The Vision Festival has started

Brass Bang

Tuesday was the opening night of the Vision Festival – the 14th edition, this year at the Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement. Check out the full program here and be curious: come out, open your eyes, your ears and your heart! It is a yearly blossoming of smart, generous and free expression unlike any other, mixing music, dance and visual arts.

(Yes, full disclosure: I volunteer for the creation of an Innovative Arts Center, an initiative closely linked to this, and I’ll be moderating two panel discussions at the Festival about Arts and Politics).

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.

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…

French urban cultures festival

For those of you in New York City: an interesting program of about French urban cultures kicks off this weekend. Yes, the title is slightly annoying, as is any institutional attempt at hipness  (“I kiffe NY”), but there are lots of films and performances worth checking.

Details here.

Another weekend, another beach

Summer in the city means finding ways to get out the city? It often seems so. Once again, jumped at the opportunity to exchange, however briefly, the sounds of cars outside my window for that of waves at my feet. This time, Jones Beach: one of those places New Yorkers always talk about in wistful tones, and now I know why. Let’s hope the “Trump-isation” of the boardwalk won’t ruin the harmony of its historic art deco style, and the quiet landscapes just steps away from the crowds. The promo is a little scary.

Just take a look, add fresh air, a zest of sun, and breaking waves:

The birds (the Brighton Beach sequel)

I ended up at the beach today – how unoriginal. Yet those two guys did their best to make it something of a different moment. Guy Number One, on fold-up stool, takes photos of the seagulls. Guy Number Two (has to be Two, as he is obviously the faithful assistant) bribes the seagulls. And sunbathers predictably bitch.

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.