Tag Archives: Juliette Binoche

Falling in Love with Dance

As a somewhat clumsy individual with very little sense of rhythm I am totally in awe of dancers; the grace and expressiveness of their movements never cease to dazzle me.

In-I at BAM was especially interesting as Juliette Binoche is not a professional dancer and described this piece as ‘acting through movement.’ She and Akram Khan created a new sort of dance together; it is brilliantly evocative. What I liked most about the style was that while it was much less acrobatic than most dance it seemed to be more physical; the interaction between the two bodies seemed more emotionally charged than the more technical movements I’m used to seeing (especially in ballet). The weakest portions of the piece were the spoken narratives; they lacked the emotion and drama of the movement. Juliette Binoche has said that she does not intend to dance again but if she does be sure to snag those tickets early!

Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan in In-I at BAM

I also attended two of the Fall for Dance performances at City Center (remember when I waited in line all morning for tickets? It was worth it!). Each of the programs consisted of four pieces, each performed by a different dance company. I will just tell you a bit about my favorites.

Les Biches, a rarely seen work from the Ballets Russes, was an adorable depiction of the 1920s flapper scene. I particularly loved seeing the ballerinas hiding behind a big blue couch to spy on the men. This ballet was considered very provocative when it was first performed and while it’s hardly scandalous the mood it evokes is no less enjoyable.

Snow, choreographed and performed by Sang Jijia, was hypnotic and intensely beautiful. The “snow” drifting down on the stage made the scene ethereal and Jijia’s repetitive movements pulled the viewer into a trance. I couldn’t tell you how long the piece went on, only that afterwards I felt lonely and expectant. The program reads

When snow begins to fall,

The world is silent

And the mind begins to speak aloud…

I believe that is a perfect description of the piece.

Diana Vishneva’s performance of The Dying Swan was truly exquisite. The piece was originally danced by Anna Pavlova and I felt as though her elegance was inhabiting the stage. Vishneva is a prima ballerina at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, so we can only hope her company visits The Big Apple again soon!

Diana Vishneva as The Dying Swan

Many of the companies who participate in Fall for Dance perform here throughout the year; I will certainly be alerting you to exciting events but keep your eyes open for news of those dancers in particular and be sure to let me know if you find something before I do!

Sept. 17-20 Additions and RECAP

First, I’d like to recap the last couple of posts (scroll down or click HERE and HERE to read them in full). There’s some questionable theater ongoing in The Big Apple: Juliette Binoche is trying her hand at dancing; one man is playing 3 Irish Widows (plus 20-some other characters); Daniel Craig thinks he’s a real actor now; Philip Seymour Hoffman IS a real actor; Medea has a whole new look; and you can now take a poetic bus tour of the Bronx. Plus next week is the start of Fall For Dance and there are still a few tickets left! Also upcoming: Williamsburg Fashion Weekend is THIS weekend (Sept. 18 + 19); Le Fooding D’Amour will bring real French cuisine to the city NEXT weekend (Sept. 25 + 26); and The DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival will be dressing up DUMBO NEXT weekend (Sept. 25-27). Plus there’s still time to “see” a concert while in a MAZE AND discover wtf psychogeography means. There’s also still time to drink awesome beer AND rock out with gypsies! ALSO be sure to check out one of the comedy shows that are part of the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival happening THIS weekend (Sept. 17-20). Feeling overwhelmed yet? Good, now it’s time for ADDITIONS!

Tonight (Sept. 17) is the 2nd Annual Park Slope Restaurant Tour! Last year’s tour was my first date with G so this marks our 1 year anniversary. Head out to 7th Ave. with someone who might be special and see if stellar samples can be good luck for you too!

Starting tonight and running through Oct. 3 M.E.A.N.Y. Fest (Musicians & Emerging Artists New York) will be showcasing up and coming bands at various venues throughout the city. G and I will be seeing Black Taxi play next Saturday (Sept. 26) and we’d love to see you there!

Tonight is the opening reception for the Recession Art Sale. The exhibition itself will open Monday and run through next Sunday (Sept. 21-27). Here’s a piece by Thaddeus Radell, an artist whose work will be on sale:

Thaddeus Radell

Tomorrow night (Sept. 18) you can sample an array of Indian street food all in one place, the Indian Culinary Center:

Your hands and feet won’t be the only things pretty enough to eat at the Indian Culinary Center‘s (131 West 23rd Street) evening of Henna and Street Foods of India this Friday from 6-10 p.m. In addition to body art applied by an onsite specialist, the evening will feature such savory bites as Bhel Puri (spicy snack mix), Aloo Tikki (potato croquettes), and Kati Rolls (Indian wraps).

On Saturday (Sept. 19) find someone willing to give up their spot on a team and you could be part of a Craft Beer Scavenger Hunt run by the lovely folks of Metro Metro!

As part of NY Craft Beer Week, we are having a daylong, multi-borough discovery of beer, bars, and neighborhoods. Teams of four will pore over the city in the pursuit of delicious knowledge while embracing the healthy spirit of competition. To cap the day off, hunters will enjoy a private afterparty hosted at the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg.

If you missed out on the last pig roast I mentioned you have another chance to see a whole pig being roasted this Sunday (Sept. 20) at Il Buco!

The sixth annual Sagra del Maiale, an outdoor pig and apple festival commemorating the Autumnal Equinox, will take place outside il Buco between 1-8 p.m. The guest of honor will be a 200-pound heritage breed Crossabaw Pig, slow roasted in an “infiernillo” (“little hell”) by Chef Ignacio Mattos.

Il Buco Pig Roast 2007

If you can’t make it out to taste what Park Slope has to offer then you may want to sample the West Village Sunday (Sept. 20); Taste the West Village lets you try a number of top shelf restaurants for a small fee (from $10 depending on the number of tastes).

Finally, get your tickets now to The Big Lebowski Festival, happening next week (Sept. 22-24) in The Big Apple!

That’s all for now! Be sure to follow me on Twitter for the latest updates and once again, shan’a tova for those of you celebrating Rosh Hashanah this weekend!

Sept. 14-27 Fashion, Art, Music, etc.

If you haven’t looked at my last post yet you should be sure to scroll down or click here to get more information on Juliette Binoche at BAM, Conflux (an annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography) and the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, all of which are ongoing or coming up THIS weekend!

To that already exciting array I would like to make some additions!

This weekend and next you can experience Euripides as you’ve never experienced him before! The production of Medea playing at Petit Versailles is anything but the play you read aloud in your High School English class:

Medea at Le Petit Versailles is a cross-culturally cast production of a modern, poetic new translation of the classic Greek play. The production is a site-specific collaboration by local artists from a variety of fields, including dance, visual arts, film, theatre, and experimental music.

If you’d like your theater “to go” you should consider experiencing The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; this innovative theater piece allows you to experience travel in a new way as you explore the neighborhood by bus. In an NPR story Robert Smith described the piece as “part tour, part narrative.” It’s certainly not plot-driven but if you’re looking to explore an area you’re unfamiliar with this is likely to be a much more poetic version of your standard tour.

Several times a year fashion designers gather in Midtown to bow down before the altar of Anna Wintour. Across the East River a very different set of designers exhibit their anti-establishment experimental work at Secret Project Robot:

Williamsburg Fashion Weekend, the original innovator of unorthodox fashion shows in Brooklyn, opens its sixth season on September 18th and 19th, at Secret Project Robot. The group of designers we assembled this year, with their finger on the pulse of our fashionable neighborhood, will display the diverse elements that make up what Williamsburg fashion aesthetic is about, right now!

Next week Fall For Dance is taking over New York City Center. You may recall that I spent all morning yesterday (and a good part of the afternoon) waiting on line to purchase tickets; if you were not on line with me you can still purchase some gallery seats and partial view seats at the box office. I’m most excited about performances by New York City Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

As far as I know Le Fooding is totally sold out but if you’re more cunning than I am try to get tickets to this foodie extravaganza at P.S. 1 next weekend. Le Fooding D’Amour is a showcase for up and coming French chefs as well as a place to see more established chefs in action.

FRANCE is actually home to countless up-to-date chefs. They just don’t get mentioned enough. The media are too dazzled by the glittering stars. The fact is that bourgeois cuisine is no longer France’s daily bread. Techo-cuisine never will be. In Paris, the gourmands are devouring the gourmets. Our favorite chefs are not celebrity chefs. Their photos aren’t printed on packs of vacuum-sealed ham. So where do you ﬁnd these oh-so-Parisian luxuries? In their restaurants, their bistros? Such hodgepodge words! No, in their kitchens. They’re frequently French, most certainly Parisian, and always authors, of course.

If Le Fooding proves inaccessible you can still check out some very exciting new art for free! The DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival “presents touchable, accessible, and interactive art, on a scale that makes it the nation’s largest urban forum for experimental art.” Here’s an interesting piece from last year’s festival:

That’s all for now! For those of you who, like me, are celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the next couple of weeks- shan’a tova! Stay tuned for additions and as always for the latest follow me on Twitter!

Additions for this weekend and Early Announcements!

I have a couple of additions to make to my last post and I also want to give you a heads up on some events coming up NEXT weekend!

Tonight if you’re up for the Fashion’s Night Out extravaganza you may want to add your first sighting of Anna Wintour into the bargain; the empress of the fashion world will be… da da da… at a mall in Queens! That is something worth seeing darlings!

As you may have seen in the comments on my last post, as part of the Dutch festivities this weekend you can pose for a picture with a model dressed as Vermeer’s Milkmaid. You know you want to. (P.S. Costume designed by my favorite pixie seamstress AF).

Girl posing with Vermeer's Milkmaid

Tomorrow night A and I are continuing our tradition of seeing deeply questionable theater by checking out a new production, which to its credit sold out its first run, titled Three Irish Widows. Why is it questionable? Mainly because it’s a one man show with 25 characters. If you’re not up for the experience you can just look forward to our review.

There’s more questionable theater on the way next week when Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan bring their unique dance piece, In-I, to BAM (Sept. 15-26). Take a look at this clip:

I find Juliette Binoche breathtaking and I’m excited to see how she works in a new medium.

Moving back to the present… You Are Here: The Maze is taking over Death By Audio. Brooklyn Based says:

“You Are Here [aka The Maze]” was conceived and created by TROUBLE, the Bushwick artist duo and married couple Sam Hillmer, 31, and Laura Paris, 41. Death by Audio, normally just two rooms with some in-between areas and a long hallway, is now a Maze complete with tall walls, confusing turns, and dead ends. The experience will be unconventional in every sense. The stage will be part of the maze, leaving it up to the performers to figure out how they can work in the space. There are many bands and artists up for the challenge, including Dan Friel (Sept. 10), A Place to Bury Strangers and Sian Alice Group (Sept. 11), Ty Segall (Sept. 18), Calvin Johnson (Sept. 14), Screaming Females(Sept. 26), The Coathangers (Sept. 29) and Zs (Oct. 2). Most of the acts performing are experimental in nature, which may or may not help them as they improvise in the altered space.

This Sunday if the Brooklyn Book Festival isn’t for you check out another sale happening in DUMBO- The Brooklyn Flea is throwing the Superstar DJ Record Fair and Vintage Fashion Bazaar!

record fair flyer 09

Next week (Sept. 17-20) Conflux, an annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, is taking over our fine city to help us re-explore and redefine our urban environment:

Conflux is the annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice. At Conflux, visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore their urban environment. From architects to skateboarders, Conflux participants have an enthusiasm for the city that’s contagious. Over the course of the long weekend the sidewalks are literally transformed into a mobile laboratory for creative action. With tools ranging from traditional paper maps to high-tech mobile devices, artists present walking tours, public installations and interactive performance, as well as bike and subway expeditions, workshops, a lecture series, a film program and live music performances at night.

On the opposite end of the entertainment spectrum, the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival will also be rocking the city next weekend. With Mirman in control it’s hard to know what’s in store, but it’s likely to be playful, irreverent and ever so slightly weird.

mirman

Those are my advance listings! Now keep scrolling down to hear all about what’s happening this weekend, including more New Amsterdam events, Craft Beer Week, theater both questionable and otherwise, a dance party on a boat and Jane Austen’s newest masterpiece Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters! Plus follow me on twitter to hear the latest from The Big Red Apple!