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Ariel Ardit
Trim but stout looking, with a widow’s peak the curves of which seem to raise the eyebrows on his armadillo face, giving him a look not of surprise but of perpetual sympathy and amusement, the tango singer Ariel Ardit could be a clown or comedian were it not for his consummate posture and deportment, strong,…
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Sophie Auster
The personae of Sophie Auster are ever shifting, and she unites them in a persona that avoids the fatal stamp of a changeless character. To appreciate her in performance is to grasp the fluidity of the shifts and the constancy of what ties them together. She projects herself physically and visually, and who she becomes…
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Danças Ocultas • Pires
I made my way to Newark on Saturday to hear Nathalie Pires sing fado and on the way encountered a quartet of diatonic accordionists called Danças Ocultas. Artur Fernandes, Filipe Cal, Filipe Ricardo, and Francisco Miguel, who formed the group in 1989, were the first half of the program at the New Jersey Performing Arts…
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The Lost Lectures
The filmmaker Josephine Decker (pictured) was second up Friday at THE LOST LECTURES NY, the “secret” location of which turned out to be the Agger Warehouse at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. She followed the writer Jon Ronson, who had delivered a disquisition on the Justine Sacco affair, in which the lightning spread of a single…
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Tango for Import
TANGO FOR IMPORT is, as a tango album, remarkably literate. The liner notes by Adam Tully are, to begin with, unusually astute, capturing the arterial flow of a long tradition. The CD ranges from early 20th century tangos to two of his own compositions, which could, on a casual listen, have been composed decades ago.…
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Congregata
So, I saw CONGREGATA by FKA twigs. There were three back-to-back sold-out shows at the Brooklyn Hangar, of which I availed myself of an opportunity to see the last one. I was in pretty good company, not just of the exceptionally well turned-out twentyoneoroversomethings who dominated the crowd, but, at least for a while, the…
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Ex Machina
EX MACHINA is a sci-fi thriller from Alex Garland on the theme of artificial intelligence. It raises the familiar questions – moral, ethical, ontological, political – with which the issue is fraught. Is a fully realized AI effectively human, or its equivalent; is it conscious (whatever that means) and morally aware; would it have a…
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Clouds of Sils Maria
In CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA the personal assistant played by Kristen Stewart holds the life together of the famous actor played by Juliette Binoche. It is admittedly surprising to realize, upon reflection, that Stewart herself, a good but still developing actor, also holds the film together, even though Binoche is, including in this film, among…
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Say Lou Lou
“We’re twins,” said one half of Say Lou Lou, at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, halfway into the Swedish-Australian pop-rock duo’s first (so they also said) concert in the United States. She had to say it, just to be sure we knew, and it added a wrinkle, because what is ingenious about these engaging sisters…
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Two Gentlemen of Verona
Sets and costumes are, when you get right down to it, a bit redundant if you are the Fiasco Theater. They are the quintessential troupe, pop-up players who could make do with the clothes they came in, the lines in their heads, and whatever is lying about to make a prop of. But, since they…