Adding a little spring in the Saturday routine: the Dance Parade

This blog has been dormant much too long… long enough for the first 100 days of the Obama administration to be celebrated and commentated.

This Saturday’s Dance Parade in Manhattan is as good a pretext as any to wake it up, shake it up,  and step it up.

A few moments from Tompkins Square Park, where the parade broke up after going down Broadway. There were tutorials, shows, and general shimmying and sashaying…

… and jumping for joy…

… and marveling…

… and catching a lot of springy-flowery acts…

… and getting involved…  … and clapping and tapping…

… till the feet hurt…

… and you never know who you might run into.

MLK Day, the day before Inauguration…

…is the time to celebrate and create a new collective vision of the United States.

It will be happening in a lot of different ways all around the country, with many volunteers contributing various efforts and talents. In these difficult times, art is one of the essential ways we can get together and move forward. Here are the details of one event, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, that will be a gathering of creative forces for change.

The invitation:

Freedom’s Ring – Dreams for a New Era

As part of the Special Martin Luther King Day / Inaugural Eve Artist’s Ball at Theater for the New City, Arts for Art is presenting a special conduction, led by Warren Smith and Joe McPhee.

Confirmed members of the Conduction ensemble include:

Alto Sax: Rob Brown Patrick Brennan Avram Fefer Henry Warner Saco Yasuma Flute: Diana Wayburn Tenor Sax: Adrian Cunningham Darryl Foster Seth Meicht Ras Moshe Bass Clarinet: Gunter Hampel Bari Sax: Dave Sewelson Vocals: Mossa Bildner Ellen Christi Jean Carla Rodea Trumpet: Lewis Barnes Jesse Selengut Trombone: Steve Swell Violin Rosi Hertlein Jason Kao Hwang Guitar: Cristian Amigo Bradley Farberman Clifton Hyde Juan Quinonez Cello: Daniel Levin Bass Michael Bisio Hilliard Greene Zak Sherzad Dance: Patricia Nicholson: Dance Conduction Ruomi Lee Hampel Jason Jordan Members of Wendy Osserman Dance Co. Drums: Whit Dickey Andrew Drury Gunter Gruner. Poetry: Eve Packer Steve Dalachinsky Poets from A Gathering of the Tribes Visual Art: Amir Bey There will be more artists coming…

Full schedule:

5 till 7: Dance / Art / Spoken Word, organized by Lower East Side Girls’ Club and LES Power of Peace Anti-Violence Youth Coalition.

7 till 9: Theater / Dance / Music performances, organized by TNC

9 till 10: Vision/RUCMA large ensemble with dance/ spoken word, conduction by Warren Smith and Joe McPhee, organized by Arts for Art

10 till 12: Vision/RUCMA individual or small group musicians, dancers and poets – personal statements of vision, organized by Arts for Art

10 till 1:30: the Artist’s Inaugural Ball, organized by the Action Arts League – Come in Costume to Express Your Dream!

From 5PM on: There will be art installations and impromptu happenings, organized by the Action Arts League – Please Come and Take Part!

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January 19, 2009 is the eve of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Let us join together to express our Vision for the Future. With an artful Inaugural Ball, we will ring in a new era and establish a direct conversation with the Obama Administration on how art and culture can help strengthen the country.

This is part of a national network of events which are an official part of the Inauguration.  The event encourages participants to create music, art or costumes that reflect a “Vision” for a better America. It will include performances and activities early with a dance party breaking out later.

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Practical information:

The event will take place at Theater for the New City, 155 1st Avenue between 9th and 10th streets. The admission for the latter portion of the evening is an affordable $5 or $10. There will also be an inexpensive bar.

Since I last wrote…

…Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States and the explosion of joy in downtown Manhattan felt like a liberation, the end of a long war.

The party was over, for the president-elect, as early as November, 6, when he received his first PDB – “presidential daily brief”, the state of the world as described by intelligence services. (Later, Al Qaeda’s perplexity, faced with a black man named Barack Hussein Obama succeeding George Bush, became perfectly clear).

Soon enough, Barack Obama was holding regular press conferences, announcing his cabinet and the priorities. Rahm Emanuel was the first major figure to be designated, soon followed by Obama and Clinton loyalists, and of course Hillary herself at the State Department.The economy quickly became the top priority, with record job losses and the debate about a bailout for Detroit’s “Big 3″.

In line with the new approach of the campaign, the transition team put itself on-line. “Chicago” and the less than stellar tradition of Illinois politics came back with a vengeance, though, with the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused by the FBI of a “pay to play” scheme involving the appointment of Barack Obama’s successor in the Senate (but not involving the president-elect or his team, the prosecutor quickly pointed out).

And yes, there was a new song - and speaking of songs, one of the reasons this blog was once again lost in the shuffle is that, besides preparing a book (in French, and no, I have no intention to translate-blog it!) and trying to keep up the French-language “Americana” blog, I volunteer for a cause I believe in: the creation of an Innovative Arts Center in downtown Manhattan. Yes, we need it – creation and imagination is more crucial than ever in tough times – and yes, we can! And yes, there is a Gala Fundraiser this Monday, at the Orensanz Center. Good cause, good art, good party…

A doc on Bobby Kennedy’s assassination

Just in time for the 40th anniversary of Bobby Kennedy, Shane O’Sullivan, an Irish documentary maker, presents his film at the Pioneer Theater - and on the Documentary channel.

“RFK must die” explores the gaps in the official investigation, with rare footage and testimonies – some were taken at the time and neglected; other interviews were conducted with survivors in the past few years. The movie does not espouse one particular conspiracy theory (and the aficionados will no doubt find some of their favorite elements missing from this piece) but it creates enough doubts about the official version to sustain interest through the meandering and the impasses of the author’s investigation. Was Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted murderer who to this day claims not to remember anything, manipulated, hypnotized? Were some agents of the CIA or other services resentful towards the Kennedy involved? Such possibilities are suggested, never conclusively demonstrated.

The Ambassador Hotel where the event took place in Los Angeles has been razed; the witnesses are disappearing: Shane O’Sullivan hopes that his work will add to the pressure to reopen the case before it would be too late, and help William Pepper, the lawyer attempting to do so on Sirhan Sirhan’s behalf. It just might. As a viewer, there is only one main regret: that the film-maker never truly choose between his quest and its results to articulate the movie. As a result, the focus constantly oscillates between the process of searching for the truth and the chapter and verse of an investigation report.

Lower East Side Festival – 13!

The talented, the painfully earnest, the weird… and the really, really boring: they’re all out at the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, a 3-day free event at the Theater for The New City.

The sampler nature of the program makes it exceptionally interesting and maddening at the same time. It includes local legends (think Penny Arcade, Taylor Mead, Steve Ben Israel…) and new talent,a mix of pleasant discoveries and moments of sheer disbelief at the corny or pedantic nature of the work presented.

The line-up don’t seem to follow any logic – as for example in the “cabaret”, on opening night, the excellent performance of Poez (original spoken word) was followed by the general anaesthesia of the excerpt of “Dr. Noguchi”, itself followed by an unexpectedly nice duo of voices called “Kitsch” (when was the last time something announced as “work coming from an organic place that is sure to captivate the audience” actually did that?). And there are the crowd-pleasers, in the major venue space, on their way to become regulars at this Festival – the Japanese dancers of 10Tecomai are certainly amongst those- , as well as the veterans of the local scene – Joe Bendik, for one… Just a few photos to capture the mood…

Woody and Larry in NYC

This was my paparazette moment, as I stepped out for a few quick errands before the non-suspense of the West-Virginia primary tonight.

Woody Allen is directing again in Manhattan, with Larry David of Seinfeld and Curb your enthusiasm fame. The crew was in front of Mogador, the French-Mediterranean cafe with reliable cheap food, and reliably unpredictable service.

The security was busily checking another table around the corner:

The last days of the Tower

last goodbye

The Toys

Still standing

It looks like it holds together again all odds, and the city thinks it can’t hold much longer. The Tower of Toys will be demolished, “the symbol of a bygone era”, writes The New York Times.

Yes, maybe it is for some, and yes, its creator Eddie Boros, who started it in 1985, died a year ago, but to a lot of us, beyond the fond memories of sunny afternoons in its shadow, his Tower is the symbol of what makes this neighborhood special: a place where people are still engaged in the life of their community, enjoy a good controversy (and the Tower certainly was, from its very beginning at the 6th Street Garden), but mostly a neighborhood where idiosyncrasies are not only tolerated, but appreciated.

The sculpture on Avenue B and 6th Street became a landmark for legions of TV viewers, an image of the fictional 15th Precinct on the credits for NYPD Blue. By the time the show was off the air, in 2005, the area had already undergone a major gentrification, now accelerated with the endless sprouting of luxury towers, erasing more and more of the urban spaces where a little freedom had grown – wild and mild.