Monday, November 16, 2009

Fela!

His Passion Ignited a Generation.
His Music Fueled a Revolution.
His Legacy Inspires the World.
 

 

This Wednesday we're in for a treat!  Immediately after class we'll be heading to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre for the brand new Broadway Musical FELA!


To prepare you for the experience of the show, a little bit about the show, the man, and more, all from the show's website.....


What is Fela! about, you ask?  

FELA! is a new musical directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones, with a book by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones, in which audiences are welcomed into the extravagant, decadent and rebellious world of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. Using his pioneering music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), FELA! explores Kuti's controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician. Featuring many of Fela Kuti's most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones's imaginative staging, this new show is a provocative hybrid of concert, dance and musical theater.

Who is Fela?

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, a pioneer of Afrobeat music, a human rights activist and a political maverick. He is ranked among the world’s most influential musicians.   Read a full bio of the man here.

Where is the theater and how long's the show?

The Eugene O'Neill Theatre
230 West 49th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
New York, New York
8pm - 10:45pm

Learn more about the show on the website:  www.felaonbroadway.com

Here's some real footage of Fela playing, his dancers dancing....

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Performa'09

While we had originally planned to visit Kurt Hentschläger's ZEE at 3LD & Technology Center, circumstances at the show changed and we couldn't quite work things out.

Luckily, a new alternate plan has been hatched.... 

We'll be combining forces with the high school student residents at EYEBEAM Art and Technology Center to attend two shows being presented as part of the PERFORMA biennial in NYC.   

Dragan Zivadinov, Zero Gravity Biomechanical Theater 3, 1999The first stop is at EYEBEAM for "Postgravity Art :: Syntapiens" by the Slovenian artist collaborative of Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič, and Miha Turšič.   Dragan will be expecting us, and will give us a private introduction to his work..... it is the abridged version of what he calls an "informance."

Here is Dragan (pictured left in Blue), performing in 1995 in zero-gravity conditions -- the first theatrical performance in such conditions in the history of the world!

BACKGROUND:  In 1995 Živadinov dedicated himself to telecosmism, telelogy, and the 50-year projectile, Noordung, named after the Slovene space scientist Herman Potočnik Noordung (1892 - 1929) who wrote the book The Problems of Space Travel. The first show One Versus One opened on 20 April 1995 (pictured here), with restaging taking place every 10 years, the first one being on 20 April 2005. The show will play until 20 April 2045. During the fifth and final reprise in 2045, cosmonaut Dragan Živadinov (trained at Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Centre, Star City) will use a spacecraft to send 14 satellites into geostatic orbit, where they will transmit signals representing the roles played by each of the deceased performers (yes, the deceased) to Earth, and at the same time send high-resolution 3D projections of their faces into deep space. As images of cosmonauts, or "space sailors", they will continue the act of searching for eternal truth.

Check out the EYEBEAM blog to learn more about the installation and the man!

So, that's the first show.

Next we'll be heading to X-Initiative to see Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!), an open-ended theatrical performance in the form of a time-based installation that takes the form of a one-act live theatrical play looping for three hours, varying slightly with each repetition and simultaneously acting as a performative “sculpture” in the center of the exhibition space, visible from all angles.  (Did you get all that??)  Here's more:  http://performa-arts.org/blog/emily-mast/



A little about the artist, Emily, from her bio on the PERFORMA website:  Emily Mast is endlessly inclined to consider the nature of nothingness. She works primarily with performance, installation and writing. She has had solo shows at Samson Projects in Boston, The Paris Project Room in Paris and the Roski Gallery in Los Angeles. She has collaborated with numerous actors, dancers, writers, composers, choreographers, musicians and visual artists in Paris, Mexico, Portland and Los Angeles. She was a resident artist at Skowhegan in 2006 and participated in the Mountain School of Art in LA and United Nations Plaza in Berlin in 2007. In 2008 she curated the show “Egoesdayglo” at Five Thirty Three Gallery in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in 2009 from the University of Southern California. She is currently working on a children’s play that examines innocence and arson.

Free popcorn will be served.
What more could we want???