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	<title>City ArtsCity Arts | City Arts</title>
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	<link>http://cityarts.info</link>
	<description>New York&#039;s Review of Culture</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:27:04 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Dr. Susan Feldman</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/dr-susan-feldman/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/dr-susan-feldman/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:44:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>CityArts</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[City Arts Interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[st anns warehouse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[susan feldman]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7739</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thirty-two years ago, the New York Landmarks Conservancy hired a young social activist named Susan Feldman to figure out how to bring people to St. Ann’s Church, a Brooklyn Heights architectural gem desperately seeking restoration funds but with a congregation barely topping out at 30. Concerts at the intimate church setting lured Manhattan classical music greats like the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center—soon followed by vanguard rock ‘n’ rollers like John Cale, Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull—across the bridges to perform under the church’s lofty ceilings, surrounded by exquisite stained glass windows. Over the decades, St. Ann’s morphed into St. Ann’s Warehouse, a music and theater behemoth now located in Dumbo (it moves to a new venue at 29 Jay St. for the 2012–2013 season) that’s not only a major hub for New York City’s avant-garde but is a primary venue choice for the international arts community. None of this could have happened without Feldman’s unerring instincts for forging wonderfully symbiotic relationships with emerging and established artists, government and community groups and similar-minded performance venues. Feldman took a break from planning the new space to recount highlights from St. Ann’s recent history. [Elena Oumano] Did the church ask you [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Going, Going Auctions</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/going-going-auctions-6/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/going-going-auctions-6/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:41:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Caroline Birenbaum</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Auctions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7737</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Rago presents a large weekend auction of top-notch modern decorative art and designer furniture Feb. 25 and 26. Varied pieces of note include an English arts &#38; crafts cabinet by F.A. Rawlence with wonderful iron decorations, a pair of French art deco daybeds by Andre Sornay—offered separately but begging to remain together—a substantial nailhead bronze sculpture by Harry Bertoia from the 1970s and a faience pillow pitcher by Betty Woodman (1980s). Even good catalog photos cannot convey the scale, details and quality of the material, so Rago wisely brought an exhibition of highlights to Manhattan the weekend of Feb. 11–12 to introduce the company to New Yorkers. Rago, Lambertville, N.J., Feb. 25 &#38; 26, 11 a.m. Previews Feb. 18–24. www.ragoarts.com. Many of the works in Swann’s Feb. 23 sale of Private Press &#38; Illustrated Books and Feb. 28 sale of Fine Photographs &#38; Photobooks would be right at home with the pieces from Rago, including the Kelmscott Chaucer and contemporary American books-as-sculpture from Janus Press in the first auction and William Bradford’s magnificent volume The Arctic Regions, Illustrated with Photographs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland, 1873, and Berenice Abbott’s “City Arabesque,” silver print, 1938, in the second. Swann, [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>A Tale of Two Operas</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/a-tale-of-two-operas/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/a-tale-of-two-operas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:40:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jay Nordlinger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Classical Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7734</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Agility, power, wit and heft at the Met In the classic cartoons, opera singers are fat and often wear horns. You will see that in real life, too. But opera singers, like other people, come in all shapes and sizes, and so do operas. In consecutive performances, the Met staged operas on opposite ends of the scale. The first was The Barber of Seville, by Rossini, a quintessential bel canto comedy. The second was Aida, by Verdi, a quintessential grand opera. The first opera requires nimbleness, subtlety and wit. The second opera can use those qualities too—but it also requires power, heft and durability. Bartlett Sher’s production of The Barber has been much refined and improved since it debuted in 2006, and it is one of the most delightful shows in town. Taking the part of Rosina the other night was one of the most delightful singers in town, or anywhere else: Diana Damrau. The most difficult music is child’s play for her. She is musical in everything she does, including the merest cough. As a comedic actress, she has few peers, certainly in the opera world—there’s a touch of Lucille Ball about her. John Del Carlo, our Dr. Bartolo, [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Two Acts of War</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/two-acts-of-war/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/two-acts-of-war/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:38:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gregory Solman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Film]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[act of valor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gregory Solman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[navy seals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the front line]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7731</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[SEAL team vs. Korean Clichés Taken as a singular feat of selfless will—and war, we’re reminded, is “a country of will”—Act of Valor serves an oblique purpose as a bracing, unspoken homage to Michael Monsoor, awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for jumping on a live grenade to spare his fellow Navy SEALs and allied Iraqis in 2006. Otherwise, this pro-am production, co-directed by practical first-timer Mike “Mouse” McCoy and stunt man Scott Waugh, generously spreads the valor around but fights in vain to break free of fictional war movie tropes, wasting a cast of admirable, uncredited, active duty SEALs who nonetheless lend the project a too easily won integrity and patriotic patronage. The screenplay, by Kurt Johnstad (who co-wrote 300), has a tidy, seminar-study act structure that undercuts any pretense of an insider’s angle on special ops that might at least dive more deeply than the dramatizations in episodes of Navy SEALs: Untold Stories. There’s no air between the action. In the end, it is no more satisfying to watch real SEALs roll through a movie contrivance than to suffer real actors pretending authenticity in a work with a shaggy, shapeless documentary texture. It doesn’t correct a single stereotype. [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Dynamiting Stereotypes: Jared Hess puts TV on blast</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/dynamiting-stereotypes/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/dynamiting-stereotypes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:35:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ben Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Film]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fox broadcasting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jared hess]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[napoleon dynamite]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7729</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Fox TV’s new Napoleon Dynamite cartoon confirms Jared Hess’ step up in status from cult director to protean pop auteur. As co-creator of the show (adapted from his 2004 live-action feature film), he has faithfully guided his vision into a new medium, almost to an entirely new idiom. Even with a good deal of the movie’s idiosyncrasy replaced by assembly-line TV gag writing, Hess’ sensibility comes through in small but notable ways. The tenacity of Hess’ vision may be related to its deep roots in parts of American culture that the mainstream often ignores. His films deal with the far-out fantasies that flourish in flyover country (Napoleon Dynamite is set in Preston, Idaho). Not close enough to the big-city action to glean the latest styles of dress and behavior, Hess’ characters nonetheless soak up American pop culture’s arrogant excess, using it to fuel their eccentricity. Some critics have accused Hess of ridiculing his characters, but that’s just a squeamish response to his lack of sentimentality. Hess’ visual style depicts landlocked American life with the vibrancy of folk art. Yet, every day, the People of Walmart photoblog supplies fresh proof that the outlandish sights in Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos have [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Listening to People: How the Swiss keep jazz Intakt</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/listening-to-people/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/listening-to-people/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:25:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Howard Mandel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Jazz, Popular and Other]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intakt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7727</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With no background of blues, gospel or swing, what does “jazz” sound like? A two-week festival March 1–15 at The Stone of the Zurich-based musicians who record for the Swiss record label Intakt offers intriguing examples. Pianist Irene Schweizer will perform powerful, blocky improvisations. Pierre Favre, her frequent accompanist and one of Europe’s busiest drummers, will demonstrate his non-idiomatic rhythmic approach. Trombonist Samuel Blaser brings a burred vocal tone and patient deliberation to melodic development. Ingrid Laubrock, with childhood classical and choir training, plays soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxes, has studied formally with U.K. as well as U.S. jazzers and leads several bands, one with Brazilians; her music stymies characterization. A dozen unfamiliar instrumentalists make their New York debuts (see The Stone’s schedule online at www.thestonenyc.com), some in league with local veterans, including Elliott Sharp, Melvin Gibbs, Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille and Mark Feldman. A showcase of individuals rather than an invading movement, the Intakt artists’ stand won’t conclusively answer questions about Euro-jazz. But why should such questions arise? Because there’s a bristly contradiction in jazz theories. The music is regarded as essentially derived from black American experience and/or a universal language, crossing borders based on fundamental values of [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Sin-sational: NYCB Mixes Brecht and Balanchine</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/sin-sational/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/sin-sational/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:21:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Joel Lobenthal</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Dance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York City Ballet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[patti lupone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[seven deadly sins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wendy whelan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7725</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thought-provokingly revived at New York City Ballet earlier this month, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1933 The Seven Deadly Sins is mercilessly unsparing of its audience’s feelings. It parades before us every act of compromise and hypocrisy, both individual and collective, of which we—spectators, society—may have been guilty. Just as when it was new last year, in Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s staging, the conflicted heroine was sung by Patti LuPone and danced-pantomimed by Wendy Whelan. The dancing Anna—Anna 2—is nearly the final repository of human impulse, her stagemates reduced to money-grasping automatons. She is continuously brutalized by her doppelganger’s froggy-voiced insistence that she acquiesce to the ways of the world. In Brecht’s masterly inversion, the sins Anna 2 is accused of are often her manifestations of morality and idealism. Finally, Anna 2 and her humanistic propensities are defeated altogether. Seven Deadly Sins is unlike anything else in NYCB’s repertory, or any other ballet company’s, and it was riveting from beginning to end. Brecht’s lyrics curdled as they dropped from LuPone’s lips, while Whelan was vulnerable to a degree that was almost painful. That meant, of course, that she as a ballerina had studied with a dispassionate eye exactly how to position her [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Original Copies: Fu Baoshi adapts to revolution</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/original-copies/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/original-copies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:20:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kate Prengel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Museums]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Art]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7723</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The title of The Metropolitan Museum’s new Chinese painting exhibit, Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965), is misleading. The painter in question did live through the establishment of the Chinese Republic, the Sino-Japanese wars and the rise of the Communist party, but Fu is far more academic than revolutionary. It is his adaptability and willingness to lose himself in the river of history that makes this show so interesting. We begin with the young Fu training himself to paint by copying the masters. He inscribes each of his early paintings with an explanation of his influences (“Cheng Sui, active 1605-1691, modeled his landscapes after Dong Yuan, active 930s-960s…I love his simple, vigorous style and imitate it”). Fu was also a professional maker of seals, and the first room of the show includes many of his seals. Like the early paintings, these are well-realized, workmanlike pieces, far more imitative than original. Fu evidently became more dynamic in middle age. My favorite pieces in the exhibit are a series of rainy, romantic paintings of mountains and remote cottages, done at the end of World War II. “Whispering Rain at Dusk” is a wonderfully broody picture washed in purple-gray; [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Post-Colonial Pictures: Modernist Indian painting liberates the Rubin</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/post-colonial-pictures/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/post-colonial-pictures/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:17:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Melissa Stern</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Museums]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Art]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7721</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I love the Rubin Museum of Art, a jewel of a museum housed in the old Barney’s store on Seventh Avenue. However, since its opening in 2004, the museum has struggled with how to be more than just a historical institution. There have been a few forays into the contemporary art world, all tied to Buddhism, but the museum has never felt part of the modern New York art scene. With the opening of The Body Unbound: Modernist Art From India, the museum has made a huge leap toward presenting the development of Indian painting as a truly modernist form, related but not bound to ancient traditions and fully embracing artistic developments in Europe and America. After India gained its independence in 1947, Indian artists were able to integrate politics and contemporary thought in their painting in ways that had been impossible under English rule. The exhibition begins tentatively, with the delicate works of artists newly freed from colonialism. These transitional pieces are unsatisfying as paintings but are perhaps more valuable seen as artistic documents of the development of a new Indian identity. As the show progresses, both chronologically and thematically, one sees the powerful influence of western painters like [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Singular Journeys: Rosenthal’s transcendental landscapes</title>
		<link>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/singular-journeys/</link>
		<comments>http://cityarts.info/2012/02/22/singular-journeys/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:16:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Goodrich</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Galleries/Gallery Beat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Art]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://cityarts.info/?p=7719</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With her current show at Bowery Gallery, Deborah Rosenthal continues to infuse a highly personal approach with intimations of the mythic. Stylistically, the artist’s abstracted paintings have always recalled for me Robert Delaunay in their melodic, organic overlapping of planes of vivid color. (As a fellow Bowery Gallery artist, I’ve had the opportunity of observing it up close for a number of years.) But her goals seem quite different, closer in spirit to Kandinsky or Rouault in their transcendental longings. Her latest showing of nearly 20 paintings, depicting wayfarers and abstracted landscapes, not only depict but personify journeys of the soul. The word “journey,” in fact, appears in the titles of a number of smaller canvases featuring pictographic stick figures in generalized landscapes of yellow, orange/ochre and slate gray. Fine networks of lines define these spaces, turning portions of canvas into receding plains, mountain ranges and suggestions of trees and streams. Animating the paintings is the recurring theme of a figure reclining across the bottom of a vertical format with a second figure striding energetically above. These images balance the serene and the charged, the ingenuous and the fateful. In “Winter Journey II” (2010), the form enclosing the recumbent figure [...]]]></description>
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