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      in Theater

      How Brandon Kazen-Maddox, an American Sign Language Artist, Spends Their Sundays

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      Brandon Kazen-Maddox has always felt an affinity with mermaids.“We both straddle two worlds,” said Mx. Kazen-Maddox, 36, an American Sign Language dancer, choreographer and filmmaker who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.Mx. Kazen-Maddox, like both their parents, is hearing. But they grew up living with their mother at her parents’ home in Washington State, where their maternal grandparents, both of whom are deaf, spoke with their hands.Soon, Mx. Kazen-Maddox learned to do the same. “I like to say my words are just along for the ride,” they said.Mx. Kazen-Maddox said they enjoyed spending time at Riverside Park, dancing and listening to music, near their home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesMx. Kazen-Maddox has been interpreting professionally since 2012 and has worked on the Broadway production of “Aladdin” and for former President Joe Biden, the composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and the actress Marlee Matlin.In a half-hour PBS special scheduled for Tuesday, “SOUL(SIGNS): Making Music Visible,” Mx. Kazen-Maddox documented the process of choreographing, filming and performing an A.S.L. music video for Morgan James’s “Drown,” shedding light on their own relationship with music and sign language.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Jam Like a King: Charles Releases a Playlist

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      King Charles III showcased 17 artists, mostly from Commonwealth countries, in a personal playlist. Beyoncé, Bob Marley and Diana Ross made the cut.King Charles III, a classical music fan who has studied the cello, piano and trumpet, released an eclectic playlist on Monday featuring 17 artists, including Beyoncé, Bob Marley and Grace Jones.Music “has that remarkable ability to bring happy memories flooding back from the deepest recesses of our memory, to comfort us in times of sadness, and to take us to distant places,” Charles said in a podcast on Apple Music, “The King’s Music Room,” released in conjunction with the playlist.Charles, who as the British monarch is head of the Commonwealth, a club of 56 nations that were mostly part of the British Empire, put out the playlist to mark Commonwealth Day, celebrated on the second Monday in March with events across member countries.The king, 76, may have had some help in choosing the songs from Errollyn Wallen, a Belize-born artist who was last year appointed Master of the King’s Music. The honorary role was created during the reign of King Charles I in the 17th century.In 2008, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, played the bongo drums at Bob Marley’s former home, now a museum, in Kingston, Jamaica.Anwar Hussein/WireImageHere are some of the king’s song choices.Beyoncé, “Crazy in Love”While the playlist primarily featured artists from the Commonwealth, he included a few from outside the group, citing a personal connection to their music. Beyoncé made the cut.Charles and Beyoncé at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2003.Anwar Hussein/WireImageDaddy Lumba, “Mpempem Do Me”In the podcast, recorded at Buckingham Palace, the king recalled a 2018 visit to Ghana, a Commonwealth nation, where he danced to the music of Ghanaian singer Daddy Lumba.Miriam Makeba, “The Click Song”The South African singer Miriam Makeba, widely known as “Mama Africa,” was a prominent opponent of apartheid. “I shan’t try too much to pronounce the title, as it requires a great deal of practice,” Charles said of her 1960s hit “Qongqothwane,” known in English as “The Click Song.”Diana Ross, “Upside Down”“When I was much younger, it was absolutely impossible not to get up and dance when it was played,” King Charles said of Ms. Ross’s 1980 song. “So, I wonder if I can still just manage it?”Kylie Minogue, “The Loco-Motion”Ms. Minogue came to St. James’s Palace to perform this song in 2012. “This is music for dancing,” Charles said of the Australian singer’s rendition of the song, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. “It has that infectious energy which makes it, I find, incredibly hard to sit still.”Kylie Minogue met Charles and Camilla at St James’s Palace in London in 2012.Pool photo by Carl Court More

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      in Music

      Anne Imhof’s ‘Doom’ at the Armory Has Everything, and Nothing

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      A Berlin nightclub habitué of my acquaintance has admonished me, more than once, not to go to concerts or parties without earplugs; too many D.J.s now crank to dangerous decibels, so have your fun and save your hearing. I forgot his advice ahead of “Doom: House of Hope,” an evening-length spectacle of attitude and abjection by the German artist and choreographer Anne Imhof, and may have developed tinnitus as a result.Your ears are not the only organs that may suffer if you come to the Park Avenue Armory, where Imhof’s massive performance work has been one of the most anticipated events of the winter season, and (thanks to its performers as well as its public) is already one of the most Instagrammed. You’ll start out in a corral with a thousand other spectators, prevented from moving forward by crowd control barriers. Expressionless, glassy-eyed performers will soon move toward you as a droning electronic score blares. You’ll be released to explore the whole 55,500-square-foot Drill Hall soon, but ticket holders should, like sensible Germans, opt for comfortable shoes: You’re on your feet throughout.Around the large hall are two dozen brand-new Cadillac Escalades, the preferred conveyance of the American oligarchy, whose roofs will become stages for limber dancers and mournful singers, and whose trunks will serve variously as pop-up bar, chess competition venue, vape break area and makeshift tattoo parlor. To follow the action of “Doom” you’ll have to chase the performers around the S.U.V.s, onto several stages, and even into the dressing rooms, while above you, on a Jumbotron scoreboard, the evening’s duration ticks down: three hours to go.The experience of “Doom” is indeed not unlike a night at the club — wending your way through a converted warehouse, losing your friends in the darkness, oscillating from moments of excessive emotion to total boredom. If you get bored, you can always look at your phone; to Imhof, your phone, and your boredom, are integral.A spectacle of attitude and abjection: the tale of Romeo and Juliet, told backward. Efron Danzig, below, and Toon Lobach.Cadillac Escalades become stages for limber dancers and mournful singers, with Lia Wang as Tybalt.This is a night of harsh contradictions, and I just can’t girdle my judgment into cheer-or-jeer format. “Doom” is narcissistic, frivolous, sometimes naïve — and still, despite all this, feels more important than a hundred cash-and-carry exhibitions in Chelsea. Its roughly 40 performers, who mutter in monotone when they aren’t just staring into space, indulge a youthful nihilism that is obvious and tiresome — until an extraordinary shift in the third hour (by which time much of the opening night’s audience had bailed), when they find grand, even Romantic purpose.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      In Zoe Saldaña, a Choreographer Finds His Dream Dancer

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      The Academy Award-nominated actress discovers her inner dancer in “Emilia Pérez” with the help of the choreographer Damien Jalet.Zoe Saldaña is an actress, but buried inside her is a highly trained dancer. This has always been obvious to me; the film “Emilia Pérez” has made it clear to the world. Finally, Saldaña — a devoted ballet student through her childhood and teenage years — can be recognized for the force that she is: an extraordinary mover.All actors use their bodies, but Saldaña has long been on another plane. She doesn’t just interpret characters, she moves through them with such salient physicality that her body often has as much to say as the dialogue she speaks. Even in the TV series “Lioness,” in which she plays a fierce Central Intelligence Agency officer, her body guides her like a coiled spring — a taut, muscular vessel of strength and sensitivity.In Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” with choreography by Damien Jalet, Saldaña’s dancing is front and center. And it is a meaningful part of why her portrayal of Rita, a Mexican lawyer helping a cartel boss with gender confirmation surgery, earned an Academy Award nomination.Jalet should have been nominated, too, but there are no Oscars for choreography. Yet his contribution is immeasurable. The story of “Emilia Pérez” is unorthodox enough; even more unconventional is the way it unfolds through music and dance. The songs’ merit is questionable; they employ, at times, employ the worst kind of Broadway-musical talk-singing. But Jalet’s choreography — sometimes invisibly, sometimes clearly — grounds the film.In “Emilia Pérez,” dance is the pathway for Saldaña’s character to become more outspoken, more comfortable in her body.Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 — WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS — PATHÉ FILMS — FRANCE 2 CINÉMA 2024.Jalet has a partner in Saldaña whose speed and exactness in gestural vocabulary electrify scenes without falling into the sketchy territory of mime. In a film about physical transformation, dance is the pathway for Saldaña’s character to become more outspoken, more comfortable in her skin. And dance has accomplished another transformation for Saldaña, the actress, by opening eyes to her range and radiance. Her precision is stunning.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      A Disruptor Asks, Is New York Finally Ready for ‘DOOM’?

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      Barking Doberman pinchers behind chain link fencing and performers who looked like they came straight from the Berlin club scene made the ultracool German performance artist Anne Imhof infamous.But last week, at her first rehearsal for “DOOM: House of Hope” at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, there were no dogs in sight.There were still those impossibly beautiful performers, though, many very young. They were sprawled on the floor of one of the Armory’s rehearsal spaces, sitting at the piano, testing out bits of movement, or rehearsing lines from marked up copies of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” — the new project’s starting point.Belying her works’ fierce, sometimes aggro aesthetics, Imhof was a gentle, observing presence, not so much directing the performers but asking them how they wanted to proceed — utterly unlike the strict rigor of, say, a ballet rehearsal.“I count on chance and accidents and things that are not planned,” the 46-year-old Berlin-based artist told me. “There has to be enough openness to it that the performers have agency.”“I count on chance and accidents and things that are not planned,” said Imhof, 46, who conceived of “DOOM” as a performance best suited for the Armory, rather than an artwork for a museum. She had wanted to do a ballet for a long time.Tess Mayer for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      An Oakland Dance Troupe Brings Vertical Choreography to Broadway

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      In 1990, Amelia Rudolph was hiking through Tuolumne Meadows, a stunning mountain pass in Yosemite National Park, when she had an epiphany on a shiny granite bluff: “Could you make a performance here?” she wondered. “Could you dance on a cliff?”Rudolph, a dancer in the Bay Area who trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, had just written a college thesis on dance and ritual and recently become an avid climber. Those experiences converged in her mountaintop revelation — and inspired her to make a dance while dangling from the climbing wall at the gym where she worked.That dance, though unrefined, was enthusiastically received. “I realized I tapped into some part of our human imagination that loves to fly,” Rudolph, 61, said in a phone interview.From that seed grew Project Bandaloop, now just Bandaloop, a vertical dance company that fuses contemporary dance with climbing technique and technology. Using equipment, like harnesses, ropes and belay devices, Bandaloop can take dance’s soaring, ethereal qualities to extremes and bring them to unlikely perpendicular surfaces like the rock face of El Capitan in California or Tianmen Mountain in China.“The spirit of the company,” Rudolph said, celebrates “the power and vulnerability of natural spaces.”Now Bandaloop’s gravity-defying movement and ecological DNA have come to Broadway in the musical “Redwood,” starring Idina Menzel, which opened on Feb. 13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring

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      Onstage, Denzel Washington is Othello, and Paul Mescal is Stanley Kowalski as stars illuminate the theater marquees. Plus: FKA twigs takes “Eusexua” on tour. Bang on a Can, Twyla Tharp, and much more.BroadwayOPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)Mel Semé and Natalie Venetia Belcon in the musical “Buena Vista Social Club.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin Peck (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater.PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, Black political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater.GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      How ‘The Lion King’s Resident Dance Supervisor Keeps the Musical in Motion

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      If there were a want ad for resident dance supervisor to “The Lion King,” it might read something like this: Must be able to work 10-hour days, seven days a week; to manipulate 200 puppets and walk on stilts; to wrangle 52 performers and remember every move in the two-and-a-half-hour show. Candidate must also have the heart of a social worker, the discipline of a Marine and the boundless enthusiasm of a camp counselor to keep the musical as fresh as when it opened 28 years ago.While plenty of Broadway shows have dance captains — they’re in charge of keeping choreography in good order — only “The Lion King” has a resident dance supervisor. The show is like a giant, kinetic jigsaw puzzle: It needs someone to ensure that all the pieces fit together, so that the narrative moves forward — and no one gets hurt.This has been Ruthlyn Salomons’s job for 25 years.There are crowds backstage and onstage at “The Lion King,” which has 52 performers; ensemble members perform multiple roles.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesMovement is the show’s motor, Salomons said. “It’s what binds it. It’s not just the performing bodies that move. Everything in the show moves. Everything dances.” That goes for a 5-inch mouse as much as for the 13-foot-long mama elephant, Bertha, who has four puppeteers tucked into her body.“The show’s demands are so unusual,” said Michele Steckler, a former associate producer of “The Lion King,” “that taking care of it requires a different kind of maintenance.” In the show’s early days, Steckler petitioned her colleagues to create a new position for someone to oversee all the movement. “It was just too much for one person,” she said. (The show also has two dance captains, but they double as performers and can’t see the show from outside.)Salomons with Ntsepa Pitjeng-Molebatsi, who plays Rafiki.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More