Category: Art

My friends at Double Edge Theatre always keep me engaged in deep conversation. One young daughter of the clan is reading Herodotus (for fun), and in my skim of the front page of quotes, I see some explanation for our discussion:

They are wont to deliberate when drinking hard about the most important of their affairs, and whatever conclusion has pleased them, this on the next day, when they are sober, the master of the house where they happen to deliberate lays before them for discussion. If it pleases them when they are sober also, they adopt it, but if it does not please them, they let it go. Whatever they have had the first deliberation on when they are sober, they consider again when they are drinking.
— Herodotus, The Histories

‡ Faye Driscoll at DTW. I love Faye’s work. It’s smart and funny and grabs you down where you thought your thoughts were private. I can’t wait to see her new piece, There is so much mad in me. Here’s a teaser.
‡ Alice in 3D land. Wen is still gathering the endurance required to make it though Avatar, so I’m going to get my intro to 3D v.2.0 with the looking glass gang. Should be fun, as is anything where one gets to watch J. Depp…

My buddy Charley and I popped over to Barbes last night and sat nearly on top of two superb guitarists in a duo setting of jazz, rag, and pop classics. As a duo, Adam Levy and Jim Campilongo were ideally matched; the former an understated quirky explorer of the silence between delicious notes and the latter a straightforward wizard of multi-picked scalar improv. Both have new CD’s out, but also a boatload of catalog, including album credits with the likes of Norah Jones and Cake in addition to their own diverse projects. I am looking forward to following these guys.

‡ LES. While it’s been growing and growing, it’s still off my beaten path. That changed a bit when Stephan Stoyanov opened his new larger space for Luxe (having first been a LES pioneer when real estate was less, well realistic).
Today I hope to start with a set of paintings touching on my favorite yoga topic: tantra. Sue Gurnee: “The Fulgent Cadences” and “Tantra” is at Feature Inc. Gurnee creates paintings that purport to balance the mind for the best decisionmaking. Sounds like yoga, and Gurnee knows it. This show includes paintings from tantric gurus alongside hers.
From there, we’ll for sure hit Stephan’s Luxe and whatever else we can find before the late lunch options seduce us to stop…

‡ Art FAIRS! It’s always a debate whether to try to take in this much art in one swoop. But there is an undeniable buzz. Thanks to Sky Pape (whose excellent show Water Works: Surface Tension is up through Saturday at June Kelly) I got to head to the ADAA Art Show with Joel Adas. Lots of great painting and drawing. Seems Marsden Hartley is the hot ticket. He and Burchfield were everywhere (and that’s a good thing!). I think I only saw one video in the whole show.

If my luck holds, I’ll be at the Armory Show with Kate Peila this weekend.

if sarah palin strikes terror into the hearts of liberals and fosters fear among her followers, is she, ergo, a terrorist? must explore…

This week I want to get on wit it. These seem like excellent places to start:

‡ Sky Pape Water Works: Surface Tension at June Kelly Gallery. I got a preview of this work in person this summer and Sky showed me the portfolio online for the show last week. This work is gorgeous. I missed the opening night, but I’ll get a less obstructed view this week — my consolation prize.

‡ Single Man. I heard Terry Gross‘s outstanding interview with Colin Firth about his latest role. Firth takes understated to a new level of intensity, and this film seems like a perfect showcase for it.

Though I appreciate economics, business, and the rule of law, our lawmakers failed to see the implications of the law that gave corporations protections without requiring of them responsibilities beyond making profit. This situation has to change if the world is to ever move beyond its status quo of greed-based life.

corporation ≠ person

The Wall Street Journal reported in September on Justice Sotomayor’s swearing in:

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”

There is a facebook cause, Abolish Corporate Personhood. Check it out.

‡ MoMA New Photography. I’ll certainly see more, too, as always with MoMA. It boils down to endurance. ‡ john hollenbeck. this coming week provides a chance to catch me up with my friend John Hollenbeck. John’s jazz/new music big band and his smaller group, the Claudia Quintet are stellar and there’s a chance to see both at le poisson rouge, which I have yet to check out. What takes John’s music to another realm for me, beyond the compositional prowess and musicianship of his world class groups, is his efforts to find answers to the “big questions” via his art.

The poisson show features three of John’s projects in one show: the Claudia Quintet with music from their new release, “Rainbow Jimmies;” a reimagining of music by Meredith Monk (John is her percussionist) called “Future Quest;” and a set from the big band featuring three premiere’s from their new new CD, “Eternal Interlude.”

ready, set, go!

‡ my kirtan. Ok, self-promotion, but i’ve wanted to lead a kirtan for a while and here it is: 7:30, Dec. 5, ISHTA Yoga. MP3 samples of the chants I’ll be leading are available here.

‡ LeeSaar: Prima at P.S. 122
I met director/choreographers Lee Sher and Saar Harari in 2008, when their piece Geisha was wowing New York City dance lovers. We spent some time together in Poland and I got to watch a class in which they introduced the concepts of the technique that drives their creative process. If you can imagine a world in which every action is a pure gut motivation — not clouded by insecurity or other emotional baggage, you’d have an inkling of the workings of the “Gaga” technique, a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance. In the hands of lee and saar, it leads to work that is sexy without being pornographic; supersonic without being chaotic; and poetic without being precious.

Visually, the work emerges from an undulation that often starts at the second chakra and fires up in the third (that’s the pelvis and the navel for you non-yogis). Which is not to say this is a stylized movement; rather there is a through-line that may result in a hip grind or may be just a passionate finger solo. The four dancers are credited as Creating Dancers; each has her own dance personality in the work, and introduces herself by name only at some point in the show. They are Jye-Hwei Lin, Hsin-Yi Hsiang, Hyerin Lee, and Candice Schnurr. A picture’s worth a thousand words; here are some rehearsal clips. The second gives a better sense of the final performance. I saw this last night. It plays through today. Catch it!

‡ home decorate: hang some art! Ah, the last bit of moving takes so long…