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      Cuomo Announces Pop-Up Performances Across New York

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCuomo Announces Pop-Up Performances Across New York“NY PopsUp” will kick off Feb. 20 and run through Labor Day.A festival celebrating Little Island, the parklike pier being built downtown in the Hudson River, will coincide with the last days of “NY PopsUp.”Credit…Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021, 3:18 p.m. ETGov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who has made it clear that he sees the return of art and culture as key components of the economic revival of the state, announced Monday that a series of more than 300 free pop-up performances, “NY PopsUp,” would begin Feb. 20 and run through Labor Day.Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, announced details of the city’s Open Culture program, which will permit outdoor performances on designated city streets this spring.The state’s pop-up events are part of a public-private partnership, New York Arts Revival, and will feature more than 150 artists including Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, Mandy Patinkin, Renée Fleming and Hugh Jackman.Since the state does not wish to draw large crowds in the pandemic, many of the events will not be announced in advance.“We’re trying to thread the needle,” Mr. Cuomo said. “We want the performances. We don’t want mass gatherings, we don’t want large crowds.”The events, the state said, will take place in parks, museums and parking lots, as well as on subway platforms and in transit stations. People can follow a new Twitter and Instagram account, @NYPopsUp, for details about upcoming performances. Many will be shown online.The series will be spearheaded by the producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal, along with the New York State Council on the Arts and Empire State Development. It is part of an arts revival plan that the governor had announced during an address in January, when he had said the state would organize the pop-up performances beginning Feb. 4.The series will begin Feb. 20 at the Javits Center in New York City with a free performance for health care workers that will feature Jon Batiste, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Cecile McLorin Salvant and Ayodele Casel. The performers will travel across the city to all five boroughs, performing in parks and street corners, as well as at the footsteps of Elmhurst Hospital and St. Barnabas Hospital.Mr. Cuomo said some of the events would use flexible venues that do not have fixed seats, and could therefore be reconfigured to allow for social distancing, including the Shed, the Apollo Theater, Harlem Stage, La MaMa and the Glimmerglass Festival’s Alice Busch Opera Theater.In June, the opening of Little Island, the parklike pier being built downtown in the Hudson River by Barry Diller, and the Tribeca Film Festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary, will add to the expanding arts programming in the city.Little Island plans to hold its own festival from Aug. 11 to Sept. 5, which will coincide with the final weeks of “NY PopsUp” programming.Mr. de Blasio announced on Monday that the city would launch a new program to help some of the city’s cultural institutions apply for federal grants. The city’s effort, called “Curtains Up NYC,” will offer webinars and counseling to businesses and nonprofits that are connected in some way to live performances.“We have to make sure that New York City cultural institutions get the help that they need,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference.Asked whether any Broadway theaters could be allowed to reopen as his arts revival plans continue, Mr. Cuomo expressed hope.“I think that is where we are headed, right?” he said. “The overall effort is headed towards reopening with testing.”He announced last week that the state planned to issue guidance to begin allowing wedding ceremonies for up to 150 guests if attendees were tested beforehand.“Would I go see a play and sit in a playhouse with 150 people?” he said. “If the 150 people were tested and they were all negative, yes, I would do that. And the social distancing and the air ventilation system is proper? Yes, I would do that.”Commercial producers have repeatedly said that economics of Broadway preclude reopening at less than full capacity.New York reported at least 177 new coronavirus deaths and 9,923 new cases on Sunday. While the number of new cases has fallen from a post-holiday high last month, the average number of new daily cases and deaths is still far above where it was last summer and fall.Mr. Cuomo said that government had to take an active role to help the city and the state recover from the economic pain wrought by the pandemic. “It’s not going to be a situation where the economy is just going to come back,” he said. “We have to make it come back.”“New York leads,” he added. “And we’re going to lead in bringing back the arts.”Michael Gold contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Strip Down, Rise Up’ Review: An Emotional Spin

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Strip Down, Rise Up’ Review: An Emotional SpinThis Netflix documentary looks at a pole dancing class led by the celebrity instructor Sheila Kelley.A scene from the documentary, “Strip Down, Rise Up,” directed by Michèle Ohayon.Credit…NetflixFeb. 5, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETStrip Down, Rise UpDirected by Michèle OhayonDocumentaryR1h 52mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Meet two dozen women who brave full exposure. The pole dancing students in the awkward, but intimate Netflix documentary “Strip Down, Rise Up” have allowed Michèle Ohayon, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker (“Colors Straight Up”), and her crew of mostly women, to observe their six-month introductory class guided by the celebrity instructor Sheila Kelley, who once prodded Conan O’Brien to twirl on late night TV.The opening montage announces that erotic dance heals the female psyche from wounds inflicted by shame and trauma, and then sets out to prove it, thrust by thrust. Platform spike heels become an obvious metaphor for relearning how to strut. Ohayon is a disciple herself, hence the infomercial vibe.[embedded content]Kelley’s lessons morph into group therapy sessions, where her pupils shed more tears than clothing. (The one girl who’d simply joined for kicks quits.) But those with enough trust to bare their histories — betrayals, sexual abuse, mastectomies, weight gain, insecurities, repressive religious households — seize ownership over their bodies. These scenes are genuinely moving: a 50-year-old widow purges the pain of her late husband’s affair, a survivor of abuse by Larry Nassar, the disgraced Olympic doctor, reconnects with her limbs. It’s a pity, then, that Ohayon’s choppy structure rotates through her subjects like amateur night. Each has a few minutes to reveal their scars before the jukebox replays the same inspirational maxims.Elsewhere, “Strip Down” interviews women with a different approach, including a Cirque du Soleil performer focused on gravity-defying artistry and an athlete who knee-spins on street signs to rebrand pole dancing as public sport. The athlete, an ex-Mormon with her own hurtful past, hopes her competition piece, set to a poem by Rupi Kaur, will bring the judges to tears. But it’s a testament to Ohayon’s empathy that she measures winning a silver medal at the Golden Gate Pole Championships as equal to that of a class participant struggling to climb the pole at all until she gets a boost from five of her new friends.Strip Down, Rise UpRated R. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Little Island Announces Resident Artists

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      @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More

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      The Royal Academy of Dance: From Music Hall to Ballet Royalty

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFrom the Music Hall to Ballet Royalty: A British TaleThe history of the Royal Academy of Dance, outlined at an exhibition in London, is synonymous with the history of ballet in Britain.The Danish-born ballerina Adeline Genée, who was a founder of the Royal Academy of Dance, in “A Dream of Butterflies and Roses.”Credit…Hugh CecilJan. 6, 2021Updated 2:07 p.m. ET“It is absolute nonsense to say that the English temperament is not suited for dancing,” Edouard Espinosa, a London dance teacher, said in 1916. It was only a lack of skilled teaching, he added, that prevented the emergence of “perfect dancers.” Espinosa was speaking to a reporter from Lady’s Pictorial about a furor that he had caused in the dance world with this idea: Dance instructors, he insisted, should adhere to standards and be examined on their work.Four years later, in 1920, a teaching organization that would become the Royal Academy of Dance (R.A.D.) was founded by Espinosa and several others, including the Danish-born Adeline Genée and the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina. Today, the academy is one of the major ballet training programs in the world, with students in 92 countries following syllabuses and taking its exams governed by the organization. And as the exhibition “On Point: Royal Academy of Dance at 100,” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, shows, its history is synonymous with the history of ballet in Britain.“A lot of British dance’s legacy started with the R.A.D.,” said Darcey Bussell, a former Royal Ballet ballerina who has been the president of the academy since 2012. “It’s important that dance training and teaching are kept entwined with the professional world, and the R.A.D. has done that from the start.”There wasn’t yet a national ballet company in Britain when the Royal Academy was formed. But there was plenty of ballet, said Jane Pritchard, the curator of dance, theater and performance at the Victoria and Albert museum. She curated the exhibition with Eleanor Fitzgerald, the archives and records manager at the Royal Academy of Dance. “The Ballets Russes were there, Pavlova was performing in London, and there were excellent émigré teachers arriving,” Ms. Pritchard said. “So the R.A.D. came into existence at just the right moment, taking the best of the Italian, French and Russian schools and bringing it together to create a British style, which it then sent out into the world again.”The exhibition, which runs through September 2021, had its scheduled May opening delayed by Covid-19 restrictions. It opened on Dec. 2, but was shut down again when Britain reimposed restrictions in mid-December. While we wait for the museum to reopen, here is a tour of some of the exhibition’s photographs, designs and objects, which touch on some of the most important figures in 20th-century ballet history.‘The World’s Greatest Dancer’ (or so said Ziegfeld)Adeline Genée (1878-1970), who spent much of her career in England, reigned for a decade as the prima ballerina at the Empire Theater, where she appeared in variety programs. She was both revered as a classical dancer and hugely popular with the public; Florenz Ziegfeld billed her as “The World’s Greatest Dancer” when she performed in the United States in 1907. Genée became the first president of the Royal Academy of Dance, and her connections to royalty and her popularity with the public made her an excellent figurehead.The 1915 photograph shows Genée in her own short ballet, “A Dream of Butterflies and Roses,” in a costume by Wilhelm, the resident designer at the Empire Theater and an important figure on the theatrical scene. “It’s a really good example of the kind of costume and the kind of ballets that were being shown at the time,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. “Ballet was still part of music-hall entertainment.”A popular entertainmentAt the Coliseum in July 1922.Credit…via Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonThis 1922 poster of weekly variety-show offerings at the London Coliseum suggests how ballet was seen around the time that the Royal Academy of Dance was founded. “It was part of a bigger general picture, and this shows it visually,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Sybil Thorndike was a great British actress and would have given a short performance of a play or monologue; Grock was a very famous clown. Most of the Coliseum bills had some sort of dance element, but it wasn’t always ballet.”Karsavina: An independent artistClaud Lovat Fraser’s drawing of Jumping Joan’s costume for Tamara Karsavina in “Nursery Rhymes” at the Coliseum 1921.Credit…Rachel Cameron Collection/Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonJumping Joan was one of three characters danced by Tamara Karsavina in “Nursery Rhymes,” which she choreographed, to music by Schubert, for an evening at the Coliseum Theater in London in 1921. Unusually for ballet at the time in London, it was a stand-alone show rather than part of a variety program. Karsavina and her company performed it twice a day for two weeks.“People associate Karsavina with the Ballets Russes, but she also had her own group of dancers, which performed regularly at the Coliseum,” Ms. Pritchard said. “She was really an independent artist in a way we think is very modern, working with a major company but also having an independent existence.”She also tried to promote British artists; the costume design was by Claud Lovat Fraser, a brilliant theater designer who died in his early 30s. “I think Lovat Fraser is the British equivalent of Bakst,” Ms. Pritchard said. “His drawings are so animated and precise, and he uses color wonderfully to create a sense of character.”Good for athletes, tooBallet exercises for athletes.Credit…Ali Wright, Dance GazetteIn 1954, the Whip and Carrot Club, an association of high jumpers, approached the Royal Academy of Dance with an unusual request. Its members had read that in both Russia and America, athletes had benefited from taking ballet classes, and they asked the Academy to formulate lessons that would improve their elevation.The outcome was a course that ran for several years, with classes for high jumpers and hurdlers and, later, “steeplechasers, discus and javelin-throwers,” according to a Pathé film clip, on show in the exhibition. In 1955, a booklet was produced, showing 13 exercises designed to help jumping, drawn by the cartoonist Cyril Kenneth Bird, known professionally as Fougasse and famous for government propaganda posters (“Careless talk costs lives”) produced during World War II.“I love the photograph of Margot Fonteyn looking on in her fur coat!” Ms. Pritchard said.From generation to generationTamara Karsavina, left, coaching Margot Fonteyn in “The Firebird,” in 1954.Credit…Douglas ElstonKarsavina, vice president of the Royal Academy of Dance until 1955, developed a teachers’ training course syllabus as well as other sections of the advanced exams. As a dancer, she created the title role in Mikhail Fokine’s “The Firebird,” with music by Stravinsky, when the Ballets Russes first performed the ballet at the Paris Opera in 1910. Here she is shown coaching Margot Fonteyn, when the Royal Ballet first staged the ballet, in 1954, the year that Fonteyn took over from Genée as president of the Royal Academy of Dance.“Karsavina had firsthand knowledge of what the choreographer and composer wanted, and is passing it on,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. (“I never was one to count,” Karsavina says in a film clip about learning “The Firebird”; “Stravinsky was very kind.”) “There is a wonderful sense of handing things from one generation to the next.”Fonteyn and NureyevFonteyn with Rudolf Nureyev at rehearsals for the Royal Academy of Dance Gala in 1963.Credit…Royal Academy of Dance/ArenaPAL, via GBL WilsonThis relaxed moment from a 1963 rehearsal shows the ease and rapport between Fonteyn and the youthful Rudolf Nureyev, who had defected from Russia two years earlier. They were rehearsing for the annual Royal Academy of Dance gala, which Fonteyn established to raise funds for the organization. Her fame enabled her to bring together international guests, British dancers and even contemporary dance choreographers like Paul Taylor.“The gala was also an opportunity for Fonteyn and Nureyev to try things that they perhaps wouldn’t have danced with the Royal Ballet,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Here, they were in rehearsal for ‘La Sylphide,’ because Nureyev was passionate about the Bournonville choreography. They really look like two dancers who are happy with one another.”‘Diminutive, dapper and precise’Stanislas Idzikowski teaching in 1952.Credit…Central Office of InformationStanislas Idzikowski, known as Idzi to his students, was a Polish dancer who had moved to London in his teens and danced with Anna Pavlova’s company before joining the Ballets Russes, where he inherited many of Vaslav Nijinsky’s roles. A close friend of Karsavina, he later became a much-loved teacher and worked closely with the Royal Academy of Dance. Always formally clad in a three-piece suit with a stiff collared shirt and elegant shoes, he was, Fonteyn wrote in her autobiography, “diminutive, dapper and precise.”In this 1952 photograph, he is teaching fifth-year girls who were probably hoping to go on to professional careers. Idzikowski was also involved with the Royal Academy of Dance’s Production Club, started in 1932 to allow students over 14 to work with choreographers; Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann were among the early volunteers, and later a young John Cranko created his first work there.Party polkaStudents demonstrate a dance for Margot Fonteyn and others in 1972.Credit…Felix FonteynThis 1972 photograph of young girls about to begin a sequence called the “party polka” was taken by Fonteyn’s brother, Felix, who also filmed the demonstration being given by a group of primary school students for Fonteyn and other teachers. The footage, which had been stored in the Royal Academy of Dance’s archives in canisters marked “Children’s Syllabus,” was only recently discovered by Ms. Fitzgerald.The film offers a rare glimpse of Fonteyn in her offstage role at the Royal Academy of Dance, Ms. Fitzgerald said, and it reflects an important change that the ballerina made during her presidency. “People really think about Fonteyn as a dancer, but she was very involved with teaching and syllabus development,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. Earlier syllabuses, she explained, had included mime, drama and history, but when a panel, including Fonteyn, revised the program in 1968, they did away with much of this.“They wanted to streamline everything and make it more enjoyable for the children, and just focus on the movement,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. “The party polka is a good example of that, with a great sense for the children of whirling around the room, and really dancing.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      11 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2021

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story11 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2021Nicolas Cage hosts the history of swearing. Lorde writes a book and Julie Mehretu takes over the Whitney. This new year has to be better, right?Credit…María MedemDec. 31, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETAs a new year begins, our critics highlight the TV, movies, music, art and streaming dance and theater they anticipate before summer.Jason ZinomanSwearing With Nicolas CageNicolas Cage hosts “History of Swear Words,” a new Netflix series.Credit…NetflixSure, the new Netflix series “History of Swear Words,” which premieres Jan. 5, features a cast of comics like Sarah Silverman, Joel Kim Booster and Nikki Glaser working as talking heads, breaking down the meaning, impact and poetry of six major bad words, which mostly cannot be published here. An exception is “Damn,” which, you learn from this show, used to be much more taboo than it is today. And there are also some very smart academics who will explain such history, some of it hard fact sprinkled in with a few questionable legends. Etymology really can be riveting stuff. But let’s face it: The main reason to be excited about this show is the prospect of its host, Nicolas Cage, hammily shouting curses over and over again. I have seen the screeners and it lives up to expectations.Jon ParelesJulien Baker Scales UpHow does a songwriter hold on to honest vulnerability as her audience grows? It’s a question Julien Baker began to wrestle with when she released her first solo album, “Sprained Ankle.” She sang about trauma, addiction, self-doubt, self-invention and a quest for faith, with quietly riveting passion in bare-bones arrangements. And she quickly found listeners to hang on her every word. Through her second album, “Turn Out the Lights,” and her collaborative songs in the group boygenius (with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus) she used better studios and drew on richer sounds but still projected intimacy. Her third album, “Little Oblivions,” is due Feb. 26. With it she scales her music up to larger spaces, backed by a full rock band with ringing guitars and forceful drums. But she doesn’t hide behind them; she’s still ruthless and unsparing, particularly about herself.Maya PhillipsThe Scarlet Witch Gets Her DueElizabeth Olsen, left, stars as Wanda Maximoff in the new Disney+ series “WandaVision,” which also features Paul Bettany as Vision.Credit…Disney PlusWhen I heard the Scarlet Witch, also known as Wanda Maximoff, was joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was hyped. Sometimes known as a daughter of Magneto (yes, we’ve got an X-Men crossover here), the powerful mutant had the ability to alter reality. So imagine my disappointment when Wanda was elbowed off to the side, shown shooting red blasts from her hands but not much else. Wanda, they did you wrong.But I’m not just thrilled about “WandaVision” finally giving this female hero her due. The new series, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and arrives on Disney+ on Jan. 15, grants the Scarlet Witch her own universe to manipulate, and uses it as a way to toy with a fresh tone and aesthetic for the MCU. Offbeat and capricious, and a perversion of classic sitcom series, “WandaVision” seems like it will give its superheroine the space to power up and unravel in ways that she couldn’t in the overstuffed “Avengers” films. Olsen seems up to the task, and Kathryn Hahn, Paul Bettany and Randall Park are also there to provide extra comedy and pathos.Jason FaragoA Retrospective for Julie Mehretu“Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation,” a painting by Julie Mehretu, from 2001, which will appear in a midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Julie MehretuThis midcareer retrospective of Julie Mehretu and her grand, roiling abstractions drew raves when it opened last year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and it belatedly arrives on March 25 in the artist’s hometown, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mehretu came to prominence 20 years ago with dense, mural-scaled paintings whose sweeping lines suggested flight paths or architectural renderings; later, she turned to freer, more fluid mark-making that places abstract painting in the realms of migration and war, capital and climate.Her most recent work, made during the first lockdown and seen in a thundering show at Marian Goodman Gallery, is less readily legible, more digitally conversant, and more confident than ever. To fully perceive her jostling layers of silk-screened grids, sprayed veils and calligraphic strokes of black and red requires all one’s concentration; come early, look hard.Jesse GreenBlack Royalty Negotiates PowerA scene from “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!,” a filmed play starring Sydney Charles, left, and Celeste M. Cooper, presented by Steppenwolf Theater.Credit…Lowell ThomasEnough with “The Crown.” Television may have cornered the market on stories about the nobility, but it was theater that traditionally got into the heads of heads of state and tried to understand what they were thinking.That tradition gets a timely update in February, when Steppenwolf Theater presents “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” — a filmed play by Vivian J.O. Barnes, directed by Weyni Mengesha. Inspired and/or appalled by the experiences of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, Barnes imagines a dialogue in which a Black duchess helps acculturate a Black duchess-to-be to her new position. Together, they explore what it means to join an institution that acts as if they should feel honored to be admitted, even as it eats them alive.That the institution in question involves not just royalty but racism, if the two are different, broadens the story. How Black women negotiate power in traditionally white arenas, and at what cost, is something that resonates far beyond Balmoral.Mike HaleAn Alien Impersonates a DoctorThe title character of the Syfy series “Resident Alien,” which premieres on Jan. 27, does not have a green card, but he does have green skin, or at least a green-and-purple exoskeleton. He’s been sent to earth to exterminate us; there’s a delay, and in the meantime he has to impersonate a small-town Colorado doctor and learn, with exceeding awkwardness, how to act like a human being. This snowbound scary-monster comedy won’t make any Top 10 lists but it looks like a hoot, and it’s tailor-made for the eccentric comic talents of Alan Tudyk (“Doom Patrol,” “Arrested Development”), who never seems comfortable in whatever skin he’s in.Salamishah TilletDeath of a Black PantherDaniel Kaluuya, rear, and Lakeith Stanfield star in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a film about a deadly raid on the Black Panther Party in Chicago.Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner Bros., via Associated PressOn Dec. 4, 1969, 14 Chicago police officers, with a search warrant for guns and explosives, raided an apartment where members of the Black Panther Party were staying. When they left, the party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were dead. Congressman Bobby Rush, who was then a deputy minister of the party, testified that Hampton, 21, was asleep in his bed when police officers shot him, a version of events investigated in “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” a 1971 documentary. Now there is a feature film about the raid. “Judas and the Black Messiah” tells the story of Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), an FBI informant who was part of Hampton’s security team, reuniting the two stars from “Get Out.” Directed by Shaka King (“Newlyweeds”), the movie is expected to be released in early 2021.Margaret LyonsA Drama Jumps Through Time“David Makes Man” is one of the most beautiful dramas of the last several years, and its structural daring added new facets to the coming-of-age genre. David (Akili McDowell) was in middle school in Season 1, but in the upcoming second season (currently slated for early summer on OWN) he’s in his 30s and facing adult challenges. That kind of time jump — and creative leap — would be intriguing on its own, but the way the show captured the warring thoughts within one’s adolescent psychology makes me even more excited to see how it depicts the turmoils of maturity.Gia KourlasDance and the Natural WorldMembers of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Graham’s “Dark Meadow Suite.”Credit…Brigid PierceSince the pandemic began, the robust digital programming at the Martha Graham Dance Company has stood out for its multifaceted approach of exploring the works of its groundbreaking modern choreographer. It helps, of course, to have Graham’s works to excavate in the first place. (And access to a healthy archive.)As most dance companies continue to maintain their distance from the stage, the Graham group — now in its 95th season — opens the year with digital programming organized by theme. The January spotlight is on nature and the elements, both in Graham’s dances and in recent works. How is the natural world used metaphorically?On Jan. 9, “Martha Matinee,” hosted by the artistic director, Janet Eilber, looks at Graham’s mysterious, ritualistic “Dark Meadow” (1946) with vintage footage of Graham herself along with the company’s recent “Dark Meadow Suite.” And on Jan. 19, the company unveils “New @ Graham,” featuring a closer look at “Canticle for Innocent Comedians” (1952), Graham’s unabashed celebration of nature, with an emphasis on the moon and the stars.Jason FaragoThe Frick’s Modernist Pop-UpA view of the former Met Breuer on Madison Avenue; the museum will be taken over by the Frick for a modernist pop-up called Frick Madison.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn this market you’re better off subletting! When the Frick Collection finally won approval to renovate and expand its Fifth Avenue mansion, it started hunting for temporary digs — and got a lucky break when the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would vacate its rental of Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist citadel three years early. Henry Clay Frick’s will bars loans from the core collection, so the Frick’s modernist pop-up, called Frick Madison, will offer the first, and probably only, new backdrop for Bellini’s mysterious “St. Francis in the Desert,” Rembrandt’s brisk “Polish Rider,” or Holbein’s dueling portraits of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More (a must-see face-off for “Wolf Hall” fans).But the modern architecture is only part of the adaptation; the Frick is a house museum, and the Breuer sublet allows curators a unique chance to scramble and reconstitute the collection outside a residential framework. The real UFOs at Frick Madison, expected in the first quarter of 2021, may therefore be the decorative arts: all those gilded clocks, all that Meissen porcelain, relocated from plutocratic salons into cubes of concrete.Lindsay ZoladzLorde Writes About AntarcticaFew new years have arrived with such weighty expectations as 2021, so to prevent disappointment let us calibrate our hopes: What I know is that in 2021 the New Zealand pop-poet Lorde has promised to put out, at the very least, a book of photographs from her recent trip to Antarctica. Titled “Going South,” it features writing by Lorde (who describes her trip as “this great white palette cleanser, a sort of celestial foyer I had to move through in order to start making the next thing”) and photographs by Harriet Were, and net proceeds from its sale will go toward a climate research scholarship fund. Cool. I love it. Of course, my true object of anticipation is Lorde’s third album, the long-awaited follow-up to her spectacularly intimate 2017 release, “Melodrama,” but after a year like 2020, I’m not going to rush her. Actually, you know what? I am. Lorde, Ella, Ms. Yelich-O’Connor: Please release your epic concept album about glaciers and spiritual rebirth at the South Pole in 2021. After a year in the Antarctic climate of the soul that was 2020, this is what we all deserve.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More