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      This Summer’s Dance MVP: The Weatherman

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      At Jacob’s Pillow, with all shows outdoors, a new uncontrollable element emerged: weather. That’s where Paul Caiano comes in.BECKET, Mass. — A week after the Jacob’s Pillow season opened here, five dancers were rehearsing in the vegetable garden for a site-specific work, “Tillers of the Soil.” They tied up tomato plants, practiced wielding a machete and learned about the Native planting practice known as three sisters — growing corn, beans and squash together. The sky was clear.“Paul said it’s going to rain at 3:30 p.m.,” said the choreographer Adam Weinert — and at almost exactly that moment, a balmy afternoon erupted into showers. The dancers fled the garden, laughing, wheelbarrow in tow.Paul is Paul Caiano, an affable Albany, N.Y., weatherman who this summer took on the role of first-ever resident meteorologist for the Pillow.Ching Ching Wong and Cynthia Koppe in “Tillers of the Soil” at Jacob’s Pillow.Christopher DugganAfter last year’s festival was canceled because of the pandemic, Jacob’s Pillow moved its summer dance festival totally outdoors this year. But that has posed a new set of worries from an uncontrollable factor, namely the weather.Even festivals and theaters that have had outdoor performances for years have found this summer singular thanks to extreme weather paired with Covid-19 precautions. Events outside in the elements have proliferated alongside record-breaking heat waves, sudden storms and flash floods.At Jacob’s Pillow, that’s where Caiano, 50, comes in. He’s been a weatherman for almost three decades, delivering spirited daily reports for NewsChannel 13 and WAMC public radio. “I thrive from trying to give people the information they need to make decisions,” he said, “whether it be just to go golfing, or a bigger thing like having 10,000 people at their performance.”Before this summer at Jacob’s Pillow, Vinny Vigilante, director of technical production, made weather calls on his own. It was lower stakes because there were fewer outdoor productions and less equipment involved. “This year, because we moved outside, I definitely was like, ‘I need help,’” he said. He’d heard that the Tanglewood Music Center nearby worked with a meteorologist. “And that turned out to be Paul,” he said.“I thrive from trying to give people the information they need to make decisions,” Caiano said.John Francis Peters for The New York TimesIn 2012, Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, invested in state-of-the-art weather-tracking software. It even installed a Thor Guard device, which the Coast Guard and NASA use to measure electrostatic energy in the atmosphere and to predict when lightning is likely to strike. Still, help was needed to interpret the complicated data, so the facilities manager Bobby Lahart began searching for a meteorologist. When Lahart cold-called WAMC, Caiano picked up. He’s been forecasting severe weather for Tanglewood’s outdoor stages since then.Becket, the Western Massachusetts town that Jacob’s Pillow calls home, is a microclimate that’s difficult to accurately forecast. The grounds are surrounded by mountains, valleys and ocean winds. Caiano says the landscape is like a moisture-trapping bowl that wind blows right over, leaving foggy, wet conditions within. The grounds might be experiencing sudden showers, as on the day Weinert and his dancers had to cut their rehearsal short, while just 20 minutes away, the town of Lee is sunny, dry and clear.That variability is an enjoyable challenge to Caiano, a lifelong weather nerd who idolized the meteorologists on the Weather Channel when young. But it’s been tough for the festival, which has had a 44 percent cancellation rate of performances so far this summer. (The festival continues through Aug. 29.) When there’s a rainout, ticket holders can either receive a full refund, rebook for another show or donate the ticket amount.Every morning, Caiano checks his computer models first thing. He evaluates whether the predictions he made before going to sleep the night before have panned out and makes any necessary adjustments to his forecast. He then writes a detailed synopsis of the day’s weather for both Jacob’s Pillow and Tanglewood, including precise information about jet streams and wind shear. He also boils it down into layman’s terms: “If it comes right down to it, there’s only a 30 percent chance” of rain, reads one. “Let’s do this.”A sunny day at Tanglewood in July for the Boston Symphony’s first in-person concert since March 2020. Caiano gives a detailed description of the weather each day to Jacob’s Pillow and Tanglewood.Jillian Freyer for The New York TimesA cancellation is not something Caiano takes lightly. Every show the weather disrupts means lost revenue, disappointed ticket holders and artists who don’t get to perform. It’s a difficult balance to strike. Be overcautious and a perfectly clear day goes to waste; be too bold and put the performers, audience and equipment at risk.The final decision about whether a performance will proceed must be made four hours before showtime, to give ticket holders fair warning if it’s canceled. Once that call is made, Vigilante tells patron services, which emails ticket holders three hours in advance.“They send you a nice email during the day,” said Enid Hoffman, who had tickets to see a performance by the Latin dance group Contra-Tiempo that was canceled because of rain. “They handled it beautifully, but we were looking forward to it. It’s like, you look forward to Christmas and then somebody stole Christmas.”At Shakespeare & Company in neighboring Lenox, where outdoor performances have long been the summer norm, the artistic director Allyn Burrows and his colleagues consult weather apps and pore over the minutiae themselves. They huddle in the box office watching weather patterns on Burrows’s computer, or argue via group text about whether to cancel a show. “We’re as animated about the weather discussions as we are about Shakespeare’s text, so the debates are vociferous,” he said.More than half of Shakespeare & Company’s shows this year have been postponed or moved indoors because of weather, and Burrows said that the concern isn’t just rainstorms, but extreme heat, exacerbated by climate change. Recently, he and his team fashioned a makeshift shade out of black mesh cloth on the fly on a particularly sweltering day.“I’ve been performing outdoors for 30-odd years now and this year feels different than any other year,” he said. “Part of me likes to think of it as an aberration, but my better self is saying, continue to make plans.”Grace McLean in “Row,” at the Clark Art Institute’s reflecting pool, a Williamstown Theater Festival production that lost nearly 60 percent of its rehearsal time because of weather conditions.Joseph OMalley and R. Masseo DavisFurther north, Williamstown Theater Festival in Williamstown, Mass., is also hosting its first fully outdoor season this year, on found stages, including the Clark Art Institute’s reflecting pool, where Grace McLean stars in “Row.” The musical lost nearly 60 percent of outdoor rehearsal time because of the weather, and six of the first seven scheduled performances were canceled. “It’s just been kind of disappointing and frustrating, because we’re not getting to do our job,” she said.The sky was dreary, gray and damp the day before “Tillers of the Soil” — Weinert’s adaptation of a dance originally choreographed by Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis in 1916 — had its premiere at Jacob’s Garden. The dancers spread straw on the soft, wet ground before the performance, but their feet still grew muddy and soaked as they danced. “We were able to still be in the moment with everything that was happening,” Brandon Washington, a dancer, said. “It ended up being super sunny and beautiful.”For dancers, weather, especially rain, has meant being ready to be frustrated — or ready for the show to go on in tough circumstances. On July 3 at Little Island, a new park on the Hudson River in Manhattan, Hee Seo, a principal for American Ballet Theater, did not know until showtime whether her “Dying Swan” solo would happen. Even then, the rehearsal and show were both delayed, and when Seo started dancing, she could feel raindrops. “But we didn’t stop,” she said. “I carried on. I finished my piece.”Artists and audiences have been hungry for performances, even as the cancellations pile up. The Trisha Brown Dance Company canceled performances on June 8 and 9 at Wave Hill in the Bronx because of rain. The company’s director, Carolyn Lucas, said the dancers rehearsed amid the drizzles until they couldn’t. “After this year of Covid, I think everybody is missing dancing and performing so much,” she said. “They were very flexible to sort of do something a bit more extreme just to get the show on the road.”It’s unlikely there will be another summer with quite this particular mix of circumstances. And at Jacob’s Pillow, the hope is that there won’t need to be another outdoor-only season. But ever adaptable, dancers will continue to make the most of what’s thrown at them. As Washington said of his performance in the garden, “With everything that was happening leading up to the performance, the wet ground was kind of the least of our concerns.” More

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      The Offspring’s Drummer Says He Was Dropped For Being Unvaccinated

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      “It has recently been decided that I am unsafe to be around, in the studio, and on tour,” Pete Parada said, citing medical reasons for not getting vaccinated.Pete Parada, the drummer for the pop-punk band the Offspring, says his decision not to get a Covid-19 vaccination for medical reasons has cost him his job.“Since I am unable to comply with what is increasingly becoming an industry mandate — it has recently been decided that I am unsafe to be around, in the studio, and on tour,” Mr. Parada said on Instagram on Tuesday. “I mention this because you won’t be seeing me at these upcoming shows.”His doctor had advised him not to get vaccinated, Mr. Parada said, because he has Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks nerves.“The risks far outweigh the benefits,” he said, adding that he had caught the virus last year and suffered mild effects from it.“I am confident I’d be able to handle it again,” he said of the virus, “but I’m not so certain I’d survive another post-vaccination round” of the syndrome. The Food and Drug Administration last month said Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine may be associated with a small increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome. There is not yet any data to suggest a link between the condition and Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or by Moderna, both of which rely upon a different technology.Mr. Parada also said he did not support “those with the most power” dictating medical procedures to others, citing governments, corporations and employers.It’s unclear whether Mr. Parada was dropped permanently or temporarily from the band. The Offspring became famous in the 1990s with such songs as “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” and “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy).” Mr. Parada joined in 2007 and this year performed on its latest album, “Let the Bad Times Roll,” its first in nearly a decade.A request for comment from the band was not immediately returned early Wednesday.An Offspring concert scheduled for Sunday in Los Angeles is sold out, and dozens of other dates across the United States and Europe are scheduled through next summer.In recent weeks, there has been a deluge of vaccine mandates from companies amid concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. Tyson Foods and Microsoft were the latest to require employees to be vaccinated. Arts institutions have also begun to require vaccinations for people visiting museums, shows and concerts. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday that New York City will become the first U.S. city to require proof of at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine for indoor dining, gyms and other activities.Mr. Parada said he doesn’t have any negative feelings toward the band, adding, “They’re doing what they believe is best for them, while I am doing the same.” More

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      Willie Winfield, Angelic-Voiced Doo-Wop Singer, Is Dead at 91

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      For more than 60 years, he sang with various incarnations of the Harptones. “His voice was unique,” one concert producer said, “and it lasted his whole life.”Willie Winfield, whose silken lead vocals with the Harptones in the 1950s made him a favorite of doo-wop connoisseurs, even though the group never achieved wide mainstream commercial success, died on July 27 in a hospital in Brooklyn. He was 91.The cause was cardiac arrest, his daughter Tina Winfield said.Mr. Winfield’s angelic voice was first heard in the early days of rock ’n’ roll, and he continued to sing when doo-wop groups turned into nostalgia acts in the 1970s. He toured with various incarnations of the Harptones until he retired in 2019, when he was 89.“He had one of the best voices around,” Dick Fox, a producer who booked the Harptones dozens of times on his live oldies shows, said in a phone interview. “His voice was unique, and it lasted his whole life. He never lost the higher register.”During the 1950s, Mr. Winfield and the Harptones performed at the Apollo Theater and at shows promoted by the influential disc jockeys Alan Freed (at the Brooklyn Paramount) and Murray the K (at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey). They were seen in the 1956 musical revue film “Rockin’ the Blues.”Among the group’s best-known songs were “A Sunday Kind of Love,” “Since I Fell for You” and “My Memories of You.”“Singing the songs for me feels fresh every time,” Mr. Winfield told the critic David Hinckley in a 1985 interview for The Daily News. “It’s the way people respond. All of a sudden, I forget my age. I lose all sense of everything except the song. I go back to the first time we recorded, when we had no idea what would happen.”Robert Palmer, the chief pop music critic of The New York Times, wrote in 1982 that Mr. Winfield’s voice had “immaculate pitch and an insinuating way with a phrase.” But despite Mr. Winfield’s memorable voice, the Harptones’ exquisite harmonies and the jazz-inspired arrangements of Raoul Cita, their pianist, they never reached the same level of commercial success that contemporaries like the Drifters, the Cadillacs and the Flamingos did.Willie Lee Elijah Winfield was born on Aug. 24, 1929, in Surry, Va. His father, also named Willie, was a merchant seaman. His mother, Christine (Cooke) Winfield, was a homemaker.Mr. Winfield sang in a church group in Norfolk and with his brothers Clyde and Jimmy. After he moved to New York in 1950, he and his brothers sang on street corners with two other men and practiced under the Manhattan Bridge.In 1953, some members of another doo-wop act, the Skylarks, merged with some from the Winfield brothers’ group, forming a new group, which they first called the Harps and, soon after, the Harptones. In addition to Mr. Winfield and Mr. Cita, the lineup consisted of William Galloway, Billy Brown, Nicky Clark and William Dempsey. Mr. Dempsey is the only member of the original group who is still alive.The Harptones “demand consideration in any serious discussion of the truly immortal acts of the doo-wop era,” Jason Ankeny wrote on the website AllMusic. But success proved elusive.Charlie Horner, who runs the Classic Urban Harmony website, said in an interview that the Harptones were popular in New York and other cities in the Northeast, as well as in Chicago, but that their local successes did not add up to any national hits.However, he said, if Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart had a Top 100 (instead of a Top 10 or 20) during the Harptones’ most productive years, in the mid-1950s, they might have had as many as 10 hits. Their only chart hit, “What Will I Tell My Heart,” peaked at No. 96 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961.The fact that the Harptones recorded for a succession of small labels with limited distribution did not help their cause.Mr. Winfield received a lifetime achievement award at the East Coast Music Hall of Fame Awards ceremony in Wildwood, N.J., in 2019. He gave his final performance that same year.George Napolitano/Media Punch, via Alamy Live News“At one time we decided to try to promote our own records,” Mr. Winfield said in the 1985 Daily News interview, which Mr. Hinckley repurposed last week on the website Medium. “It was like, give the D.J. $75 to play the record. Our producers should have been taking care of that.”In the mid-1960s, Mr. Winfield began delivering prayer cards to funeral homes; he retired from that job in 1995. He continued to perform part time with versions of the Harptones, notably as background vocalists on “René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War,” a tender song on Paul Simon’s album “Hearts and Bones” (1983) that recalls the doo-wop music that Mr. Simon grew up listening to.In addition to his daughter Tina, Mr. Winfield is survived by another daughter, Stephanie Winfield; his sons, Vincent, Timothy and DeWayne; two sisters, Serita Alexander and Goldie Bronson; two brothers, Clyde and Abraham; 44 grandchildren; and 22 great-grandchildren. His wife, Alice (Battle) Winfield, died in 2011.At Mr. Winfield’s final performance, at a doo-wop weekend in April 2019 at Half Hollow Hills East High School in Dix Hills, N.Y., he wrapped up his career with another signature ballad, “Life Is But a Dream.”He sat on a stool until the end of the song and, after the group sang “Will you take part in,” he rose, steadying himself on his cane, and finished the line and the song in his familiar tenor — “my life … my love? That is my dream.”And he hit the high notes. More

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      Want Free Central Park Concert Tickets? Keep Trying.

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      The first batches of free tickets to the “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert” are being released online this week. They can be gotten, with patience.Plenty of things require patience in life. Cobbling together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle while in lockdown comes to mind, as does doing your nails — basecoat, color, topcoat.Now add to that list waiting in the virtual line for tickets to “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert.”Yes, they are free. Yes, there are more than four million fully vaccinated New Yorkers who qualify to attend. And the lineup for the Aug. 21 show — including LL Cool J, Bruce Springsteen and punk rock goddess Patti Smith — was sure to draw some interest.So perhaps it was no surprise that I found my first attempt a ticketless dead end, an exercise in frustration.It began at 10 a.m. Monday, when the free tickets first went up online. I learned quickly that to get a ticket you need a Ticketmaster account. So began a frantic scramble to remember my own.That was followed by a long wait in line, locked in a staring contest with a glowing white orb that represented my place in “The Queue.” I was told, with cold precision, that more than 2,000 people were ahead of me.But by 10:41 a.m. I was at the end of my road. Suddenly, the oval signifying the availability of general admission tickets faded from blue to gray.As in, No Longer Available.But New Yorkers wait online for a living. So on Tuesday, at 7 a.m., ready for Round 2, I clicked on the “We Love NYC” block on the Homecoming2021.com website. Sure enough, the previously gray, “unavailable” general admission block had been replenished with tickets and was now blue. At the edge of my seat, I selected two tickets and hit “Next.”“Sit tight, we’re securing your Verified Tickets,” the screen read. But then, as I refreshed, I began getting the same error message — “Sorry, we could not process your request, please try again later.” I tried for another hour and it did seem as if more tickets became available after the first batches were gone. But each time I got shut out.But there are success stories out there, people. I know early risers who had better experiences than I did. And all you have to do is go to Stub Hub to witness how many people have scored free tickets and now hope someone will pay dearly for them: A lot of those were on sale Tuesday, some as low as $48, general admission, all the way up to $12,789. Selling the free tickets is “violating the spirit of this historic concert,” a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said on Tuesday.The city has not said how many tickets are made available each day. (Those interested can try again on Wednesday at 9 p.m., Thursday at 7 a.m., Friday at 10 a.m. or on Saturday at 9 p.m.) Clive Davis, the producer, has said he is looking for a crowd of about 60,000 on the Great Lawn and the mayor’s office has said that 80 percent of the tickets were going to be free.Now the good news for some is that if you fancy yourself a V.I.P., and are looking to spend from $399 to $3,450 or even up to $4,950 — tickets for those seats seem easier to get.The most expensive tickets — platinum V.I.P.s — promise seats right in front of the stage, entry into an exclusive backstage lounge featuring a “Complimentary Eclectic Selection of Hors D’Oeuvres,” an open bar and a special entrance.The gold V.I.P. tickets, price tag $3,450, include seating just behind platinum and all the comforts, food and drink of the backstage lounge, plus that special entrance.For $399, you still get a good ticket, but wave goodbye to that backstage lounge. Still, there will be a dedicated concessions area — and V.I.P. restroom facilities.Everyone — the free, the V.I.P.s and the V.I.P.s of the V.I.P.s — has to present proof of vaccination to enter the concert, either by showing up in person with their vaccination card or a photo of it, the New York City COVID SAFE App or the New York State Excelsior Pass. And if you can’t score a ticket, CNN will air the concert live.At an online news conference Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio was excited that the tickets were being distributed.“This is going to be amazing,” he said, “and it’s going to be a great sign of New York City’s rebirth.” More

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      Review: Mostly Mozart Returns to Lincoln Center, Quietly

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      The center’s summertime music series has a limited outdoor run this week.The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the headliner ensemble of Lincoln Center’s summertime music series, is the latest group to return to live performance in New York. But unlike some organizations, it sneaked back into action quietly.Early Monday evening, Louis Langrée, the orchestra’s music director, led 13 players in a Mozart masterpiece, the “Gran Partita” Serenade for Winds in B flat. The informal performance — a surprise pop-up, produced with little promotion — took place on the inviting artificial lawn with which Lincoln Center has covered its plaza.Louis Langrée, the orchestra’s music director, led the performance.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesThe concert, and other offerings in the center’s Restart Stages venture this summer, was conceived at a time when arts institutions were being especially careful to avoid attracting oversize crowds because of fears of the virus spreading. Those concerns, of course, linger.But I wish the revival, however modest, of Mostly Mozart had been more touted. In addition to crowd control, the center’s reticence might have to do with the questionable fate of the venerable festival: As my colleague Javier C. Hernández reported Tuesday in announcing the news of the center’s new artistic leader, officials there say they are still working out Mostly Mozart’s future. That’s not reassuring, especially since it was only four years ago that the center, grappling with budget woes, dissolved the Lincoln Center Festival to focus on reinventing Mostly Mozart.Despite the limited publicity, a couple hundred people, including children scampering up and sliding down the curved artificial turf walls, were already on the lawn before the performance began. As the players took their seats and started warming up with Langrée, the crowd grew even larger.On a balmy evening, a crowd gathered on the artificial turf lawn that has covered the plaza since the spring.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesLangrée spoke to the audience about how special the occasion was for the musicians — the “first time in two years that Mostly Mozart gets together again.” He announced a schedule of performances for the rest of the week, including two more pop-ups, both at 6 p.m.: On Tuesday, a performance of a Mozart duo for violin and viola accompanying two dancers from the New York City Ballet, and on Wednesday, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Mozart’s Divertimento in D (K. 136). On Friday in Damrosch Park, at 8 p.m., the full orchestra will play Mozart’s first and final symphonies.Monday’s performance was wonderful; hearing the music in that space amid grateful New Yorkers was inspiring. The musicians, who played splendidly, were visibly moved.In the “Gran Partita” Serenade, Mozart achieves an uncanny blend of breeziness and grandeur. The music seems genial and sunny, yet is also intricate and complex, almost epic: The piece has seven movements and lasts some 45 minutes. The scoring is heftier than was typical of wind serenades at the time. Along with the standard two bassoons and two oboes, two clarinets are fortified by two basset horns (a deeper alto clarinet); two French horns are doubled to four; and a string bass brings added depth.The ensemble will give a series of performances this week at the center.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesSubtle amplification allowed intricate details to come through beautifully. Langrée and the players — determined, it seemed, to draw in listeners — played whole stretches with mellow sound and soft-spoken grace, especially in the sublime slow movement. Yet the feistier episodes were full-bodied and exciting. The concluding rondo was exceptionally rousing.It was gratifying to see how many people who might not have anticipated hearing this performance wound up standing near the players or sitting on the lawn, listening closely, including mothers swaying to the music with babies in their arms. Mostly Mozart is back, for the time being, even if many music lovers in New York didn’t know it.Mostly Mozart Festival OrchestraEvents this week listed at mostlymozartmusicians.com. More

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      Shoe Obsession for the Ages: Prince’s Killer Collection of Custom Heels, Now on View

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      The beautiful ones, they hurt you every time.CHANHASSEN, Minn. — Before we start, I want to get one thing straight: You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a grown man gasp over a giant wall of high heels. Not just any heels. Stiletto heels, custom-made for a size 7 foot. Fabric-covered ankle boots, mainly, but also knee boots, over-the-knee boots and platforms, in colors bright as Oz.Male, female, Black, white, young, old — everyone visiting “The Beautiful Collection: Prince’s Custom Shoes” at Paisley Park on a recent Saturday afternoon tour went gaga over Prince Rogers Nelson’s heels. More than 300 pairs, soles cleaned, fabrics vacuumed, shapes stuffed and lit up from behind, delivering us from gender norms and pandemic loungewear.Hark! Here were the hand-painted cloud boots from the “Raspberry Beret” music video; the platform roller skates documented by Questlove and discovered, posthumously, in a custom-made briefcase; and ankle boots with metallic stickers proclaiming “Get Wild” on the toe and “Free Music” on the heel. (Prince wore that pair in 1995 in protest against Warner Brothers, whose recording contracts he found so exploitative he temporarily changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol.)Prince wore these gem-studded heels at his induction ceremony into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.John Wagner PhotographyHe wore these boots, hand-painted with clouds, with a matching suit in the “Raspberry Beret” music video in 1985.John Wagner PhotographyOne pair was covered in candle wax. (Prince loved candles.) Another hid scuffs with pink Magic Marker. Multiple pairs had friction burns from Prince’s legendary dancing.“If there’s a stain or a scuff mark, that should remain on the shoe,” Mitch Maguire, the curator of the exhibition, said on a humid afternoon. “That’s part of its history.”The artist’s estate, which assumed management of Paisley Park in 2019, manages tours of the complex, which Prince built in 1987. Photos and videos are not allowed, and visits to “The Beautiful Collection,” a limited-run exhibition that opened to the public in July as part of the larger tour of Paisley Park, are kept to 15 minutes.More than 900 additional pairs of heels discovered at Paisley remain in storage, though Mr. Maguire said they hope to exhibit them all over time. Also omitted from the tour are the consequences of wearing nothing but high heels for four decades, including a reported hip surgery and well-documented opiate use that led to Prince’s fatal overdose in 2016.Instead, visitors are treated — and it is a treat — to nose-to-glass close-ups of exquisite bespoke designs from artisans including Willie Rivera, Franco Puccetti, Cos Kyriacou, Andre Rostomyan and Gary Kazanchyan of Andre No. 1, as well as filmed interviews with Mr. Kyriacou and Mr. Kazanchyan. Between them, the two men built more than 3,000 custom pairs of heels for Prince, including light-up Lucite platform sneakers and ankle boots with reinforced heels for arena shows.Yet even reinforcements — in this case, a metal brace bolting the heel to the sole — wasn’t enough to let Prince’s shoemakers watch concerts in peace. “There were moments when my heart was in my mouth,” Mr. Kyriacou said in an exhibition interview. “He was a relentless performer.”Constructing dangerously high heels that were embellished enough for the artist’s taste, yet secure enough for his talent, required ingenuity and engineering. After all, Prince stomped in his heels — four inches high in the early years, three and a quarter inches later. He spun and strutted and sashayed. He swayed and skipped and slid into the splits so fast that unreinforced heels sometimes broke clean off like a wishbone.Over time, designers refined the reinforced heel and fiddled with its angle. Mr. Kyriacou worked with Donatella Versace to get the famed Versace fabric heels up to snuff. (The label was the only one Prince wore outside of his custom designs.)Prince wore these boots when he performed “Purple Rain” at the 1985 American Music Awards.Tony SylversHe wore these gold metallic boots during his 2010-2011 “Welcome 2 America” tour.Tony SylversCreating a literal head-to-toe look with custom fabrics — usually his heels were covered in the same material as his suits — is arguably Prince’s most memorable contribution to rock ’n’ roll fashion. The goal wasn’t to make the 5-foot-2 musician taller, said the costumer Helen Hiatt, who headed Prince’s wardrobe department from 1985 to 1991, but to construct a look in which the shoes “wouldn’t cut your eye.”Gwen Leeds, a stylist who worked for Prince in numerous capacities from 1983 to 1988, recalled flying to New York to buy fabric at the high-end shops on West 57th Street and taking it to T.O. Dey on 46th Street to have the shoes custom-built and covered.“Normally you purchase fabric by the yard,” she said. “In the purple world, it was done by the pound.”Money was no object, but time often was. Ms. Leeds’s instructions from Prince’s wardrobe department? “Have them do whatever’s necessary” to meet the deadline. This once meant outbidding reps for Luther Vandross and Queen Elizabeth to secure the fabric that became Prince’s 1985 Oscars ensemble, to which H.E.R. recently paid homage.“I said, ‘Well, I’m representing Prince, and I have cash,’” Ms. Leeds said. “I got the fabric.”Necessity, of course, is the mother of invention. Mr. Kazanchyan recalled purchasing, demolishing and rebuilding a pair of Fendi shoes in two weeks to match Prince’s foot pattern. Ms. Hiatt attached metal bat wings onto Prince’s toe box with double-sided carpet tape to create his now-legendary Batman boots. Once she even melted plexiglass in her oven to satisfy a last-minute request for a glitter cane.“You just used every bit of ingenuity you could come up with,” Ms. Hiatt said.Yet when Ms. Hiatt tried to invent a new toe point on Prince’s shoe pattern, widening the box to prevent bunions, Prince demurred. “‘You know I hate to argue,’” she recalls him saying while staring at the floor. “‘Just go change it.’ My heart ached for his little feet.”Bunions did not, apparently, matter in the purple world, any more than budgets. And though this purple world is not the real world, “The Beautiful Collection” reveals the benefits of an alternate reality. For here, an androgynous Black man represents peak sex appeal, straight white couples will ooh and aah at platform flip-flops, and a couture shoemaker will buy a pair of children’s shoes from Payless, rip out the light-up soles and build them into white platform sneakers so that every time a rock legend pushes down on a piano pedal, his heels light up like happy Tinkerbell.And if there remains skepticism toward the purple world, this celebration of spectacle, turn your gaze toward Paisley’s parking lot, 19.4 miles from George Floyd Square, where a group of Black motorcyclists, engines gunning, jams out to “When Doves Cry” as total strangers dance. More

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      Abrons Arts Center’s Fall Season Celebrates Trailblazers

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      Highlights include a photography exhibition on female leaders in public housing and a contemporary play about the life of Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.”Abrons Arts Center’s lineup for the fall season is a salute to groundbreakers and innovators in the arts, public housing and emerging technology.“As we emerge from isolation, we wanted to focus on work that’s still been happening and developing in different ways during the pandemic,” Craig Peterson, the center’s executive artistic director, said in an interview. “Because it deserves an audience.”Several of the productions scheduled at the 300-seat playhouse for the coming season were booked before the pandemic and postponed because of it, said Peterson, who curated the season in collaboration with Ali Rosa-Salas, the recently appointed artistic director of the center.“Lots of them got displaced when we stopped live performance,” he said. “But we never stopped supporting artists and always intended to present them.”The center has scheduled a concert, “Holy Ground: Land of Two Towers,” by the jazz ensemble Onyx Collective on Sept. 11 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center.“It felt like an appropriate way to think about the long-term impacts of historical moments like the ones we’re in now,” Rosa-Salas said.A week later, the center will open a free outdoor photography exhibition, “Community Matriarchs of NYCHA” (for the New York City Housing Authority), celebrating five women who have transformed their neighborhood on the Lower East Side, where they organized food distribution, especially during the pandemic, to other residents of public housing. The exhibition, presented as part of the Photoville Festival 2021 in partnership with the digital storytelling platform My Projects Runway, will include portraits by Courtney Garvin and video interviews by Christopher Currence and remain on view through Dec. 1.“I’m really excited to uplift women activists in our community and reflect on the role of public housing in our neighborhood and city,” Rosa-Salas said.From there it’s on to Frankenstein, Bigfoot and Sasquatch as Abrons presents a streaming video adaptation of Sibyl Kempson’s “The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.,” beginning Oct. 29. First performed as an experimental, four-part radio play in January, the production, presented by the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., is described as a visual journey through the layered universe of Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.” The new virtual video work will feature hand-cut collages, digital and analog animation and illustration and collaborations with more than a dozen artists. An in-person screening is also set for Halloween at the new Chocolate Factory Theater.Closing the season from Dec. 10-12 is a live motion-capture piece, “Antidote,” created in collaboration with Pioneer Works. Directed by the Jamaican-born choreographer Marguerite Hemmings and the new-media artist LaJuné McMillian, it explores the relationship between physical movement and motion-capture technology and how the latter can be used as a tool of personal power and liberation. The project is a collaboration with six young artists from high schools on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.“It’s an intergenerational experiment and a great way to end the season,” Rosa-Salas said.The full season lineup is available at abronsartscenter.org. More

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      Lincoln Center Names Shanta Thake as its New Artistic Leader

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      Shanta Thake, a theater executive, faces challenges that include helping the center embrace new genres and attract virus-wary audiences.Feeling the pressure to attract new audiences and rethink its offerings even before being upended by the coronavirus pandemic, Lincoln Center announced on Tuesday that it had chosen a theater executive with a reputation for working across disciplines as its next artistic leader.Shanta Thake, most recently an associate artistic director at the Public Theater, will assume the role of chief artistic officer at the center, the nation’s largest performing arts complex, as it works to broaden its appeal beyond classical music and ballet into genres such as hip-hop, poetry and songwriting.Thake — who at the Public spent a decade managing Joe’s Pub, a cabaret-style venue, and more recently began overseeing Under the Radar, Public Works and other programs there — said she was eager to bring more popular and world music to Lincoln Center.“The goal is expansive reach,” Thake, 41, said in an interview. “What’s missing? What have we left out? What stories aren’t we telling that feel like they’re demanding to be told in this moment?”Lincoln Center is the landlord of the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet and other independent institutions, which are responsible for their own programming. But it is also a presenting organization in its own right, putting on hundreds of events each year and running the Mostly Mozart and White Light festivals, which have been primarily devoted to the classical arts. The center and its constituent organizations have competed, sometimes tensely, for rehearsal and performance space, ticket sales and donations.Thake will oversee the work Lincoln Center presents, and said in the interview that its robust classical offerings would be maintained. “We’re not looking to erase history here,” she said.But center officials say they are still working out the future of Mostly Mozart, which was put on hold amid the pandemic, other than a few small events this week. In 2017, as it grappled with budgetary constraints, the center dissolved the Lincoln Center Festival to focus on reinventing Mostly Mozart, its summertime sibling.Thake, who starts next month, replaces Jane Moss, who played a key role in programming for nearly three decades and stepped down as artistic director last year — and who also came from a theater background. (The chief artistic officer title is a new one.) Thake joins the center at one of the most challenging moments since it opened in 1962. Its woes predate the coronavirus: It struggled for years from leadership churn and money problems.Then the pandemic wiped away tens of millions in revenue and forced the cancellation of hundreds of events. About half of Lincoln Center’s staff of 400 was furloughed or laid off, and its top leaders took pay cuts.While many workers have been rehired and indoor performances are set to resume in the fall, the center will likely be grappling with the financial fallout for years. It remains to be seen whether audiences will return at prepandemic levels, especially given the recent spread of the Delta variant of the virus.Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, said the organization had turned to Thake for her experience programming creatively across genres. “We wanted someone who could kind of help us think about some new territory,” he said.Timms said the virus would continue to pose a challenge for the center’s artistic ambitions, but added that he believed audiences were eager to return. “There will be a great deal of demand for what we do and there will be a great deal of re-imagination,” he said.As infections have eased in recent months and vaccines have become widely available, Lincoln Center has started to come back to life, building several outdoor stages and transforming its plaza into a summer gathering place by covering it in a synthetic lawn. When indoor performances resume, the center plans to require vaccines for audience members, production staff and artists. Children under 12 will not be permitted to attend performances since they are currently not eligible for vaccines.Thake said she saw her mission as, in part, to “lift up the city that is still reeling from the ongoing trauma” of the pandemic. She said Lincoln Center could play a role in helping smaller arts organizations, for example by sharing best practices for reopening venues.“Hopefully we can make it to the other side all together,” she said.Thake, whose mother is Indian and whose father is white, said she was committed to presenting artists who represent a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Cultural institutions have in general been slow to respond to demands for a reckoning over racial justice in the United States. But Lincoln Center is one of the few arts organizations to show substantial progress in bringing more diversity to its upper ranks. People of color now make up about half of its leadership team. More