Interludes

THE STATE OF THE ARTS – January 16, 2015

• By drediman
• January 16, 2015
• No Comments

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• New York in January is a wonderland of cutting edge contemporary theater. The granddaddy of the experimental theater festivals currently running at a relentless pace is the Public’s (in association with La MaMa) Under the Radar festival. Genre-defying UTR highlights include Daniel Koren’s off-beat and side-splitting The Most Important Thing and Companhia Hiato’s gutsy, heartbreaking O Jardim.
• PS122’s Coil festival also rages on, with highlights including Andrew Schneider’s simply extraordinary Youarenowhere and Temporary Distortion’s ravishing, durational “installation”, My Voice Has an Echo in It.
• On to Abrons Arts Center’s American Realness festival, your chance to catch some wild avant-garde shows (many head-scratchers here). One of the festival’s more conservative offerings was also one of its most memorable, Tere O’Connor’s sensuous, engrossing Undersweet.
• The NY Philharmonic is currently giving thrilling performances of Verdi’s Requiem under Music Director Alan Gilbert. I caught a rehearsal earlier this week, and Gilbert’s account is gripping and sonically awesome.
• BAM is hosting the Mariinsky’s gloriously traditional Swan Lake — the full three-act version (which we rarely see these days). The dancing was exquisitely ethereal, proving that the Mariinsky are among the finest Petipa dancers out there. The orchestra (under Gergiev) sounded magnificent and vitally present.
• Also, try and catch Norm Lewis as the Phantom of the Opera before he ends his run in the long-running musical in a few weeks. Although still vocally a stretch for Mr. Lewis, his performance is now fully committed and all-consuming (he was somewhat tentative and awkwardly affected when he first started the run), moving me very much by the show’s end.