CULTURIST

Because we’ve been sweating nonstop for more days than I care to count…

Because all of the people I know are desperate to go on vacation, and because many of them have to make do with staycations - the adult equivalent of being grounded….

Because I was going to blog about “The Dark Knight,” but the shows were all sold out, and I can’t get any of my lame friends to go with me because they’re all freaked out about seeing Heath Ledger, and because the movie’s living star is facing accusations of assault, made by his sister and mother, for god’s sake. What the hell, Batman?

In such brutal times, where can we turn? To YouTube, of course. Here is one of my favorites, the guerrilla video artist/critic James Kalm getting kicked out of the 2008 Whitney Biennial:

James is a fixture on the local gallery scene. Go say hi next time you see him - just look for the tall guy with the camera. Maybe you’ll even get a cameo.

If ever there were a blue crowd, politically speaking, you’d figure it would be the folks populating this city’s various arts scenes. I haven’t noticed many McCain 2008 buttons recently at any galleries or theaters, have you?

Right. So it always interests me, and startles a bit, to hear the term “Eurotrash” bandied about with regard to work (usually dance and theater, but with regard to other disciplines too) imported from the Continent - usually with a dismissive, all-encompassing wave of the hand or pen, as if the term says all you need to know about the art in question. I’m never quite sure exactly what it means, but the implication seems to be that the work is flashy for the sake of flash, vulgar, and oblivious to the very traditions it purports to extend.

Rob Fordeyn and Helen Pickett in William Forsythe’s “Impressing the Czar.” Photo by Johan Persson

Beginning tonight, Lincoln Center Festival 08 is presenting five performances of William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar, performed by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. Forsythe is American, but he has worked in Germany for decades, and is often saddled with the reactionary Eurotrash canard. Taste is taste, fair enough, and it’s a dangerous game, as Ezra Pound proves, to equate aesthetics with politics. Still, it amazes me to hear how many quite left-leaning folks, while outraged by what they see as this current administration’s isolationist tendencies, are categorically opposed to much contemporary European work. The context is different, but the dismissal of different artistic approaches always reminds me of the “Our way or the highway” thinking I so dislike in American politics.

I’m not saying that contemporary European work is all good, or even that most of it is (though I am a big Forsythe proponent). Many of the lavish European spectacles brought over by places like Lincoln Center and BAM are terribly pretentious - heavy on production values, light on content. I remember one arts administrator, dismayed by an imported piece being presented by her organization, equating it to the dashing local you have a fling with in Barcelona or Rome, only to invite him for a visit and be horrified at the reality, once it’s divorced from a romantic context of late night cafes and exotic languages.

American artists have a long, often tortured relationship with venerable European traditions, much as the American population does at large. Hello, freedom fries! And, of course, it cuts both ways; while American artists often talk longingly of European support for the arts, and (sometimes senselessly) ape theatrical concepts (I remember when pseudo-dramaturgs were all the rage), European artists talk about the suffocating politics of state support, and of the openness and generosity of American performers. And, of course, French farmers go ballistic on McDonalds restaurants.

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this, especially if they contradict my own. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see whether the “Czar” impresses the Big Apple.

Spiraling living expenses, unaffordable health insurance, the rampant disappearance of studio space to make way for luxury developments, prohibitively expensive admission prices which make it increasingly difficult to keep up on what’s happening in theaters and museums … this really isn’t a good time for artists in New York. More days than not, it seems, somebody mentions that another one has jumped ship for Minneapolis or Berlin or some other more arts-friendly city.

So, I can’t imagine that there were too many cheers of joy from artists at the news that David H. Koch has given $100 million to the capital campaign for the State Theater (soon to be known as the David H. Koch - pronounced “Coke” - Theater).

I gave Counter Critic $100 million for the rights to this photo.

I wasn’t either - great, another gaudy gift from a so-called arts patron who gets to have his name on a high-profile chunk of real estate and be applauded during the next round of New York City Opera and New York City Ballet galas. I’m sure the artists who can afford the nosebleed tickets will be really impressed with the renovations, especially when they compare them to their dire living and work situations.

Of course, buildings need to be maintained. It’s not cheap, and the money has to come from somewhere, and people like to have their egos stroked. I’m less bothered by the naming game than Counter Critic, who wrote an interesting post about the leasing of identity; he wonders “if there isn’t something ultimately fatal about naming a venue to the highest bidder.”

I take his point that tacky corporate dealings can inhibit how communities relate to their arts institutions. But I’m more concerned with the (often terribly safe) quality of the work that happens in the big institutions, and the reflexive, too-prevalent, totally wrongheaded attitude that the bigger an institution, the more important it is. I wish the term “world class” could be banned from the arts lexicon.

And I wish that generous people like David H. Koch might think, next time, of putting $100 million directly toward artists. Maybe the recipients could tattoo his name on their arms or something …

“We want to keep New York City’s status as the place where the best and brightest from all over the world come to live and work, and this campaign helps extend the State Theater’s ability to serve artists and audiences for the 21st century,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was quoted as saying in the press release. Yes, we do - and so far we’re not putting our money where our mouths are nearly often enough.

Earlier this week I traveled to Bard College to see The Mark Morris Dance Group perform Morris’ new work, “Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare.” As everyone knows by now, this is the R&J - as Prokofiev originally intended it before those pesky Soviet censors mucked it all up - in which the two star-crossed lovers don’t die.

Happy ending? Tell that to Tybalt and Mercutio.

Even leaving aside the bloodshed that occurs despite the now-absent suicides, Morris’ ending is rather more ambiguous than your typical happily ever after. Still, as the three-hour production unfolded, I couldn’t help but feel that Morris’ take on the play reflects a particularly American impatience with tragedy. This feeling was reinforced by the setting, Frank Gehry’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Gehry, though Canadian born, has been based in Los Angeles for decades, and his extravagant buildings have always seemed, to me, to represent a particularly American vision of the world - one that, depending on my frame of mind, can come off as wonderfully hopeful and expansive, or terribly wasteful and vulgar:

This was my first trip to Bard, and I was expecting to find the Gehry building utterly out of place on the gorgeous, verdant campus, like a gaudy spaceship that has crumpled to earth in a remote forest. But this one, unlike many Gehry buildings, won me over, prompting the first nice thoughts I’ve had about the architect since he clambered into bed with the Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner. The photo doesn’t really do justice to the odd delicacy of the building’s shimmery skin, which reflected the changing light as day shifted into night. The image, instead of alien machines, was of an alien itself, pulsing with strange life against a backdrop of plush evergreens.

I also hadn’t had the highest hopes for this “Romeo,” but here, too, I was surprised. Most people I’ve talked to were not impressed with Morris’ choreographic choices for the lead couple, and I agree with the criticism that there is some pretty weak material here.

But Morris has always been in love with the crowd - a group full of individuals, yes, but a group nonetheless.

Even feuding, the Capulets and Montagues remain gloriously in sync with one another, leaving the lovers to moon about in the shadows. The setting might be Verona, but the idea is All-American.

Do you remember the movie “Cocoon”?

“It is everything you’ve dreamed of. It is nothing you expect.”

That’s according to the IMDB tag line, anyway. The plot summary for this 1985 movie is even better: “When a group of trespassing seniors swim in a pool containing alien cocoons, they find themselves energized with youthful vigour.”

Why, you might ask, are you reading plot summaries for ridiculous Ron Howard films?

Well, holiday weeks demand frivolous posts, and it just so happens that the Culturist went to an American Ballet Theater matinée yesterday. As I approached the entrance of the Met, surrounded by hustling elders (it’s always awkward to be outpaced by folks who have decades on you - the Met lobby isn’t for the weak of heart), I had the strongest feeling that I was in the scene in which all of the old people are streaming toward the swimming pool in search of youth. Only, of course, an afternoon with ABT doesn’t make you young and fabulous again, it just offers the chance to sit in the dark and stare at fabulous young things jumping higher and spinning faster than you ever will (please note that yesterday’s ballet was “The Merry Widow,” in which the ridiculous old baron is made a cuckold by his beautiful young wife). Really, it’s the next best thing.

Naturally, I had been seated next to Francis Mason, who’s been watching dance about twice as long as I’ve been alive - he asked me what I was up to these days. When I told him about this blog, he remarked that he got his start in radio at WNYC in 1950.

Anyone even remotely involved in the arts knows that there is great anxiety over the graying of audiences. Series like Wordless Music are working to reinvigorate classical forms and find new audiences, and there is nothing like a matinée to drive home the need for such initiatives. Energy levels can dip to disconcerting levels, and the unwrapping of hard candy sometimes threatens to drown out the orchestra.

But I sort of love matinée crowds. I love the fabulous oral histories you often get when sitting next to a longtime theatergoer, whether it’s a professional like Mason who has intimate knowledge of such heavyweights as Martha Graham and George Balanchine, or a regular audience member who remembers seeing stars from decades’ past. And I love the weird mishaps with technology, like one incomparable Merce Cunningham Dance Company show at the Joyce Theater in which the audience was meant to listen to the score for one piece via iPods. I was seated behind a couple who had their iPods on during the entire show, and loud, only they didn’t know it because their hearing was shot.

While they kept kvetching about the machines not working, Mark Morris, a choreographer known for his musical ear and short fuse who happened to be seated directly across from them, grew increasingly agitated. In the end, he restrained himself to dark glares, but at one particularly fraught moment I thought, gleefully, that he might spring across the aisle and strangle them with their headphone wires …

And, speaking of dark glares, I am spending the holiday weekend at the Jersey Shore, where I will apparently be pissing off many a native. When an editor at WNYC found out I was going there, she sent me this fabulous segment about tensions between north Jersey Shore inhabitants and tourists from local cities, especially NYC, who are known as Bennys.

Southern New Jersey shore residents, on the other hand, prefer the term “Shoobie.”

Culture. Ain’t it grand? Happy Fourth, everyone!