Living Listings
by Village Voice
WEDNESDAY
AUGUST 27
Books
BEST AMERICAN CRIME WRITING
Mystery mensch Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook put together this anthology of the year’s outstanding true-crime reporting, wherein the dread is deepened by all-too-specific addresses, sums of money, even the time of day. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil author John Berendt appears, along with contributors Peter Richmond and Devin Friedman. DE KRAP
At 7, Barnes & Noble, 675 Sixth Avenue, 212.727.1227
Dance
DANCING FOR LIFE
From the Martha Graham Dance Company to the DRA Studio of the Year—a school in Marietta, Georgia, that raised nearly $20,000 for Dancers Responding to AIDS—a gamut of modern, ballet, and jazz performers, including Broadway hoofers, give their all to benefit this organization’s essential programs. Admission is free, but bring cash to throw in their basket. Four different bills: See dance listings for full details. ZIMMER
Through Thursday at 12:30 and 6, Bryant Park, 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, 212.840.0770
Film
SUDDENLY
A pair of sullen Buenos Aires dykes kidnaps a dumpy, depressed lingerie salesgirl at knifepoint and . . . take her to the beach? Things get even sweeter and more eccentric from there in Diego Lerman’s unassuming first feature, a humane meditation on chance and caprice that blows along its unpredictable course like a tumbleweed. LIM
Through September 9, Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, 212.727.8110
Music
THE DOLPHY PROJECT
Hat and Beard,” “Straight Up and Down,” “Sketch of Melba”—Eric Dolphy is known for the keening emotion of his solos, but he was also a provocative little writer. Here, in the era of interpretation, a sextet of Bartz, Reed, Harris, Hurst, Pelt, and Green convenes to celebrate his pen, not his horn. Bet they find the sweet spots. MACNIE
Through Sunday at 8 and 10, Friday and Saturday also at 11:30, Iridium, 1650 Broadway, 212.582.2121
PAUL MOTIAN, JOE LOVANO & BILL FRISELL
This long-standing trio proves that sculpting beauty has to do with establishing balance. The drummer’s tumult, saxophonist’s bluster, and guitarist’s folkadelia illustrate how much grace is needed to create a perfect storm. Of course they occasionally invert that tack, revealing the coordination needed to drive some of the most heady pastoralism jazz has ever heard. MACNIE
Through Sunday at 9 and 11, Friday and Saturday also at 12:30 a.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, 212.255.4037
HOWARD TATE
Over three decades hidden from his tiny, evangelical cult, Tate maintained the shout and croon bequeathed him by Julius Cheeks in its natural habitat: church. On Sunday. Thus his voice is less raggedy than you expect from a great lost soul man aged 60. Like the man says, get it while you can. CHRISTGAU
At 7 and 9:30, Blues Cruise, Pier 16, South Street
Seaport, at the end of Fulton Street, 212.560.BLUE
DJELIMADY TOUNKARA
Mali’s master guitarist is in his natural element leading the Super Rail Band, but it was on last year’s solo album that he made his master statement. The great chain of being turns back on itself, and his fingers know it. CHRISTGAU
At 7:30 and 9:30, Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, 212.239.6200
THURSDAY
AUGUST 28
Music
PAUL VAN DYK
Pretty-boy German trance DJ Paul Van Dyk plays records that punch the obvious buttons (Build! Climax! Melodramatic finish!)—but in a happy kind of way. His music might be lite, but his personal and political views are not. Van Dyk should get respect for wearing a T-shirt that says “Stop the War” at nearly all his public appearances this year. ROMANO
At 6, SummerStage, Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, mid-park, at 72nd Street, 212.360.CPSS
Photo
CUBA ON THE VERGE
Last chance to catch this thoughtful, unpredictable, and often politically astute show of work by Cuban, American, and Cuban American photographers confronting “An Island in Transition.” Among the highlights: Fazal Sheikh’s soulful meditation on life, death, and belief; Abelardo Morell’s hallucinatory conflations of private and public space; Carrie Mae Weems’s poetic, engagingly enigmatic narratives; Sylvia Plachy’s freeze-frame panoramas; and Ernesto Bazan’s dazzling shower of celebratory sparks in the night. ALETTI
Through Sunday, International Center of Photography,
1133 Sixth Avenue, 212.857.0045
Theater
INDIAN INK
Tom Stoppard took up his quill to write this Anglo-Indian drama just two years after his celebrated Arcadia. Both plays concern the histories of decades past and the attempts of insufferable English academics to disclose them, but Indian Ink, put in calligraphy with a far heavier hand, suffers in comparison. When poetess Flora Crewe arrives in Jummapur, she begins a languorous flirtation with painter Nadir Das; discussions of colonialism, paternity, and art soon ensue. SOLOSKI
Through Saturday, Walkerspace Theater, 46 Walker Street, 212.868.4444
FRIDAY
AUGUST 29
Dance
TRAFFIC JAM TAP JAM FOR JELLY
Laraine Goodman’s fabulous free holiday diversion, a tap jam near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel at rush hour, is dedicated to “the life, times, and spirit of Gregory Hines, beloved friend and mentor to the worldwide tap community.” Among the performers will be RhythmMutation, Akim Funk Buddha, Omar Edwards, Michela Lerman, Hank Smith, “Toes” Tiranoff, and wonderful accordionist Rachelle Garniez. Bring your own tap shoes! ZIMMER
From 6 to 9, the HUB, 517 Broome Street, 212.475.0588
SATURDAY
AUGUST 30
Music
LIGHTNING BOLT
Like a construction team outside your window at 6 a.m. after somebody slipped something into your drink, except fun—a bass-and-drums two-piece that plays so hard and loud that air buckles, light refracts, matter vaporizes, and hooks magically appear. With Wolf Eyes and Emil Beaulieau, also with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo on Sunday. WOLK
At 9, Knitting Factory Main Space, 74 Leonard Street, 212.219.3006; Sunday at 9, Northsix, 66 North 6th Street, Brooklyn, 718.599.5103
Photo
SEA
This young gallery has a knack for putting together group shows of new and established photographers, and the current one is as refreshingly straightforward and spare as its title. It’s hard to beat Stephen Shore’s 1977 shot of a nearly empty stretch of Miami Beach shorefront, but Mark Wyse’s picture of a solitary surfer in a mass of foaming water holds its own nicely. So does work by Shannon Ebner, David Hilliard, Katie Murray, and Pete Mauney, whose tiny video piece provides the show’s soundtrack. ALETTI
Through September 13, Jen Bekman, 6 Spring Street, 212.219.0166
SUNDAY
AUGUST 31
Film
I AM CUBA
Longing for the tropics? Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov’s delirious paean to the Cuban revolution is as unexpected as a woolly mammoth in a coconut grove—a throwback to the revolutionary formalism of the 1920s. The movie is relentlessly visual, promoting a permanent state of vertigo, while memorializing, as if in granite, the hopes, hysteria, and Tropicana doo-wop of 1963. HOBERMAN
At 2, 5, and 8, BAM Rose Cinema, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-630-4100
THEY LIVE
The Reagan revolution is masterminded by tele-canny creatures from outer space in John Carpenter’s minor classic, one of the few pulp political satires of the 1980s and a forgotten precursor to The Matrix. No less timely today, Carpenter’s acid-ripped Woody Guthrie worldview posits the most visceral paranoid theory imaginable for consumer greed, industrial pollution, and media narcosis. HOBERMAN
Sunday and Tuesday, Walter Reade, 70 Lincoln Center
Plaza, 212.875.5600
MONDAY
SEPTEMBER 1
Art
BLACK PRESIDENT
Fela, revolutionary inventor of Afrobeat, was “James Brown, Huey Newton, Rick James, Bob Marley, Duke Ellington, and ODB all rolled up in one black African fist,” says Mos Def. But if the focus has been on Fela, the art in this exuberant homage—including Olu Oguibe’s fiber mats, Odili Donald Odita’s Afro-abstraction, Yinka Shonibare’s headless brides, Kendell Geers’s Chevron idol, and Alfredo Jaar’s astonishing text—deserves attention, too. LEVIN
Through September 28, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 583 Broadway, 212.219.1222
Music
N.E.R.D.+THE ROOTS+TALIB KWELI+O.A.R.
How much Pharrell is too much Pharrell? Does such a conundrum actually exist? If so (read: “Frontin’ “), the return of the N.E.R.D. project is the proper salve. Word is the Neptunes have been workshopping new material for their side project, something no one does as well as the Roots, also featured on this hip-hop-heavy bill (Talib Kweli and Kelis also appear). Token rockers O.A.R. will make even less sense than 311 did last year. CARAMANICA
At 8, PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, New Jersey, 212.307.7171
TUESDAY
SEPTEMBER 2
Books
MARATHON READING ON AIDS IN AFRICA
I can’t guarantee this will be a lighthearted affair, but the righteous roster includes such heavy-duty versifiers as Yusef Komunyaaka, Breyten Breytenbach, Sapphire, Timothy Liu, Meena Alexander, Daniel Nester, and Edwin Torres. All proceeds go to the Ghana Education Project. DE KRAP
At 5, Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, 212.614.0505.
Music
THE SHINS
After a pithy debut of melancholic pop, the Shins return with the even tighter and more varied Chutes
Too Narrow. Bandleader James Mercer emerges from
vocal effects on songs that are neither garage nor
power-pop, yet still apropos; their sound remembers the
new wave that reared them and the ’60s pop that honed
them. Great at 2002’s Siren Fest, they’ll be psyched to return to NYC. With Two Tears and French Toast. KIM
At 9, and September 3 and 4, Bowery Ballroom,
6 Delancey Street, 212.533.2111