Stage Write: March 2008 Archives

The Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center just launched a new exhibition, "New York Story: Jerome Robbins and his World." Since his death a decade ago, the resourceful choreographer-director has spawned at least three biographies, but a gallery show is a different animal. Full of photographs, window cards, costumes, correspondence, and of course film and video, the show, curated by dance scholar Lynn Garafola, integrates both time- and space-based art, sometimes all at once.

I'd ruminate more on the show, but I've just been derailed by the news that Deborah Jowitt, one of Robbins's biographers and my long-time colleague at The Village Voice, has just been fired from her job as chief dance critic there, after 40 years.

Multi-taskers will be fascinated by a wall of six video monitors, each playing kinescopes of television appearances by Robbins and the various ensembles for which he made dances. Banks of seats each have a padded headset and a control panel with six buttons; you can flip back and forth, concentrating on one sound track at a time, though all six videos are always in view. 

The picture, is, of course, Costas's shot of Jerry Robbins, taking a curtain call at the New York State Theater. The show runs through June 28 in the Library's Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza in Manhattan; for hours and other info, call 212-592-7730, or visit www.nypl.org.

In this era of ecological consciousness, there's one endangered resource we hear little about. It is especially important to those of us who make our living in the arts. That resource is time.

Technology enables us to sample the wisdom of the whole world, and of the ages, in the calm of our own homes, but so far no one has managed to give us more than 24 hours a day in which to do it. Video renditions of live performances tend to feel "too long," and revivals or reconstructions of dances from 50 years ago strike us, now, as "too slow."

In this blog I plan to approach various artifacts of time-based art, from the emerging to the classic, from the wordless to the text-based. I'll consider whether these productions are "worth our time," given the plethora of offerings laid out for our pleasure at every hour.

Going to the theater, even going to church, used to be "occasions" for people, a chance to open themselves to stimulation and new ideas.  When my former spouse lost his day job, a long time ago, I got into the reviewing business both to shore up our income and to guarantee a steady flow of free tickets to dance performances, plays, movies--the events that made living in a small Canadian city bearable.

Decades later I'm still in the business, as much out of habit as for any other reason. But the competition for my time--even though I've lost my day job, and now set my own schedule--has grown desperate. I outsource housekeeping and most cooking, but my daily 24 hours now need to include substantial time to exercise, read two newspapers, several magazines and much of the cream delivered by ArtsJournal, open and vet the e- and snail mail that clogs both my virtual and real mailboxes, meet the deadlines set by my various freelance clients, go to a show almost daily and sometimes two. I make time to see friends, usually by taking them to work with me and sharing a meal before or after. I keep up with an online community I joined in 1993; my compatriots there are like a cousins' club of cherished relatives I rarely have time to visit.

But.  It has been weeks since I read a book. The piles of books I really want to read, for pleasure and edification, have grown to towering heights beside my bed.