Oh, the places we may go!

Browsing on the inernet I found a Dracula performance off broadway. It’s $20 and runs from Novmber 11 until December 30 every Tuesday at 8PM. There are also three extra performances on the weekends. This play is much “darker” than our previous venues, I think that we could all anjoy a little scare and even though Halloween is long gone, Dracula is the ultimate scary story. It would be interesting to see the story come to life as opposed to all the movie versions. The location is 115 MacDougal Street
(between W 3rd Street. & Minetta Lane)
New York, NY10012
And for more information the website is:http://www.newyorktheatreguide.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?mytemplate=tp2&method=all&event1=DRACULA&00theatre=Players

Based on our latest class discussion and the suggestion for some type of venue involving the movies or cinema, I think visiting The American Museum of Moving Image would be a great way to finish off our art experience in New York. The museum is dedicated to the art, history and creation of movies, television and digital media. There are also exhibitions on how movies are made, and on select days screenings of historic and contemporary movies. It is located in Astoria, Queens and tickets are five dollars per person for a group visit. Here is their website with all the information: http://www.movingimage.us/site/about/index.html .

I will like to propose New Dances/Edition 2008 from Juilliard to the class for our last event. I feel that many of us enjoyed the Fall for Dance Festival so I thought it would be a good idea to end with a relaxing performance. The performance runs on different days including Wednesday-Saturday, December 10-13 at 8:00PM and Sunday, December 14 at 3:00PM at Peter Jay Sharp Theater.
The address is 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, Broadway (at 65th St) Upper West Side
FREE tickets available 11/19 at the Juilliard Box Office
For more information visit the following site:
http://events.juilliard.edu:8080/cal/event/showEventMore.rdo

We have seen many genres of the performing arts..all except a ROCK CONCERT. Well, the play I found, “The Uncanny Appearance of Sherlock Holmes” combines crime investigation with rock music. In fact, during the play the actors actually pick up instruments and play. This is a “carnival style crime investigation filled with live original rock music, high energy acrobatics, slapstick comedy antics, cross dressing, and 20th century philosophy. The play follows the world-famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he investigates the bizarre murders of Dr. Jeremy Nietzsche and Dr. Kevin Freud. To complicate matters, Holmes becomes embroiled in a competition of wits against a formidable female detective, Jacqueline Derrida. As the investigation progresses, the case begins to unravel, and so does the very fabric of Holmes’s hyper-rational reality. This highly kinetic performance does not rely solely on narrative, as the performance is as much a rock concert as it is a play. The ensemble of actors doubles as a rock band and their original songs interlace with the narrative to reveal the inward spiral of Holmes’s psycho-emotional disintegration.”
Sounds fun to me!
at the HERE Arts Center (www.here.org)
145 6th Ave btwn. Spring and Broome St.
$15 student ticket, Dec 2-21 Wed-Sat at 7 PM and Sunday at 3 PM

On the first saturday of each month, the Brooklyn Museum has free music and arts programs between 5pm to 11pm. There’s no need to stay the whole whie, because there’s many things to do by the hour at the museum. Oh, and our cultural passports can get us in for free.

Different showcases include a poetry reading, artist talks, a music performance of a jazz, hip-hop, and soul mix, and a DJ with a live percussionist.

Here’s the link:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/visit/first_saturdays.php

On both Sunday the 14th and Saturday the 20th the Amato Opera is putting on a performance of “The Merry Widow.” To be honest, I don’t know much about the opera, but for years I have heard great things about the Amato. It was once an old, regular house to which the owners modified (by cutting out half of the second floor and making a hole into the basement apparently) into a full opera house; balcony, pit and all. The performances are supposed to be good too, so don’t worry.
Admission for full time students is 30$, not the cheapest thing I know but I think it would be a great, cozy yet focused environment for us to end the semester in.
http://www.amato.org/

I thought it would be fitting to take the semester full circle and meet at a museum for our final venue since our first class took place at one. I found that the New York Historical Society is having an exhibition entitled Drawn by New York: Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings. We delved into watercolors a bit when we looked at the Turner exhibition, so everyone would have a little background on the types of paintings. The exhibition houses watercolor paintings from when America was just a colony of Great Britain, to where it now stands as a world power. Another plus of this venue is that our Macaulay cards allow us to get in for FREE. Also, for anyone interested in history, the museum is having from what I have heard, an excellent exhibition on generals Grant and Lee of the Civil War.

It’s open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00am to 6:00pm.
It’s located at 170 Central Park West

Here’s the links: https://www.nyhistory.org/web/default.php?section=exhibits_collections&page=exhibit_detail&id=7197996

https://www.nyhistory.org/web/default.php?section=exhibits_collections&page=exhibit_detail&id=533709

A great conclusion of our class should be sky diving.

Even though that would be quite an adventure for all of us, an interesting place we should see is the MOMA ( Museum of Modern Art ). Since we have not been there, and it relates to the first half of our class, the MOMA is modern art and contains very unique pieces of art. I believe its free with the Passports.

Its close by: Located 53 West 53rd Street

http://www.moma.org/

I think that we should go visit the Bronx Zoo because it would be loads of fun to see all sorts of animals and the unique exhibits they have after we’ve just been focusing on humans and their arts. It’s open 365 days a year and on Wednesdays tickets are on a donation basis so you can pay what you want. Adult tickets are $15 normally. The zoo is open 10am-4:30PM which is one minor drawback but if we go wednesday morning instead of CHC, most of us are free until 3PM because of Dean’s Hours.

It’s also very easy to get there, just take the #2 or #5 train to East Tremont Ave/West Farms Square. At street level, walk straight ahead (follow train uptown) on Boston Road 21⁄2 blocks to the Zoo’s Asia gate entrance (Gate A).

Here’s the link:
http://www.bronxzoo.com/this-season-at-the-zoo.aspx

I apologize for blogging later-
I thought the assignment was due the seventh.

Nevertheless, I’ve done some investigation and would love to see STOMP. It’s playing in a theater in the East Village ( very close to the dorms ). The show is a combination of percussion, movement and comedy. I called for group rates and they can do 45 dollars a ticket. I know thats steep compared to other prices, so I will continue to badger them, especially if this idea resonates with the class.

I also apologize for posting this late, since I assumed that this was due on the seventh.
I saw this on Betsy’s list of free things to do around town and thought it looked interesting. The Museum at FIT has an exhibition called “Gothic: Dark Glamour.” It’s open every Tuesday-Friday from noon until 8 PM, and on Saturdays from 10 AM til 5 PM. As I mentioned, it’s free, and we haven’t really looked at fashion as an art form.

http://www3.fitnyc.edu/museum/gothic/
and
http://www.fitnyc.edu/aspx/Content.aspx?menu=FutureGlobal:Museum:Exhibitions

Synecdoche - a movie that is from one of my favorite directors and writers

Or a show at this theater:
http://www.repertorio.org/
the plays are in Spanish but many include audio translations, similar to the MET.

Thanks!

Mary Williams

An extra idea - completely free (and we could eat at shake shack!):
Tadashi Kawamata
Tree Huts
https://www.madisonsquarepark.org/Programs/MadSqArt.aspx

Sorry for posting a late suggestion!

The show is called “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind”. This is the description-

The New York Neo-Futurists’ ever-changing race-against-the-clock attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes! Each performance features a different selection of original short plays (from over 1000) in random order-—a non-illusory collage of the comic and tragic, the political and personal, the visceral and experimental, embracing chance, change, and chaos.

I thought it sounded really cool, the tickets are 15 dollars and it is playing at 85 E 4th Street. Shows are on Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30pm. I know that 10:30 is kind of late, but the show is only an hour long. This is the website- http://www.nyneofuturists.org/site/index.php?/site/shows_schedule/

Sorry too for posting late, but I didn’t know it was due last night. Anyway, I thought that our last event could be a visit to the legendary Cloisters. This is not only a real New York landmark, but offers art and even architectural art from medieval times. The Cloisters are a division of the Metropolitan Museum, so admission is a donation (i.e. a penny). I thought it might be interesting to look at the architecture since we haven’t really seen much of it as art during the semester. Highlights include the Gothic Chapel and the famous St. Guilhem Cloister.
The Cloisters are located in Fort Tryon Park on 190th Street and open Tues-Sun 9:30am-5pm

Another later blogger and yet again, another sorry. The good news is that I found a really cool to see a poetry reading. We haven’t done it yet this semester and I think it would be fun. Here’s the info…it’s really close to the dorms and cheap…. =)

Wednesday, December 17 2008
8:00pm

Midwinter Day: A 30th Anniversary Reading

An event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of “Midwinter Day”, by Bernadette Mayer - please join her and special guests as they read selections from this epic 1978 work - Readers include Philip Good, Marie Warsh, Lewis Warsh, Barbara Epler, Jamey Jones, Peggy DeCoursey, Lee Ann Brown and Brenda Coultas

St. Mark’s Church
131 East 10th Street @ Second Avenue
$8; $7 students & seniors; $5 members | http://www.poetryproject.com | cf@poetryproject.com | 212.674.0910
Subways: N/Q/R/W/4/5/6 to 14th St – Union Square, or L to 1st or 3rd Ave.

Sorry for the late response…I feel rather silly now.

The most intriguing performance I was able to find (that wasn’t already listed on the blog) was “Lightning at our Feet” at BAM. It’s a multimedia stage production based on the writings of Emily Dickinson…the link is here:

http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=127

The stagings are a little earlier than Professor Israel suggested… December 9, 11-13, and the cheapest tickets are $20.

A lot of these sounds fantastic. It’s going to be a tough choice tomorrow.

Here are my two:

Primary:
Garden of Earthly Delights
-Performance based on a wacked-out Dutch religious painting that includes a fish eating a man. (http://www.quotesque.net/images/Bosch-goed.gif)
-”Ms. Clarke also uses a single special effect: harnesses for the passages in which the performers take flight, echoing the surreal spatial relationships in the painting.” -NY Times
See: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/theater/reviews/20gard.html?pagewanted=1&ref=theaterreviews

Alternate:
Arias With a Twist
Features:
-Aliens
-Cross-dressing
-Magic mushrooms of hell
-A 50-foot woman
-An “Edenic rain forest”
-A marionette jazz ensemble
-Giant snake
-”Cymbal-banging monkeys”
-Giant satan puppets
-etc.
Do you really need more?
NY Times: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/theater/reviews/19twist.html?scp=1&sq=arias%20with%20a%20twist&st=cse

Sorry, I thought we had to post by December 7th.

This performance is called Bamboo Blues and is going to be at the BAM. I was thinking we could go on the 16th since that is the actual last day of classes.

The performance is a little over 2 hours and starts at 7:30PM on various days.
Tickets cost $25.

http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=128

I have two suggestions. The first is that we go to the NEW MUSEUM (http://www.newmuseum.org/) at 235 Bowery. This is a contemporary art museum that has painting, sculpture, some cool-looking architectural installment. It’s free for 18 and under, and for anyone older, it’s $8 for students. And if we went the 18th, for people who wanted to stay until 7:30 and pay 8 bucks, we could see:

“The New Museum is proud to present a hyperactive and sweaty party for December’s Get Weird, featuring Ninjasonik and Cerebral Ballzy.

Ninjasonik’s relentless beats and unstoppable swagger bring together the propulsive chant of Baltimore Club with the anything-for-a-beat scavenging of their friends Spank Rock and Diplo. Caught between the gritty charisma of Ol’ Dirty Bastard and the sharp-edged provocation of GG Allin, the group rhymes about party-lurking, resisting haters, and creeping on art school girls. The single “Tight Pants” is a raw-throated anthem that’ll have even the meekest wallflower screaming out the hook.” http://www.newmuseum.org/events/274

My second suggestion is that we take the seven train out to the first stop in Queens to see Five Pointz. It would be a little toolish to go as a class tour group, but I think the quality of the walls and the massive scale and coolness would outweigh that. Obviously free. http://www.5ptz.com/5pointzgallery.html

For our last class, I think that we should see the Gilbert & George retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. It looks very unique, as it involves a variety of mediums, from photography to paper sculpture…and even postcard pieces! Their art apparently also deals with themes such as religion, sexuality, and urban life, to name a few.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/gilbert_and_george/

I’m not sure if we can get in for free with our Cultural Passports, but the suggested admission rate is $8, which isn’t too bad, and the hours are more flexible than if we attended a show.

So sorry.
I’ve always wanted to go to the Bodies exhibit. It’s at the South Street Seaport and it’s possible to get really cheap tickets, as in from 14-21 dollars even.
http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/section/synopsis/show/116810
Here’s the overview for the exhibit:
Bodies…The Exhibition hits New York City this holiday season. Housed in the newly refurbished Exhibition Centre at the South Street Seaport, this striking new exhibit showcases real human bodies, giving visitors the opportunity to see themselves in a fascinating way like never before. Both captivating and edifying, Bodies unveils the many complex systems of organs and tissues that drive every aspect of our daily lives and unite us all as humans.

Although the intense study of human anatomy has traditionally been reserved for the medical community, this unique exhibit offers a rare opportunity for us all to examine and understand our own bodies including an up-close examination of the skeletal, muscular, respiratory, and circulatory systems. The various specimens showcase and exhibit healthy body parts and highlight the effects of disease, revealing how dramatically our daily choices influence our health.

Although this show takes place on the 19th at 10:00 PM instead of the suggested last day on the 17th, I am suggesting it because it seems like it would be an interesting piece to attend. Here is the synopsis for the performance.

“My First Time,” an exercise in Web-theater synergy at New World Stages, consists of short monologues about inaugural encounters with sex that together channel all the thrill of a photo album chronicling a trip you didn’t take. Culled from anecdotes collected on MyFirstTime.com, the stories, some meant to be funny, some meant to be poignant and sad, move back and forth among four actors like a game of pass the baton. The structure allows the players to portray variously 15-year-old virgins or 42-year-old ones, Southerners or Minnesotans: people just like you and me. Ken Davenport, who serves as the adapter and director, hasn’t created real context or characters, though he has demanded accents, an approach that leaves his project feeling without just cause. I never became convinced that listening to these stories was a whole lot more enlightening or fun than merely sitting in front of a computer and reading them. And hovering over the enterprise is the air of a specious social purpose. — Ginia Bellafante

My apologies, like the rest, for blogging late!

Reading the previous entries, I saw that my suggestion was already posted! I was planning on blogging about seeing STOMP. I’ve been a big fan of their venue, as I have bumped into their videos on youtube a lot. I’ve always wanted to see them live, but I never knew that they held performances so close to our dorms! I know the price is a little steep compared to some of the other suggestions but I think it will be a very entertaining performance to watch because it’s has a laid back vibe, yet it’s breath-taking and inspirational at the same time!

For those who don’t know what STOMP is, it’s a type of music/theatre production where percussionists that look like ordinary people create musical harmony using everyday objects such as brooms, garbage cans, basketballs, wet socks, etc. Their performances are a combination of pure physical energy, humorous movements with a hint of theatrical atmosphere.

Here are some links for you to get a taste of what they do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYXUm8GgPjE (basketballs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-_mUAhzhkg (brooms)

Even though my suggestion would probably take place on a Thursday(since its pay what you can afford instead of the usual $15 for students), I would suggest seeing London Cries, which is a musical adapted from a book. The venue itself is pretty historic, so it would be interesting to see how that would change perceptions of the musical.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/theater/reviews/01lond.html
and a NYT review: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/theater/reviews/01lond.html