Archive for February 28th, 2007

I wanted very badly to have an awesome time at The Painted Ladies, a burlesque style, sexually provocative dance show at the East Village’s Mo Pitkin’s. The venue is perfect for the rowdy, risque women, and the potential was there, but the end result was a surprising dull night, nursing a very strong margarita, waiting for something truly thrilling to happen.

To be fair, the women have talent, energy, and are all excellent performers. The director, Jenny Rocha, particuarly stands out from the very first number. The dancers are fearless and brazen and their faces are just as expressive as their bodies. They are all strikingly beautiful, their costumes are fun and creative, the music they chose was memorable. How then, did I find the time to be bored, you ask? Easy. In between each of the seven dance numbers there is a long break– just as long as the numbers themselves. Each time the break arrived, I found myself checking my phone, looking around the room at other bored customers, and wishing I could be somewhere else. The dances were also at times repetitive and unfocussed. I wasn’t always sure what I was watching or why. And instead of feeling excited about interpretting the night on my own, I felt confused by the overt and awkward sexuality, and uncomfortable with the luke warm response of the audience.

Somehow, The Painted Ladies get lost in the strange place in between legitimate dance performance and Coyote Ugly style dancing bartenders. Since they commit to neither, they stay trapped in a kind of purgatory of almost-ness. They have the talent, courage, spirit, and direction to achieve greatness, so I felt a real sadness at their inability to utilize their strengths. Even my very strong (and let’s face it, overpriced) margarita wasn’t enough to liven my night at this oddly unsatisfying event.

If you dig astrology; or gazing up at the night sky; or just like catching an early evening buzz and staring at big, bright, shiny shit, then you need to check out Tuesday nights at the Hayden Planetarium. Just about every Tuesday night at 6:30 pm the good folks at the planetarium put on an hour long lecture and star show under the dome and it only costs $12 (or $10 if your a member, a student or a senior citizen.)

Me, my girlfriend and a fifth of Jack went on the last Tuesday of the month when they host “Celestial Highlights”, a nifty overview of what’s going on in the sky for the upcoming four weeks. Turns out March is a pretty happenin’ month, astrologically speaking. We sat with about two dozen other people in the dark as the lucid tones of Professor Steve Beyer took us on a tour of the night sky starting with the planet Venus coming into view just west of the setting sun on the 1st.

The Hayden possesses the world’s largest cosmic atlas and they use their unique Zeiss Mark IX Universarium Star Projector(say that ten times fast) to paint the heavens in all their hyper detailed glory. Under the dome the sky blazes with a majesty that just can’t be observed with the naked eye in the big city. It was breathtaking and a little overwhelming.

All during the lecture and the show there’s a digital clock on one wall with the date on it. As the lecture continues and the stars move across the sky, the date on the clock progresses through the month to parallell when it is we are seeing and hearing about. It was just another little touch that added to our immersion in the subject.

The star show and lecture gave me a new appreciation for a skyscape that I take for granted as a constant everyday fixture in my life. The whole adventure was a wonderful experience, and like almost all the thiings you’ll find on this website, the planetarium is a treasure that far too few New Yorkers take advantage of. So, I implore all of you to take an hour and go. You’ll have a blasty blast. If nothing else, it’s a cool way to pre- party before hitting the bars. And who knows- you might just learn something. In the words of Professor Steve Beyer, “Just get out and LOOK!”

UPCOMING COOLNESS

• Tuesday March 6- Depths of Sky

• Tuesday March 13- The Search For Life on Exoplanets

• Tuesday March 27- Spring Has Sprung

To get updates on upcoming sky phenomena and Hayden events send a blank e- mail to

star-struck-join@lists.amnh.org

Straight from the streets of Brazil comes Ruas de São Paulo: A Survey of Brazilian Street Art. Ensconced within a gallery, the graffiti feels anything but confined as it sprawls across the newly expanded Jonathan LeVine Gallery (located at 529 West 20th Street, 9E, NYC). Catch the work of Boleta, Fefê Talavera, Highraff, Kboco, Onesto, Speto, Titi Freak, and Zezão before it leaves on March 17. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM.

As cutting edge as it’s supposed to be, graffiti begins to feel a bit passé here in New York when you pass tag after tag sprayed across tenements. Thanks to Ruas de São Paulo we can now see the stylings of Brazil without blowing all our rent money on airfare. The colorful and expansive exhibit demonstrates the unique cultural influences that impact art in São Paulo.

Kboco’s work, replete with totemic aboriginal forms, is a prime example of the impression the indigenous population has on Brazilian art. Likewise, Talavera’s work is inspired by Aztec and Mayan myth. Northeastern Brazil is represented in Speto’s work, which invokes its traditional woodcarving styles. As Jonathan LeVine Gallery points out, “he fuses modern techniques with Brazilian cultural heritage to create a distinctive form of street art.”

Of course, São Paulo’s industrialization is one of the primary factors at play in the artists’ work. Jonathan LeVine Gallery explains:

Ruas de São Paulo captures the changing Brazilian urban landscape, raw and uninhibited graffiti scene, and is a snapshot of a thriving movement stemming from a rich political and poetic history. A city destroyed by pichação (markings originating from inner-city, impoverished neighborhoods), these young, innovative Brazilian muralists are now transforming, and beautifying, the city of São Paulo.

Zezão has found one of the most intriguing ways to incorporate a modern-day convenience that we take for granted into art: he actually paints in the sewer system and subterranean water ducts of São Paulo. We’re glad that the art world has finally taken street art seriously enough to put it on display at a gallery so we don’t have to slosh around in the sewers to see the work of one of Brazil’s leading abstract graffiti artists.

Jenny Gottstein, who was involved with Graffiti NYC, notices how urbanism affects art. She compares the graffiti in São Paulo with that of Salvador da Bahia, a less-developed city in the northeast:

The interesting thing about Salvador is that a lot of the art is characterized by an Orixa theme (the afro-Brazilian gods that are so highly venerated in the area). The Ruas de Sao Paulo event was interesting, because it presented a group of artists who tend to inject a more international/cosmopolitan edge into their work. But despite any resemblance to the street art happening in Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the artwork we saw had a distinctly … at the risk of sounding obvious … Brazilian flavor. Why? Because (like most things that come out of Brazil) the pieces had an inherent musicality to them.

The influence of music on art in Brazil was the subject of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’s Tropiclia, which closed in January. The artists involved in Ruas de São Paulo likewise cite music and the art surrounding certain musical movements as a major influence on their work. Speto is into hip-hop, while Boleta and Highraff show psychedelic influences. Talavera literally makes her work out of the concert posters plastered throughout the city.

More than simply a collection of graffiti, the Ruas de São Paulo exhibit reflects Brazil’s deep heritage while exploring the contemporary art movement. The works of each artist are highly individualistic and insanely beautiful.