjoyed what I've seen of her company, Flux Theatre Ensemble).

My cast mates Antonio Miniño and Susan J. Bob are a joy to work with and are doing some damned fine work. The script by David Stallings is first rate and I'm thrilled to be working on it. (though you might not be able to tell that from this photo - hey, not everything that happens in this play is exactly overjoyed. Many thanks to David for the photos)

It's part of the Frigid Festival, and you have four more chances to see it. I heartily suggest that you do.

The Empress of Sex

That being the title of the play we performed (well, in staged reading form) with the Hive Theater company a few weeks ago in Times Square. It was, of course, somber tragedy. Oh wait, no: it was a sex comedy. A ridiculous sex comedy. I have described it thusly: "Sort of a live-in-person cross of The Hangover, No Strings Attached, Twelfth Night, and that cable series Spartacus. Maybe a dash of Porky's." Like I said, ridiculous. BUT - with some good writing, some good acting, some good music, and plenty of laughs, if I may say so myself.

It was very staged for a reading, so there was also some skin. One purpose of a staged reading is to get a sense of how a show might work in full production, and this is one of those shows that you really just won't be able to tell how it works if there isn't a certain amount of boobage. And butts. And simulated sex acts. Cory came with our friend Joe and they were sitting at about the 4th table back (this happened in a comedy club with cabaret-style seating). One of her comments was something along the lines of: "I didn't have a very good view of that part where you were on the floor surrounded by those three topless muses and you had all those boobs in your face. Yeah, I was ok with that." It was a big mess, but legitimately funny, I think, and quite a bit of fun for a bunch of people.

And no, I did not show any excess skin of my own. Probably for the best...

Happy Birthday Pete

Pete Townshend's 65th birthday today.



This event more or less speaks for itself.

However, as a treat to those who care about such things, Pete released the last installment of his 6-part "fan interview" over the weekend. (I think they might make you set up a profile to get to read that copy.) Was the timing of that release intended to coincide with the birthday? How would I know?

Anyway, the interview is LONG, and I haven't had the time to make it all the way through yet. Here's one little tidbit, in response to a question about how his Lifehouse project foreshadowed the internet phenomenon.

Lifehouse was written in 1971. The smallest music computer at that time filled a huge shed. But anything we imagine will become reality sooner or later. I’m a sucker for the online world, but what I foresaw in Lifehouse has actually turned out to be far worse in real life. There is no way to truly lose yourself on the internet, you are not really safe there, you are not protected, you are merely overlooked and exploited as a resource for banks, businesses and of course moral or political dictatorships.

Last Chance La MaMa

And though you probably know it already, I may as well mention that this is the final weekend for Post Modern Living at La Mama.

On Monday it'll be gone (and the link will be different,) but for now it's the Pick of the Week!

Checking In

Yes people, I'm still here. Busy as ever, keeping at least one hand on the wheel and keeping the show rolling. So, a brief recap:

Post Modern Living had its opening weekend (and is now 2/3 through its second weekend) which included the rare pleasure of my sister being able to attend the show and the opening night party. Think that has to have been the first time she has seen me on stage since, umm, high school.

The Red Sox have been struggling in a way that is odd for them for April. Many a year they have rocked the beginning of the season then let it crumble, so I'm taking the view that they are getting their sucking out of the way early on this time. Lately they have been finding ways to eke out one-run wins, often of the last-minute variety. A good skill to develop...

The dayjob plods on in its petty pace, which isn't always so petty these days. Lots going on and the stakes get ratcheted up more often than was their wont not long ago. So be it.

The television program 'Lost' (perhaps you've heard of it) is nearing its end, causing much discussion and headscratching and online research into arcane mythology. Also, we are planning an end-of-series viewing party for the finale. Make sure to let me know if you want in on that.

In the midst of all this, I find certain moments to be fascinated by discussions of equally arcane matters such as well-tempered tuning. Yes, it takes a certain amount of geekitude to get jazzed up watching an argument develop from:

...as Pythagoras discovered, intervals are also mathematical ratios. If you take an open guitar string sounding E, stop it with your finger in the middle and pluck, you get E an octave above. The octave ratio, then, is 2:1. If you stop the string in the ratio 3:2, you get a fifth higher than the open string, the note B. The other intervals have progressive ratios; 4:3 is a fourth, and so on.

to, a few paragraphs later:

What all this means in practice is that in tuning keyboards and fretted instruments, you have to screw around with the intervals in order to fit the necessary notes into an octave. In other words, as we say, you have to temper pure intervals, nudge them up or down a hair in some systematic way. Otherwise, you get chaos.

and on to:

There have been some 150 tuning systems put forth over the centuries, none of them pure. There is no perfection, only varying tastes in corruption.

continuing through:

One of those tunings was already known to the ancients: equal temperament. Here the poison is distributed equally through the system: The distance between each interval is mathematically the same, so each interval is equally in, and slightly out of, tune. Nothing is perfect; nothing is terrible. So now it's all fixed, yes? The laughter of the gods has been stilled, right? Are you kidding? You fools: The gods never lose.

And going on from there for another two pages, including musical examples of course...

In moments like these, I envision a life in which I live and work in an artistic research-and-performance laboratory where people appear who play instruments from various historical periods and bring to life these matters of microtones, and we explore their theatrical possibilities. If you know someone who is looking for help at such a facility, please let me know.

Meanwhile, Cory and I got to play host to our friends Claudia and Valter from Rome. Remember them? We took them and a couple of their friends out yesterday to see one of Emily Faulkner and Jody Sperling's Tea Dance incarnations. Our Roman friends will never acknowledge that New York espresso can stand up to comparison with Italian caffe, but we did have a lovely afternoon walking the High Line afterward.

Then it was on to the UES for me for a friend's wedding reception, then down to the East Village for the show. We crashed in the 'boken last night, as I needed to take Cory to Paramus this early morning so she could make a trek with part of her family to South Jersey for an MS walk. Now I'm enjoying some good ol' homemade coffee and telling you all about it. My Beatles phase (did you all know that I am currently going through a Beatles Phase? Well, I am.) has me on the mono master of the White Album this afternoon. I'll get some time with the Times and then head back to La MaMa for tonight's show.

And that brings us up to date on this rainy Sunday. I'll leave you with some visual stimulation courtesy of the Fab Four, and a bonus question:

Discuss visual and sonic collage elements in the Beatles eponymous 1968 "White Album" release. Extra credit: compare and contrast the dramatic results of the differences between the mono and stereo releases. Suggested starting reference points - visual: De Kooning, Rauschenberg, Rothko; audio: Cage, Ives, Wilson.

Kosha Killa Krew

What?

I am LOVING this Matthew-Lee Erlbach / Happy Sunshine Kung Fu Flower joint. Worked with HSKFF a while back. Last I heard, they were not active - hope that this viddy (which isn't all that current, but still) is evidence that the rumors of their demise are exaggerated...

Even Yet Still More Post Modern Living

Ok, here's the next installment in our seemingly endless stream of Post Modern Living posts.

This is a scene that happens early in the piece, with Chester (me) and Mitch (Richard Sheinmel) in bed first thing in the morning, and Mitch's "Spirit Guide" Louie (Chris Orbach) holding up our pillows. Now, maybe you'll be asking questions about the metaphorical nature of a Spirit Guide or guardian angel supporting us: pillow feathers representing angel wings? protective spirits as a cushion against the shattering blows of (post) modern life? If those are the questions going through your head, give yourself a hand: you're in touch with the finer points of performance art. But if you're like a lot of the people out there (including no small number of my friends and family members, and virtually all of my dayjob co-workers) your first reaction is apt to be "whoa - you're in bed with another guy?" Yes, it's true: in this show, my character is gay. Which isn't that radical. At ALL. But even in 2010, it gets a reaction. I've played murderers, rapists, incestuous lovers, but the response I get to those is pretty muted compared to the reaction people have when they find out I'm kissing a dude. For better or worse, there is very little in the way of a Katy Perryesque titillation factor, and a whole lot in the way of an "is there tongue?" recoil factor.

In any case, there is more to this show than man-on-man action: there is also some damned good music and acting, and a really bitchin band. Cue the Stephen Mosher photo essay (Stephen took all the photos in this post during a dress rehearsal):

Here's Joy (Wendy Merritt) checking out Mitch's situation.

Here Chris is playing the cabbie who takes Mitch to the doctor. One of Chris' friends had a fun insight to his character: "You're Snoopy! One minute you're the WWI Flying Ace, one minute you're Joe Cool, and when you're not any of those guys, you're one enlightened beagle."

This is Meg (Catherine Porter) and Mitch helping Gerrie (Briana Davis) get her bearings after one too many Run Run Rudolphs.

Here's Dr. Zappi (Frank Blocker) giving Mitch a consult about some post-op stitches that are about to come out.

Here is Grace giving Joy a consult. Hmmm... "Grace" and "Joy" - nothing symbolically significant about those names, is there? Wait a minute: what does that say about "Chester"?

Well, I'm doing the best I can. Here I am in phone conversation with Mitch. Don't worry - he's not cheating on me; his shirt's off because he's still at the doctor's office.

This is definitely the money shot. Joy is demonstrating - well, hell: come to the show and see what she's demonstrating.

And here's the lot of us bringing it all back home in the finale.

See you at La MaMa.

Post Modern Opening

Well, the performance art piece I'm working on opened last night at the Club at La MaMa after two previews - there are some production photos out there, and I'll get to posting them at some point, but for now, here are a few more shots from when we were still in the rehearsal room.


That's Richard and Frank onstage there as patient and doctor, and Jason Jacobs is in the center facing us, doing his director thing. I haven't gotten too many good shots of Jason yet, but I like this one.


Here's Wendy in an offstage moment of rest working on her knitting. She's a wonderful actress and a lovely person. And she knits. A lot. As she puts it, "Well, I don't read as much as I used to..."



And I'll wrap up for now with this group shot - from left: Chris on Guitar, Jason directing, Frank and Richard as Dr. Zappi and Mitch, and Heather bringing up the right in Stage Managerial glory.

We had previews on Friday and Saturday at 10, and our Opening Night was yesterday at 5:30, followed by a cast party at a nearby bar. Each show had its own quirks, and we learned a lot from all of them. The performance for press opening was the strongest of the bunch, in my estimation, which is a good thing. We had a full house, there was good energy in the room, and it seemed like people had a good time.

Let me know if you'd like to come to the show and I'll get you all the details you need (oh, and most of them are in the sidebar - off to the right, up top, see?)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

At the Highline the other night. So good.

Real roots music - voices clear, open, released, natural, exploring sounds and stretching possibilities. Finding and using all manner of sounds a voice can make. Reaching back to ancient African music through jazz through doo wop through bebop through hip hop to today and back again. Thoroughly playing with, in and around any given note until every thing they can get out of it in a single song has been squeezed and spun and swirled. Zulu dance moves that bring to mind nothing so much as Miracles (as in Smokey Robinson and the...) and Temptations.

Afrobeat forever.

More Fun with Movement and Art

As promised, here is some more on Cory's Dance Debut with Simone Forti.

First of all, why don't I link to Claudia La Rocco's rave in the Times. One of those love letter reviews that we all dream of. Which Cory gets her first time out. Nice! [They didn't mention her by name, per se, but she was most certainly a part of the "ad hoc group of dancers" mentioned in the review.] Of course, that fits in all-too perfectly with Simone's perspective on dance. She called these pieces "Dance Constructions" and they are tucked into the boxes of sculpture/visual art as often and as fittingly as they are labeled as dance (by those who enjoy putting decals on things - as with most achievements of importance, I tend to see this work as being elusive of pigeonholes, what Duke Ellington would have called "beyond category") A movement artist in the Proto-Judson Era (which term I may be making up, but you know what I mean), Forti was part of the group that presented at Yoko's loft, which is where Huddle was first shown in 1961. She wasn't terribly well known then; she's made her mark more by influence (Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer, and of course Robert Morris) than recognition. Until recently! Simone is finally getting her due, and I hope she's enjoying it!

I had the great good fortune to attend this event with Ginger Spivey, a good friend of Cory's from Duke, who is a more than formidable resource on Simone, the Judson school, New York art in the 60s, and art in general. I can't link the full text here (go ahead and support indie press and buy the thing!) but she has an article about Forti in last summer's Women's Art Journal. So I've got some art world cred when I tell you that this show ROCKED!

Here's the promised viddie - it's just a portion of the Huddle that happened during the reception. This show happened on stage, on screen, and among the audience. That's Cory in the pink top. And you don't need to be a dance aficionado to recognize the guy commenting on Trevor crossing the Huddle near the end...

How cool is that?

[ok, here I have an issue with the good people at Blogger. I have tried to upload this video four times now - taking lots of time - and it continues NOT to work. So I'm putting it on youtube and embedding it from there; which is fine I guess, but shouldn't the video app work better?? If anyone has a fix, let me know]

Holiday Happenings

There is a LOT going on right now. More even than usual at this festive time of year. The biggest news of all is that there is a very very good chance that my sister and her family will be spending a significantly higher percentage of their time out here starting at some point in '010. Something along the lines of 100% of their time. More on this as it develops...

Meanwhile, this is very late notice, but, consider yourself notified: I will be reading tonight at the Renegade Cabaret. It will be a short but presumably jolly performance of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas tucked in among jazz and Holiday musical faves. The High Line at W. 20th Street, 7 p.m.

Speaking of Holiday faves, I haven't figured out how to embed from this site, but in honor of Chanukah (it's the 7th night, after all, or will be in a few minutes) click here for a great viddy from our friend Leslie Jonath teaching us how to make latkes! It's controversial in a small way, and not completely specific, so you may still want to refer to a recipe, but it's got some great tips. Enjoy!

Birthday Bruce

So, ok - you've heard of Cory, right? Well, she takes really good care of me for my birthday. (My birthday was October 7, for those of you who pay attention to such things.) This year the first way that took shape was in the form of tickets to see Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium.

This, it bears noting, is a pretty good gift. A pretty AWESOME gift.

He did a series of five concerts to close the stadium, which is getting demolished to make room for a shiny new stadium next door next season, so these are special, historic shows. And these were field tickets, which unless you have a broken leg or something are so the way to go. To get the best spot on the field you have to show up early, so it takes a pretty good chunk of day to do it. And we had to miss my good friend Lia's birthday party in the Bronx, which was sad in its way, but everything lined up so amazingly as to make up for all else.


It was predicted to be a really rainy day, so we weren't going to go for the extra special super early version of tailgating in the parking lot. Instead we went the the gym and then hit the grocery store to grab some provisions and Cory went uptown to get the tickets from her friend and to pop in on the Dan Graham exhibition at the Whitney (Cory got soaked on the walk from her friend's place to the museum. That would be one way the stars didn't actually line up too well.) Meanwhile, I put the cooler together with beer, soda and food, and eventually the weather cleared up as we hit the road.

Comedy of errors with the parking staff, and we found ourselves in a less-than-ideal lot, but after a little bit of E Street shuffling, we ended up in a great spot and had some food and drinks and took in the scene. The sun was even kind of shining by this point, and it turned into a pretty nice afternoon. A couple things I wasn't prepared for in today's world of tailgating: the amount of fairly professional sound systems people brought for sharing their tunes with the world; and more surprisingly - the proliferation of professional-looking beer pong tables.

Who knew?

At around 6 we went to the gate - they weren't letting people in yet (other than the first thousand, who'd been there since about midday to get the spots RIGHT up against the rail.) It wasn't that bad a line, and they let us in at about 6:30. We got wristbands of our own, which let us go up to the front portion of the floor they'd laid down on the field. We had a great spot! 20 yards or so from the stage, close enough that we didn't need those jumbotrons to see what was going on.

And what a show!!! The Boss knows how to do it up. Such an artist; such a showman. I didn't bring my camera, natch, so was limited to what I could catch on my cell phone.

As I said, these shows are going to be the last concerts that happen in Giants Stadium before they tear it down, so Bruce wrote a song for the occassion.


We got to be among the first to hear it! Ok, among the first several thousand.

For this series of shows, the band is playing albums in their entirety. We got to hear Born in the U.S.A., which of course was the record that took Bruce from stardom to Monster Mondo Mega Stardom. It was fantastic - of all his albums, this is probably the most stadium-friendly, the one that was kind of built to fill these ginormous venues. Here's the setlist, with the U.S.A. songs shaded red.

Wrecking Ball
Out in the Street
Outlaw Pete (does anyone else think the riff on this song sounds dangerously close to the Kiss song "I Was Made for Lovin' You"?)
Hungry Heart
Working on a Dream
Born in the U.S.A.
Cover Me
Darlington County
Working on the Highway
Downbound Train
I'm on Fire
No Surrender
Bobby Jean
I'm Goin' Down
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
My Hometown
The Promised Land
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
The Rising
Born to Run
Raise Your Hand (instrumental version, while he went out into the crowd to pick up request signs)
Jersey Girl
Kitty's Back
Detroit Medley
American Land
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Thunder Road

Do you see that?? The first request he played was "Jersey Girl," which was AMAZING because a) he hardly ever does that song, b) hello - it's just a-ma-zing, and c) hel-LO? - I was there with my Jersey Girl! And then he did another rarity in "Kitty's Back" that completely blew me away, really let the band stretch musically: solos from Charles Giordano (rest in peace, Danny Federici) Curt Ramm (a phenomenal trumpeter who joined them for these shows) Roy Bittan and Bruce himself (people still underrate his guitar playing, in my opinion) just took the show way over the top. No Rosalita that night, but Thunder Road brought things home very very nicely.

One more blurry photo before I go. When he does "Dancing in the Dark" he usually brings someone up on stage to dance (a la Courtney Cox in that video way back when the song came out.) For this show he brought up this teenage gal who looked nervous for about a half a second and then totally tore it up with the Boss!


After they finished the song, Springsteen let her friends (her mom?) take their picture, then he showed us the sign that she'd held up to get his attention: "13th Birthday Dance?" Pretty rad.

Ave Atque Vale Merce Cunningham

You've probably heard by now that Merce Cunningham has died.

As it seems we've been doing a lot lately, let's celebrate a life as well as mourn a loss.



This Annie Liebowitz portrait is an iconic one, and seems to fit the bill.

I was fortunate enough to attend what must have been one of his last public appearances, and maybe his very final performance event at Dia Beacon. It was incredible, beautiful, stunning, moving. The program shared the oft-stated (Alastair Macaulay writes "almost routinely hailed") contention that Merce was The Greatest Living Choreographer, and I asked someone who is more than passingly familiar with the dance world if they could really do that. Make that claim? THE Greatest? And the response was: "Well, who else would it be?"

Good point.




Love these images from his 1958 piece "Antic Meet," which was designed by Robert Rauchenberg and photographed by Richard Rutlege



Now, while I 've said before and will say again that I'm not a fan of favoritism, so that whole 'The Greatest' thing falls a little flat, I think it's surely fair to say that Merce Cunningham was one of the greatest artists in any medium, not limited to dance/choreography, of the last century or so. I have the sense that if you gave him a paperclip, a ball of twine and a tuba he could turn them into something you couldn't take your eyes away from.

Various media outlets/newspapers have their own obituaries, of course. Among many many others are Macaulay at The Times, Tobi Tobias for Bloomberg, and one from the London Telegraph that has no byline, but that yields some choice commentary:

He was impatient with the quest to discover meaning in art; asked what one dance was about, he answered: "It's about 40 minutes."

...for many years he was derided. Fairly early in the life of his company, a New York reviewer wrote: "Last night Merce Cunningham presented a programme of his choreography, and if someone doesn't stop him, he's going to do it again tonight."

The reception was not always rapturous: in Paris in 1964, when the company was beginning to tour Europe, audiences threw tomatoes and eggs, and Cunningham later recalled that people would leave in the middle of the performance to go out to buy more.

Love those, for their display of his persistence, and for their revelation of his originality and passionate creativity as he worked with Rauschenberg, Martha Graham and (especially) John Cage as well as countless other dancers, artists and musicians.

And the obits (along with commentary as he was still working) make the supremely important point that his work continued to be vital, relevant, important, well past the time he was able to dance with full vigor, or even get around unaided. That event we experienced in Beacon was beyond remarkable: he was creating up until the end, and he'll be missed.

Real Gone

Another much-belated post on a more-than-worthy event. Saw the Armitage Gone! dance company perform its Think Punk! progam at the Kitchen.



Raucus and rockin', the Armitage dancers celebrated the energy of punk culture and downtown art, and the place of their own company in that history, while creating work that is still hyper-vital today. The music came recorded from Jimi Hendrix, David Linton, Mozart and X-Ray Spex; and also from live musicians including the amazing TALIBAM! (All these exclamation points everywhere. Sigh. I think the energy of the artists is self-evident without added punctuation, but whatever.)

I loved this performance. Elegant, athletic, sexy, powerful, inspiring. Made me want to create pieces, stage them and perform them, especially in rooms as bitchin as the Kitchen.