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Orpheus
The New York City Opera has been on an Odyssean voyage since setting sail from the financially burdensome port of Lincoln Center, with “its return to its birthplace, New York City Center” set for next April, according to the teller of tales that is next season’s brochure. The journey has been a chance for artists…
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Elles
I went to this for Juliette Binoche, who is my choice for the finest international film actress of her generation. She does not disappoint. But ELLES, even though it traverses familiar thematic territory, is worth seeing in its own right. Binoche plays a journalist who is interviewing female university students who make ends meet working…
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8cho Aerial Tango
What the Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company of Argentina does in 8CHO AERIAL TANGO at the New Victory Theater is not easy. There are multiple movement vocabularies in play, a variety from the aerial arts and a huge number of steps and figures from stage and social tango. The obvious tension to be exploited is…
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Pisco Portón
That, in the photo, is pisco in a specially designed pisco glass and how you sniff the pisco in advance of swushing it about in your mouth to adjudge its subtleties. It was a very informative talk that Pisco Portón founder Johnny Schuler gave on Saturday at Tutuma Social Club‘s Happy Hour, an event lubricated…
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Tangolandó
I spent Thursday night at Terraza 7 Train Café, where, as this vertiginous view suggests, Tangolandó sent me reeling. It was not just the boldness of the sound, which backs tango, sung in its own time by Sofía Tosello, with the Afro-Peruvian rhythm known as landó, arranged by the guitarist and impresario of the project…
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Irène Jacob
The double life of Irène Jacob. Her performances in the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski are indelible in the modern cinema, and her grace and intelligence have persisted in the work – all too little of it – that I have been able to see since. I have known her only as an actress, so I…
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The Three Sisters
There were numerous Russian speakers in the audience for THE THREE SISTERS on Friday night at BAM, and a comment I heard on the way out was that people were laughing in the wrong places because the supertitles were not well synchronized with the dialogue. This comment intersected in my mind with another I had…
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La Traviata
Of all the performing arts, is any more obviously equipped to assert the largeness of human emotions in the face of eternity and infinite space than opera? The isolated instance of joy or pain breaks the confines of the human frame and demands the attention of the cosmos, or at least of anyone within hearing…
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Il sogno di Scipione
This was the inaugural production of the Gotham Chamber Opera, which they have revived in celebration of their 10th season. A creation of the 16-year-old Mozart and the librettist Pietro Metastasio, IL SOGNO DI SCIPIONE is an allegorical dream play in which the Roman general of the title must choose between the affections of Fortune…
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Tango Connection: Love Stories
Act I of TANGO CONNECTION: LOVE STORIES by Mariela Franganillo , currently playing at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, exposes the private relationships of several couples through theatrical dance, song and music. Act II portrays the public face of those relationships in the context of a social dance event. Hence the private lives that…