cityArts February 8, 2012

New york’s Review of Culture • CityArtsNYC.comNew york’s Review of Culture • CityArtsNYC.com

Feb. 8—Feb. 21, 2012 • Volume 4, Issue 2

Damien Hirst’s Spotland and Carrie Pollack’s Mechanical Garden Page 6

Glass and Pärt at Carnegie Hall Page 9

The City Arts Interview: Dr. Muhammad 5

ART vS. CONTROvERSy

EvERyONE’S ‘PORGy AND BESS’ PAGE 10 By ARMOND WHITE

2 CityArts | February 8–February 21, 2012

INSIDE

EDITOR Armond White [email protected]

MANAGING EDITOR Mark Peikert [email protected]

SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC Jay Nordlinger

SENIOR DANCE CRITIC Joel Lobenthal

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Caroline Birenbaum, John Demetry, Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich,

Amanda Gordon, Steve Haske, Ben Kessler, Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves,

Gregory Solman, Melissa Stern, Nicholas Wells

DESIGN/PRODUCTIONPRODUCTION/CREATIvE DIRECTOR

Ed Johnson [email protected]

ADvERTISING DESIGN Quarn Corley

PUBLISHER Kate Walsh [email protected]

ACCOUNT ExECUTIvES Ceil Ainsworth, Mike Suscavage

MANHATTAN MEDIAPRESIDENT/CEO Tom Allon [email protected]

CFO/COO Joanne Harras [email protected]

GROUP PUBLISHER Alex Schweitzer [email protected]

NEWSPAPER GROUP PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin [email protected]

DIRECTOR OF INTERACTIvE MARkETING & DIGITAL STRATEGy

Jay Gissen [email protected]

CONTROLLER Shawn Scott

ACCOUNTS MANAGER Kathy Pollyea

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GALLERIESHoward Buchwald at Nancy Hoffman Gallery P. 4Andrew Lenaghan at George Adams Gallery P. 4Gordon Moore at Betty Cuningham Gallery P. 5 Carrie Pollack at MINUS SPACE P. 6Damien Hirst at Gagosian Gallery P. 6

MUSEUMSEmanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” P. 7

FILM Armond White on Chronicle P. 8

JAZZTim Berne presents Snakeoil P. 8

CLASSICALClarinet Month P. 9Jubilee concert honors Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt P. 9

THEATERArt vs. Controversy: Everyone’s Porgy and Bess P. 10Porgy Reborn P. 11

DANCEThe Takeover: When guest stars rule P. 11

ON GAMINGThe elusive joys of Rayman Origins P. 12

POPSolo dance videos go viral P. 12

AUCTIONSA preview of upcoming events P. 14

INTERvIEWDr. Kahlil Gibran Muhammad P. 15

P.4

P.12

JuilliardJoseph W. Polisi, President

Fri, Feb 24 at 8Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium417 East 61st St, NY

Monica Huggettleads Juilliard415The Evolution of the Concerto GrossoMonica Huggett, Leader/ViolinUS Premiere by Alessandro STRADELLAConcerto Grosso in D Major for two violins,lute and stringsand works by Georg MUFFAT,Luigi BOCCHERINI, Unico Wilhelm van WASSENAERA co-presentation of Juilliard andSalon/Sanctuary ConcertsTickets $25 ($15 senior/student)online: salonsanctuaryconcerts.orgor call (212) 866-0468

Mon, Feb 27 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Juilliard

Jeffrey MilarskyConducts theJuilliard Orchestra4 World Premieres byJuilliard ComposersMICHAEL LEE Contrasting Visions

Winner, Arthur Friedman PrizeSTEFAN CWIK TerpsichoreMICHAEL IPPOLITO NocturneJARED MILLER Cartoon MusicFREE tickets at box office 2/13

Wed, Feb 29 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater

Gerry MulliganTributeGuest SaxophonistGary Smulyanand the JUILLIARD JAZZ ORCHESTRA James Burton III, ConductorThe music of Gerry MulliganFREE tickets at box office 2/15

Fri, Mar 2 at 8 • Avery Fisher Hall

Alan GilbertConducts theJuilliard OrchestraFabiola Kim, ViolinRAVEL Le tombeau de CouperinROUSE Violin ConcertoSTRAVINSKY Le Sacre du PrintempsTickets $30, $15online: LincolnCenter.orgor CenterCharge (212) 721-6500FREE student and senior tickets, TDF, acceptedonly at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office

Thurs, Mar 15 at 8Paul Hall at Juilliard

EnsembleACJWL. MOZART, ALBRECHTSBERGER,CRUMB, W.A. MOZART, BARTÓKFREE tickets at box office 3/1

Mon, Mar 19 at 8Paul Hall

Juilliard JazzEnsemblesperform original student compositionsFREE tickets at box office 3/5

Thurs, Mar 22 at 8Alice Tully HallJUILLIARD VOCAL ARTS HONORS

Kyle BielfieldTenor

Takaoki OnishiBaritone

Lachlan Glen andNozomi Marusawa, PianistsFREE tickets at box office 3/8

R E M I N D E R S

ONLY TWO PERFORMANCESTONIGHT & SATURDAY AT 8

Peter Jay Sharp Theater

GLUCK’s

ArmideIN CONCERT

Jane Glover, ConductorFabrizio Melano, Director

Produced by the Metropolitan Opera’sLindemann Young Artist DevelopmentProgram in partnership withThe Juilliard School

Tickets $30 at the box office oronline: events.juilliard.educall CenterCharge (212) 721-6500

Next Fri at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater

AXIOMJeffrey Milarsky, ConductorRIHM Jagden und FormenFREE tickets at box office

JUILLIARD 155 W. 65th St. • Box Office M-F, 11AM-6PM • (212) 769-7406

events.juilliard.edu

February 8–February 21, 2012 | CityArts 3

LIGHT BULB ARMOND WHITE

History interacts with our contem-porary art experiences. That’s what keeps New York’s cultural scene lively and enriches our apprecia-

tion. At the Carnegie Hall concert for Philip Glass’ 75th birthday, the premiere of a new work (Glass’ Symphony No. 9, reviewed by Judy Gelman Myers) was also a reminder of his impact on the course of serious music. Howard Mandel traces its influence even in new work by jazz lone wolf Tim Berne.

These events—signs of New York’s vari-ety—parallel the opening of the Broadway production entitled The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, where the past is revived with new urgency and intelligence. Every num-ber resonates with memories of previous interpretations, even as the current cast brings fresh emotion and intensity to their characterizations. Joseph Smith’s opera definition tells us why.

Historical resonance is essential to bring-ing thinking back for sophisticated art appre-ciation. We always respond to new experi-ences with curiosity about fresh meanings but also with an understanding of the artistic heritage being extended. At CityArts, the bal-ance of the new and the vintage is a journalis-

tic requirement and a necessity for art lovers. It’s a matter of “memory and visual echoes”

as Jim Long writes in his Carrie Pollock review.This awareness affects the way we value art

experience, as seen in Joel Lobenthal’s survey of the star system being practiced by differ-ent dance companies and Ben Kessler’s deep look at the phenomenon of solo dance pieces in current music videos. Even an art form as young as the music video has traditions that affect the way new work is made and can be understood.

This also holds true for gaming, as Steve Haske illustrates in writing about Rayman Origins—an example of the unique pleasure to be had from interactive art.

About the cover: The 1958 Ella Fitzger-ald and Louis Armstrong recording of Porgy and Bess’ songs exemplifies the best interaction. It’s impossible to watch a new production without also hearing how Ella and Louis made the landmark show part of their individual artistry. Claiming Porgy and Bess as their own—as Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis do—Ella and Louis confirmed an authentic expression of American ambi-tion. We salute it as one of the great cultural artifacts.

Ella and Louis, 1958. © Polygram Records

92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street An agency of UJA-Federation

92Y Harkness Dance Center receives support from the Harkness Foundation for Dance; the Goldhirsh Foundation in memory of Wendy and Bernard Goldhirsh; Jody and John Arnhold; the Mertz Gilmore Foundation; the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development and the NYC Council; the NY State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew

Cuomo and the NY State Legislature; Judith K. and James Dimon; The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation; and the Capezio/ Ballet Makers Dance Foundation, Inc., among others.

Harkness Dance Festival Stripped/Dressed Curated by Doug Varone5 weeks, 5 distinct styles, 15 evenings of intimate performances

in 92Y’s historic Buttenwieser Hall.

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company FEB 17-19

Peggy Baker Dance Projects FEB 24-26

Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc. MAR 2- 4

Monica Bill Barnes & Company MAR 9-11

Susan Marshall & Company MAR 16 -18

Fri & Sat, 8 pm; Sun, 3 pm; $15GET YOUR TICKETS TODAY! Order online and save 50% on service fees at 92Y.org/HarknessFestivalor call 212.415.5500.

MEDIA PARTNER


GALLERIES ExHIBITION OPENINGS

DC Moore Gallery: Janet Fish: “Recent Paintings.” Opens Feb. 9, 535 W. 22nd St., 212-2476-2111, dcmooregallery.com.

James Cohan Gallery: Yinka Shonibare MBE: “Addio del Passato.” Opens Feb. 16, 533 W. 26th St., 212-714-9500, jamescohan.com.

Luise Ross Gallery: “From Iceland.” Opens Feb. 9, 511 W. 25th St., 212-343-2161, luiserossgallery.com.

Hasted Kraeutler: Kim Dong Yoo. Opens Feb. 9, 537 W. 24th St., 212-627-0006, hastedkraeutler.com.

LAST CHANCE EXHIBITS

Alexandre Gallery: Lois Dodd: “New Panel Paintings.” Ends Feb. 18, 41 E. 57th St., 212-755-2828, alexandregallery.com.

Claire Oliver: Jennifer Poon: “Strange Blooms.” Ends Feb. 11, 513 W. 26th St., 212-929-5949, claireoliver.com.

Postmasters: Monica Cook: “Volley.” Ends Feb. 11, 459 W. 19th St., 212-727-3323, postmastersart.com.

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery: Thomas Scheibitz: “A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events.” Ends Feb. 18, 521 W. 21st St., 212-414-4144, tanyabonakdargallery.com.

MUSEUMS

Brooklyn Museum: “Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919.” Ends Aug. 19. “Question Bridge: Black Males.” Ends June 3. 200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, 718-638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org.

International Center of Photography: “Weegee: Murder Is My Business.” Opens Jan. 20. “Perspectives 2012.” Ends Sept. 2. “Magnum Contact Sheets.” Ends May 6. “The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet.” Ends May 6, 1122 6th Ave., 212-857-0000, icp.org.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: “New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture & Decorative Arts.” Opens Jan. 16. “Breaking the Color Barrier in Major League Baseball.” Opens Jan. 18, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.

The Morgan Library & Museum: “Rembrandt’s World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection.” Opens Jan. 20, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008, themorgan.org.

Museum of Modern Art: “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream.” “Print/Out.” Opens Feb. 19. “Millenium Magazines.” Opens Feb. 20. “9 Scripts from a Nation at War.” Ends. Aug 6. “Sanja Ivekovi: Sweet Violence.” Ends March 26, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400, moma.org.

National Academy Museum: “The Annual: 2012.” Ends April 29, 1083 5th Ave., 212-369-4880, nationalacademy.org.

Whitney Museum of American Art: “Real/Surreal.” Ends Feb. 12. “Aleksandra Mir: The Seduction of Galileo Galilei.” Ends. Feb. 19, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570-3600, whitney.org.

Lovely ChallengesBuChWALD AND LENAGhAN GO FOR CLARITY

By MARIO NAvES

The paintings of Howard Buchwald, on display at Nancy Hoffman Gal-lery, are as much a call to arms as an

exhibition of art. Listen to Buchwald tell it: “Painting is

not in the service of some purpose, objec-tive, image or idea residing outside, prior to and independent of the specific work.” Momentarily commiserating with the aesthetically challenged, he does admit to “understand[ing] the anxiety that direct looking and feeling still produce.”

But any “attempt to overcome this feeling by supplanting what is right there...is largely beside the point.” Don’t come to Buchwald, then, with high-flown theoretical flourishes or pressing sociological agendas. Codifying art by any means other than direct visual engagement stifles its integrity—why don a straitjacket when you’re given free agency?

A fixture of the New York art world, Buch-wald believes in the eye above all. His rigor-ously choreographed arrays of wriggling, rubbery lines and declarative, eye-rattling colors couldn’t kowtow to extra-aesthetic imperative if they wanted to. The rhythms are too headstrong, the compositions too unpredictable, the sense of purpose too fiercely independent.

The pictures have the graphic clarity of superhero comics—you know, KA-POW!—and recall the New York School in their scale and ambition, though Buchwald’s firm sense of humor is entirely his own. The black line muscling its way through “Mapped (Large Red)” (2010) would steal the show if it weren’t for the acidic tonalities of “In or Out” (2008), a monumental canvas whose title is both plain-as-day descriptive and a chal-lenge to the viewer.

While looking at Andrew Lenaghan’s paintings at George Adams Gallery, I overhead a visitor exclaim, “New

York has never looked so lovely.” Really? There’s much to commend in

the work, not least its crisp light and keen sense of place. But “lovely”? That’s such a mild adjective for pictures whose verisimili-tude is inseparable from a pointed and, at

moments, bristly animism.Lenaghan has long been drawn to areas

of Brooklyn that, when not mundane, are distinctly unlovely—a graffiti-laden build-ing in Greenpoint, anonymous industrial structures in Williamsburg and the stained and mottled roadway bordering the Bedford Avenue Armory. Family is also a mainstay—in one painting, children watch Dora the Explorer; in another, a woman stands by the mirror in an unkempt bedroom. Geometry, as it informs the city’s infrastructure, our homes and backyards, is important, too.

In their details, the picturesque and domes-tic are rendered with a skittering line that accu-mulates—sometimes tenuously, always con-vincingly—into solid form. The cobblestone

walkway at the bottom right of “New Stadium, Atlantic Avenue” (2011) is a particularly telling marker of Lenaghan’s pictorial abilities; the way in which errant mark-making and fidelity to observation are navigated is emblematic of his bracing and flinty intellect.

Howard Buchwald Through March 10, Nancy hoffman Gallery, 520 W. 27th St., 212-966-6676, www.nancyhoffmangallery.com. Andrew Lenaghan: Recent Paintings Through Feb. 18, George Adams Gallery, 525 W. 26th St., 212-564-8480, www.georgeadamsgallery.com.

(Above) Andrew Lenaghan, “McGuinness Blvd/Clay Street,” 2011, oil on panel, 24 x 32 inches.

(Left) Howard Buchwald, “Float,” 2012, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 90 inches.

Courtesy of the artist and George Adams Gallery, New York.


Traditions of NewnessGORDON MOORE PuT IN CONTExT

By JOHN GOODRICH

Where would postmodernism be without paradoxes of context? After all, even works as dissimilar

as Jasper Johns’ flag and Jeff Koons’ chrome bunny both recontextualize the familiar to challenge our perceptions of them.

At Betty Cuningham, Gordon Moore’s exhibition of abstracted paintings and photo-emulsion drawings poses similar questions about processes of cognition, but through entirely different means. The artist pursues his investigations with remark-ably delicate observations of his subject’s appearance, then arranges these percep-tions in dynamic compositions. The results are quite startling—a unique blending of the usually divergent concerns of postmod-ernism and traditional art.

Moore draws upon a number of contem-porary trends: a focusing on the abject; a combining of multiple media, including photography; a juxtaposition of coarse and tidy textures. These come together in austere designs, dominated by brushy or vacant grays and laced by a few winding lines and sections of denser texture and subdued color.

A number of his works include faint photographic images of the armatures of an unbent coat hanger or broken umbrella, their linear gestures extended by the art-ist’s own hand-rendered forms and shad-ows. Larger prismatic structures, airy but abstract, emerge among the intersections of the “real” and the manufactured.

Moore’s modeling of the light-revealed objects is so subtle as to make one ques-tion which is truer: his eye or the camera’s? And which is more naturally spacious, the layered skeins of paint in the background or the jazzy polygon, flattened by its syntheti-cally striped pattern but casting a faint faux-shadow? Even his darting lines thicken and narrow, giving the impression of twisted ribbons.

These moments might be merely clever, but the artist arrives at them with author-ity; his designs are—forgive the dreaded word—composed. That is, his images are filled with surprising formal events, coor-dinating accelerations of contour and con-centrations of detail. In “Facet” (2011), for instance, the obtuseness of the dominant form, spacious in its interior but cordoned by those tense ribbons, narrows to barely contact a smaller but somewhat darker

shape; in response, a small array of stripes flares into the larger form’s interior.

In many of Moore’s works, the massive encounters the small, the compact opposes the buoyant in particular times and ways. There’s just enough naturalistic modeling to suggest the sculptural weight of elements, but their characters are most profoundly

uncovered through an embracing discipline of rhythm.

This exhibition features such moments frequently enough to make a memorable show. If you’re into this kind of pictorial expression, you may feel in these works the echoes of Mondrian and Matisse (and Matisse’s experience, in turn, of the distant

rumble of Giotto). These are qualities of little interest to Johns and Koons, on the visual evidence of their work. Moore, how-ever, reminds us that great traditions and postmodernism can be made to actually talk to each other—or at least wave as they pass. Gordon Moore: Paintings & Photo-Emulsion Drawings Through Feb. 11, Betty Cuningham Gallery, 541 W. 25th St., 212-242-2772, www.bettycuninghamgallery.com.

LaPlacaCohen 212-675-4106 Publication: C

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Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Portrait of a Lady (detail), ca. 1460–65, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, and Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of an Old Man and a Boy (detail), ca. 1490, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The exhibition is made possible by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.The exhibition was organized by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

metmuseum.orgThrough March 18

from donatello to bellinithe renaissance portrait

MET-0113-Renaissance_CityArts_7.341x8.5_Jan18_v2.indd 1 1/12/12 6:00 PM


SpotlandJOuRNEY ThROuGh hIRST’S DOTTY PAST

By kATE PRENGEL

Damien Hirst is tapping into a simple fact: We all like smooth surfaces and bright colors. Since 1986, the bad boy

British artist, notorious for his installations of floating animals in cases of formaldehyde, has produced about 1,500 spot paintings, white canvases covered in colorful circles. (He has an army of assistants to help him.)

Right now, Gagosian Gallery is running a multi-city exhibit of all those spots in gal-leries from New York to London. There are three Gagosian locations in New York alone, which means you can immerse yourself in Spotland for the whole weekend without leaving town.

And for me, at least, walking into the gal-leries was like walking into another coun-

try. There seemed to be light everywhere, reflecting off of the powder-white canvases and the endless pastel spots. It was dazzling. The canvases themselves are totally flat and impenetrable; stare as I might at the dots, they wouldn’t give anything back to me.

But this only reinforced my sense of for-eign travel. After a while, like a tourist with a phrasebook, I picked up some hackneyed spot vocabulary and started to compare the canvases: here’s one with only four dots; here’s one where the dots are so tiny you’ll think you’re looking at computer code. I began to see unreal patterns in the white space between the dots. And by the time I walked into my second Gagosian location, I felt like an old hand, like a tourist going from one Spanish city to another.

But then, what, exactly, does this trip leave you with? Some of the paintings are, it’s true, more interesting than others. The Gagosian Madison Avenue show includes Hirst’s first

spot painting, made back in 1986. The piece is wonderfully messy, dots splattering out of their neat circles and filling up almost all the white space on the canvas; the thing looks like a child’s playground. And in the same gallery, “Untitled with Black Dot” (1988) looks like a beloved old toy—the bright paint is scratched and the background is dirty, but it’s still here for us.

For the most part, though, Hirst’s spots fade into one another. The differences between paintings are only interesting while you are immersed in the show; leave and you are left with nothing. I wish that I could con-tradict the endless array of critics who call Hirst a cynical moneymaker, but Gagosian makes it hard. Outside the Madison Avenue location, they’ve set up a pop-up store sell-ing mugs, T-shirts and key chains with little dots on them: A souvenir from your visit to Spotland. Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011 Through Feb. 18, Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Ave., 555 W. 24th St., 522 W. 21st St., www.gagosian.com.

Mechanical Garden POLLACK’S ERROR MAKES ART

By JIM LONG

Carrie Pollack is a poet of impermanence. Her subject is memory and the visual echoes that surround us everywhere. On daily walks with her

camera, she records deteriorating poster debris, the sky at a particular moment—the usual stuff to which we ordinarily pay little attention—then subjects the imag-ery to computer processing and prints the final result on unsized artist’s linen. Her experiments engage old-school photo collage, familiar from the days of dada, early pop and new realism in France. Surprisingly, new-school charm wins in these thoughtful covers of oldie classics.

The notion that we know it already fades as what should be static imagery comes to life through the art-ist’s careful attention to the process of presentation, a process not without elements of comic unpredict-ability. Time and again the fabric jams in her printer, requiring readjustment. The artist’s attempts to pre-cisely reposition the material and resume printing inevitably produces over-printed stripes of varying width across the image, technology’s equivalent of the expressionist’s drip. In her exploitation of these and other quirky “errors,” Pollack has discovered the

garden in the machine.Exhibiting the works involves further subversion.

Rather than delivering a prepared show, the artist arrives at the gallery with a roll of images and wooden stretchers of various sizes. The work is then stretched according to an intuitive process, often with the images off-center or out of alignment.

Pollack’s humor, elements of performance/interven-tion and interest in technology link her aesthetic to artists such as Karin Sander. A modest-sized piece, “New Sky 1” (2011), is simply a barely inflected photo of a blank sky printed on linen. It hangs off by itself, but don’t miss it.

With Witness, her first solo exhibition, Pollack has taken on imagery weighted with the avant-garde past. Dada’s torn paper drawings will shortly be a century old, and Arp’s hastily scribbled poetry was delivered to his printer with the instruction that the printer supply any words he might find illegible. Their attack of established culture and society proposed thorough disorder. Pollack’s pro-cess and allusive poetry are a gentler, reductive rebellion, announcing neither anti-art nor avant-garde but rather a refined awareness of image and support adapting to cur-rent concerns. Carrie Pollack: Witness Through Feb. 25, MINuS SPACE, 111 Front St., Ste. 226, Brooklyn, 347-525-4628, www.minusspace.com.

Damien Hirst, “Famotidine,” 2004–2011. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2012. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates.

Carrie Pollack, “Blanket 1,” 2011, Pigment ink on linen, 36 x 26 in.

Courtesy MINUS SPACE.


MUSEUMS

History Lesson: LeutzehOW WAShINGTON ICON CROSSED ThE POND

By JIM LONG

From time to time over years of visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I would fi nd myself in front of Emanuel

Leutze’s iconic “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” About 12 and a half feet high and 21 feet long, the huge rectangle was simply and plainly framed, hanging at just below knee height, if memory serves.

“It’s about the ice,” I would think each time I saw it; acres and acres of the stuff, won-derfully observed and presented in loosely brushed color and impasto white varnished to cast a glitter over the surface. Pyramids of men and perhaps a woman of various nations and stations, rearing horses and standing cannon all crossing a frozen river of glory in boats without names.

In the lead is a standing fi gure representing Washington, the center of a triangular com-position along with a Scot, an African, West-ern sharpshooters, a trapper, what appears to be a pair of twins (one perhaps a woman), a Native American and future president James Monroe, a Noah’s Ark of intrepid democratic warriors in breaking dawn light headed to victory over a force of Hessian soldiers.

The painting has recently been cleaned as part of the reorganization of The Met’s American collection and is now cradled in a 3,000-pound gold-leaf frame surmounted by a shield and eagle and bristling with rifl es and bayonets. The work is hung too high on the wall, making it diffi cult for the eye to adjust to its perspective and, I would think, especially diffi cult for children or seated viewers.

The painting has a curious story. Leutze’s

father was a German political activist who had to escape the country with his family. Leutze grew up in Philadelphia and returned to Germany during the revolutions of 1848. His epic 1849 work was conceived to lift the fl agging spirits of the ’48ers, as they have come to be called. It’s called “Sturm Und Drang,” inspired by the 1776 play of that title by Freidrich Klinger about the American Revolution and a German lad, frustrated by life under despotism, who crossed the sea to become a soldier in Washington’s army.

Leutze’s work is solidly in the tradition of German romanticism, which absorbed the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) move-ment and produced paintings such as Caspar Wolf’s massive glaciers and the sea battles and avalanches of de Loutherbourg, as well as infl uencing American painters like Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church and Thomas Cole, who hang with Leutze in the gallery.

The source of Leutze’s icescape was the Rhine, not the Delaware, and according to experts, the formations in the painting are uncharacteristic of Delaware River ice, which forms as slabs. Yet, ultimately the work is too big to fail, and even though it was badly damaged in Leutze’s studio after it was fi nished, the insur-ance company that took ownership exhibited it to great success. Leutze began a second ver-sion that was sent to New York in 1851, where it found 50,000 viewers and is to this day the most popular painting in The Met’s collection.

In our century, the work is more likely to be visited by groups of schoolchildren than by weary revolutionaries, but it remains an over-the-top monument to Leutze’s great goodwill and solidarity.

The original ended up in Bremen, where it was destroyed by the British in a bombing raid during World War II.

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” 1851, Oil on canvas.

MUSEUMS

Lois Dodd NEW PANEL PAINTINGS

Jen Casad DRAWINGS

A l e x a n d r e Ga l l e r yFuller Building 41 East 57th Street at Madison

www.alexandregallery.com

Through February 18

FEB 17 / FRI / 7:30 PM Borden Auditorium

Concluding ConcertMSM SYMPHONY with Kurt Masur and Selected Seminar Conductors

All-BEETHOVEN ProgramOverture to Egmont, op. 84 Symphony No. 6 in F Major, op. 68Symphony No. 7 in A Major, op. 92

$20 Adults | $12 Seniors and Students

FEB 13 – 17 / MON–FRI Borden Auditorium

Free Open Rehearsals MON / FEB 13 / 9:30 AM TUES / FEB 14 / 7 PM WED / FEB 15 / 9:30 AM THURS / FEB 16 / 7 PMFRI / FEB 17 / 9:30 AM

Seventh Annual

KURT MASURCONDUCTING SEMINAR

Man

hatta

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usic

Manhattan School of Music

122ND & BROADWAY | 917 493 4428 | WWW.MSMNYC.EDU© 2012 MSM. Program and artist subject to change. Masur by Brian Hatton.


FILM

Lone Wolf CompositionsTIM BERNE PRESENTS ‘SNAKEOIL’

By HOWARD MANDEL

Tim Berne is the saxophonist as lone wolf—a rangy and determinedly individualistic composer/improviser

who has for 30-plus years lived far from the jazz mainstream and skirted the edges of the avant-garde. He’s been a presence in aficio-nado venues in New York, North America and beyond, and has just embarked on an 11-city U.S. tour, with a promising quar-tet performance at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art Feb. 17, to be followed by nine March gigs in Europe.

With a new album—Snakeoil, his 41st as a leader—issued by the prestigious and well-distributed label ECM, Berne may be poised for a breakthrough. But that’s seldom how

things work now, however worthy the sound.Most careers in the jazz arts gain stature

gradually. Few saxophonist-composer-improviser-bandleaders attain anything like culture-wide name recognition, much less make their way into the national soundtrack. An artist who demonstrates creative original-ity and determined productivity will attract a coterie of collaborators and protégés and perhaps a cultish following. What their music has to offer a general audience will be discov-ered eventually, if at all.

Berne also has a sound of his own as an instrumentalist and composer. His music has many dimensions: solemn, beseech-ing, sometimes expressing deep tender-ness, sometimes urgent to the point of rage. Pieces often contain both minutely detailed episodes and open-ended, “free” parts. They are typically long (on Snakeoil they run from

seven and a half to more than 14 minutes) and develop unpredictably, true to their own unique forms.

If Berne seems to be instinctively resistant to being tied down, he welcomes the contri-butions of bandmates. Early on, trumpeter Herb Robertson was his most significant countervoice; more recently, pianist Craig Taborn, whose solo album Avenging Angel (also on ECM) made many critics’ Top 10 lists in 2011, influenced Berne’s direction.

“Craig is the master of making simple grooves sound like the end of the world—in a good way,” Berne said in a recent tele-phone interview. One distinctive element of Snakeoil is that Berne’s alto sax several times takes off jaggedly over repeated patterns, akin to contemporary music’s minimalism.

“I don’t listen to minimalist composers much, but I like getting a lot out of a little,” he explained. “I like repetition, the trance element. When Philip Glass repeats the same three notes for 20 minutes, you either get bored or transported—the attitude you have toward it really changes the effect. I like the feel of phrasing that I can push, where something happens the more I play it. We

have one piece that in concert can keep repeating at the end for five minutes or more. I love that.”

Even so, Berne’s ensemble—also called Snakeoil—is not pattern-bound. On the record, clarinetist Oscar Noriega shadows Berne’s alto but then stretches out on his own. There’s no bassist in Snakeoil; pianist Matt Mitchell solos and comps in an un-swinging, classical-referent idiom while drummer Ches Smith focuses on dynamics and percussion timbres as much as rhythmic drive. Yet, like every good jazz group, the band constructs and sustains admirable rapport.

And the overall picture is the point. Rather than starting with a display of dazzling sax virtuosity, Snakeoil begins with a quiet, time-free piano introduction. Berne himself doesn’t play a note for three minutes.

“I’m not big on hitting audiences with the hook right up front,” he said. “I don’t want to see the end of the movie at the beginning.” Does such reserve puzzle listeners? “They’re either there or not,” the lone wolf shrugged. He ventures towards us. Are we ready for him? Reach the author at [email protected].

JAZZ

Theory vs. Practice A DAzzLING ALLEGORY IN ChRONICLE

By ARMOND WHITE

“Ever hear of Plato’s allegory of the cave?” one teenager asks another in Chronicle. This philosophy quiz was unexpected in the midst of a thrill ride movie, but Chronicle is so surprisingly interesting I wondered if its makers ever saw The Conformist (1970), where Bernardo Bertolucci visualized Plato’s allegory. When it’s good, Chronicle is less a thrill ride than a deliberation on movie thrills and contemporary youth market tastes.

In Chronicle, debut director Josh Trank uses all of the high school adolescent clichés polished into queer angst (camera geek Dane DeHaan as Andrew, who documents his mother’s illness and his father’s abuse); Obama stargazing (look-alike Michael B. Jordan as student council prez Steve Mont-gomery); and hunk sensitivity (Alex Russell as Andrew’s very responsible cousin Matt).

It’s commercial formula with a brash spin; Andrew’s snooping camera represents a poor kid’s attempt at both the self-consciousness

of the social media age and Hollywood’s lat-est cheap trend: using subjective realism as a premise for the horror and supernatural genres. This goes back to The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, trite exploitations of the hand-held, real-time camera gimmick, but Trank distances himself from both with state-of-the-art panache.

Videography by Matthew Jensen makes spectacle the movie’s real subject. Chron-icle’s sharp, ultra-clear, subtle imagery is more compelling than what happens to Andrew, Steve and cousin Matt’s friendship after they develop telekinetic superpowers upon encountering a meteorite.

Chronicle alludes to the metaphoric hor-monal urges of DePalma’s classics Carrie and The Fury—in fact, it’s loaded with pop references. Screenwriter Max Landis throws in plot concepts and gimmicks (like Obama and the cousin’s pursuit of a female video blogger) without ever achieving the concen-tration on moral quandary and mythology that distinguished last year’s TrollHunter, the Scandinavian upgrade of the witness-to-horror stunt premise.

Landis and Trank only play around with

that potential (also tossing in Let the Right One In allusions). But when the three friends discover an ability to fly and play football in the sky, the metaphor for prowess and transcendence blends digital video effects and genuine cinematic spectacle into the damnedest thing since the skydiving scenes in Point Break. From there, Chronicle’s play with spectacle and imagination is almost a fascinating version of Plato’s allegory.

Beyond its gimmicky premise, Chronicle’s visual excitement raises the important issue of how we use and respond to media. When the camera appears to follow Andrew’s P.O.V. or capture his different adventures and humiliations—from spelunking to flying to sex—Trank seems to be exercising cinemat-ic form. Like Andrew, he attempts to figure out what to do with this amazing digital video technique. (Is it accidental that neur-asthenic DeHaan resembles a cross between Jonathan Caouette and Todd Haynes?)

The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and the Paranormal Activity movies have degraded cinematic form, but when the hand-held, real-time stunt isn’t trite, the matter of aesthetic purpose and artistic responsibil-ity must be pondered, as here. Do modern audiences know about Godard’s theory on editing as a political act or, having been raised on television and Internet excess,

is cutting and camerawork just ignored in favor of dialog-based “content”?

Masterpieces like Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Bertolucci’s The Conformist, DePalma’s The Fury and Spielberg’s War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin make aesthetic issues part of their stories—the Blair Witch hoaxes don’t. Trank’s fumbling allegory questions responsibility: The boys realize that their ability to move things and do damage carries an onus (their noses bleed) and cousin Matt comes up with rules that Andrew defies when enraged. Lacking consistent follow-through (Landis never explains the source of the boys’ powers), Chronicle deteriorates into a destruction-of-Seattle finale, eventually trashing Trank’s subtle references to Nirvana’s cheerleaders-in-hell music video “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

That Plato question is smart-assed. Chron-icle superficially touches on philosophy as it superficially questions violence while exploit-ing Hollywood’s violent trends. Smart-alecky Landis invokes the apex predator theory as if to explain Andrew’s anxiety before defining it in dramatic terms. Chronicle’s frustrat-ing misuse of dazzling cinematic technique raises the question of the era: Do youth audi-ences know what cinematic form is for? Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xchair.


CLASSICAL

Platinum PremiereJuBILEE CONCERT hONORS GLASS AND PÄRT

By JUDy GELMAN MyERS

Carnegie Hall hosted the best birthday party ever as the American Compos-ers Orchestra presented the Philip

Glass 75th Birthday Concert in the Isaac Stern Auditorium Jan. 31. Thousands of composers, musicians and music lovers broke into a roar when Glass was introduced, giving him no less than four curtain calls at concert’s end.

The American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated

to promulgating the music of American composers. They commissioned Glass’ fi rst orchestral work, as well as works by John Adams and Lukas Foss, among hundreds of others. For this concert, ACO conductor laureate Dennis Russell Davies paired Glass’ Symphony No. 9 (U.S. premiere) with Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate for orchestra and solo pia-no (New York premiere), brilliantly executed by Maki Namekawa.

Both Glass and Pärt have been dubbed “minimalist.” While both composers decry the term, they employ some of the same compositional tools. Both require the audi-ence to tune into tiny modulations in order

to grasp the music’s greater purpose; both employ non-Western modes; both employ repetition to signal its opposite: change.

Indeed, change itself is the event that happens in this music. It may or may not be beautiful, but it is signifi cant. Musical resolution is not considered the inevitable outcome, it’s just one more change, which appears in two guises: a shift, often abrupt and without closure, from one pattern to the next or a shift within a pattern. More subtle, the second has greater effect.

There are obvious differences between the two composers. Pärt abandoned avant-garde techniques to study Gregorian chant and medieval polyphony before emerging with his own haunting, otherworldly voice. He composed Lamentate after seeing Anish Kapoor’s statue “Marsyas,” which captured

for him the myth’s tragic element: No one can escape death and suffering.

When Lamentate begins, you feel some-thing great happening somewhere in the world. As it draws to a close, you’re sharing the human experience of the world’s end. What is remarkable is that Pärt tunes you into the infi nite with the sparest of sounds, the most delicate juxtapositions.

Glass collaborated with poet Allen Gins-berg, pop icon David Bowie and theater iconoclast Robert Wilson. His ninth sym-phony, which he describes as “big and unrelenting,” is full of syncopated rhythms, a fortifi ed horn section and a second move-ment that begins with the lyric simplicity of a pop love song. Not quite “Happy Birthday to You,” but close enough to make for a very happy evening.

It’s Clarinet MonthWILLIAMSON, MCGILL, MEYER AND ShIFRIN BLOW uP

By JAy NORDLINGER

Say what you will about piano playing, conducting, violin playing and, espe-cially, composing: This is a very good

age for clarinet playing, even a great one. We have Alessandro Carbonare, Martin Fröst, Kari Kriikku and Julian Bliss, among oth-ers. Four of those others played in New York during the month of January. Call it clarinet month, almost a celebration.

Two of the clarinetists appeared in concer-tos with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The two used to be co-princi-pals in that orchestra. But then one of them, Stephen Williamson, jumped to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Williamson played the Mozart concerto, arguably the greatest clarinet piece of them all (and one of Mozart’s greatest pieces, which is saying something). Under Maestro Fabio Luisi, the fi rst movement began very fast, and there was not much grace. In fact, the music had a nasty edge, which is not this music at all. Moreover, the orchestra was spotty at so fast a tempo.

The soloist, on the other hand, was clean and graceful. Was the speedy tempo of his choos-ing? Probably. The second movement, Adagio, was appropriately heavenly, with Williamson giving tenors and other singers a lesson in how to sing a Mozart aria. I think his overholding of

the last note was a little showy, however.Like the opening Allegro, the closing Alle-

gro was taken at a breakneck tempo. The licorice stick could handle it, the orchestra not really. Incidentally, Williamson squeaked once or twice—but I always say, “Life is not a studio recording.” And Williamson is a supreme player.

The other clarinetist on the afternoon, Anthony McGill, played the Copland con-certo, written for Benny Goodman. It is in two movements, the fi rst slow, the second fast. They are linked by a nifty cadenza. From McGill and Luisi, the fi rst movement was mannered and stilted. The notes were placed just so, rather than fl owing naturally. It must be said, though, that a wrong concept was executed beautifully.

Things perked up with the cadenza, in which McGill showed superb judgment. And the second movement really swung. That is, the American clarinetist swung while the Ital-ian conductor did his best.

Sabine Meyer brought her clarinet trio—billed as Sabine Meyer’s Trio di Clarone—to the 92nd Street Y. Meyer gained worldwide fame in the early 1980s when Herbert von Karajan tried to install her in the Berlin Philharmonic. The old boys balked. Meyer walked, enjoying a rich solo career.

She knows the other members of her trio very well: One is her husband, Reiner Wehle, and the other is her brother, Wolfgang Meyer. The men are outstanding in their own right. But I personally couldn’t take my ears off

Sabine, one of the most intelligent and ele-gant musicians around. She simply has the gift of “knowing,” and of doing.

So does David Shifrin, who played the next afternoon in Alice Tully Hall. He was joined by the pianist Wu Han and the cellist David Finckel, who are married to each other, and who are the artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They suc-ceeded Shifrin himself.

Brits like to say of Queen Elizabeth II, “She never puts a foot wrong.” I say something similar of Shifrin. He is usually impeccable, but at the same time he’s not cautious or prim. He tackles music with relish. He does not have one sound, but dozens, as all good clarinetists do: He picks the one most suited

to the note or phrase at hand. And he has an uncanny sense of the “stream” of music, its momentum.

I will give you two details from this concert: He took such a long breath in a Brahms trio, I thought, “Who does he think he is, Dmitri Hvorostovsky [the Russian baritone, who is suspected of having a third lung]?” And there is a Bruch piece that begins with a merry, quick tune, played by the piano. Shifrin had a look on his face that said, “I can’t wait to get it.”

In a fi nal bit of clarinet news, Ricardo Morales has joined the New York Philhar-monic as principal this season. Previously he was with the Met Orchestra and then the Philadelphia. He, too, is a master, a star. Yes, we are in a lucky age for the clarinet.

Sabine Meyer’s Trio di Clarone.


THEATER

Art vs. ControversyEVERYONE’S ‘PORGY AND BESS’

By ARMOND WHITE

Stephen Sondheim failed to set the agenda for Broadway camp followers when he decried the new production

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Instead, his argument that the DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and George and Ira Gershwin collaboration was inviolable wound up set-ting the stage for its 21st-century reception, proving why the show matters.

Since its premiere in 1935, Porgy and Bess—as opera, musical theater, album or fi lm—makes a relentless claim on American cultural values. Its story of black American ghetto dwellers as envisioned by white and Jewish American artists reveals the contradictions of American social and artistic history like few other works of art. Conceived as a “folk opera,” a hybrid term that mediated its authors’ ambitions and the class snob-bery they opposed, Porgy and Bess was created in contradis-tinction to blues and jazz and Negro spiri-tuals while alluding to them all. And all of it must always be rethought.

The current Broad-way production from the American Reper-tory Theater (ART), directed by Diane Paulus with a new book by Suzan-Lori Parks, stars Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald in modern interpretations of the title cripple and his wanton woman. The characters’ psychol-ogy is emphasized—but within the com-plexity of the material, which shows its richness.

Committed actress McDonald, roman-tic Lewis and thoughtful Paulus and Parks contribute to the legacy of Porgy and Bessinterpretations. Their intention is not to change the show but to bring it forward; their success is in not succumbing to obvi-ous contemporary political attitudes. This Porgy and Bess—only partly emphasizing the Gershwin score—fi nds a loophole in political correctness by taking refuge in art.

In more politically principled times, Porgy and Bess was understood as either an expression of sympathetic imagination or an insult to a group’s self-identifi cation (contradictions still attached to Otto Prem-inger’s gorgeous 1959 fi lm version that to this day is regretted by its conscientious star, Sidney Poitier). But only a shallow appreciation of the show would condemn it for white folks’ patronizing or black folks’ humiliation.

Paulus, Parks and ART cannily follow the show’s pop heritage. This scaled-down production (trimmed from four hours to two and a half, pre-senting Catfi sh Row as a theatrical idea—more factory than community—not a political reality) sug-gests an intelligent, choreographed con-cert version to which McDonald, Lewis and the other players bring compelling presence.

Performed this way, Porgy and Bess’ narra-tive reveals the same triangular dynamic as Bizet’s Carmen trans-ferred to American

circumstances, a way of better understand-ing the same social conditions that the Gershwins surely knew also plagued the underclass of New York’s Lower East Side and were universal to the human experi-

ence: impotence, rapacity, superstition.Now, the Gershwins’ initial cultural

appropriation has been newly appropri-ated. Every time an artist puts a new spin on the show, its beauty and depth become more apparent as generations realize new ways to approach the material and bring out its truths.

This is the wonder of the great 1958 Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong concept album and the various renditions recorded by Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Leontyne Price and William Warfi eld, Ray Charles and even such stand-alone interpretations as Billy Stewart’s “Summertime” and Bil-lie Holiday’s astonishing, late, “I Loves You, Porgy,” so subtly, eccentrically personalized it obliterates all other versions (and certainly informs McDonald’s characterization).

Out of the show’s Negritude origin, mod-ern artists reshape it, providing their own

view on its stereotypes while also address-ing its “classic status.” Porgy and Bess was never kitsch but music of magnifi cent, stylized sorrow, beauty and desperation. If the Gershwins couldn’t give this black story the fullest politics, they gave it their fullest artistry—a sign of respect that Ella, Louis, Billie and others return, thus making the songs a vehicle of African-American triumph over the would-be oppressive institutions of opera and theater and the national songbook. Sondheim’s defense on behalf of authorship was an elitist protest that ignored the reality of how interpreta-tions happen through time.

There should be no controversy. Trans-lating Porgy and Bess into personal art is one of the greatest, most meaningful tradi-tions of American pop culture.

Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xchair.

IN MORE POLITICALLy

PRINCIPLED TIMES, PORGy AND BESS

WAS UNDERSTOOD AS EITHER AN

ExPRESSION OF SyMPATHETIC

IMAGINATION OR AN INSULT TO A GROUP’S SELF-IDENTIFICATION

Andra McDonald and Norm Lewis in Porgy and Bess.Photo: Michael J. Lutch


Not Necessarily So‘PORGY’ REBORN

By JOSEPH SMITH

ABroadway production calls itself The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Thereis no such thing. In a musical, the

words may have as much importance as the music; thus, for instance, Girl Crazy is “by” the Gershwins, plural. But Porgy and Bessis an opera. (Music and singing are con-tinuous, although “numbers” such as arias, ensembles and choruses stand out by virtue of their tunefulness and closed forms.)

In opera, since music rather than words dominates the drama, the work is “by” its composer. (For instance, La Traviata is by Verdi, not Verdi and Piave; anyone who dis-likes Strauss will hardly enjoy Der Rosen-kavalier, despite its inspired Hofmannsthal libretto.) Even if Ira Gershwin’s contribu-tion to the text had been as large as DuBose Heyward’s—which it is not—Porgy and Besswould be by George Gershwin.

The primacy of the music distinguishes

opera from musical in every respect. An opera composer, for instance, always orchestrates the work himself, because tone color is an essential element. (Ger-shwin orchestrated Porgy, but never his musicals.) In opera, vocal range will often compromise intelligibility—this is the price we pay for the emotive power of the vocal extremes. (In “My Man’s Gone Now,” for instance, we miss much of the text, but Serena’s passionate wailing is more elo-quent than words.)

Most operas are sung throughout, and since singing is slower than speech, the amount of text is limited, necessitating a certain oversimplifi cation and crudeness in the text. The librettist must rely on the composer to supply nuance, poetry, sub-text and emotional complexity.

Generally, opera is a big medium. If Ger-shwin’s opera were principally about Porgy and Bess, it would not require its many supporting roles and huge chorus. In fact, the piece is as much about the relationship of each individual to the community of

Catfi sh Row as about the title characters. Porgy’s largeness (and, alas, expense!) is not a matter of extrinsic spectacle but an essential factor, as proved not only by the sheer number of choruses but also by their musical complexity and richness. Thus, an “intimate” Porgy is an oxymoron.

Those who acknowledge Porgy and Bessto be an opera will understand that its dra-maturgy is inseparable from its music; the composer is the “auteur.” A good example would be its ending: Porgy sets off to New York in his goat cart to rescue Bess. The music that rings down the curtain doesn’t address what may happen to Porgy, but

what Porgy is feeling. The music of “Oh, Lawd, I’m on My Way” tells us that Porgy’s quest exalts and ennobles him and that Catfi sh Row is inspired by him. As an audi-ence, we can like or dislike the ending but, since it is a musical climax, it is integral to the work.

We should not allow the present pro-duction to say that it is merely casting off “tradition.” At issue is not how the work has been performed but what it is—a coherent musical work. A cut-down, reorchestrated production retaining only a fraction of the music is neither “the Gershwins’” nor George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

The TakeoverWhEN GuEST STARS RuLE DANCE

By JOEL LOBENTHAL

It sometimes seems today as if every ballet company in the world is fronted by a representative sampling of about

a dozen perpetual guest stars. Each has a company that they at least nominally call home, but they are continuously orbiting out on their own.

Sometimes they need no more fi rma-ment or context than their own refl ected glitter, which is what brings fi ve of ballet’s busiest men to City Center later this month for the Kings of the Dance. Reigning this year are David Hallberg (ABT and the Bol-shoi), Marcelo Gomes (ABT), Ivan Vasiliev (Mikhailovsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia), Guillaume Coté (National Ballet of Canada) and Denis Matvienko (Mariinsky).

The current roster dominance of guest stars certainly robs performance oppor-tunities from a company’s full-time mem-

bers. It also works against the possibility of establishing a homogenous company style, which at one time was the overriding artistic ambition of the world’s major com-panies. On the other hand, it quells within the host company what is one of the worst occupational hazards: complacency.

Largely trained in the state-supported ballet academies of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the guesting globe-trotters almost invariably manifest stage-readiness and confi -dence, a certain worldliness and glam-our. Companies can benefi t from their knowledge, professionalism and experi-ence. But the guest-star treadmill as a rule is not a range or artistry widening exercise.

Principal dancers get the most solo stage time, so administrations tend to pick people who are likely to appeal to the widest demographic. Guest stars are on stage in more places than “mere” principal dancers, and they tend to market easily comprehended physical and performance

temperament. It’s easy for them to get into bad habits, become self-indulgent or rely on special effects.

The stamina needed to survive their itin-eraries mark them as super-

human, but of course they

are not. Jet lag and fatigue are ever-present impediments to quality.

When the Berlin Ballet’s Polina Semion-ova—a prominent ballerina in the guest tribe—made her ABT debut as Kitri in a Saturday matinee of Don Quixote last May, her performance was less stellar than it

might have been. For me, her schedule loomed as the likely culprit, all the more so when I later read in the New York Timesthat she had left the theater after her debut and gone directly to the airport to catch a fl ight to La Scala in Milan for her next gig.

(She missed the fl ight.) It’s a short career, and plan-

ning a comfortable retirement is nothing to be ashamed of, but I would appreciate a bit more frankness about it. When Hallberg joined the Bolshoi, what you probably didn’t hear (I didn’t) amid the press hoopla was the salient fact that, as well as artistic satisfaction, pecuni-ary rewards had to have been a major factor in his decision.

Certainly, Kings of the Dancehas been lucrative for the kings as well as for impresario Sergei

Danilian. But Kings aims for a degree of creative accomplishment as well by com-missioning new works for the reigning monarchs; this month, there will be no less than eight New York premieres shown.

Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com.

DANCE

IT’S A SHORT CAREER, AND PLANNING

A COMFORTABLE RETIREMENT IS NOTHING TO BE

ASHAMED OF, BUT I WOULD APPRECIATE A BIT MORE FRANkNESS

ABOUT IT.

Audra McDonald, NaTasha Yvette

Williams and ensemble in

Porgy and Bess.

Photo: Michael J. Lutch


Dancing With MyselfSOLO VIDEOS GO VIRAL

By BEN kESSLER

Too often, music videos exist solely to maximize a performer’s impact on consumer culture, a branding exer-

cise. But there’s a small subgenre of solo dance performance videos—typifi ed by the recent viral hits “Lonely Boy” and “Call Your Girlfriend”—that inverts consumer-ist logic, expressing instead the impact of popular culture upon the individual within “normal” society.

This subgenre can be traced back to direc-tor Spike Jonze’s groundbreaking, millennial Fatboy Slim clips “Praise You” and “Weapon of Choice,” wherein Jonze (and his muse Christopher Walken) wittily combined youth culture anarchy and popcult grace. Jonze, in turn, may have drawn inspiration from Denis

Lavant’s unforgettable solo dance at the end of Claire Denis’ fi lm Beau Travail (1999).

Against the house track “Rhythm of the Night,” Lavant depicted in wild, scary cho-reography the suffering of a repressed man succumbing to his inner demons. Switch-ing in an instant from ramrod military posture to fully horizontal prostration, he described his character’s torment as a kind of crucifi xion. Though related to tragic plot events adapted from Melville’s Billy Budd,Lavant’s dance—a suicide note communi-cated in movement—conveyed the ironic triumph of deviance over normality.

At a much lower level of physical articula-tion, we have The Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy,” in which actor Derrick T. Tuggle performs a quasi-parodic dance routine in unadorned offi ce space. Tuggle’s palsied renditions of the twist and various disco moves comple-ment the banal, derivative song. He quite

literally goes through the motions speci-fi ed by the uninspired lyrics, looking at his watch as the singer complains about a girl who keeps him waiting, etc.

It’s unclear whether the joke is on The Black Keys or on the viewer, but Tuggle’s spirited lit-eralism certainly appealed to fanboy culture’s love of “faithful” remakes and rehashes, with 7 million YouTube views and counting.

Back in December, Robyn’s video “Call Your Girlfriend” inspired its own viral remake in connection with the singer’s Sat-urday Night Live appearance. SNL writer Taran Killam’s workplace re-enactment of Robyn’s solo dance coup was a rare embarrassment-free moment for the show. Neither withering satire nor fawning celeb-rity tribute, Killam’s disco moment was an amusing testament to the original video’s infectious sense of drama.

Set on a soundstage without scenery (as bare as the hallway in “Lonely Boy”), “Call Your Girlfriend” serves as a clarion call to imaginative projection. Seemingly in one take, Robyn—an untrained dancer—struts, slides and somersaults through director Max Vitali’s widescreen frame. The expan-sive image puts Robyn’s solo dance in per-

spective. What’s most important here is not the performer’s individual talent or ego but the emotions she works to evoke, which are bigger than she is. And when the sound-stage lighting shifts dramatically, suddenly conjuring a dance club, Robyn and Vitali capture how feelings set free by pop culture transform our perceptions, thus transfi gur-ing the everyday world.

These one-person fl ash mobs fl aunt the incongruity of amateur dance in quotidian space. They confront an apparently uncar-ing society with fl amboyant spectacles of deviant feeling, perhaps none more effec-tively than last year’s “Überlin,” the R.E.M. video directed by Sam Taylor-Wood. Solo performer Aaron Johnson’s dance through the streets of London keeps swerving around masculine norms. When imitating a Banksy-like squirrel graffi to or cartwheeling on the pavement, he’s closer to Lavant (yes, him again) in the “Modern Love” sequence of Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang (1986).

Suspended in air like a trapeze artist, with a streetlamp wedged between his legs, Johnson offers iconoclasm that translates as sexy heroism. That’s a triumph worthy of Lavant and Jonze.

ON GAMING

POP

Back to Gaming BasicsThE ELuSIVE JOYS OF RAYMAN ORIGINS

By STEvE HASkE

When was the last time you had real fun playing a game? I’m not talking about the pleasure you

get from playing Pac-Man or Madden or Words with Friends. Those are all perfectly fi ne games, of course, but like so many titles today, they’re missing an element that’s rarely found in the medium: pure, adulterated joy.

Through the years, Nintendo has been pretty consistent in offering this kind of almost indescribable elation. Super Mario Bros. obviously comes to mind fi rst, dating from the NES to the present-day Super Mario Galaxy titles. That joyous feeling is hard to put my fi nger on. I could sit here and analyze the simplicity of design or how the bright, color-ful whimsy naturally leaves one beaming, but that’d kind of be missing the point.

With joy, it’s more about moments—maybe you’ve quickly completed a tricky

series of jumps through a challenging plat-forming section or have collected a power-up and are soaring over a level as Mario audibly whoops in delight. Whatever the case, it just feels good.

But aside from Donkey Kong Country Returns—the best non-Mario Nintendo platformer of this console generation—it’s been years since I’ve felt as much genuine joy with a game as I have while playing Rayman Origins recently.

The intro is all you need. When Ray-man and his layabout friends accidentally annoy an underground, gibberish-spouting Hell-grandma by snoring too loudly above ground, it’s hard not to laugh at the fury of goofy, bizarre monsters she unleashes.

Rayman Origins’ ridiculous personal-ity is overwhelmingly infectious. Items may sing at you as you collect them. The exaggerated slapstick and weird art direc-tion feel like a bit like a European Looney Tunes. You won’t necessarily understand how your score works. I don’t even know what sort of creature my favorite charac-ter is. He kind of resembles a drunk frog (I

don’t know his name, either).Co-op trolling by slapping friends silly is

maybe the most enjoyment you can have in Rayman Origins. Wonderfully, there’s no particular incentive to do so—screwing around is just hilarious. This is the kind of game where few will be able to resist the urge to stop acting their age at least once—and I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have a grin plastered on their face within fi ve minutes of playing because of it.

Plus, the soundtrack has stubby bassoon and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”-style banjo. That’s got to be worth something.

Rayman Origins is available now for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are available now for the Wii.

Steve Haske is a Portland, Ore.-based freelance journalist. Follow him on Twitter @afraidtomerge

A scene from Rayman Origins.


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Going, Going AuctionsBy CAROLINE BIRENBAUM

African Americana at AuctionSwann introduced thematic auctions of

African Americana way back in 1996 and added separate sales of fine art by African-American artists in 2007. They now con-duct at least two major auctions of African-American fine art each year, along with an annual winter sale of Printed & Manuscript African Americana. This season, Chicago auctioneer Leslie Hindman jumps in with an auction of Works by African-American Artists.

Swann’s Feb. 16 auction of African-American fine art contains a wide array of prints, drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptures by both familiar and seldom seen artists, with pieces ranging from the 1860s to the first decade of the 21st cen-tury. Highlights among the works on paper include Charles White’s large charcoal drawing, “J’Accuse! Number 10,” which appeared in a cropped version on the cover of Ebony magazine’s August 1966 special issue on “The Negro Woman”; “Fish Fry,” a pen-and-ink drawing by Jacob Lawrence; a complete set of Kara Walker’s “Harper’s Pic-torial History of the Civil War (Annotated),” consisting of 15 offset lithographs and screen prints; and significant pieces from the estate of drummer Max Roach, includ-ing a set of four color screen prints by David Hammons and Bruce Talamon designed for use as album covers and Romare Bearden’s oil monotype, “A Portrait of Max: In Sounds, Rhythms, Colors and Silences.”

Of special note among many splendid paintings are two landscapes by 19th-cen-tury Cincinnati artist Robert Scott Duncan-son; Samuel Countee’s “My Guitar,” which was a favorite at the 1936 Texas Centennial Exhibition; a biomorphic abstraction by Charles Alston; a large figurative Haitian scene on masonite by Ellis Wilson; Alma Thomas’ colorful depiction of the August 1963 march on Washington; and “Eastern Star,” a very large, vivid abstract acrylic on canvas by William T. Williams, the first painting by the New York artist and teacher

to come to auction.Swann’s March 1 auction of Printed

& Manuscript African Americana offers important documents and ephemeral material relating to the history of slavery, racism and civil rights.

The B. H. Munday Family’s Slave Bible contains seven pages inscribed with the names, birth and death dates of this Essex County, Va., family’s slaves, significant information for African-American genealo-gists. An archive related to Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey includes photographs, essays and broadsides. Military items include the only known copy of a World War II recruitment poster of Pearl Harbor hero Dorie Miller and an album of 77 personal photographs depicting the Tuskegee Air-men while stationed in Italy.

Among featured civil rights items are the June 20, 1963, preliminary printing of what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with a handwritten note by New York Rep. Emanuel Celler to NAACP Washington Bureau Director Clarence Mitchell: “To Clarence—An indefatigable worker for Civil Rights, here is my home work sheet, Emanuel Celler,” and an original copy of the tally of votes for the Act; and two inscribed copies of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, dedi-cated to A. Philip Randolph and Illinois Sen. Paul H. Douglas.

Swann: Feb. 16, 2:30 p.m. Previews Feb. 11 & 13–16. March 1, 10:30 a.m. & 2:30 p.m. Previews Feb. 25 & 27–29. www.swanngalleries.com.

Leslie Hindman’s inaugural auction of Works by African-American Artists March 1 features Duncanson’s “The Apennines, Italy,” Hughie Lee-Smith’s “Acropolis II” and an abstract acrylic and gouache by Thomas. Hindman will also offer a “selling exhibition” of works by African-American artists that will run concurrently with the auction preview.

Leslie Hindman, March 1, 7 p.m. Pre-views Feb. 25 & 27–March 1, www.leslie-hindman.com.

Out-of-Town visitorRago, the Lambertville, N.J., auction-

eer, holds its first preview in Manhattan, exhibiting highlights from its Feb. 25–26 auction of 20th- and 21st-Century Design. Featured examples include a carved table from the Arden utopian community; a three-panel screen by Donald Deskey; fine furniture from the New Hope, Pa., area, including carved wood chairs by Phil Pow-ell, a bench by George Nakashima and a large wrought metal wall hanging by Paul

Evans from the collection of the original owner; French furniture by Dominique, Royère and André Sornay; and an assort-ment of decorative smalls from all over the world, such as a rare sterling and enamel tea caddy by Ramsden & Carr and contem-porary glass by Kyohei Fujita.

Rago, Feb. 25 & 26, 11 a.m. New York pre-views at The Apthorp, Feb. 11 & 12, noon–5 p.m. Call 609-397-9374 for an open house appointment. www.ragoarts.com.

AUCTIONS

Paul Evans Studio, wall hanging, polychromed and bronzed torch-cut steel, 1960s. Estimate $18,000–$24,000. At auction at Rago Feb. 26. Photo courtesy Rago.


THE CITyARTS INTERvIEW

Dr. kahlil Gibran MuhammadD

r. Kahlil Gibran Muhammad, for-merly an assistant professor of his-tory at Indiana University, was named

director of Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at a press confer-ence Nov. 17, 2010. On the fl ight home that day, Muhammad glanced over to see his seatmate unfold the New York Times’ Arts and Leisure section and there he was, smil-ing back at himself from the front page.

“Talk about a learning curve,” says the 38-year-old great-grandson of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and author of The Condemnation of Blackness, who has succeeded longtime Schomburg leader Howard Dodson. “I couldn’t hide in my 8-by-8-foot faculty offi ce anymore.”

By the following July, Muhammad was back in New York City, submerged in a crash course on the Schomburg’s massive hold-ings and confronting the reality that librar-ies are scrambling to reinvent themselves in a world where information can be conjured up by a fi nger stroke on a hand-held com-puter screen. [Elena Oumano]

CityArts: What are you doing to reach out to young people?

Khalil Gibran Muhammad: We’re not focused strictly on literacy; we’re also inter-ested in historical and cultural literacy, and that kills two birds with one stone. We want young people to read more, consume and take advantage of the arts, and we want them to have a context and deeper under-standing of where these ideas come from, how they evolved and why they’re relevant today. We’ve developed partnerships with other leaders of educational institutions in this community who address this need for consciousness and critical engagement and develop young people’s sense of having a stake in these debates and institutions.

Our Saturday Junior Scholars Program focuses on the African Diaspora, African-American history, performing arts, visual arts, scholarship and journalism and teaches how to reengineer ideas from the past to express yourself in the present so you can become inspired, critically engaged and take on the world through the lens of an understanding that everything that meets the eye isn’t a refl ection of reality, that there

are often many layers to peel away.The prospect of Def Jam founders Rus-

sell Simmons and Rick Rubin leaving their papers to the Schomburg has come up.

We’re fi guring out how to sell preservation to the hip-hop generation. We have John Coltrane’s sheet music, which makes sense as paper evidence of growth in composition. But it’s different with beat box machines and digital sampling. One, it’s more material than written down and two, for the found-ers of hip-hop in particular, because things weren’t written down in that traditional way, we have to meet them where they are and focus on the AV preservation part of it. That’s new.

Part of the conversation I’ll have with these artists is also about scraps of paper that get translated into published music, because that’s part of the process. Many of them don’t think of it that way. It’s fascinat-ing, because you’d think this is an obvious meeting of the minds, a mutual interest, but it’s also challenging because cultural insti-tutions like the Schomburg don’t have the same resonance they did for earlier genera-tions.

It’s like the black church: Everyone of any signifi cance, except for a small minority of converted Muslims, went through the black church. Whether they got their vocal train-ing or political skills, the black church was at the center of everything. The Schomburg was a cultural, secular equivalent—particu-larly for people in New York and people who engage in the arts. That’s no longer true. The church has lost its foothold and so have cul-tural institutions like the Schomburg.

The Schomburg was founded during the Harlem Renaissance. Is there a need for another Harlem Renaissance?

We’re in the midst of a renaissance, in terms of literary and cultural production. African Americans and black folk from various parts of the world are producing a tremendous amount of work, and our challenge is to support the cultural work of this commu-nity, whether it’s small, grassroots theaters, authors or artists. We see a cultural intimacy that didn’t exist on this scale in earlier genera-tions, but there’s a lack of appreciation for the social and economic context that still under-girds the reality of segregated lives.

Most black children attend overwhelm-ingly segregated schools; blacks and whites still don’t live together in major cities. Eco-nomic inequality has grown worse rather than better. We’re trying to address that cultural sensibility, that sense of being part of something bigger through engaged pro-gramming.

Our new programs Stage for Debate and Talks at the Schomburg bring these issues together. Stage returns to the performance of engaging ideas instead of panels or moderated discussions, where people are mostly polite and not necessarily rigorously engaging each other. We want to take two people with published records who oppose each other’s points of view on important issues, like racial identity. This is not about personality or demagogy but issues such as what are the basic operating assumptions about who black people are in the 21st cen-tury, which underlies a lot of today’s literary

production. That raises the literacy of young people in that they can embrace complexity because that’s exactly the world we live in.

We’re planning a major innovative hip-hop exhibition for 2013 that won’t be just a celebration but a take on hip-hop as a historical phenomenon—what was the con-text, how has it evolved? What are the con-tours of its reach and infl uence? What were the foundation’s successes and mistakes? We want to be a platform for those conver-sations and document them. When we look back, we don’t want to run into people any-where in New York City who say, “I’ve never been to the Schomburg Center.”

Not only is it about celebrating the legacy of so many giants and lesser-known folk, it’s also about investing in this institution and making sure that the work black people have done then and now continues to be celebrated and be a central thread in the fabric of the American story.

Dr. Kahlil Gilbran Muhammad, director of Harlem’s Schomburg

Center for Research in Black Culture.

Photo courtesy of NYPL


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cityArts February 8, 2012

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Transcript of cityArts February 8, 2012