A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Martha says:
The particular can also be universal. In Gabri Christa’s “Magdalena,” the choreographer and multimedia artist pieces together her mother’s history, from Magdalena’s early survival of the WWII bombing of her hometown Rotterdam to her marriage and family life in an interracial marriage with her black Caribbean husband. Christa grapples with Magdalena’s dementia as well, and the loss of her memory. On the canvas of her mother’s life, Christa paints with broad strokes about war, love, race, and the illness that may define the losses of this generation. Woven in film, dance, and storytelling, Christa aims to bring what was lost back to the world. Opens Wednesday, September 12 at 8 pm at Theaterlab.
On September 11, 2001, the world was upended. The enormity of what happened in New York City had an inescapable impact, and artists have grappled with how to acknowledge and honor it in the years since. In a work that has engaged 100 dancers every September 11 morning since 2011, choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi and artist Rossella Vasta offer the “Table of Silence Project 9/11,” a ceremony and meditation that is both mournful and hopeful. The dancers enter from the corners of Lincoln Center Plaza, clad in flowing white, each with a white plate, inspired by a “banquet for humanity” that Vasta designed with 100 terra cotta plates. Then they move quietly into a spiral recalling a mandala, dancing to the beat of timpani and a flute. The audience, with the performers, turn their hands skyward in a gesture of peace at 8:46 am (when the second plane hit the north tower). The performance is free, on Tuesday, September 11, beginning at 8:15 am.
Cover: Gabri Christa in “Magdalena.” Photo © Maria Baranova.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
