UPCOMING IN JANUARY Dance, New Plays, Comedy, a Pow-Wow and a new International Theater Festival

 

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Joseph Mills performs in the "Icarus Aspires" section of "Questions About Angels." Sculpture by Alan Boeding. Photo by Jeff Greenberg.

JANUARY 13 TO 22
"QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS" BY JOSEPH MILLS
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
Veteran dancer/choreographer Joseph Mills, known for his work with MOMIX, Eric Hawkins Dance Company and Heidi Latsky Dance, has returned to New York and formed his own company, MILLS/works.

Xu Xiubing and Nicole Bilbao in "On the Head of a Pin" section of "Questions About Angels." Photo by Jeff Greenberg.

It will debut in "Questions About Angels," his evening length suite of four dances on what's angelic: their asexual purity, power, wrath, vengeance and yes, even their sexyness. With five dancers (including Mills and John-Mario Sevilla, who is mostly known for his work with Pilobilus).

Mills is also a visual artist and he designs his own works deliberately and intricately. The physical setting will integrate yards of voluminous fabric, first as costume and then as a scenic element. Since angels are often described as beings of pure light, the dancers will often be clothed in garments of light and dance among reflective surfaces.

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Conor Williams regrets his shortcomings in Kids 'N Comedy's "New Year's Resolution Show." photo by Jonathan Slaff

JANUARY 15
KIDS 'N COMEDY "NEW YEARS RESOLUTION SHOW"
GOTHAM COMEDY CLUB
Kids 'N Comedy, New York's leading presenter of young comic talent, will present "The New Year's Resolution Show," a one-of-a-kind show of original standup material by teenage comedians, January 15 at Gotham Comedy Club, 208 West 23rd Street. A new year means it's time for new beginnings and a renewed sense of hope for the future. It also means it's time to start making promises to yourself you'll never, ever keep. By mid-January, you've already fallen short, but you can at least remember the resolutions you aren't keeping. Funny, isn't it? Not to your parents, who never seem to understand these lapses. So Kids 'N Comedy decided to dedicate its January 15 show to the whole phenomenon, featuring Conor Williams, Charley Bardey, David Thompson, Jake Sidransky, Daniel Laitman, Andrew Vatier and more.

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JANUARY 16 TO 22
TIMES SQUARE INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL
LITTLE TIMES SQUARE THEATRE AND THEATRE 500
300 WEST 43RD STREET
The Roy Arias Studios & Theaters, located in the Times Square Arts Center at 300 West 43rd Street, will present the first Times Square International Theater Festival, featuring 15 fully staged works, of which two are world premieres and five are New York premieres. Coinciding with this festival, the complex is addressing shortage of flexible, experimental, curated performance venues in Midtown by recommissioning its fourth floor theater space (74 seats) as the Little Times Square Theatre and its fifth floor Off-Broadway theater (136 seats) as Theatre 500.

Left: John Sowle in "Horripilation!" (US/India), photo by Steven Patterson. Right: László Kocsis and Mo Ahmadi in "Match" (Garmany/Hungary). Photo by Thilo Hofer.

The festival is produced by Roy Arias and Stalin Urbano and curated by noted director Alfred Preisser and Irma Bello. The festival is dedicated to work that challenges the status quo, exhibits artistic excellence and manifests invention and innovation in all of its aspects. Its mission is to provide an affordable venue for an assortment of plays and performance pieces that will not otherwise be seen in the doorstep of Broadway, offering companies of reduced budget but great artistic merit the opportunity to show their art in the heart of the theater capital of the world.

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Left: Victor Attar and Ilana Cohen in "The Lady and the Peddler." Right: Howard Rypp in "Gimpel the Fool."

 

JANUARY 19 TO 29
"THE LADY AND THE PEDDLER" AND "GIMPEL THE FOOL"
LA MAMA E.T.C.
These two plays are based upon stories by Nobel Prize Laureates. "The Lady and the Peddler" by S.Y. Agnon, adapted by Yosefa Even-Shoshan and directed by Geula Jeffet Attar, is a dance theater piece featuring actor Victor Attar as the Peddler and dancer Ilana Cohen as the Lady. "Gimpel the Fool," a monodrama from the story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, is adapted for the stage, directed and performed by Howard Rypp.

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OPEN REHEARSAL -- In an absurdist play about a chaotic family that pretends to be a chaotic rehearsal, an electrician (top) prepares to electrocute the entire cast.

 

JANUARY 19 TO FEBRUARY 5
"OPEN REHEARSAL" BY LAZARRE SEYMOUR SIMCKES
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"Open Rehearsal" by Lazarre Seymour Simckes, author of "Seven Days of Mourning," "Ten Best Martyrs of the Year," and "Nossig’s Antics," is a Pirandellian farce in which a play about a chaotic family pretends to be just a chaotic rehearsal. The playwright is an award-winning author whose plays usually confront difficult questions of Jewish history with absurdist logic. This is his fourth production at Theater for the New City and his first time directing his own work.

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Carlos Ponce/Eagle Feather (Mayan) meets a young audience member. Photo by Lee Wexler/Images for Innovation.

Hoop Dance. Photo by Lee Wexler/Images for Innovation.

JANUARY 27 - FEBRUARY 5
THUNDERBIRD AMERICAN INDIAN DANCERS 37th ANNUAL DANCE CONCERT AND POW-WOW
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
This is Thunderbird American Indian Dancers' 37th annual Dance Concert and Pow Wow at Theater for the New City. The troupe's appearances benefit college funds for needy Native American students. These Pow-Wows have been presented annually as a two-week event by TNC since 1976, with the box office donated to these funds. There will be dances, stories and traditional music from the Iroquois and Native Peoples of the Northwest Coast, the Southwest, the Plains, and the Arctic regions. Between 15 and 20 dancers will assemble for the event.

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Andres Chulizi Rodrigues plays a pair of brothers in "Growing Up Gonzales." Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

JANUARY 26 TO FEBRUARY 25
JAN HUS PLAYHOUSE, 315 E. 74TH ST.
"GROWING UP GONZALES"
"Growing Up Gonzales" by Felix Rojas, performed by Andres Chulisi Rodriguez, was performed April 17 to June 12, 2011 at the Sixth Street Playhouse in Alphabet City to full houses, but little notice. This "sleeper" play has taken the leap to Off-Broadway and will be presented January 26 to February 25 at the Jan Hus Playhouse, 351 E 74th Street. Playwright Felix Rojas is a former member of the historic Family Repertory. Performer Andres Chulisi Rodriguez is a gravelly-voiced comedian, playwright and member of the comedy troupe "Lose Control." The play is a bittersweet comedy of two brothers growing up the Puerto Rican section of the Bronx, whose coming of age is marked by the untimely death of their father. One actor plays both parts. The play is filled with the hearty characters, flavors and textures of The Bronx in the 70's and displays a very witty understanding of life.

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Eric Kurn in "The Philosophy Show." Photo by Eva Ostrowska

JANUARY 29
KIDS 'N COMEDY IN "THE PHILOSOPHY SHOW"
GOTHAM COMEDY CLUB
Kids 'N Comedy, New York's leading presenter of young comic talent, will present "The Philosophy Show," a one-of-a-kind show of original standup material by teenage comedians, January 29 at Gotham Comedy Club, 208 West 23rd Street. The teenage years are filled with alienation, self-doubt, conformity, senseless athletics and facial outbreaks. What better way to deal with it all than by weighing Hegel against Kierkegaard? The teen comics will crack books to prepare for this one. With: Leo Frampton, Val Bodurtha, Lee Wolfowitz, Eric Kurn, Zach Rosenfeld and more.

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FOOTLIGHTS

YARA ARTS GROUP EARNS DESIGN GRANT, PLANS "DREAM BRIDGE" AND PREPS FOR JANUARY FESTIVAL.

Yara Arts Group recently received the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund grant from ART/NY for projections by Mikhail Shraga for Yara’s next show at La MaMa, “Dream Bridge.”

“Dream Bridge”-- Andrew Colteaux (R) and actors from Kyrgyz theatre during workshop of piece to premiere La Mama April 26-May 13, 2012. Photo by Baird Cornell.	Alla Zagaykevych during rehearsals for Yara's "Raven" in Kyiv. Photo by Vitaly Horbonos.

From April 26 to May 13, 2012, La MaMa will present Yara in "Dream Bridge," an original, experimental theatre piece featuring Yara artists from New York together with actors from Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. The production, created by Virlana Tkacz, is based on a Ukrainian poem "Dream" by Oleh Lysheha and fragments from Shakespeare’s "Midsummer Night’s Dream" (which is mentioned in the poem), as well as the dreams and nightmares of the participants. It features Kyrgyz traditional music as well as an electronic score by Kyiv composer Alla Zagaykevych.

Alla Zagaykevych is a world-renowned Ukrainian compser of electronic music and will appear in Yara's "Re-Imagine: Ourselves," a festival of new arts, music, poetry, performance and video this month, January 27 to 29 at the Ukrainian Institute of America, 2 E. 79th Street. Yara Arts Group will fly off to Kyiv in March to workshop "Dream Bridge." For more info visit the company's website.

 

 

AMERICAN VIDEO PIONEERS INTERACTIVE WINDOW DISPLAYS FOR BLOOMINGDALE'S

Did you see the snazzy new holiday windows at Bloomie's this year? They contained a new level of interactivity thanks to American Video, which is headed by video maestro Gregory Sherman.

Jack Hruska, executive VP, creative services and Harry Medina, Bloomingdale’s Windows Visual approached American Video to design an interactive store widow display for this year's Bloomingdale’s Christmas Windows. The results spoke for themselves as throngs of people took turns from Thanksgiving Day to January 2 at three created window displays at Bloomingdale's on Lexington Avenue, where they posed for pictures that were then displayed on Bloomingdale’s Facebook page. The pictures could then be uploaded to the picture taker's own Facebook page.

The technology involved custom "stars" on the inside of the window display which, when pressed, acted as the switch to activate a picture taking countdown. The photograph, taken in high resolution, was displayed on three overhead display screens before being uploaded to the Bloomingdale’s Facebook page. Single pictures or group family pictures were taken. Seven licensed special application softwares were used.

Interactive display by American Video at Bloomingdale's, 2011. Lighted star at right is interface for onlookers to add their photos to Bloomingdale's Facebook page.

This developed technology can be applied to various types of interactive window displays involving the customer as more than a mere observer of the display. No longer are window displays only visually interesting and informative, now they have become a point for customer interaction.

The Bloomingdale’s windows electronics were developed and installed by Tyler Erdman, Lee Erdman, David Sherman, Gregory Sherman and Abram Ward. The windows' design was based on previous years' Bloomingdale’s Christmas Bags as redesigned by Harry Medina of Bloomingdale’s Windows Visual and built by Spaeth Design.