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Victor Jaenada kicks off the Espai 13 series of exhibitions at the FundaciÃ³ Joan MirÃ³ for the 2022 season
BARCELONA.- To begin Dive and Immersion, Victor Jaenada (Esplugues de Llobregat, 1977) has plunged into the deepest memories of his childhood and artistically processed an incident that marked his life and work. Family oral tradition left the artist a narrative of this real event that took place at his grandmothers house when he was just a year old and that could have ended in tragedy. In Jaenadas words, At just over a year old I was at my grandmother Isabels house, in her room, in the cradle. Suddenly some formless angels appeared, frightening me a lot. They approached, hanging from the dark ceiling of the room, and I remember I must have cried . . . My grandmother, seeing that I was so upset, took me out of the room to calm me down. Just then the ceiling of the room fell in; the rubble destroyed the cradle, and I would have been ... More

Augmented Reality Theater takes a bow. In your kitchen.
LONDON.- Standing in front of a golden bandstand, dressed in a white satin gown and pearls, vocalist Nubiya Brandon sashayed to a gentle beat. Stepping toward the spotlight, she took a lazy turn around the stage, singing a playful calypso number and smiling occasionally at the band behind. The weird thing about this show, called All Kinds of Limbo, was that Brandon appeared to be in this reporters kitchen. The singer was, in fact, an eerily realistic holographic avatar on a mobile phone screen; her performance had been recorded and was now being broadcast in augmented reality from the National Theatre here. Via the technologys strange alchemy, which overlays digital imagery onto whatever a camera phone is pointing at, Brandon seemed to be singing and sashaying on the countertop. After she took a bow, her image evaporated, and the bandstand faded ... More

Annet Gelink Gallery introduces Constant Companion by Minne Kersten
AMSTERDAM.- In the Bakery, Annet Gelink Gallery is presenting Constant Companion, Minne Kerstens first show at the gallery. Originally conceived as part of an installation, the video Constant Companion brings forth the mythological figure of the Raven as its main protagonist. The bird is used as a leitmotif to speculate about concepts like the Stone Tape theory and place memory. Both these concepts hold the idea that some buildings are receptive to the energy produced by traumatic or emotional events, which they record and store. The Raven is a bird with strong symbolic connotations; they are often interpreted as an omen, connected with tragedy and darkness or seen as spirits from the supernatural world. In Constant Companion, several interpretations are allowed to exist next to each other and create friction between symbolism and reality. ... More

One opera opening would make any composer happy. He has two.
NEW YORK, NY.- When composer Ricky Ian Gordon saw Stephen Sondheims Follies on Broadway in the early 1970s, it was unlike anything hed watched on a stage. He was creating this musical theater that felt like foreign film to me, Gordon said recently. And I wanted to make something in the theater that felt like foreign movies. Thats what Follies was: a musical about broken lives and disappointment, he continued, adding an expletive for emphasis. I thought, Thats what I want to do. Gordon, now 65, did go on to create art inspired by those subjects in the process becoming considerably better known in the world of opera than theater. In a coincidence caused by pandemic delays, not one but two of his operas are opening nearly simultaneously before this month is out, and both involve the darkness Gordon adored in Follies. Intimate Apparel, at Lincoln Center Theater, for w ... More

Do men still rule ballet? Let us count the ways.
NEW YORK, NY.- Periodically, arts writers and critics will sound the alarm: Ballet has a significant gender gap. Women fill ballets stages and classrooms, but choreographers and artistic directors the people with power are predominantly men. How serious is the problem? The numbers paint a stark picture. At the largest 50 ballet companies in the United States, 71% of artistic directors from founding to present have been men; 69% of all ballets programmed at those companies during the 2020-21 season were by men; in the mostly pre-pandemic 2019-20 season, 72% were by men. Worldwide, the odds that an artistic director of a major ballet company will have a female successor are just 29%. Until recently, those figures would have been nearly impossible to find. They are available now thanks to Dance Data Project, a nonprofit organization that is using ... More

What designers have been doing at home during the pandemic
NEW YORK, NY.- If the average person were to hollow out a tree branch, turn it into a light fixture and hang it over a dining room table, it would look like the work of a Cub Scout. But in Constantin Boyms weekend home in New York states Hudson Valley, the branch is perfection. Not too crusty, not too knobby, so artless as to be almost invisible. Boym, chair of the industrial design department at Pratt Institute in New York and co-principal with his wife, Laurene Leon Boym, of design company Boym Partners, is very good at making things and has recently had lots of opportunities. Sequestered with his family for 18 months in their 1955 cabin in Esopus, New York, he embarked on a long busmans holiday. Inside, he designed a second bedroom for the couples 24-year-old son, Rob, and a mudroom where the refrigerator and laundry appliances could live. ... More

How Meat Loaf made a cult favorite: 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'
NEW YORK, NY.- The singer Meat Loaf, who died Thursday, was a rock n roll anomaly: a portly force of nature whose theatrical musicality made him an unlikely but undeniable radio staple and a standout presence in films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fight Club. Of his vital contributions to the American karaoke canon, the most potent may be Paradise by the Dashboard Light, the 8 1/2-minute opus to nascent sexuality that appeared on his multiplatinum 1977 debut, Bat Out of Hell. The story of a teenage couple about to consummate their relationship in a car, the song is built around a boisterous call-and-response duet between Meat Loaf and singer Ellen Foley. The sexual act itself is narrated by the famous New York Yankees shortstop and play-by-play announcer Phil Rizzuto, over a rollicking barroom groove. (Sample ... More

Badal Roy, who fused Indian rhythms with jazz, is dead at 82
NEW.- Badal Roy, an Indian tabla player whose drumming propelled East-West fusions for some of the most prominent musicians in and out of jazz, died on Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware. He was 82. His son, Amitav Roy Chowdhury, said the cause was COVID-19. Roy was largely self-taught. He was not trained in the Indian classical apprentice tradition of gurus and disciples. Where classical tabla players use a pair of differently tuned drums, Roy sometimes used three or four. His improvisational flexibility and his skill at sharing a groove made him a prized collaborator for jazz, funk, rock and global musicians. He first became widely known for his work in the early 1970s with English guitarist John McLaughlin and Miles Davis, appearing on Davis pivotal jazz-funk album On the Corner and its successors. He went on to many other collaborations, recording ... More

Dan Einstein, champion of singer-songwriters, dies at 61
NASHVILLE, TENN.- Dan Einstein, a Grammy-winning independent record producer who championed the careers of John Prine and Steve Goodman, died here Jan. 15. He was 61. His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his wife of 27 years, Ellen Krause Einstein, who did not cite a cause. Most people in Nashville knew Einstein as the proprietor, with his wife, of Sweet 16th, the award-winning bakery they opened in 2004. But he had previously made his mark, in the 1980s and 90s, as an independent record label operator who forsook corporate wisdom about economies of scale in favor of a smaller, more artist-driven approach to making records that proved feasible as well as garnering critical acclaim. Having dropped out of UCLA in the early 80s after his studies were eclipsed by his work with the campus concerts committee, Einstein became a partner ... More

A skilled ballet leader creates a messy 'Raymonda'
LONDON.- Esteemed ballerina. Experienced artistic director. Skilled fundraiser. In Tamara Rojo, who was announced last week as San Francisco Ballets next leader, American dance has tapped a woman of many talents. Still, the San Francisco company may want to hold off on adding choreography to her list of duties. On Tuesday at the London Coliseum, Rojo unveiled her final major project for English National Ballet, the ensemble she has led for 10 years, and her first as a choreographer and stage director: a reworking of Marius Petipas 1898 ballet, Raymonda, set during the Crusades. Unlike Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty, it has been a work of niche appeal in Britain and the United States, mainly performed in Russia and in France, where Rudolf Nureyevs version has endured. (Dutch National Ballet will also tackle Raymonda later ... More

Solo exhibition of Palestinian-American artist Kris Rumman opens at UrbanGlass
BROOKLYN, NY.- Till Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown, a solo exhibition of work by Palestinian-American interdisciplinary artist Kris Rumman, is on view at UrbanGlass from January 19 April 8, 2022. Curated by Zeljka Himbele, the exhibition inaugurates UrbanGlass Curator-at-Large program, which gives an invited curator the opportunity to develop innovative concepts and public programs for 4 annual exhibitions presented in UrbanGlass Robert Lehman Gallery. The programs goal is to address critical cultural issues and to contribute to the contemporary art and design dialogue through the material of glass. The notions of balance, interconnectedness and codependency within living systems permeate Kris Rummans multimedia artistic practice. Working from a background in glass-making techniques, Rumman often experiments with a myriad ... More