#Perelman Arts Center

[adriannamateo]

It's a double bill :)) I'm performing TONIGHT, 2 May 2024, at LINCOLN CENTER! I'm acting, singing a song by Rocky Duval, and playing violin in "Hildegard, Reborn" at Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave., 6:00PM. Free admission (just show up :). And...

I'm performing FRIDAY, 3 May 2024, at PAC NYC! I'm singing original songs at 5PM and 7:45PM at NYC's newest, hippest downtown venue. Free admission (just show up :).

[blogarteplus]

Desde Blog Arte Plus: Centro de artes escénicas Perelman en New York, diseñado por REX architecture.

[ Acceder ]

[thequeereview]

The Mother of Reinvention - Theatre Review: Cats "The Jellicle Ball" (Perelman Performing Arts Center, New York) ★★★★★

Cat-egory is: the Mother of Reinvention Five years after the critically mauled movie adaptation of Cats, that not even Taylor Swift could save, New York’s Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) ends its inaugural season on a major high with an inspired, exhilarating reinterpretation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1981 musical theatre classic as the worlds of Broadway and Ballroom merge for an…

[chambergambit]

"A radical reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic dance musical based on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Inspired by the Ballroom culture that roared out of New York City over 50 years ago and still rages on runways around the world. Staged as a spectacularly immersive competition by Zhailon Levingston (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Chicken & Biscuits) and PAC NYC Artistic Director Bill Rauch (All the Way), with all new Ballroom and club beats, runway ready choreography, and an edgy eleganza makeover that moves the action from junkyard to runway.  Come one, come all, and celebrate the joyous transformation of self at the heart of Cats and Ballroom culture itself."

ok ngl i'd see this

[phoenixyfriend]

[Personal rambling about my relationship with an event of recent history. This is not meant to reflect anyone else's feelings on the subject, just my own. If you reblog, please engage in good faith.]

[TW: discussions of 9/11 and its effects]

One of the side-effects of watching a lot of videos on the topic of architecture, especially in NYC, is getting really strong, complicated feelings rising back up about 9/11.

I was living in Queens when it happened, and not yet six years old. I was young, but a few moments of the day it happened is pretty clear in my memory. I was too young and not connected directly enough to the event to really understand what was going on at the time, but it was very nearby and had very strong impacts on my life both immediately, and going forward.

(After all, I had to fly inter-continentally just to see my grandparents, and I had younger siblings. Any family from Serbia needed to apply for a visa to come over to visit us, and most of them didn't speak English. Imagine how difficult airports are, right after that, if you hadn't experienced it yourself. This doesn't apply to just New York, but it does apply to me.)

Anyway, the memories are pretty shaky but definitely there for me. I was lucky enough to not have anyone who died in the event or the aftermath, but my surroundings were pretty heavily impacted due to proximity, and I imagine there's a lot that happened that I don't remember because my parents shielded me from it.

The thing is... I was still there. I still remember it, and I feel a sense of connection to the way NYC chose to rebuild after, the ways it worked to commemorate the dead, etc. I was too young to be involved and, for a time, too distant--I lived in Colorado for six years, starting '07.

It's still the city that's defined much of my life, either while living in it or living on LI, which isn't NYC but is in its shadow in all ways. I've lived in or near NYC for over half my life.

So when I look at New Yorkers reacting to the event or commemorations of it, I get it. New Yorkers erecting monuments and having strong feelings about 9/11 makes sense. Of course the people who live here and were directly hit by it have strong opinions! It was a major event! Of course city residents went feral with anger when a random luxury housing unity tried to build higher than One World Trade Center. You don't just... choose to be larger than a building that was designed to commemorate one of the greatest tragedies in the city's recent history, especially not when that building's height is already symbolic, being exactly 1776ft tall at the spire.

It might seem stupid, but I get it. I understand why NYC residents were furious at the idea, given how contentious the supertalls already are.

I understand why, over twenty years on, the rebuilding is still ongoing. I understand why 2, 5, and the Perelman Performing Arts Center have taken so long, and are still years away from completion. Nobody wants to get this wrong.

And the reason it gets so complicated is because there's this stark difference to my feelings on how the average American, and also some New Yorkers, it's true, might use 9/11 as a tragedy to fuel their racism and xenophobia and jingoistic warmongering.

This isn't my tragedy, for all that I was in its shadow, saw the smoke rising and felt the echoes of it across my childhood. I didn't lose anyone in the attack or the aftermath, and I wasn't part of a minority group targeted in its wake. I was only ever on the fringes... but it was still my city, you know?

When I was in high school, I lived in Colorado. We were discussing the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources in class. The teacher used 9/11 as an example, saying that everyone in the room was a secondary source, because we were alive and saw the events unfolding on television, but we weren't there, just getting the information secondhand from the news.

I raised my hand, and said I lived in New York at the time, just across the river, and the teacher acknowledged that I was significantly closer as a source than most of the class.

I don't call myself a primary source on this. I wasn't even six, yet. My memories have faded with time, and I wasn't as close as many were.

But there's still a pride in NYC and in the rebuilding, in the way that the city bounced back. It's not so much about the architecture and rebuilding, for all that its symbolism is important and meaningful in its own right. It's more about the smaller businesses that were impacted by the destruction of a large section of the financial district, the local delis and bodegas, the hot dog carts at Bowling Green, and the wider economy hit by the ripples of the event, which definitely did affect everything in the metro area, not just the immediate surroundings.

So it's not my tragedy, really, but it is New York's.

And there's a specific kind of distaste and rage in me when I see it co-opted. When I see the average American call it 'our' tragedy. 'The nation's' tragedy.

It's not. It's not yours to use for your violence and hate for what you call Other.

I don't feel suspicion when New Yorkers hold on to the symbolism of the event, and snap back at corporate interests that try to disrespect the memory of it. This is New York's tragedy, and it makes sense for New Yorkers to feel strongly about it.

I sure as hell suspect everyone else that tries to claim it, though.

[bestmusicalworldcup]

The drag-ball reimagining of Cats (officially titled Cats: The Jellicle Ball) now has its full cast with the following newly announced cast members: Xavier Reyes as Jennyanydots, Bebe Nicole Simpson as Demeter, and Dava Huesca as Rumpleteazer, along with understudy Shelby Griswold.

Previously announced cast members from the world of ballroom include Baby as Victoria, Dudney Joseph Jr. as Munkustrap, Capital Kaos as DJ, Junior LaBeija as Gus, Robert "Silk" Mason as Mistoffelees, "Tempress" Chasity Moore as Grizabella, and Primo as Tumblebrutus, along with understudies Dominique Lee and Kendall G. Stroud.

Previously announced musical theatre and dance names in the company include Jonathan Burke as Mungojerrie, Emma Sofia Caymares as Skimbleshanks, André De Shields as Old Deuteronomy, Sydney James Harcourt as Rum Tum Tugger, Antwayn Hopper as Macavity, Shereen Pimentel as Jellylorum, Nora Schell as Bustopher Jones, Garnet Williams as Bombalurina, and Teddy Wilson Jr. as Sillabub. Rounding out the company will be ensemble members Tara Lashan Clinkscales and Frank Viveros.

The production is directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch.

Performances begin June 13 at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, with opening night set for June 20. Closing night is July 14.

[orangetruckercap]

Light coming through the Marble facade of the Perelman Performing Arts Center

[cryptidvoidwritings]

Full text below.

A D.J. pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere.

That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway behemoth does to the drab original. It sets the joy free.

Whether upper- or lowercase, cats never previously offered me much pleasure. The underlying T.S. Eliot poems, ad libbed for his godchildren, are agreeable piffle, hardly up there with “Prufrock” as fodder for the ages. The musical, instead of honoring the material’s delicacy, stomped all over it, leaving heavy mud prints. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, and especially the rigged-up story and original staging by Trevor Nunn, tried so hard to make big statements from little ditties and kitties that it wound up a perfect example of camp.

Camp, cleverly, is the new version’s base line, neutralizing that criticism. It turns out that the show once advertised vaguely (and threateningly) as “now and forever” — it ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000 — works far better in a specific past.

That past is the world of drag balls, which at the time of the original “Cats” was beginning to achieve mainstream awareness. Madonna’s appropriation of the participants’ style and dance moves in her videos and concerts, as well as Jennie Livingston’s celebration of them in her documentary “Paris Is Burning,” helped pave the way for the supremacy of RuPaul and dragmania today. But beneath that triumph lay a darker truth: that the thrill of ball culture depended on its drawing extravagance from destitution, meeting prejudice with bravery, and staring down death with style.

The key insight of this “Jellicle Ball,” which opened on Thursday at the new downtown arts cube, is that at least some of those themes could resonate with Eliot’s subtext and Lloyd Webber’s score. The directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have thus transported Grizabella, Skimbleshanks, Rum Tum Tugger and the rest from a metaphysical junkyard to a hotel ballroom for a vogueing competition, accompanied by new versions of the songs that go heavier on the synthesizers, turn some lyrics into raps and add a distinctive house beat.

It’s often a good fit. The former felines — now fantastically attired humans — compete in traditional categories, like Opulence and Hair Affair, that are to some degree matched to Eliot’s descriptions. The song “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,” for instance, pits those two “knockabout clowns” against the pairing of the balletic Victoria and the acrobatic Tumblebrutus in a showdown called Tag Team Performance.

Not that it is any easier to keep the cats straight just because they’re queer. The structure of the show doesn’t allow it. Hemmed in by the Eliot estate, Nunn could not add dialogue, making it difficult to flesh out any characters or encourage specific emotional investment. His solution was a bizarre framing device with late-1970s woo-woo overtones: The clan meets each year on the evening of the Jellicle moon so that their leader, Old Deuteronomy, can choose one lucky cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn.

That silliness didn’t help much. It remained difficult to keep Jellylorum and Sillabub apart or care about either. In revivals like the one on Broadway in 2016, let alone the dreadful 2019 movie, the material seemed fatally ludicrous.

And if “Jellicle Ball” doesn’t quite solve that problem, it succeeds in making it mostly irrelevant. The new frame allows you to feel something for the characters, at least as a group, even when you don’t know what’s going on, which is often. The design of the long, narrow room, with the audience surrounding a runway on three sides, is awkward in the way one imagines the balls were: You can’t see everything, you’re constantly craning, the sound (by Kai Harada) is blurry and some fuss or hilarity is always happening somewhere you missed.

Even so, we recognize Rum Tum Tugger (Sydney James Harcourt) far better now that he competes in the Realness and Body competitions. (He’s a smooth playah.) Gus, the theater cat, is a more instantly recognizable type as performed by Junior LaBeija, the M.C. of the “Paris Is Burning” ball, as a catty old queen who, though “no longer a terror” can still throw ample shade. And it takes little more than the arrival of André De Shields, with his unsurpassed ability to freeze attention onstage, to show us that Old Deuteronomy is a Moses.

It helps, too, that he’s given a glowing Ten Commandments-like set of tablets, and that he’s dressed (by Qween Jean) in royal purple topped by a gigantic matching lion’s mane (by Nikiya Mathis). Indeed, the wonderfully over-the-top design of the show is as important as the concept itself in filling out the vast blanks of the characters as written. Enjoyable as that is in itself, the chief benefit of the physical staging (on sets by Rachel Hauck, with lighting by Adam Honoré and projections by Brittany Bland) is that it grounds the performative mayhem on the runway in a real environment that suggests the struggles of real lives.

Among other things, this rescues the nominal star role, Grizabella, from bathos. A faded “glamour cat” seeking the reincarnation nod, she has no other function in the original story, not even suspense. (We know she’s going to be chosen because she keeps popping up to sing fragments of “Memory.”) But here, in smeary makeup, a ratty fur and carrying a tarnished old trophy, scrambling about the outskirts of the action, we see at a glance the pain of an outsider now exiled from the place she’d once been safe. Especially as played by Chasity Moore, known in the ball world as Tempress, that pain feels authentic.

That is not something that ever occurred to me in watching the old-school “Cats.” At best the Broadway show felt like a stoned oratorio about nothing, with a dog’s breakfast of song styles including ear-wormy music hall, grating electronica and the occasional Gilbert and Sullivan chorale. (The choral singing here, under the direction of William Waldrop, is gorgeous.) Likewise, the original choreography, by the Royal Ballet star Gillian Lynne, seemed totally random despite its supposedly catlike footwork. The athletic vogueing created for this production by Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles, sometimes blended with throwbacks to Lynne’s classical style, is instead perfectly tailored to its milieu, and thrilling besides.

I should say at this point that, no, I haven’t turned into a fan of the show itself, the one you can see at your community theater or license for your high school. I don’t believe musicals should need whisker consultants. But as happens occasionally, the right idea can transform the wrong material. If “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” has managed a Grizabella turn, reincarnating itself in fabulousness, do not expect an 18-year run or, pardon me, copycat productions. It’s a lightning strike: not now and forever but now and once.

(Honestly, I'd respect this guy more if he came out and said 'I'm taking money to pretend to review the new show but actually am just regurgitating 40 years of The Smart, Cultured Critics Hate CATS.')

[nerdlifeisbetterthanreallife]

#30DaysofPride: Day 20- A review of CATS: The Jellicle Ball

CATS: The Jellicle Ball was a 2 and a half hour party that you don't want to miss!! The cast is trans and a lot of the company is from the ballroom scene. 10/10 would definitely go again!!!

The company of Cats: “The Jellicle Ball” at Perelman Performing Arts Center Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman So I went to see CATS: The Jellicle Ball on Tuesday and it was such a treat for someone going to see the production for the first time without knowledge of the source material!! So, what did I think? It was a great way to celebrate pride month! So what did I like about this? View this…

[oldbaton]

By the way the new Cats set in the queer ballroom scene is at the brand new Perelman arts center at the World Trade Center which means when you leave Gay Cats you are immediately unloaded to the literal site of the twin towers. Mere feet from the tower site that black ridge is one of the towers. I am taking this picture from the stairs of the building. I just.

[uppastthejelliclemoon]

perelman casting has won everything this is actually all that matters to me rn

[seasoflife]

Perelman Performing Arts Center - NYC

Unknown

seasoflife

[youremyonlyhope]

Me: I don't like Cats the musical. You could not pay me to ever see it live.

Perelman Performing Arts Center: We're doing a version of Cats inspired by ballroom culture!

Me: Ok... that's definitely interesting... I could be into it... but NO still you can't make me want to see it.

PAC: Here's some rehearsal footage of the cast vogueing to Jellicle Ball!

Me: ...I hate that this actually is working... it fits a little too well...

PAC: Also André De Shields is playing Old Deuteronomy!

Me: ...Why must satan tempt me in this way...

[greaterstokesawareness]

My RECAP: Brian Stokes Mitchell at Perelman Performing Arts Center in NYC, October 5, 2023

Autumn in New York when it still feels like summer

It was so warm out on this early October day that I didn't even get to wear my Richard Gere pea coat trench, maybe next time. We spent a bunch of time wandering around St. Paul's Chapel and graveyard and visiting the September 11 memorial reflecting pools. The performing arts center is just across the street. This isn't a part of New York City that we've ever visited so we did a lot of exploring. Our next stop was the Tin Building and the Pier 17 waterfront area overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a really cool spot with lots of built-in outdoor seating and restaurants.

Not a library

The new Perelman Performing Arts Center is a big marble cube of a building with spaces that are designed to be flexible to accommodate all kinds of different performing arts needs. There's also a restaurant and lounge, an outdoor balcony and a giant staircase leading up. I work at Yale and it reminded me of the Beinecke Library because the there are no windows and the marble is designed so the light filters through. It was a pretty cool spot and I would love to see another show there sometime. You can read more about the building in this New York Times article (x).

Songs of Hope and Life

The show was Brian Stokes Mitchell accompanied by Ted Firth on piano and was titled Songs of Hope and Life. It lasted for a good two hours and Stokes did 18 songs including several that I personally hadn't heard him perform live before. You can find the setlist below. Highlights were pretty much all the songs I've never heard live before which were "Hope," "The Best Is Yet to Come," and "Being Alive." And I'll give a goofy honorable mention to "It's Not Easy Being Green" and "Hooray for Tom" mostly because of the surprise green spotlight which honestly cracked me up. When Stokes did "Odds on Favorite" and "Over the Moon" he was in full excitable-boy-mode. He literally sat at the piano and played an instrumental song from the E.T. soundtrack with Ted Firth playing his part standing up. I mean it was objectively adorable.

[side note: I was surprised to hear the Bruce Hornsby cover and it made me think that the Jackson Browne songs on my wishlist (x) might not be too far off the mark :)) Brian Stokes Mitchell "Sky Blue and Black" when?].

Twice in a lifetime opportunity?

Did I mention we were sitting in the front row center? Yeah, in a repeat of good fortune just like at the Town Hall show last April, we were lucky enough to sit in the front row. Which means we were lucky enough to witness the absolute artistry of Stokes singing "This Nearly Was Mine" with no microphone. I will never get tired of seeing him do this. What made this time especially cool was that he moved right up to the edge of the stage, right in front of us, to sing. Honestly, I was frozen in my seat, literally holding my breath at times. Like I can't properly explain how captivating it is to watch someone that talented and professional at their craft sing that close up and to be able to catch every mannerism, every dramatic choice, all of the breaths and swallows, all those small decisions during a performance. Just stunning. Here's audio of the song from that night (x), I know it can't truly capture the actual performance but you can get an idea of how cool it was to have Stokes basically sing this really special song right into your face.

Next up for us is Ridgefield, CT on October 29th. Super excited, can't wait to see Stokes sing again! You can find a link to his upcoming concert dates and other goodies in my pinned post (x).

Links: setlist.fm (x), event page on NYCPAC (x), Playbill article about Downtown Sessions series (x)

Set list:

Feeling Good

Hope (Jason Robert Reynolds song)

I, Don Quixote

The Best Is Yet to Come

Getting Married Today

Being Alive

Waters of March

Lush Life

This Nearly Was Mine (no microphone) (x)

A Wizard Every Day

It's Not Easy Being Green

Hooray for Tom (Bruce Hornsby song)

New Words

Make Them Hear You

The Impossible Dream

Odds on Favorite (Pete Seeger song)

Over the Moon [instrumental on piano with Ted Firth] (from E.T., John Williams)

Grateful

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

The Perelman Performing Arts Center, a glamorous $500 million project at ground zero, may yet turn the World Trade Center into a neighbourhood.

A floating, translucent marble cube, it nestles at the foot of One World Trade Center, just eight stories high, a runt in a herd of mega-tall commercial skyscrapers but impossible to miss. If you look closely, you may notice that the building's footprint is oriented at a slight angle to the skyscrapers around it. A serendipity of the underground engineering, the angle is a tad irreverent.

But at ground zero, irreverence is new and good. Perelman's success will depend on its public space and program of events to entice visitors to the World Trade Center.

New York Times Architecture Critic @michael_kimmelman discusses Lower Manhattan's new beacon. Read his full review of the new @pac_nyc and to see more from its opening night. Video by @globalgabrielgrey

#nytimes #ThePerelmanPerformingArtsCenter #groundzero #WorldTrade Center #NewYork #skyscrapers #LowerManhattan #Architecture engineering #Michael_kimmelman #marble #newbeacon #pac_nyc #globalgabrielgrey

[petnews2day]

Review: A 10th Life for Those Jellicle ‘Cats,’ Now on the Runway

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/news/pet-news/cat-news/review-a-10th-life-for-those-jellicle-cats-now-on-the-runway/?utm_source=TR&utm_medium=Tumblr+%230&utm_campaign=social

Review: A 10th Life for Those Jellicle ‘Cats,’ Now on the Runway

A D.J. pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere. That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway […]

See full article at https://petnews2day.com/news/pet-news/cat-news/review-a-10th-life-for-those-jellicle-cats-now-on-the-runway/?utm_source=TR&utm_medium=Tumblr+%230&utm_campaign=social #CatsNews