Kate Bush Dance Troupe, 2008. Courtesy Jennifer Sullivan

Because who doesn’t want to watch a heartfelt, quirky tribute to one of music’s most beloved, haunting eccentrics?

The Kate Bush Dance Troupe (Samara Davis, Erica Magrey, Cassie Thornton, Kate Scherer, Renata Espinosa and Jennifer Sullivan) will be performing as the closing act of choreographer Chase Granoff’s piece in Nancy Garcia/Chase Granoff at The Kitchen, November 5, 6, and 7. In addition, Garcia and Granoff will each be premiering new works inspired by sources ranging from noise and punk music to the writings of Doris Humphrey and Simone Forti.

The Kate Bush Dance Troupe is an ongoing collaborative ensemble of non-dancers who create dance performances inspired by the music and emotive movement stylings of Kate Bush.

Buy Tickets

The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Thursday–Saturday, November 5-7, 8pm
$12
Curated by Matthew Lyons

Tags: Cassie Thornton, Chase Granoff, choreographers, dance, Erica Magrey, Kate Bush Dance Troupe, Kate Scherer, Nancy Garcia, Renata Espinosa and Jennifer Sullivan, Samara Davis, The Kitchen.

In celebration of the extraordinary range of artistic expression in the Muslim world, Asia Society, BAM, and New York University Center for Dialogues proudly present Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas. Muslim artists and speakers from as far away as Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and as near as Brooklyn will gather for an unprecedented ten-day festival and conference, offering New York audiences the opportunity to experience the cultural diversity and multiple perspectives that represent the Muslim world.

Official festival events will take place at the Asia Society, BAM, and the American Museum of Natural History, with a 2-day, 150-vendor outdoor souk at BAM during the opening weekend. There will be related events and programming around the city and on public television at WNET Channel THIRTEEN, and in celebration, the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Borough Hall will be lit green from June 5—7.  

Our top picks include:

Thursday, May 21st (Festival Partner Event): The Seen and the Hidden: (Dis)covering the Veil- 14 contemporary artists from the Middle East, Europe, and New York, including celebrated graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, present approaches to the ideas that surround both the literal and metaphorical meaning of the veil. Opening reception from 6-8pm at the Austrian Cultural Forum. Free, through August 29th.

Friday, June 5th: Opening reception for New York Masjid: The Mosques of New York City. Photographer Edward Grazda and CUNY Professor of Architecture Jerrilynn R. Dodds not only documented the mosques and analyzed their architectural forms, but conducted interviews with community members, revealing an alternative image of American Islam in the process. Natman Room at BAM’s Peter Jay Sharp Building, though June 28th.

Monday, June 8th: Shirin Neshat presents a rare screening of Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad’s landmark short film The House Is Black (1962), which has had a profound influence on the New Wave in Iranian cinema as well as Neshat’s work. Neshat will also screen excerpts of her own films. At BAMcafé. 7pm, $10 ($5 for members), reception follows. 

Friday, June 12th & Saturday, June 13th: BAMcafé Live presents contemporary Muslim musicians in concert- Brahim Fribgane and zerobridge perform on Friday night, and Saturday night features global hip-hop by Muslim-American artists such as Dr. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Kenny Muhammad The Human Orchestra, and Nihan Devecioglu, selected by the fantastic beatboxer and composer Adam Matta. 9:30pm both nights, FREE.

Tags: Adam Matta, American Museum of Natural History, artists, Asia Society, Austrian Cultural Forum, BAM, BAMcafe, beatbox, Brahim Fribgane, Brooklyn, concert, Dr. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Edward Grazda, Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, Islam, Kenny Muhammad The Human Orchestra, Marjane Satrapi, mosques, Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas, New York Masjid, Nihan Devecioglu, Shirin Neshat, souk, The House Is Black, The Seen and the Hidden: (Dis)covering the Veil, zerobridge.

Following the opening of two installations at Location One this week, Laurie Anderson’s new solo performance, Transitory Life—a collection of adventure stories, poems, and music drawn from her life’s work, has been created specifically in response to the themes of the Guggenheim’s The Third Mind exhibition. These pieces reflect a sensibility she attributes to her “practice of attention” and interest in Buddhism. Set within the intimate space of the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed theater,Transitory Life promises to be a uniquely personal and compelling opportunity to experience Anderson’s world-renowned performance work.

(If you have time to visit the Guggenheim before the performance, don’t miss experiencing the theatrically spare, meditative work of James Lee Byars as part of The Third Mind exhibit, as well as 2008 Hugo Boss Prize recipient Emily Jacir’s solo exhibition in the upstairs gallery.)

Guggenheim Museum

Thursday, March 12, & Friday, March 13, 8pm. $30; $25 for members; $10 for students under 25. Tickets

Tags: Emily Jacir, Guggenheim, Hugo Boss Prize, James Lee Byars, Laurie Anderson, Location One, Third Mind, Transitory Life.

Trevor Paglen, Four Geostationary Satellites Above the Sierra Nevada, C-Print, 48 x 60 inches. Courtesy Bellwether.

Though the focus is on the art fairs this week, The Totam has still found plenty of concurrent happenings to provide balance to the collector frenzy that usually descends upon the west side of Manhattan:

TODAY, March 4th: The New Museum and Creative Time present It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, a new commission by British artist Jeremy Deller. A revolving cast of participants including veterans, journalists, scholars and Iraqi nationals have been invited to take up residence in the New Museum’s gallery space with the express purpose of encouraging discussion with visitors to the Museum. Through March 22nd.

Thursday, March 5th: Armory Arts Week opens to the public at Pier 94 in New York. In addition to special projects like Kenny Scharf’s customized, donut-delivering golf-cart being mounted onsite, sister fair VOLTA NY will present curated invitational projects and a launch event for Humble Arts Foundation’s Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography. Public events include tours of arts districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Contemporary art fairs exhibiting during the same week include Pulse, SCOPE, Fountain, Bridge, and PooL. Through March 8th.

The discards of industry and technology found in Sergio A. Fernandez‘ photos form a unique counterpoint to Dana Gentile’s collages, which focus on modern agriculture. Opening at Kris Graves Projects, 6-9pm.

Friday, March 6th: Bay Area artist Trevor Paglen’s spacescapes and other astronomy-themed works open in New York at Bellwether Gallery, in conjunction with his SECA Award exhibit at the SF MoMA.

Saturday, March 7th: Past, Present, Future of Food at the Bushwick Library. As part of the Arts in Bushwick Festival, librarian Nate Hill and cook Gabe McMackin will engage in an open public discussion exploring how Brooklyn and Bushwick in particular went from being a rich agricultural community to the desert it is today, and talk about what people can and ARE doing to grow food locally. 1-4pm. Free.

The Yerba Buena Center for Contemporary Art’s Screening Room in San Francisco presents a double bill of films by Chinese directors, distributed by Strand Releasing: Wayward Cloud by Tsai Ming-Liang, and Help Me Eros, by Lee Kang-Sheng. 7pm. Advance tickets available, or with gallery admission.

Sunday, March 8th: The last day to catch the adaptation of Adam Mansbach’s novel Angry Black White Boy at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, a satire about race, Hip-Hop pop culture, identity and violence in the 21st century. 8pm, $15-25.

Monday, March 9th: As part of its recent project/exhibition, Branding Democracy, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School presents The Rogue State- a panel lecture on fundamental (in)divisibility of sovereignty using philosophy, history, and art as a framework. 6:30-8:30pm. $8

still from The Wayward Cloud, 2005

Tags: Angry Black White Boy, Armory Show, Art Fairs, Arts Week, Bellwether, Branding Democracy, Bridge, Collectors, conversations, Creative Time, Dana Gentile, fairs, Fountain, Gallery, Guide to Emerging Art Photography, Help Me Eros, Humble Arts Foundation, Intersection for the Arts, Iraq, Jeremy Deller, Kris Graves Projects, lecture, Lee Kang-Sheng, New Museum, novel, play, Pool, Pulse, SCOPE, screening, SECA Award, Sergio A. Fernandez, SF MoMA, Strand relasing, The Rogue State, Trevor Paglen, Tsai Ming-Liang, Vera List Center, VOLTA, Wayward Cloud, Yerba Buena Center.

As dire economic straits trigger institutions to sell big-ticket items in order to raise cash*, The Totam recommends a selection of thrifty events for frugal New Yorkers to attend during the week ahead. There may even be a few items worth dropping some hard-earned dollars upon….

Bradley Peters, Untitled, (mother and son with shopping cart), 2008. c. Bradley Peters

TONIGHT: Bradley Peters‘ Home Theater opens @ Melanie Flood Projects, a salon-style project space doubling as the tasteful Brooklyn apartment of Melanie Flood. Peters, a recent graduate of the Yale School of Art, documents his suburban Nebraskan hometown life in a series of fraught photographic moments reminiscent of Philip Lorca-DiCorcia’s staged images, with the added emotional weight of Peters’ personal connection to his subjects. Curated by Amani Olu. FREE, 7-10pm, RSVP required.

Left, Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor in John M. Stahl’s film of the 1929 novel “Magnificent Obsession” (1935); Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s remake (1954). (Criterion Collection)

Thursday, January 29th: Stahl vs. Sirk @ the Anthology Film Archives. Anthology presents some of celebrated director Douglas Sirk’s finest melodramas alongside John M. Stahl’s seldom-seen, and arguably masterful originals; Universal Pictures had given both filmmakers the same source material to adapt from over a span of two decades- see the NY Times review of the differences in Sirk vs. Stahl’s version of The Magnificent Obsession, which screens tonight at 6:45 and 9pm. $9

left: c. Eric Hairabedian, 2008. right: c. Peter Mallo, 2008. Courtesy Kris Graves Projects

• Friday, January 30th: Opening reception for the inaugural exhibit of Kris Graves Projects in DUMBO; featuring the work of photographer Eric Hairabedian and artist Peter Mallo. Like Peters, Hairabedian’s photographs are set in unidealized middle-class environs, but his stark examination of his subjects, mostly members of his family, comes closer to the iconographic, subtly bleak portraiture of photographers like Gillian Laub. The shapes and shades in Mallo’s new Soft Black drawing series recalls the delicate, enigmatic pencilwork recently seen in Gino De Dominicis’ survey at PS 1. 6-9pm. FREE

(The gallery will have excellently priced (we are talking $10-$40 here!) 11×14″ and postcard-portfolio limited editions on hand for the budget-minded collector.)

• Saturday, January 31st: Pulitizer-winning poet Gary Snyder, called “‘the Thoreau of the Beat Generation’” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, reads and talks about his influences @ the New York Public Library, 3-5pm, Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street; Enter at Fifth Avenue- South Court Auditorium. FREE, first come, first served.
• Sunday, February 1st: Catch the last weeks of Keith Haring’s monumental Ten Commandments at Deitch Studios in Long Island City. FREE

Installation view, Keith Haring, The Ten Commandments, 1985, Deitch Studios

• Also: See Dan Hurlin’s Disfarmer @ St. Ann’s Warehouse, a haunting biographic work about American rural portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer, done with puppets and a wonderful dust-bowl banjo score by Dan Moses Schreier. 4pm.

• Tuesday, February 3rd: Joy Dragland with St. Cloud @ Pete’s Candy Store, 9pm. Don’t miss St. Cloud’s monthlong residency every Tuesday night in February; Dragland’s enveloping, always-sympathetic voice carries her listeners along a winding journey of musings on subjects as varied as the Mona Lisa, sisters, homesickness, and cocaine escapism. FREE

Tags: Amani Olu, Anthology Film Archives, Beat Generation, Bradley Peters, collector, Dan Hurlin, Dan Moses Schreier, Deitch, Disfarmer, documentary, drawing, DUMBO, Eric Hairabedian, Gary Snyder, Home Theater, Joy Dragland, Keith Haring, Kris Graves Projects, limited editions, Magnificent Obsession, Melanie Flood Projects, murals, New York Public Library, New York Times, Pete's Candy Store, Peter Mallo, photographs, portraiture, Rose Museum, Sirk, St. Ann's Warehouse, St. CLoud, Stahl, Ten Commandments, Universal.

So you’ve resolved that with a New Year and the inauguration of a new President, you’re going to celebrate for the rest of the week by taking in as much culture as possible?  Our recommendations:

Mark Wagner, Buying the Brooklyn Bridge, 2008, Currency collage, 30×20 inches, Courtesy of Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NY.

• TONIGHT: A New Deal, Art and Currency opens @ the BRIC Rotunda Gallery. This exhibition takes its name from the social and economic reforms implemented by FDR in the 1930s, and highlights relationships between American presidents and the economy, observing how these relationships affect art-making.
• Thursday, January 22nd: Catch Peter Caine’s animatronic installations @ Derek Eller Gallery, on view until February 21st, and Stephen Sprouse’s Rock on Mars @ Deitch Projects, on view until February 28th.
• Friday, January 23rd: The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm opens @ the Tina Kim Gallery from 6-8pm. Organized by poet and writer Christopher Y. Lew, this group exhibition named for the Wallace Stevens poem explores a spirit of “meditative rapture” in its artists’ practices. With Robert Booras, Julia Chiang, Amy Elkins, Jeff Feld, Leslie Hewitt, Amy Kao, Marc André Robinson, Kiki Smith. Through February 21st, 2009.
• Saturday, January 24th: The Anna Copa Cabanna Show: It’s Summer In Australia! @ Joe’s Pub, Midnight. Recently recovered from her first cross-country tour, and with a devoted cult following that includes the likes of Tommy Ramone and Lady Bunny, the latest incarnation of Australian showgirl Anna Copa Cabanna‘s Rock and Roll Variety Show draws inspiration from The Lynda Carter Specials, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, and The Carol Burnett Show. With overly-earnest, beautifully choreographed dance numbers by The Copa Cabanna Dancers and regular guest, Hula-Hoop Harlot Melissa-Anne. Not to be missed.
• This is also the last weekend to catch the sold-out run of Wickets @ the 3LD Art and Technology Center; an extra 3pm Saturday performance has been added. Clove Galilee and Jenny Rogers’ adaptation of Marie Irene Fornes’ 1977 drama Fefu and Her Friends reveals the inner thoughts of eight ’70s-era stewardesses, as they serve the seated audience/passengers inside a unique airline cabin set. I had the pleasure of seeing this as a work-in-progress at the HERE Arts Center last year, and since then, the drama has garnered several favorable reviews in major publications over its short run.

Tags: 3LD Art and Technology Center, airline, Anna Copa Cabanna, BRIC Rotunda Gallery, cabaret, cabin, Christopher Y. Lew, currency, Deitch Projects, Derek Eller Gallery, economy, Fefu, group, Joe's pub, Marie Irene Fornes, New Deal, Peter Caine, show, Stephen Sprouse, stewardesses, Tina Kim Gallery, Totam Culture, variety, Wallace Stevens, Wickets.