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      Farewell to ‘Stomp,’ a Show at the Beating Heart of New York

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      The stage has no curtain. The set is littered with highway signs and mass transit insignia. And then there are the gigantic oil drums, ominous and puzzling. It could be a storage facility. Or the site of an industrial warehouse party. But then the sweepers start to trickle in, swooshing across in balletic punk pageantry.Since its debut at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village in 1994, “Stomp,” the wordless percussion spectacle of twirling, tapping, sweeping, banging, clanging and yes, stomping, has gone from a scrappy neighborhood attraction to a mainstay of the culture of New York City.In honor of the show’s 10th anniversary in 2004, a mayoral proclamation declared March 14, 2004, as “Stomp Day.” For its 20th birthday in 2014, the Empire State Building shone in red light in its honor. That year, the production was also the centerpiece of the city’s “Stomp Out Litter” campaign, shot across the five boroughs; and in 2015, the show’s performers participated in a collaboration with another city cultural institution, the Harlem Globetrotters. The city once even temporarily renamed Second Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets “Stomp Avenue.”In its history, only three occasions have disrupted the continuity of the New York run: Sept. 11, a gas explosion on Second Avenue and the Covid pandemic. Even as commercial stores booted out local businesses, rents shot up and students and artists moved farther downtown, the show hung on in an ever-shifting neighborhood.The Orpheum Theater, which has been home to “Stomp” since the ’90s.Zack DeZon for The New York TimesIn the world of “Stomp,” anything can be used to create rhythm: garbage cans, radiator hoses, match boxes.Margaret Norton/NBC, via Getty ImagesBut after 29 years, the production will close for good on Jan. 8 because of declining ticket sales.“Say it ain’t so!” said the music producer Lou George, who is widely known as Bowlegged Lou. A “Stomp” super fan, he said he had seen the show 225 times and planned to see it once more before the cast takes its final bows.“I’m having withdrawals,” he said. “‘Stomp’ was such a fixture in New York.”Part drum line, part step team, part ensemble of city buskers, “Stomp” is a show in which timing is everything. The cast of eight perform with repurposed household objects and urban detritus, creating rhythm out of garbage cans, suitcases, radiator hoses and precision choreography, all while threading in humor through one-upping showdowns and zany mishaps. Anything can become music: fingernails scratching against match boxes; basketballs passed back and forth with a thud.“Stomp” has had unusually global reach. It has been spoofed on “The Simpsons,” included as an answer on “Jeopardy!” and performed in 45 countries — including at the Acropolis and the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony.A Farewell to ‘Stomp’After nearly 29 years onstage, the percussion and dance spectacle will close in New York on Jan. 8.Sound of the City: Part drum line, part step team, part ensemble of city buskers, “Stomp” became part of the fabric and culture of New York.Memories: We asked our critics and Times readers to share what the show has meant to them. This is what they told us.10 Things: There’s more to the show than banging on a can. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Off Broadway institution.1994 Review: The wordless show “speaks so directly to one of the most basic human impulses, the urge to make rhythmic noise,” our critic wrote when “Stomp” opened in New York.Still, it remained a symbol of the cultural landscape of New York. But it wasn’t born here.The 1997 cast of “Stomp,” which included one of its creators, Luke Cresswell, fourth from left.Lois GreenfieldIt was conceived by two Britons — the creators and directors Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, who met as street performers in Brighton, England, in the early ’80s. Together they formed musical groups that mixed percussion, vocals and comedy, and after experimenting with one-off performances using only brooms and garbage bins, they premiered “Stomp” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1991.“We concentrated on the rhythmic elements,” McNicholas said, “but I think we remained aware of the inherent absurdity of the concept of using everyday objects as instruments, so the humor was there from the start.”When the show arrived in New York in the early ’90s, the East Village was home to Blue Man Group, CBGB and the indie-rock club Brownies. Cresswell and McNicholas found the punk downtown — far from the bright lights of Broadway — a perfect fit for their deadpan show.“Stomp” has been spoofed on “The Simpsons,” featured as an answer on “Jeopardy!” and performed in 45 countries.Rachel Papo for The New York Times“It’s not glamour; it’s not cute sets,” Cresswell said. “It’s a small, funky little theater with people doing it really close to you. You feel and smell the sweat.”Cresswell and McNicholas weren’t sure if the show would make it through its original four-month run, yet it has outlasted much of the neighborhood’s arts ecosystem from those early days.Brownies went dark in 2002, CBGB in 2006; and Blue Man Group was acquired by Cirque du Soleil in 2017. And one by one, many of the “Stomp” cast and creators’ go-to East Village locales shut their doors: the adjacent luncheonette Stage Restaurant, the corner bar and bistro Virage, and Gem Spa, the nearly 100-year-old bodega across the street, which closed in 2020.Still, “Stomp” endured for nearly three decades, rivaling “The Phantom of the Opera,” which is set to close this year after 35 years onstage. Throughout the show’s touring and Orpheum Theater productions, Cresswell and McNicholas retained artistic control and directorship.Jackie Green, the publicist for “Stomp,” said that flagging international tourism after pandemic lockdowns was a factor in deciding to close, but she declined to share financial figures. (The North American and European touring shows will continue to run.)McNicholas said that he felt for the New York performers, who in the last year were performing for “tiny” houses, though neither the energy onstage nor the enthusiasm in the audience had let up, he said.“It’s a small, funky little theater with people doing it really close to you. You feel and smell the sweat,” Cresswell said.Rachel Papo for The New York Times“I’m a little bit sad, because I feel like we were part of the East Village,” McNicholas said. “We were part of the landscape of the Village, and it’s a shame to say goodbye to that.”“Playing on objects to create music has been around forever,” said Alan Asuncion, a member of the final New York “Stomp” cast who has been performing at the Orpheum since 2007. “But the creators brilliantly put it into a piece of theater that has become a household name. And that legacy will live on.”Because the show is wordless, save for a few gibberish sounds and some good-natured grunting, its cadence and comedy are accessible to a wide variety of audiences.At a recent performance, children bubbled over with delight, adults clapped their hands and stomped their feet wildly in a packed house. The audience was carried by the pulse of drums and call-and-response cues.In any other setting, seeing a group of muscled men and women in work boots wielding yellow rubber gloves and industrial sinks around their necks might be cause for alarm. At “Stomp,” it’s a moment of giddy anticipation. The audience can sense something big is coming. There’s a collective prolonged inhale. And then the Stompers started rocking. As they swayed their bodies, so did the giant sinks. Water sloshed from side to side creating a swishy melody, before the performers began to heave their bodies to and fro, banging on the sinks and pipes.“I’m going to miss the audience interaction, being able to look out and see the audience look back at you,” Asuncion said. After 15 years, “it surprisingly doesn’t get old.” More

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      New Year’s Eve D.J.s Haven’t Been This Busy Since 2019

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      For the first time in years, New Year’s Eve parties are back in full swing, despite a possible equipment shortage and a tripledemic.Since October, Rashad Hayes, a D.J. from Brooklyn who prides himself on spinning, in his words, “every genre,” has fielded 12 offers to work on New Year’s Eve in New York City — triple what he was offered in 2019. So he did what any other enterprising artist who is suddenly in demand after surviving two years of Covid slowdowns and cancellations (and willing to work on New Year’s Eve) might do: He packed three sets in, at three different venues in Manhattan.“I would say if you’re not D.J.ing on New Year’s Eve in New York City, you probably need to get another profession if you’re a D.J.,” Mr. Hayes said. “There’s so many parties.”Although the pandemic and inflation continue to make socializing in big groups impossible for many New Yorkers, several leaders in the nightlife industry have expressed optimism about the demand for New Year’s Eve parties — and what this could possibly mean for the rest of the winter. Venue owners and event management companies say ticket sales are at least meeting those from 2019, and agencies that book D.J.s say requests have skyrocketed.This weekend, Sameer Qureshi, who co-founded the hospitality company El Grupo SN, will finally get to throw the two-floor New Year’s Eve party at Somewhere Nowhere, the dreamy nightclub atop the Renaissance New York Chelsea Hotel, that he had planned to throw last year — until Omicron, the fast-spreading variant that announced itself in time for the 2021 holidays, stymied his plans.Last week, he walked through the hotel’s 38th floor, an Eden-like setting that Prince would have approved of had the musician favored forest green — the color of the plush European couches in the room — over purple. There was a cluster of disco balls on the ceiling, along with a sparkling dove-like creature and fabricated clouds hanging throughout. Flowers spilled from the D.J. booth and floral scents wafted through the vents.It was the only floor he could use for New Year’s Eve 2021. At the time, 80 percent of his staff had come down with Covid, and he was wondering if holding an event even made sense at that point.But this New Year’s Eve, the party in the sparkly pleasure dome on the 38th floor will expand to include the 39th floor, which has another lounge area and a rooftop that features heated tents. From there, guests have a clear view of One World Trade Center and Times Square, a potential draw for tourists, who have also returned to the city.“It’s the first year it’s probably going to be normal, you know, after so long,” Mr. Qureshi said.Madison Back, the chief executive of 4AM, a talent management and events company, said she had three times as many booking requests this year, compared to before the pandemic.Although New Year’s Eve is not the biggest event on some planners’ calendars — that could be Halloween or Pride Month — the night is inarguably a massive moneymaker for those involved. Ticket prices for clubs and lounges are often marked up to at least $100.Martin Muñiz Jr., known as D.J. Marty Rock, has two gigs lined up for New Year’s weekend. OK McCausland for The New York TimesMartin Muñiz Jr., a Bronx native who performs as Marty Rock, locked in a gig 200 miles north of New York City in Saratoga Springs four months ago, the earliest he had ever been booked for New Year’s Eve.But then this fall, more requests poured in, Mr. Muñiz said. In the end, he was able to book an additional job for the holiday weekend; on New Year’s Day, he will rush back to Manhattan to do a set at Bounce Sporting Club in Chelsea. “There’s a lot of venues and a lot of G.M.s looking for a lot of people, last minute,” he said.Some believe that the last-minute demand stems from party organizers hedging their bets, especially after the suddenness with which Omicron’s surge ended the hopes of a near-normal Dec. 31 in 2021. This year, there is the tripledemic of Covid, R.S.V. and influenza to worry about; in December, Mayor Eric Adams recommended that New Yorkers use masks again. The New York State Department of Health warned people to stay vigilant, too: “With New Year’s Eve celebration gatherings around the corner, it is important New Yorkers take precautions to protect against the flu,” it said in a statement.Ms. Back, of 4AM, said that at least for this holiday season, there is room for New Yorkers who want to take the risk and for those who are not quite ready.“I think other people have completely moved on and they’re doubling down and saying, ‘People want to party, people want to go out, we are going to invest in making New Year’s amazing and really promote it and sell our venue out,’” she said. “I think for others, they maybe fall into more of that casual category, and there’s a little bit more uncertainty there. They might be taking a wait-and-see approach to see how this goes.”For those organizing parties, equipment is also in high demand, especially at the last minute. Mixers, speakers and controllers — which are to turntables as laptops are to desktops — from brands like Pioneer DJ have been on back order for months. (A representative for Pioneer DJ said in an email that the company, reeling from pandemic-related supply chain issues, might not catch up with those back orders until well into next year.)“I’ve seen like a shortage of new equipment,” Mr. Muniz said. “Like a mixer drops, sold out. There would be a shortage of that. But a shortage of all equipment? I’ve never seen that.”For now, the D.J.s who are just starting out or who are playing private parties are more likely to be the most affected by the shortage.Venue owners and event management companies say ticket sales for New Year’s Eve are at least meeting those from 2019, and agencies that book D.J.s say requests have skyrocketed.OK McCausland for The New York TimesPlanners for bigger events often start plotting out New Year’s Eve by late summer, which allows some leeway for production delays and gives them a better shot at securing equipment and booking top-flight D.J.s. For George Karavias, the chief executive of Dream Hospitality Group, which owns nightclubs and runs events for several others all over the city, the equipment shortage has not been an issue.“It’s all about planning ahead,” he said. “You know, if you’re a promoter that books an event a week before New Year’s Eve trying to book a D.J., yes, you’re going to have issues because every D.J. is booked. And, you know, big or small or whatever name it is, New Year’s Eve is New Year’s Eve.”The first weeks in January typically slow down for nightlife as tourists leave, the glow of the holiday season fades and the chill of winter spreads. While it is difficult to definitively call the New Year’s Eve turnout a forecaster of what’s to come for the party scene, some of the outside factors that pushed people to celebrate may continue to be a barometer in 2023.“I think it’s just going to be a function of how the economy holds up,” Mr. Qureshi said. “How people are feeling, if they’re still spending, if they’re still craving the experiences after being locked down for as long as they were. And we’ll see what happens.” More

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      Machine Dazzle: How Many Ways Can You Say Fabulous?

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      It was movie night at the Museum of Arts & Design in Manhattan, and the costume designer Machine Dazzle was ready for his entrance.The selection was the 1980 roller-disco fantasy “Xanadu,” and he had draped his 6-foot-5 frame in a shiny take on Olivia Newton-John’s purple Grecian goddess look, accessorized with pastel-rainbow pumps, sequined legwarmers and a Venetian-style ONJ mask on a stick.The movie, of course, was a mess — but the kind of wildly colorful, overstuffed, yes-to-everything mess that could have roller-skated right into his own work.“How many different ideas can find their way into a costume?” Dazzle asked the audience, plenty of whom came in their own homemade light-up headdresses, sparkly jackets and legwarmers. “A lot. If you don’t believe me, go upstairs.”“Upstairs” meant the museum’s fourth and fifth floors, where “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle,” on view through Feb. 19, is currently offering perhaps the city’s most glittery, tinselly, witty display of bling this holiday season.The show, Dazzle’s first solo exhibition, brings together more than 80 costumes and other artifacts, from self-worn creations from his beginnings in the 90s downtown experimental drag scene to his outrageously extravagant costumes for Taylor Mac’s epic “24-Decade History of Popular Music,” which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize.Costumes from “Treasure,” Machine Dazzle’s 2019 indie-rock cabaret piece about his relationship with his mother, who died soon after he moved to New York.Jenna Bascom/Museum of Arts and DesignIt’s a summing up, but also a bit of a pivot for Dazzle, who turns 50 on Dec. 30. Lately, he said, he’s been broadening his possibilities, “slowly moving uptown” — and not just because there’s currently a 30-foot photograph of him in rainbow-spangled drag on the museum’s facade, looking up Central Park West (or as he put it, “shooting lasers” at the nearby Trump International Hotel & Tower).This month, he designed and performed in “Bassline Fabulous,” a fanciful staging of Bach’s Goldberg Variations with the Grammy-winning Catalyst Quartet in a Versailles-themed gallery at the Metropolitan Museum (where his character, among many other things, constructed an elaborate topiary garden from ingenious props pulled from under the covers of a giant bed, and at one point did battle with a giant bottle of Elmer’s glue). Next up: costumes for Rameau’s “Io” with the Washington-based Opera Lafayette in the spring.“I love there’s this shift into classical,” Dazzle said. “It makes me want to dive into it more.”Before the commission, he said, he’d never heard the Goldberg Variations, but then he listened to them every day for months. “Music inspires me more than anything visual,” he said. “When I hear music, I see shapes.”Chatting in his studio on the top floor of the museum known as MAD, the evening before the “Bassline Fabulous” dress rehearsal, Dazzle — dressed in paint-splattered jumpsuit and sneakers, his Medusa-like head of dark curls tucked into a knit hat — came off as both knowing exactly what he was doing but also a bit hard-pressed to describe his indeterminate position in the intergalactic space between the art, theater and drag worlds.“It’s taken me years to describe what I am, what I’ve been my whole life,” he said. “I’m an emotionally driven, instinct-based conceptual artist in the role of costume designer” — he paused ever so slightly — “most of the time.”Three looks from “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle”: left, a Jackie Kennedy-inspired costume from Taylor Mac’s “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music”; center, a costume from Godfrey Reggio’s film “Once Within a Time”; and right, another costume from Mac’s show.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesIf the exhibition floors are a dazzling parade of exquisitely detailed looks, the studio is unabashed chaos, crammed with bits and pieces of costumes from previous projects. On a dressmaker’s dummy, there was his not quite finished Louis XIV-ish costume for “Bassline Fabulous,” including a bondage-tinged cage of ruched elastic over a lace caftan that had been pulled through the holes.“You get these weird blob shapes, which are kind of oozing,” he said. “You don’t want to lose the body, but there can also be sculpture.”Nearby was a neck corset, a pair of size 15 period shoes awaiting their blue-sky-and-clouds trompe l’oeil paint job, and a pile of cloth flowers in “weird Barbie flesh tones” set to be incorporated into a headdress. And, on the table, his sewing machine: a basic $250 Singer from Michael’s, the arts and crafts emporium.“I use a sewing machine the way I use a hammer,” Dazzle said. “I’m not a fine tailor. What I do with a sewing machine is attach two things together. It’s sort of like civilized glue.”“Civilized glue” — or maybe Krazy Glue? — might be an alternate title for the exhibition, which showcases the way his work bonds not just wildly disparate elements but trash and glamour, metaphor and materiality, emotion and intellect.“I love wearing ideas,” Dazzle said. “You can make something that’s really beautiful but gets boring after five minutes onstage. I like giving the audience some work to do. I want them to ask, ‘Why the hell is he wearing an apple pie on his head?’”Taylor Mac in Machine Dazzle’s 1776-inspired opening costume from “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, 2016.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMachine Dazzle with the Catalyst Quartet at a dress rehearsal for “Bassline Fabulous,” a staging of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December.Stephanie Berger/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe show was assembled by Elissa Auther, the museum’s chief curator. She’d seen photographs of Dazzle’s costumes for “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” a 24-hour-long queer retelling of American history from 1776 to the present through songs of the time. “I thought I’d be lucky if I could find 10 costumes available,” she said.Instead, she was surprised by the profusion of material that came out of Dazzle’s studio, his apartment and friends’ basements. The title “queer maximalism” was her idea — and one meant to challenge aesthetic hierarchies.“In the art world, these kinds of maximalist styles are viewed as stylistic embarrassment, lacking in rigor or meaning,” Auther said. “But Machine really, really brilliantly demonstrates it as an embodied aesthetic category. These surface effects are really political effects of resilience and survival.”Dazzle, whose name is Matthew Flower, was born in 1972, and spent his early childhood in Houston, where his father worked as an engineer in the energy sector. He was always into crafting, and movies like “Grease” and “Xanadu.” On his 10th birthday, he was enchanted by a trip to “The Nutcracker,” which involved not just elaborate costumes but children like himself onstage.“I thought, ‘This is what I want to do! Look, there it is!’” he said. “But then I got depressed, since I was so far away from that. I didn’t come from a cultured place. I had to find it for myself.”A display of headdresses, costumes, photographs and ephemera, from “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle” at the Museum of Arts and Design. Jenna Bascom/Museum of Arts and DesignWhen he was 11, the family moved even farther from Xanadu, to Idaho Falls, Idaho. In 1994, after art school at the University of Colorado, he bought the proverbial one-way ticket to New York City. (In his suitcase was a bag full of milk tops that said “HOMO,” for “homogenized,” collected from a favorite cafe in Boulder, which he later fashioned into a kind of chain-mail breastplate included in the show.)He worked a series of day jobs, including a 15-year stint as a costume jewelry designer. (In his studio, he pointed out one of the first pieces he made in the early 2000s, for a friend: a choker made of a piece of windshield retrieved from a burned-out car on the Brooklyn waterfront.) At night, he was a regular at venues like Exit Art, a performance-oriented gallery, and small downtown queer clubs like the Cock, the Slide and the Pyramid Club.He began making costumes for the Dazzle Dancers, a Solid Gold-style dance troupe formed in 1996 (represented in the show by writhing mannequins in barely-there costumes and a video for their raunchy cover of the theme from “The Love Boat,” which introduces them as “a naked sensation” that had “come to heal a broken nation”). A friend called him a “dancing machine,” and it stuck.Machine Dazzle’s costumes for the Dazzle Dancers, a downtown performance art troupe founded in New York City in 1996. A fellow member called Dazzle (who was born Matthew Flower) a “dancing machine,” and the name stuck.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesHe also began making costumes for downtown performers like Julie Atlas Muz, Justin Vivian Bond and Mac, who in 2004 invited the Dazzle Dancers to participate in “Live Patriot Acts: Patriots Gone Wild!,” a “political vaudeville” that parodied the Republican National Convention.“I had my own rougher aesthetic, and Machine had a similar take on things,” Mac recalled. “It was about making a trash bag beautiful, and not so much about making something that was already beautiful beautiful.”“His costumes are always metaphors for something,” Mac continued. “With everyone else, if you say the costume is a cat, it’s a cat. But he would make a costume of what cats make you feel like.”They are also, Mac ventured, “a storage of pain.” “It’s a flooding of all the emotions and things a little queer kid wasn’t allowed to express, growing up in the time we did,” Mac said.Dazzle made what became nearly 100 costumes for “The Lily’s Revenge,” Mac’s six-hour, 40-performer play staged in 2009 at HERE Arts Center in Manhattan. It’s represented at the museum by a single flower headdress. But MAD’s entire fifth floor is dedicated to Dazzle’s dozens of costumes for “A 24-Decade of Popular Music,” including the companion costumes he made for himself. (For those who missed it, there’s a sizzle reel in the gallery, and an HBO documentary in the works.)Dazzle’s Civil War-era costume for Mac, right, from “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” featuring a hoop skirt made of hot dogs and barbed wire, inventions of the period. At right, Dazzle’s companion costume for himself, “Gay-braham Lincoln.” Jenna Bascom/Museum of Arts and DesignDazzle summed up what he calls his “recipe” for Mac’s show: a silhouette informed by what people wore at the time, but layered with references to inventions, technological and social change, and collective emotions. Take his costume for 1856-1866: a shredded military jacket on top of a skeletal hoop skirt made from barbed wire and strings of … sausage?“It was the Civil War, so there’s loneliness, dead people, sadness, winning, losing,” Dazzle said. “But also barbed wire, which was invented at the time. And hot dogs! I read in a couple places that the American hot dog was invented in this time, by German immigrants.”Representing the 1960s, there’s a Jackie Kennedy pink suit painted with Roy Lichtenstein dots, backed with giant “wings” of Pop-Art hands pointing like guns. For the AIDs era, there’s a robe made of cassette tapes, topped by a many-headed mushroom-cloud-like death mask.It was in 2016, during the performances leading up to the one-time-only, 24-hour marathon show at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, that Dazzle got the courage to quit his day job.“I’m Capricorn, Virgo rising — very responsible, practical, realistic,” he said. “I was really scared, but I decided to take the leap and follow my heart.”Dazzle in his studio at the Museum of Arts & Design. “I love wearing ideas,” he said. “You can make something that’s really beautiful but gets boring after five minutes onstage.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThe show highlights some work with new collaborators, including his costumes for “Once Within a Time,” a 50-minute wordless art film by Godfrey Reggio (“Koyaanisqatsi”), which had its premiere last October at the Santa Fe International Film Festival. (One oversize mannequin wears the mud-cloth shaman number worn by Mike Tyson, who plays a character called the Mentor.)There’s also a moving suite of costumes for “Treasure,” his 2019 indie-rock cabaret piece about his relationship with his mother, who died soon after he moved to New York. (An album version was released in October.)And Dazzle is also working with Mac on a new, large-scale piece, “The Bark of Millions,” a suite of 54 original songs inspired by queer figures throughout history, written by Mac and the composer Matt Ray. At a recent preview concert at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Dazzle — who also sings in the ensemble — wore a jumpsuit and “a large poncho.” But this time, both he and Mac decided to trade their usual extravagant footwear for some maximal minimalism.“Being barefoot onstage is very punk,” Dazzle said. “It’s raw and it’s real and it’s kind of witchy.”Queer Maximalism x Machine DazzleThrough Feb. 19, Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, Manhattan, (212) 299-7777; madmuseum.org. More

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      After 40 Years of Fa-La-Laing, a New York Caroler Hands In His Bells

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      A onetime Macy’s elf, Tom Andolora founded a troupe that sang Christmas carols in Victorian dress. Now he is packing it in, worried about the survival of New York caroling.He has been heckled, slapped by a drunk Wall Street banker and ignored altogether. He has performed in the cake section of a Bronx supermarket, serenaded commuters on frigid Manhattan subway platforms and sung from inside a claustrophobic display window at Bloomingdale’s.Being a Christmas caroler in New York City is not for the fainthearted. Just ask Tom Andolora, a onetime elf at Macy’s Santaland, who has spent the past four decades leading the Dickens’ Victorian Carolers, which he founded in 1982.Now, after a long career in which the Carolers have tried to spread a little comfort and joy to sick children at Harlem Hospital, provided the soundtrack for wedding proposals at Rockefeller Center and serenaded several first ladies at the White House, Andolora, 65, is caroling for the last time this Christmas, before turning in his bells and retiring.“Caroling is a dying art form and I don’t know if New York caroling will even be around in a decade,” he said, wistfully flipping through old photos of himself, in his top hat and Victorian dress.“People don’t want religion or tradition anymore,” he worried. “I’ve given up my Christmases for 40 years. I’m done.”The lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic; holiday playlists that are now heavier on Mariah Carey than the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge; competition from younger upstarts who can rap “Jingle Bells”; and the closure of storied New York department stores like Lord & Taylor and Gimbels were all making traditional Victorian-style caroling increasingly untenable.Andolora said the caroling business had never fully recovered from the coronavirus. “We are still getting cancellations,” he said. “People are getting Covid or are afraid of getting it.”Bretana Turkon, Andolora, Rebecca Reres and Justin Tepper in 19th-century garb.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesCarols and caroling dates back at least to the Middle Ages in England, when people would go “a-wassailing” — singing Christmas songs in the streets in return for an alcoholic drink known as wassail, traditionally made with warmed ale, wine or cider, blended with spices and honey.In New York, the caroling tradition has existed for decades, with dozens of groups who take to the streets in all five boroughs, bringing a little Christmas cheer to grumpy department store shoppers, neighborhood churches and soulless corporate parties, sometimes for as much as $1,500 an appearance.Andolora began his Christmastime career as an elf.The year was 1981 and Andolora, the grandson of Italian immigrants, had recently arrived in Manhattan from Jamestown, N.Y., eager to make it big in show business like another Jamestown native, Lucille Ball. To begin with, however, he had to pay the rent, and was soon wearing a jaunty green hat, a green velvet tunic and red knee-high boots at Macy’s Santaland.He quickly worked his way up from “Tree Elf” to “Cashier Elf” before graduating to “Photo Elf” — positioning sometimes screaming children for their photos with Santa. He taught acting at Brooklyn College for a time, and also adapted and directed a gothic play about the secret lives of the dead.But inspired after hearing caroling groups he found wanting, Andolora, a powerful baritone, decided he could do better. And so the Dickens’ Victorian Carolers were born, a quartet clad in 19th-century garb — black top hats, lace collars, capes, hoop skirts and white gloves — which has drawn its ranks from cruise ships and Broadway productions like “Show Boat.”It turns out there is a crowded field of Dickensian carolers, apparently inspired by “A Christmas Carol,” and it has sometimes been difficult for the Dickens’ Victorian Carolers to stand out. There are the Dickens Carolers of Seattle, the Dickens Carolers of Kansas and the Original Dickens Carolers of Denver.“I added the word ‘Victorian’ to our name to try and be different,” Andolora explained.Andolora paid his dues (and the rent) as an elf at Macy’s Santaland.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesLooking back on his caroling days, Andolora said there had been mirth but also some Grinch-worthy moments, including a shopper who jeered, “That was terrible!” On more than one occasion, a member of the quartet has belted out “Twelve Days of Christmas” with stentorian gusto when the group was supposed to be singing a soulful version of “Silent Night.”Some years ago, at a private Christmas party in a Park Avenue penthouse, Andolora accidentally shoved a porcelain Buddha with his foot during a spirited rendition of “Deck the Halls.” He dislodged the statue’s arm, which fell with a thump to the floor.“It was mortifying,” he said, adding that the host, a wealthy impresario, forgave him.There have also been high points, like when a New York State Police officer proposing to his fiancée hired the group to gather nearby and sing “Congratulations!” as he got down on one knee.“He still sends me a Christmas card every year,” he said.The Carolers have also performed at the White House during four administrations. Andolora recalled that Nancy Reagan’s party was impeccably run, that the Clintons never showed up to take their photo, and that President Barack Obama teased the group about its oversize hoop skirts.Whatever the challenges of caroling in the Big City, Andolora said he had no regrets.“I have loved caroling since I was a kid,” he said. “It can bring people to tears.” More

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      The Cast and Crew of ‘Women Talking’ Reunite Over Mushroom Risotto

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      Claire Foy: We formed a really strong bond [working on the movie “Women Talking,” out this month]. It felt like so little time had passed since the shoot [in summer 2021], and the film went down really well [at its New York Film Festival premiere in October], so it was a wonderful, cyclical thing to enjoy it together.We exposed a lot about ourselves [at this dinner] and were very honest in our opinions — that’s just the way we speak to one another. But what happens in the hayloft stays in the hayloft [where much of the movie, which takes place within an isolated religious community, unfolds].Sarah Polley: This has always been a really fun, imaginative, intellectually stimulating group of people. Claire is a real truth teller; Rooney [Mara, who didn’t attend the dinner] does a lot of connecting; Jessie [Buckley, who was away filming] is the life of every party; Judy [Ivey] is incredibly wise but holds that wisdom lightly; Sheila [McCarthy] is a bridge builder and peacemaker; Michelle [McLeod] always sees the “funny” in a moment; Liv [McNeil] is an attuned observer; and Kate [Hallett] can imagine how people feel before they feel it.Our conversations weave fluidly in and out of very serious and light things — sharing things personally and talking about the world at large — which is, I think, what groups of women who are close do. I’ve been fascinated by how women in groups don’t finish one line item, resolve it, then move on to the next. It’s not a linear thing.On the CoverFrom left: McCarthy, Hallett, McLeod, Polley, Foy, McNeil, Gardner and Ivey of the film “Women Talking.”Jason SchmidtThe attendees: All from the “Women Talking” family, the guest list included its director, Sarah Polley, 43; its producer Dede Gardner, 55; and its actors Claire Foy, 38; Judith Ivey, 71; Sheila McCarthy, 66; Michelle McLeod, age withheld; Liv McNeil, 17; and Kate Hallett, 18.The food: The mushroom risotto at Lincoln Ristorante at Lincoln Center took both Foy and Polley aback — Foy enjoyed it despite being suspicious of fungi ever since watching the poisoning scene in “Phantom Thread” (2017), and Polley because it was “the best I’ve ever had in my life.”The conversation: They all discussed Hallett’s first visit to New York City (she’d never been) and Ivey’s 1992 turn on “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” where, as Polley put it, she got “smoked” by Luke Perry. In keeping with a theme of “Women Talking,” they also talked about sexism (Polley says that’s “probably something that comes up often for women everywhere in groups”).Polley has picked these songs for gatherings she’s thrown in the past:Interviews have been edited and condensed.All Together Now More

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      Anne Bogart Is Not Entirely Retiring

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      The theater director Anne Bogart first made a splash with the radical student productions she put on while teaching at New York University in the early 1980s. Her “South Pacific” (1984), for example, was conceived as the show that veterans in a mental institution performed as part of their therapy. Legend has it that the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate snuffed out the production, but Bogart clarified that it simply denied an extension. “It’s more dramatic to say they shut us down,” she said, chuckling.Under Bogart’s leadership, the New York City-based Saratoga International Theater Institute (SITI) Company, formed by a group of artists in 1992, spent three decades exploring experimental outposts in both original creations like “Bob,” “The Medium” and “Hotel Cassiopeia” and re-imaginings of classics, often by ancient Greek playwrights.The group’s emphasis was on rigorous actor training and the performers’ physicality. Bogart’s approach involves “decentering emotion and re-centering the body,” said Jay Wegman, the director of N.Y.U. Skirball, which presented SITI’s “Radio Macbeth” last month. “I love how metaphorical her work is. It becomes an event, and there’s almost a mystical feeling because everything comes together so tightly in her stagings.”Now, SITI is ending its producing activities. “It came down to whether we are an institution — in which case you get a younger, more diverse company and a young artistic director — or a group of people,” Bogart, 71, said. “After a great deal of quite emotional discussion, we decided that we’re a group of people. I think that the legacy is more how we offer a model for future young companies: a collaborative ensemble whose focus is not on real estate but on the plays they do.”Bogart, center, with Kelly Maurer as Andy Warhol in a 1990s production of “Culture of Desire.” Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBogart is not entirely retiring. She will remain a professor in Columbia University’s directing program, whose alumni include Rachel Chavkin, Jay Scheib, Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page, until 2026. She will also continue to direct on a freelance basis.Although SITI is presenting “A Christmas Carol” at Bard College (spearheaded by the co-director Darron L West) from Dec. 16-18, this felt like a good time to look back, especially since the company’s digital archives are going live on its website on Nov. 15, and a book, “SITI Company: This Is Not a Handbook,” is due soon via Yonkers International Press. Bogart spoke in a video chat from London shortly after the latest (and last) SITI gala. The event prefaced a revival of the company’s production of “War of the Worlds” and turned into a heartfelt tribute to the director. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What were some of the fundamental things that you all agreed on when starting SITI?The actors met at a diner and asked each other: “What does it mean to be a SITI Company member?” Every year they renewed that question, and they always had the same answer: We train together. It’s the cement that’s kept us going over time. Not only do they train together and learn together, but they teach that training, which makes sure they have a paycheck year-round. My own proposal to them was that I had all these theatrical essays I wanted to create. We didn’t expect it to last as long as it did, but I did need a group of people who would work together over time and solve problems together.How did you manage your freelance activities with SITI?I do a lot of opera outside. I always felt that was the least stressful for SITI Company: If I’m going to do opera, nobody can complain, because they can’t sing like opera singers. I still have a big appetite for all those things. That hasn’t changed.Where did you find inspiration when you started out?I came to New York in 1974, at the end of the Judson Church era, and I was very influenced by dance. It was also the explosion of theater companies like the Performance Group, which later became the Wooster Group, André Gregory’s Manhattan Project, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater, and with the crazy work of Richard Foreman and the big wild things of Bob Wilson. I was also completely in love with German theater — particularly Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Grüber, Luc Bondy — and I stole from them a lot.Bogart with her wife, Rena Chelouche Fogel, in October at the Laurie Beechman Theater.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesIs that why you temporarily moved to Europe in the early 1980s?I decided I hated Americans and I was going to be German. But what I discovered is that I’m actually very American: I have an American sense of humor, an American sense of structure. And I’m really interested in American history — a lot of my work since then has been about Americans like Orson Welles, Bob Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell.What are some of the big theatrical trends you’ve seen coming and going over the past decades?I was part of the generation who just admired directors. I used to follow Bob Wilson and Lee Breuer on the street! Then I noticed that people weren’t naming directors, they were naming companies, like Complicité, for example. That lasted for about a decade. Now the revolution is happening in playwriting, where extraordinary new voices are challenging the old forms. “An Octoroon” — that’s a radical play. So it’s gone from director to company to playwright.How have theater directors themselves changed?I’m surprised by how little they are interested in the regional theater. We have these theater factories around the country that used to be where everybody wanted to go, and it’s not so attractive right now. What is attractive are the art centers, and SITI Company has lived in the realm of the art centers, like the Krannert, the Walker, the Hancher, U.C.L.A. Directors like Rachel Chavkin or Diane Paulus are also looking at commercial models in new ways. When I was younger Broadway was not of interest to me, but the young directors are intrigued.What do you make of theater in the Covid era?We’re in a very interesting moment. The wonderful Scottish philosopher William MacAskill has a theory that every time there’s a cataclysmic event, there’s a period of plasticity in which change happens, and then soon afterwards we clamp down into a new accepted way of being. I think we’re in that moment of plasticity. What comes out on the other side? You or I can’t know.Whose work do you like these days?I got really interested in the work of Stan Lai, a Taiwanese director who’s rethinking the way audiences and plays function. I’m always interested in what Ivo van Hove is thinking about. I have a hate/love relationship with [Romeo] Castellucci: I cannot stand his work most of the time, but I have to deal with it. I guess what I’m looking for is somebody throwing down the gauntlet.“I got really interested in the work of Stan Lai, a Taiwanese director who’s rethinking the way audiences and plays function,” Bogart said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesDo you think there’s been a renewed interest in the relationship between audiences and theater, especially since Covid?I think that’s what the frontier is right now. My friend [and one of SITI’s artistic directors] Leon Ingulsrud went to the theater the other day. I asked how it was and he said, “Not so good — the actors never said hello to the audience.” I thought that was really interesting. The acknowledgment of that relationship, or how an audience interfaces, is the prize, I think.But how do you do that? Wouldn’t it be distracting?“Bob” [1998] starts with him literally saying hi — there’s a moment of interface, where everybody comes together. In Ivo van Hove’s “More Stately Mansions” [1997] the actors came out onstage, bowed to each other and to the audience, then Joan MacIntosh started speaking at top speed the first monologue of that O’Neill play. I started hearing the thump of people leaving the seats. They just couldn’t stand it. But in a way, that’s also like saying hi. At first I thought, “Damn him, I could never do that — I’m an American, I’m about populist art.”OK, but in all honesty, you’re not really thought of as a populist director.Deep down, yes, it’s in me. It’s how I was brought up. At the beginning of SITI Company we were kind of, “[expletive] the audience.” I don’t feel that at all anymore. I feel that the point of being there is the audience — it’s all about the audience. More

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      Animal Lovers, Rejoice: The NY Cat and Dog Film Festivals Return

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      The programs feature many surprises, including a cat that plays Wordle and a lone man’s odyssey to feed Turkish strays.Tracie Hotchner still doesn’t offer tissues.During her early years as the director and founder of two animal film festivals, audience members would occasionally confront her and say, “‘Why don’t you give Kleenex?’” Hotchner recalled. While her programs have never included “Old Yeller”-style tear-jerkers, she acknowledges that her first festivals were too long and emotional. Even a steady string of uplifting tales could cause sentimental overload.But when Hotchner’s seventh annual NY Dog Film Festival and fifth annual NY Cat Film Festival arrive on Sunday at the Village East by Angelika Theater in Manhattan — before a monthslong tour of the United States and Canada — they will be as sleek and compact as a prizewinning Abyssinian or a champion greyhound. Featuring international short films, each festival now runs under two hours and intersperses serious works with the purely comic. (The 16-film cat festival screens at 11 a.m., the 17-film dog festival at 2 p.m.)This year, moviegoers can witness the challenging lives of feral cats in Malta and abandoned dogs in Mexico. Yet they can also see a feline parody of “America’s Got Talent,” fancifully animated dog and cat crime capers and a documentary about golden retrievers that served as the legitimately elected mayors of Idyllwild, Calif.With each festival, “I’ve tried to make it more balanced and something that is a magic carpet ride,” said Hotchner, an author and radio host in Bennington, Vt., whose Radio Pet Lady Network features online talk shows. During a telephone interview, she added, “There’s lots of short films, but you don’t have several in a row that slam you emotionally.”The programs have transformed in other ways, too. The 2022 editions are the most global, including films from Chile, France, Ireland, China, India, Israel and Sweden. Hotchner is also extending the projects’ reach: A film distributor is booking both festivals in other cities well into 2023. And for the first time, she is hosting a 20-minute question-and-answer session with a few filmmakers after each festival’s Manhattan screening.“I’ve never had a theater that would let me do that before,” Hotchner said. “It costs them money.” She explained that the Village East was donating the time, a gesture that is very much in the spirit of her feel-good, do-good mission: Ten percent of the $20 ticket price for each festival goes to a local animal charity in every city hosting the programs. On Sunday, the beneficiary is NYC Second Chance Rescue, whose co-founder, Lisa Blanco, will help greet audiences.But what may distinguish this year’s festivals most is the element of surprise. “Many of the films were not like anything I’d seen before,” Hotchner said.Consider “Kopecki” (“The Dog God”), Hayrettin Alan’s 11-minute documentary about a lone man feeding homeless dogs near Van, Turkey. Lacking narration or dialogue, the film simply follows this self-appointed savior, as packs of startlingly beautiful dogs greet him with unanticipated affection.Clockwise from top left: Scenes from “Jade & Trubs,” “Kopecki,” “Duet” and “Please Rescue Me.”Clockwise from top left: Mutual Rescue; Hayrettin Alan; Yadid Hirschtritt Licht; Kim BestHotchner also found a live-action fictional work among her entries — these are rare, as they tend to have high budgets. This selection, “Adam,” by Hope Elizabeth Martinez, focuses on a teenage girl whose sole companion is an ailing 14-year-old dog.Among the animated submissions, Hotchner discovered an unusual variety of styles and unexpectedly serious themes. In Yadid Hirschtritt Licht’s lyrical “Duet,” for example, a cat’s loving legacy continues after its original owner dies.But the humorous films offer surprises, too. Ever see a cat play Wordle? Kim Best, a filmmaker in Durham, N.C., created “Cat of Letters” with her own pet, Nube. (Pronounced NOO-bay, the word is Spanish for “cloud.”) Although a cat lover, Best admits that her stars don’t take direction.“They’re very insubordinate and churlish,” she said in a phone interview.Nube was churlish enough to reject the fingerlike extensions Best tried to attach to his claws, so she used a stuffed animal’s paw affixed to a stylus to portray the cat tapping letters on an iPad. (It’s convincing.) But she also gave herself a challenge: Nube, whose thoughts are conveyed via subtitles, chooses only cat- or dog-related words for his opening Wordle efforts, so Best had to use those to solve the puzzles in real time. There was “no cheating,” she said.A director who has contributed to every NY Cat Film Festival so far, Best also has a documentary spotlighting a more typical feline talent: getting stuck in trees. “Please Rescue Me” follows Patrick Brandt, a kindly North Carolina biochemist and arborist who has volunteered his skills and equipment to extract some 250 trapped cats — and one pet coatimundi.As he says in the film, “I’m not so much rescuing the cat as I’m rescuing the person.”Animals, of course, frequently save the people who save them. Mutual Rescue, a global nonprofit initiative that creates documentaries about these relationships to encourage pet adoption, delivered “Kimo & Jazz.” This film concerns a young gay man from a conservative religious background who finally felt able to come out to his parents after adopting a shelter dog. The pet, Jazz, then helped sustain him as his father was dying.Another Mutual Rescue documentary, “Jade & Trubs,” chronicles how Double Trouble — a toothless, sickly and thoroughly unsociable feline shelter resident — uncharacteristically responded to Jade, a little girl with autism visiting the organization. Jade had sensitivities that turned every bedtime into long bouts of tears and screams. But once the family adopted the animal, nicknamed Trubs, both child and cat blossomed in unexpected ways.Perhaps the most surprising interplay of rescuer and rescued, however, takes place in “Underdogs,” an independent project by Alex Astrella. His documentary unfolds at the California Men’s Colony, a prison in San Luis Obispo where the inmates train service dogs for veterans and emergency workers with post-traumatic stress disorder. The prisoners’ dark histories — several on camera are convicted murderers — contrast starkly with their tender devotion to the dogs and their purpose.“I took a life,” one says. “Now I want to save a life.”Astrella said in a phone interview that he intended to illustrate the program’s effects on the men and “the change it’ll hopefully enact on their lives going forward.” The film, he added, is a testament to the “spiritual power that dogs have on humans.”Such connections are the thread that runs through the festivals. As Hotchner said, their mission is “to celebrate that human-animal bond, however and wherever it occurs.”So prepare to celebrate. And maybe pack a few tissues.NY Cat Film Festival and NY Dog Film FestivalOct. 23; the Village East by Angelika Theater, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com, dogfilmfestival.com. More