Richard III by William Shakespeare, performed by the actors of Shakespeare’s Globe, London

 

(image of Mark Rylance as Richard III; image found online here: http://theatrelight.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-different-kind-of-animal.html)

I've combined some Wikipedia research about the facts of the historical time with the nuances of the play. Here is my un-authoritative synopsis of the history and characters of "Richard III" by William Shakespeare:

How are Kings made? It's a game of chess. 

Preface before the play: The War of the Roses

Henry VI was one year old when his king father died. He was a Lancaster.

His cousin was Richard, Duke of York. This man was also in a direct line to the throne from a previous king, Edward III - and Richard married and had 13 children. He is the father of the later kings Edward IV and Richard III.  Young Richard, born 12th of the 13 children, was raised to be a military man and given significant military roles from the age of 11.

For an interlude as an adult, King Henry VI had a mental breakdown - Richard, Duke of York was then made regent. When the king regained his sanity, Richard, Duke of York became his enemy. Battles ensued  between the Yorks and the Lancasters. Many of the York key defenders of this generation were subsequently killed in battle or executed. 

Henry VI, married to Margaret, had a son Edward who would have been the rightful heir to the throne. They, representing the Lancasters, were significantly defeated in battle by the Yorks. Henry VI was captured and murdered in the Tower of London. This murder, according to Shakespeare, was the work of Richard III. Queen Margaret pressed on in further battles, attempting to keep the crown for her son; she was also finally defeated, perhaps also to the credit of Richard III. 

The play: Richard III 

In this next generation of Yorks, three sons survive and are in Shakespeare's play: Edward, George (aka Duke of Clarence), and Richard. Edward is King Edward IV. 

(It is known that through their marriages the estates of Richard and George became legally entangled and so there was known cause in history for enmity between them. George, in fact but for reasons I don't know, was killed while imprisoned in the Tower.)

Richard's actual wife was Anne Neville, a close relative he'd met 12 years before; she was the widow of a man who had been a Lancaster and heir to the throne.

King Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth had two sons and a daughter. Elizabeth's clan is the Woodville family, and her brother and sons (from a previous marriage) are in the play. After the king's death, the marriage was declared invalid and the heirs illegitimate. Richard III became king; the young princes were never seen again. Their sister, Elizabeth, survived.

The Duke of Buckingham, once Richard's loyal ally, is later betrayed by Richard and becomes his foe. Buckingham then rallies Henry Tudor, who resides in exile in France, to fight against Richard. Buckingham was later captured by Richard's allies and beheaded.   

The loss of Buckingham was a grave blow to Henry Tudor's campaign. However, Henry Tudor ascended for a second battle through the agencies of female support; his staunch supporters included his mother, Buckingham's widow, the Woodville family of the prior Queen Elizabeth, and the female regent currently ruling in France. After he vowed to marry the surviving daughter of Edward IV, Elizabeth,  he was able to rally broad support to fight Richard's forces a second time. 

With Richard's forces outnumbering those of Henry Tudor, it might have been easy for Richard to keep his crown and his life.  However, there were significant defections of key allies on the battlefield.   

As in the game of chess, you win by capturing the king.  Richard III, the last of 300 years of ruling Plantagents, died on the battlefield, suffering numerous blows.  

Henry Tudor, supported by the Lancaster family, became the King of England and married Elizabeth, the surviving princess/daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth. It achieved the unification of the houses of York and Lancaster.

-dp
(resources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/king_richard_iii, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_(play), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lancaster#Henry_V_and_the_Hundred_Years.27_War_.E2.80.93_the_Lancastrian_war)

Theater: Sweet and Sad at The Public Theater, Nov. 2013

This synopsis is from http://thirdrailrep.org/events.php?show=26:

It’s the 10th Anniversary of September 11 and the Apple family find themselves gathered together in Rhinebeck, NY for an impromptu lunch before heading off to an afternoon memorial service. While Uncle Benjamin rehearses for a reading, emotions run the gamut as the Apples catch up on politics (both familial and political), tell ghost stories, tease each other mercilessly, and confront the difficulties of loss. Filled with humor and sorrow, SWEET AND SAD celebrates the challenges of life in 21st century America and features the returning cast from last season’s hit show, THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING.

I'm a huge fan of playwright Richard Nelson and his Apple Family series. In this show, which is second in a set of four plays, the four siblings gather and touch, as best they can, the deepest wounds. There has been a death in the family, divorce, separation, unemployed children, illness, injury, and frustration at economic and professional paralysis. As the play opens, Barbara enters the empty dining room and looks like she's already been crying. Marion, under heart breaking circumstances, has moved into Barbara's house to live with her. Much has happened since the last play and "Sweet and Sad" artfully unfolds.

In addition to the personal tragedies are reflections about 9/11: the loss of intimate friends who have been ritually celebrated and mourned by brother Richard for the past 10 years, and the anonymous thousands killed who are made personal through Barbara's discovery of a set of discarded notebooks found in a secondhand store.

The arrows of emotion and meaning fly quickly in this play. An audience member who is in a happy place, without a "sore spot" from such pain in their own life, might find that the arrows fly past without resonance, missing their mark. But for others, they will feel the sharp sting. I left with tearful eyes.

The questions about 9/11 might seem familiar, but what might transpire if - like Barbara's high school seniors - we were given a whole hour to discuss each one? Hero or victim? Suicide bombers? Suicidal teens? How do the living make peace with their own souls? And how do we fit into the political landscape that we help create and move through?

One thing is for certain: these siblings fly in each other's faces at every turn. They interrupt ruthlessly. They deflect praise with a irritating self-negation. They throw up walls and boundaries where conversation is not permitted, making those psychic walls themselves invisible characters in the play. It's no wonder that boyfriend Tim gets to tell a ghost story: the dead, and our ultimate inability to talk about them, are very much present in tonight's play of "Sweet and Sad."

--dp

Theater: Sleeping Beauty at the New Victory Theater 11/1/13

Sleeping Beauty by Carlo Colla & Sons Marionette Company from Milan, Italy.

It is interesting to try to explain why this production is so touchingly beautiful. The marionettes are each a study in fine craftsmanship, and the manipulation by the Italian company is intricate and masterful. And yet - what conveys is the fragility of it all and, perhaps as a reflection, the fragility of all humans too.

The puppets still move like real marionettes and not like the smooth-action cartoons we've become familiar with in movies and TV. Real marionettes often move with jerking little stabs, their dances awkward in spite of their characters' glamour and grace.

The ancient fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty still conveys the feeling of "life's joys threatened by Misery." Children might watch this production focusing on princess and prince, a destiny of romantic love and marriage. But I feel certain that the myth has sustained itself through the ages because of the anguish felt by parents: the natural fear for the safety of their child when young, the disruption of youthful joys by puberty, the hopeless anguish when illness or death of a child must be accepted.

Combining these thoughts with the fragile marionettes made my experience of this Sleeping Beauty a profoundly deep one. I could have cried, leaving the theater, except for the joyous ending that the fairy tale version demands.

About the company:
The marionette company Carlo Colla and Sons is one of the best known companies in the world, with nearly three centuries of activity and has been Teatro Stabile of Puppets (1906-1957) Gerolamo Theatre in Piazza Beccaria in Milan. Today, his shows are appreciated throughout the world by an audience of adults and young people, on the occasion of the most important national and international events.  (http://www.marionettecolla.org/)

Theater: That Hopey Changey Thing, Oct. 2013 at the Public Theater

A quiet and typical family scene opens:  preparations are being made for a family dinner in a liberal suburban town in New York state.

Newcomer Tim is introduced to a family of four adult siblings and their memory-challenged uncle Ben. 

Written and directed by Richard Nelson, there's just enough-of-everything present in the room to create an evening of surprise, drama, humor, and sharp daggers of politicized anger and - even - irrational hatred. Underscoring the dialogue is the premise that one of the siblings, Jane, is researching a book that she imagines might be useful as a societal autobiography: the manner and mores of common social situations revealing deeper beliefs and values by both "what is said" and "what is not said."

The playwright has cleverly focused the audience's attention on the unspoken. 

A brilliant piece of writing and beautifully acted.  -dp

From Joe Dziemianowicz's review in the New York Post: 

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/hopey-changey-wake-reviews-fine-tuned-ensembes-drive-political-plays-article-1.450088

Fine-tuned ensembles drive two politically charged plays at the Public Theater.
Richard Nelson's "That Hopey Changey Thing" begins with a dying cry of a dog, Oliver. The whimper echoes the sick feelings of everyone at the cozy Rhinebeck home of high-school English teacher Barbara Apple (Maryann Plunkett). 

She lives there with her ailing uncle Benjamin (Jon DeVries), a retired actor with amnesia brought on by a heart attack. Also on hand are Barbara's siblings -- Richard (Jay O. Sanders), a state lawyer, Marian (Laila Robins), a second-grade teacher, and Jane (J. Smith-Cameron), a writer who's brought her actor boyfriend Tim (Shuler Hensley).

It's Election Night 2010 (as in Tuesday) and this liberal Democratic clan expects a beating at the polls. Talk turns to "us" and "them," Cuomo, who's a shoo-in, and disenchantment with Obama. The mention of Sarah Palin (whose quote inspires the title) causes choking. Ditto when Richard reveals he has taken a job with the Republicans.

For timeliness, "Hopey Changey," presented as part of the Public's issue-oriented Lab series, has immediacy. But the election-night setting is just a convenience. What makes the play interesting is the detailed portrait that emerges of the all-American Apples -- a group with polish, bruises and maybe a even worm or two.

Nelson, who directs his play, evokes the Apples in conversation that sounds as natural as breathing. And the cast couldn't be better.

There's also a never-seen character, Toby, a new pooch for Benjamin to replace Oliver, who kept soiling the house in his dying days. Toby makes the same messes his predecessor did. In that way, he's like a lot of elected officials.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/hopey-changey-wake-reviews-fine-tuned-ensembes-drive-political-plays-article-1.450088#ixzz2j1mF2I3E

Theater: Fun Home

From the review by Joe Dziemianowicz in the New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/fun-home-theater-review-article-1.1492941

The dearly departed were well cared for at the Bechdel funeral home in small-town Pennsylvania. 

“We remove all signs of trauma,” promises family-man proprietor Bruce Bechdel.
But the same can’t be said about the Bechdels themselves. 

The family shows several signs of trauma, especially the haunted Alison, who struggles with her past and the man who raised her.

So it goes in “Fun Home,” the achingly beautiful musical at the Public Theater. It speaks to one family and all families torn by secrets and lies.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/fun-home-theater-review-article-1.1492941#ixzz2j1kgcP7n

Theater: Wallace Shawn's "Grasses of a Thousand Colors" at the Public Theater, Oct. 2013

In this masterful epic play, Wallace Shawn takes us down the treacherous path of reasonableness. He's comfortable in his robe and slippers; he sees us, the audience, and welcomes us. Are we flattered when he tells us we look like a box of chocolates, ready to be eaten and enjoyed? Yes! Are we sympathetic with his ambitions as a scientist to solve the greatest problem of humankind: insufficient food? Yes! Are we entertained by stories of sexual prowess and sexual adventure? No surprise: Yes!

Written by Wallace Shawn and directed by Andre Gregory, the play unfolds as a futuristic vision of the accidental destruction of the world.  The lead character, Ben, has invented an improvement to the food chain. As audience, we experience the anguish of self-destruction while entertained by Ben's life story in which overt and outlandish sexual behavior is a symptom of the new illness he has imposed on humankind.  Is this a mirror of our "reasonable" present-day lives? Frighteningly I must answer, yes.  -dp

More from critic John Lahr's 2009 review in the New Yorker Magazine:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2009/06/01/090601crth_theatre_lahr

At the beginning of the three-hour “Grasses of a Thousand Colors” (superbly directed by André Gregory), Shawn is at it again: he stands before us as Ben, a scientist and a memoirist, in a black dressing gown, black monogrammed slippers, and black cravat, and plays his familiar wrong-footing game of self-deprecation. He is dressed as an agent of darkness, but he is bright with good will. “Well. Hello, everybody. Hello! Hello there!” he says, in his lisping, halting, high-pitched voice. He goes on, “When you’re all so nicely sitting there and listening to me, I’m deriving a great deal of pleasure from each and every one of you, as if you were chocolates I was eating.” In this futuristic dream play, eating and being eaten are important leitmotifs. Ben, we learn, is one of the barbarians who have devoured the planet, and, beneath his charm, he is as unrepentant as a hedge-fund manager. “Loaves, with Fishes, for Dinner” is the title of the memoir from which he reads to us, and which hints at his majestic self-infatuation.

Ben is perhaps the most unreliable of Shawn’s many unreliable narrators. His smugness—“I was born lucky”—is rivalled only by the imperialism of his convictions. “We’re fixers, improvers,” he says of his optimistic generation. The thing that he has fixed, it turns out, is the “problem of food.” As he pompously puts it, “There was, on the one hand, an enormous crowd of entities—ourselves and others—roaming the planet, trying to sustain themselves, or, in other words, looking for something to eat; and on the other hand there was a tiny, inadequate crowd of entities available on the planet to be eaten.” The appliance of Ben’s science allows the animal kingdom—frogs, cows, his own dog, Rufus, and, by implication, Homo sapiens—to feed on its own kind, as well as on the corpses of other animals. The discovery has made him rich; it has also destroyed the food chain. Things have gone disastrously wrong: animals are dying, and people are vomiting and keeling over.  (jump to link to read complete review)

Thurs. Oct. 17th: Esteli Gomez, soprano, and Colin Davin, guitar

An evening of songs for soprano voice and guitar entitled "Ancient Melodies, Modern Echoes" was presented at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 65th St. and Central Park West.

The program was split 3-ways between composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) ("perhaps the greatest 20th century composer of art songs"), Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563-1626), and a single piece by contemporary composer Caroline Shaw.

Of Dowland's songs, I loved the ancient poetry written in the time of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. This excerpt from Come Again:

Come again, Sweet love doth now invite, Thy graces that refrain, To do me due delight,  To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die, With thee again in sweetest sympathy. 

Come again, That I may cease to mourn, Through thy unkind disdain: For now left and forlorn I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die, In deadly pain and endless misery.

All the day, The sun that lends me shine, By frowns do cause me pine, And feeds me with delay, Her smiles my springs, that makes my joys to grow, Her frowns the Winters of my woe.  (and poem continues...)

Of Britten's many songs, it was a special treat to follow along through the sections of Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70 for solo guitar and, in the last part, soprano voice:

i.      Musingly  

ii.     Very Agitated 

iii.    Restless 

iv.    Uneasy 

v.     March-Like 

vi.    Dreaming 

vii.   Gently Rocking 

viii.  Passacaglia 

ix.    Slow and Quiet ("Come, heavy Sleep")

It was a marvelous performance in the lovely and colorful setting of the church. It was extra special to be there with son Elliot.

Tues. Oct. 14th: The Gotham Jazzmen (free weekly noon concert)

Piano. Upright bass. Clarinet. Cornet. Drums. Trombone.

The professional pedigrees of the Gotham Jazzmen, as they like to be known when they are performing at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts (Lincoln Center, UWS), would combine to be a couple of hundred years of music education and performance.

They gave us a rich, nuanced experience of New Orlean's-type jazz.  Some hits from their set list (from my notes, might be slightly wrong titles!):

• Bye Bye Blackbird
• Everybody Loves My Baby
• How Deep is the Ocean
• Crazy Rhythm
• Creole Love Song
• Christopher Columbus
• Willow Weep for Me
• Me, Myself and I

I can't wait to become a regular at their Tuesday noon concerts.  Three of them have another band called The Creole Cookin' Jazz Band, which is performing on Sunday nights from 7-10 pm at Arthur's Tavern in Greenwich Village, NYC.  http://www.arthurstavernnyc.com/performances.html

Sunday Oct. 13th: "The Forty Part Motet" in the Fuentidueña Chapel, the Cloisters, NYC

The Cloisters Museum, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, hosted this exhilarating soundscape performed by 40 speakers set up in an oval inside a 12th century chapel.

"The Forty Part Motet (2001), a sound installation by Janet Cardiff (Canadian, born 1957), will be the first presentation of contemporary art at The Cloisters."

It made me wonder what it would be like to be a choir member able to perform an exquisite piece of complex music. By walking the perimeter, as the first video below demonstrates, the listener is able to focus on individual voices, one at a time. I was thrilled to practically hear a new piece of music come to life at various speakers, experiencing each chorister's personal soundscape, as I walked the perimeter.

The Cloisters describes this as an installation of contemporary art - the first one ever - at the museum. Perhaps they could make this a permanent exhibition? It would be an awesome addition.

From YouTube, a good example of the soundscape (although in a different architectural setting):

 

 More about the project, as performed in another location:

"The Recommendation" by Jonathan Caren at the Flea Theater 9/7/13

The Recommendation is a fine play energetically performed by The Bats of the Flea Theater. The storyline: college student Feldman is generous with his offerings of social advancement strategies to his hapless roommate Izzy. These include "recommendations" by his influential family to aid Izzy to be admitted to graduate school and later offered a prestigious job.

We learn that Feldman also has a dark secret; Izzy remains innocent of the fact. When Feldman finally asks for a favor, can Izzy refuse?  -dp









(Online information source: http://www.theflea.org/show_detail.php?page_type=0&page_id=1&show_id=138)

"Aaron Feldman is popular and connected. He is everything his best friend Iskinder Iudoku is not, but when Feldman gets pulled over for a broken taillight, he is introduced to a world where privilege means nothing and Iskinder has the advantage. A play about friendship, class and where loyalty has its limits.

The 2012 production at The Old Globe in San Diego won the Craig Noel Outstanding New Play Award."

Featuring The Bats:
Barron Bass, James Fouhey, Alex J. Gould, Donaldo Prescod, Orlando Rivera, and Austin Trow.
Written by Jonathan Caren
Directed by Kel Haney
Set Design Caite Hevner Kemp
Lighting Design Nick Solyom
Costume Design Sydney Maresca
Sound Design Elisheba Ittoop
Fight Director Mark Olsen

Film: Twenty Feet from Stardom

Movie Info

Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names. In his compelling new film 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, award-winning director Morgan Neville shines a spotlight on the untold true story of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century. Triumphant and heartbreaking in equal measure, the film is both a tribute to the unsung voices who brought shape and style to popular music and a reflection on the conflicts, sacrifices and rewards of a career spentharmonizing with others. These gifted artists span a range of styles, genres and eras of popular music, but each has a uniquely fascinating and personal story to share of life spent in the shadows of superstardom. Along with rare archival footage and a peerless soundtrack, 20 FEET FROM STARDOM boasts intimate interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger and Sting to name just a few. However, these world-famous figures take a backseat to the diverse array of backup singers whose lives and stories take center stage in the film. (c) TWC-Radius

http://twentyfeetfromstardom.com/synopsis

Film: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

Found online: http://www.kinolorber.com/film.php?id=1346

Release Year: 2012
Running Time: 115
Color Type: Color
Country: France, Germany
Language: French w/English subtitles

Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh,You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet opens with a who's-who of French acting royalty (including Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and frequent Resnais muse Sabine Azema) being summoned to the reading of a late playwright's last will and testament. There, the playwright (Denis Podalydes) appears on a TV screen from beyond the grave and asks his erstwhile collaborators to evaluate a recording of an experimental theater company performing his Eurydice--a play they themselves all appeared in over the years. But as the video unspools, instead of watching passively, these seasoned thespians begin acting out the text alongside their youthful avatars, looking back into the past rather like mythic Orpheus himself. Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Eric Gautier on stylized sets that recall the French poetic realism of the 1930s, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema.

 

Film: Image from The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

Film: THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE

From the Film Forum website:

"(1952) At first glance, Shin Saburi seems the thick-headed dullard wife Michiyo Kogure likens to a carp, while she seems a spoiled snob, but then the layers of character peel away, as Keiko Tsushima (7 Samurai) flees from an arranged marriage and eventual yakuzalegend Koji Tsuruta extols buying second-hand. And a resolution seems inevitable at the simple plain meal of the title. Approx. 115 min. 35mm."

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/flavor_of_green_tea_over_rice

Film: The Discovery at Dawn

From the website:  http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/the-discovery-at-dawn

Kent and I were swept away by this film today at Lincoln Center.  Exiting the theater, we glanced into the nearby cafe and saw director Susanna Nicchiarelli sitting at a nearby table. We spoke to her and told her how much we enjoyed the film; she stood up and smiled; we had a sweet private conversation with her for a minute or two. We were so excited to be able to share with her our appreciation of her brilliant and engaging film!



THE DISCOVERY AT DAWN
LA SCOPERTA DELL'ALBA | SUSANNA NICCHIARELLI, 2012
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | 95 MINUTES

"Rome, 1981:  Professor Mario Tessandori is shot in the university courtyard and dies in the arms of Lucio Astengo, his friend and colleague. A few weeks later, Astengo vanishes mysteriously.  Flash forward to 2011. Caterina and Barbara Astengo, six and 12 when their father passed away, put up for sale their family cottage by the sea, which has long since been abandoned. The house is filled with memories of a childhood interrupted by the father's disappearance, a broken family that never reassembled. In one corner, there's an old phone still attached to the outlet. Caterina picks it up and discovers that, inexplicably, it works, even though the line is disconnected. Playfully, she dials her home number from 30 years earlier and hears the voice of a child responding on the other end. In shock, she realizes that she is speaking to her 12-year-old self, a week before the death of her father. She's been given a second chance, if not to save him then at least to uncover the truth. Wonderful performances by Margarita Buy and Nicchiarelli herself as Caterina's sister."

Dance: Polina Semionova with American Ballet Theater in Don Quixote, May 27, 2013

Found online:

"Based on Miguel de Cervantes' sweeping tale of romance and chivalry, the knight-errant of la Mancha, Don Quixote, and his devoted squire, Sancho Panza, are positively heroic when it comes to aiding the spirited maiden Kitri and her charming amour. From the bravura dancing of the fiery toreador Espada to the colorful caravan of gypsies, the stage explodes with one show-stopping performance after another in this feast of choreographic fireworks."

Here is a review from the New York Times of her performance in 2011.

Plimpton's NYC apartment - party

Film: Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself

Found online:
"Witty, sophisticated, urbane and yet a man of the people, [George Plimpton] embodied the American optimism of 1960s and '70s. He co-founded and edited one of the most influential literary magazines in history, The Paris Review for 50 years, and in the process, he innovated a writing technique called participatory journalism. This gave Plimpton a unique perspective on the activities he wrote about, perhaps most famously with Paper Lion, a bestseller, which has never left the conversation of the greatest sports books of all-time."

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/plimpton-starring-george-plimpton-as-himself

Dance: Rennie Harris Awe-inspiring Works (RHAW)

Consider me a big fan, officially, as of right now.

Rennie Harris is a living master and the performance today by his pre-professional dance company was beyond words; okay - throw at it "beautiful, exhilarating, amazing." "Awe-inspiring" is correct.  Dr. Harris (with an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Bates College) has a professional pedigree that includes the Alvin Ailey Award for Choreography, three Bessie Awards and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. His professional company is called "Rennie Harris Puremovement" - but today's RHAW dancers at the New Victory Theater (NYC, 5/19/13) already made the grade. I had to take a big breath at intermission to keep from crying. It was that good.

Here's the review in the New York Times.

It was especially interesting to see this hip-hop performance after recently seeing "The Spectators" by Pam Tanowitz (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/arts/dance/the-spectators-at-new-york-live-arts.html?_r=0). If you had an itemized list of features to compare the two dance programs, the RHAW hip hoppers would still be top dog for:  inventiveness, energy, formal choreographic structures, emotional connection, profound physical training and sheer joy. In addition, even though the RHAW music choices tended to be obvious, it at least helps to develop in dancers that extra bit of magic: musicality. No matter how diligently Ms. Tamowitz chips away at the ballet vocabulary, the only emotional response I heard in the audience around me was a chuckle of recognition when one dancer, with curved modern-dance spine, beat her balletic legs together. Compare this to Mr. Harris' work where the audience gasps unexpectedly again and again - and for the subtler reasons as well as the smashing big ones.

 

  http://www.rennieharrisrhaw.org

Film at MoMA: Old Dog

Kent called it "a sketch of a poem."  In Tibet: a childless couple, an old man and his dog, a policeman and a school teacher; in a setting of new town construction, grassland hills, ruins of lost villages, a pastoral simple shepherd's home; populated by sheep, goats, pigs, motorcycles, ponies, trucks and cars. A pool table is set up and played in a muddy street. An infomercial on TV shamelessly tries to sell gold jewelry to people who can barely get signal reception. What will become of the old dog?

Found online:

Old Dog

2011. China. Directed by Pema Tseden. With Yanbum Gyal, Droluma Kyab, Lochey. A young Tibetan decides to sell his family's nomad mastiff, an exotic dog that fetches a fortune from wealthy Chinese. His aging father opposes him, leading to a series of tragicomic events that threaten to tear the family apart. Pema Tseden is the leading filmmaker of a newly emerging Tibetan cinema, and the first director in China to film his movies entirely in the Tibetan language. His third feature, Old Dog employs an observational documentary approach that soberly depicts the erosion of Tibetan culture under the pressures of contemporary society. Courtesy of dGenerate/Icarus. 88 min.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/18237