See Dance Differently at The 2015 (21st Annual) Fire Island Dance Festival

Make your plans now to attend Fire Island’s most anticipated event of the season. The Fire Island Dance Festival  (July 17-19, 2015, Fire Island Pines, NY) has wowed audiences for 20 years with an eclectic mix of famed and fast-rising dancers from Broadway to Ballet performing on a stunning waterfront stage with the Great South Bay as a backdrop. During the festival’s 20 years, 48 new works have had their world premieres at Fire Island Dance Festival.

To date, Fire Island Dance Festival supporters have raised $3.8 million for the most vulnerable among us, helping to ensure that they receive lifesaving medications and health care, nutritious meals, counseling and emergency financial assistance.

This year’s line of performers includes:

• American Ballet Theatre, presenting in-demand choreographer Liam Scarlett’s intimate “With a Chance of Rain,” featuring principal dancers Isabella Bolyston and Cory Stearns.

• Aszure Barton & Artists, a collective of visual, sound and performing artists evoking the movement-based vision and free spirit of its founder through her adventurous choreography.

• The Bang Group, negotiating the perilous and hysterical results of David Parker and  Jeffrey Kazin wearing neck-to-toe Velcro suits in “Slapstuck.”

• Jon Bond & Joaquim de Santana, members of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, exploring gravity-defying movement with fluidity and intensity.

• Ashley Bouder & Amar Ramasar, principal dancers with New York City Ballet, creating an intriguing juxtaposition onstage with powerhouse precision and infectious enthusiasm.

• Dorrance Dance, honoring tap dance’s uniquely beautiful history in a new and dynamically compelling context by pushing the boundaries of tap rhythmically, aesthetically and conceptually.

• Marcelo Gomes, a Brazilian-born principal dancer for American Ballet Theatre, and violinist Charles Yang,
combining Gomes’ own irresistibly charismatic choreography with Yang’s explosive playing in Paganini.

• On the Town, one of America’s classic musical comedies currently playing at Broadway’s Lyric Theatre, showcases “Lonely Town Pas de Deux,” choreographed by Emmy winner Joshua Bergasse, inspired by Jerome Robbins’ original choreography, and featuring Kristine Covillo and Stephen Hanna

• Parsons Dance, hailed as “one of the hottest tickets in contemporary American dance,” performing Trey McIntyre’s “Hymn” which premiered at Fire Island Dance Festival in 2007.

• Sonya Tayeh, nominated for an Emmy Award for her choreography on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, premiering a duet showcasing her bold, unrelenting style of contemporary jazz.

Tickets start at only $125 and include open bar. Tickets available at dradance.org or by calling 212.840.0770, ext. 268. The festival is produced by and benefits Dancers Responding to AIDS, a program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Funds raised by DRA are distributed through Broadway Cares to AIDS and family-service organizations nationwide and to the essential social service programs of The Actors Fund.

ANNUAL WHITNEY ISP EXHIBITION, S/N, GOES ON VIEW MAY 22 AT THE KITCHEN

Photo: Film still of Lis Rhodes, Dresden Dynamo, 1971-72, 16mm, color, sound, 5 mins.

From May 22 to June 13, 2015, the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program presents S/N, curated by the ISP’s 2014–15 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows Alex Fleming, Anya Komar, and Blair Murphy. The exhibition takes place at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York. S/N, an abbreviation for signal-to-noise ratio, refers to the relation between a message and the background noise emanating from the materials and environments it traverses. An exhibition of diverse practices including video, performance, conceptual writing, and music, S/N examines the material complexities of sound as a force that both allows and frustrates communication. While the works on view employ various media, they all interrogate the historical and political contexts of audibility: how, where, and when something can be heard.

S/N features works by Sonia Boyce and Ain Bailey, Cammisa Buerhaus, James Coleman, Manon de Boer, Joan La Barbara, Tracie Morris, Vanessa Place, Steve Reinke, Lis Rhodes, SCRAAATCH, Masha Tupitsyn, Ultra-red, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Jackie Wang. The exhibition hours are Tuesday through Friday, 12 to 6 pm, and Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm. Admission is free. The opening reception will take place on Friday, May 22, from 5 to 8 pm. The opening will include a performance of Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Sonata No. 6 performed by Cheryl Seltzer of Continuum Ensemble, which will take place promptly at 6 pm in The Kitchen theater.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Galina Ustvolskaya: Piano Sonata No. 6 performed by Cheryl Seltzer of Continuum Ensemble
The Kitchen theater, 512 West 19th Street
Friday, May 22, 6 pm
Seating is limited and will be first-come, first-served

Composed in 1988, Piano Sonata No. 6 is one of Galina Ustvolskaya’s most challenging compositions. The score consists largely of tone clusters and demands the performer aggressively strike the instrument, thereby speaking to the turbulence and violence at the end of the Soviet era.

Winner of the prestigious Siemens international prize for distinguished service to music and four ASCAP/Chamber Music America Awards for Adventuresome Programming, New York-based CONTINUUM — directed by Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs — is now in its 43rd season.

After a CONTINUUM concert the New York Times wrote, “Simply put, there is no musical organization in New York that produces more intellectually enticing or more viscerally satisfying programs than Continuum… Year after year, its explorations in 20th-century repertory prove to be not only unusual and unexpected but also important and enduring… This ensemble has a long history of acting in behalf of composers whom others discover years or decades later.”

CONTINUUM‘s name embodies the philosophy that new music and old form an unbroken tradition. Aiming to expand the audience for recent music, it has performed throughout the United States, including appearances at the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, at colleges and community series throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, in 25 tours to Europe, ten to Asia, and five to Latin America. In 2008 Continuum made its sixth visit to Mongolia‘s Roaring Hooves festival, and in recent seasons has appeared at festivals in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

CBS-TV, educational television, National Public Radio, the Voice of America, and European networks have broadcast CONTINUUM events. CONTINUUM has made 17 portrait recordings for diverse labels. Its concert programs embrace the entire range of music from 20th-century classics such as Ives, Joplin and Webern, to today’s composers from all over the world.

Ultra-red: Introduction to Collective Listening
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Saturday, May 23
12–3 pm

Sound collective Ultra-red will lead a sound walk and workshop based on its work Protocols for the Wojnarowicz Object, or What Is the Sound of Building Up and Tearing Down? (2012). Participants will gather at The Kitchen at 12 pm for a short introduction, followed by a sound walk down the west side of Manhattan. After the sound walk, participants will return to The Kitchen for a discussion of their experiences during the walk.

SCRAAATCH: SCRAAATCH No. 9
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Friday, June 5
4–6 pm

SCRAAATCH performs SCRAAATCH No. 9, part of a series of collaborative performance works. Combining live sound processing and performative notation, the duo develops an intricate physical and aural choreography, exploring the difficulties of mediated communication and exchange.

Avital Ronell, Vanessa Place, Kyoo Lee: Last—Words?
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street
Saturday, June 6
6:30–8:30 pm

What does it mean to speak of one’s own death? And how does one hear what is spoken? Avital Ronell, professor of German, Comparative Literature, and English at NYU, will address the death penalty and the recorded speech of executed prisoners. Artist and criminal defense attorney Vanessa Place will perform Botched Execution (2015), an extension of her Last Words (2014–ongoing). Included in the exhibition, Last Words is a recording of the artist’s voice reading the last statements of inmates executed in Texas since 1982. Kyoo Lee, philosopher, theorist, and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, will respond and moderate the conversation.

Jay Sanders and Charles Bernstein in Conversation
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Thursday, June 11
6–8 pm

Whitney curator Jay Sanders and poet Charles Bernstein will discuss their work in, on, and around sound, performance, installation, dance, poetry, theater, poetics, curating, editing, essay writing, and teaching. They will also reflect on their previous collaboration curating the 2001 exhibition Poetry Plastique at the Marianne Boesky Gallery.

This exhibition is a collaboration between the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program and The Kitchen. Curatorial Participants of the ISP are designated as Helena Rubinstein Fellows in recognition of the long standing support of the Helena Rubinstein Foundation. Support for the Independent Study Program is provided by Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa, The Capital Group Charitable Foundation, The New York Community Trust, and the Whitney Contemporaries through their annual Art Party Benefit. Endowment support is provided by Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Fund of the Communities Foundation of Texas, the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation and the Helena Rubinstein Foundation.

H&M To Open Monumental Store In New York City’s Herald Square

On May 20th, H&M, will open its Herald Center flagship, which will become its largest H&M store in the world at noon with a special performance by music icon John Legend. One of the most dynamic shopping destinations in the world, Herald Center is located at the southwest corner of 34th Street where Broadway and Avenue of the Americas converge. The store will be the 13th location in Manhattan, and will become a fashion destination for the millions of New Yorkers and international visitors who pass through Herald Square.

Rendering of H&M Herald Center (PRNewsFoto/H&M)

Rendering of H&M Herald Center (PRNewsFoto/H&M)

The store located at 1 Herald Center in Manhattan, New York 10001. New York City has the largest concentration of H&M stores in the country, employing over 1,900 people. The store can be reached by phone at 212-564-3836. Store hours will be Monday through Thursday 9am-10pm, Friday through Saturday 9am-11pm, and Sunday10am to 9pm.

The new store has a custom illuminated store front that wraps around 33rd Street, 34th Street and 6th Avenue. Measuring approximately 63,000 square feet, the store will showcase all of the H&M including H&M’s Home Collection and a special shoe department for ladies and men. It will include four floors of H&M fashion for the entire family including ladies and men’s collections, H&M Sport, H&M Mama, cosmetics and H&M’s children’s collection. Unique store details will include a custom-designed 35 ft. modern glass facade with LCD screen, mirror and terrazzo tile details, as well as an approximately 30 ft. high atrium on the second level. The store will also feature two main street entrances.

The U.S. continues to be one of H&M’s most important expansion markets since its first store opened on New York’s Fifth Avenue thirteen years ago. The Herald Center Flagship is the third flagship to be opened in New York City in the past two years, resulting in the creation of almost 900 new jobs. Now offering U.S. consumers access to quality fashions at the best prices through 361 locations across the country and through Shop Online, H&M is delighted to continue its expansion in its first U.S. city.

To celebrate opening day, Grammy- and Academy-Award winning singer and songwriter John Legend will perform and cut the ribbon and twenty lucky winners will be chosen at random for a meet and greet. In addition, H&M Herald Center will have several exciting giveaways, including Access to Fashion Passes to the first 1,000 shoppers, valued from $10 to $1,000.

H&M customers can help close the sustainability loop in fashion by donating old pieces of clothing. Any customer who donates on opening morning will receive a voucher for 20% off their next purchase for each bag of donated clothing. To kick off the recycling program opening day, customers who bring garments to be recycled before the store opens at 12:00 pm will also have the chance to win H&M gift cards valued between $50 and $100 in addition to receiving the voucher.

H&M To Launches Beauty Collection this Fall

H&M Launches Beauty Collection this Fall (PRNewsFoto/H&M)

H&M has announced the arrival of its first full range beauty collection. The launch will kick off in stores this fall, with an assortment of makeup as well as haircare, body care and beauty tools. Fashion will play a major role, as it is at the heart of the range, with an ever-evolving makeup selection that focuses on seasonal looks, ideas and colors. Over 700 beautifully packaged makeup products will be introduced within the launch, followed by seasonal drops of new and limited-edition color collections. The new line, which will replace existing beauty products at H&M, will also include two subsidiary collections: a premium beauty line and a Conscious assortment of Ecocert-approved sustainable products.

H&M Launches Beauty Collection this Fall (PRNewsFoto/H&M)

The launch comes at a time when makeup is more important than ever as an expression of personal style, whether the look is natural, classic or fashion-forward. There will be new, dedicated beauty areas within the stores to help customers experiment with trends and develop a look that’s all their own.

The products will be available in over 900 stores worldwide and online at hm.com.