Hi y’all-
If you subscribed to this monthly cultural highlights newsletter there is a 98% you know me (or know someone who does) and a 93% chance you know most of my budget is spent absorbing as many shows/movies/exhibits as I possibly can because I am making up for missing all those things during Covid, want to support my peers and feel inspired!
Every month I’ll share some cultural highlights and look forward to discussing yours too if you have some to share!
photo by the one and only Maria Baranova <3 of Crowd
A dance: Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd. This is technically cheating because I saw it in October but I still have chills thinking about it and nothing that I’ve seen since in dance has really blown my mind in that way- I left wishing I had made that dance which is such a rare and particular feeling. Gisèle grew up in France wanting to be a dancer and was told that she didn’t have the right body for it so she turned to puppetry and cinema (this is the part that hits home) only to come back to dance and create something that defies any idea I’ve had of dance prior that both clearly shows her influences from puppetry and cinema. This dance has been worked on since 2017 and was marked by the loss of three members of her creative team (including one of the main dancers). And there is a sense of gravity to the dance that is an endless rave. The warm-up for the show alone involved 45 minutes of meditation, 45 minutes of improvisation and then one hour onstage- which is around a total of around 3 hours. Which if you’ve worked in performance is A LOT OF TIME to set aside- a very unusual ritual. The movements are all a poetic rendering of daily communication through extreme slow motion with techno blasting in the background. Kind of making you feel like you’re buzzed and are observing the dance through a strobe light. But her direction is incredibly specific, the dance at times reminding you of a renaissance painting, made up of teens in crop tops and framed by beer cans. As we left someone in the audience behind us said “well that was something”. It truly was.
An exhibit: Theaster Gates at the New Museum. It’s a rare experience to be able to walk into a museum in the city on a Sunday and not feel claustrophobic but I guess the New Museum can somehow offer that experience. I am embarrassed to say I never learned about Theaster Gates through my art history program and was stunned by the breadth and relevance of his work. His paintings, clay vessels, and video installations are personal and collective studies of labor and spirituality- which brings together his background in Urban Studies and Religious Studies with a personal narrative thread to it. Leading you throughout the exhibit to think about your role as the viewer, his experience as the artist whose work you’re observing and the collective this is for- while being mesmerized by sheer magnitude of it all.
Theaster Gates exhibit at The New Museum, photo by Dario Lasagni
A podcast: Articles of Interest (see what I did with the title of the substack). Avery Trufelman, as she knows, is one of my favorite storytellers and hosts. And we have never worked with each other which is why I feel like this is somehow okay for me to write about (I am making a point to never talk about any podcasts I work on in this because this is pleasure listening outside of work hours). But that being said- it’s really hard for me to listen to anything anymore because I listen to so much but Avery’s Articles of Interests awakens my curiosity for things I didn’t know I cared about. In her previous series Nice Try! (which I was at Vox for but did not work on), she made history around mundane object seem extraordinary (from the bidet to the dumbbell) and my partner and I devoured them during road trips. I’ve recently accepted my embarrassing interest in fashion and have been loving Avery’s dive into “Take Ivy”, Japanese photographer’s Teruyoshi Hayashida’s collection of photos of American Ivy League campus fashion from the 1960s. It was only translated in English in the 2000s and I remember my mom purchasing it and me subsequently stealing it from her absorbing it all, fascinated by how each campus completely blended into one another.
Random: If you’re tired of all the streaming services and want to watch something intellectually stimulating, Doc NYC (documentary festival) is offering most of their documentaries for streaming- it’s not free but way cheaper than a movie ticket. We may or may not have watched way too many it’s embarrassing but one that stuck with me is 26.2 to Life- a documentary about the San Quentin running group and the San Quentin marathon in which inmates run hundreds of times around a track until 26.2. Most of their sneakers are donated and every once in a while they are interrupted mid-run by a security breach alert that requires them all to kneel for as long as is needed. If you haven’t run a marathon- I can confirm that the continuous loop and tight corners, interruptions involving kneeling, and used shoes adds unfathomable levels of difficulty to the physical feat. Though the coach feels a bit too white savior-y at times, the tenacity of the runners alone is inspiring.
Saw something you liked? would love to hear about it!
XOX see you in Dec!