#WTSTW: Cosmography @TheKitchen, Verdensteatret @dancetworkshop, Vieux Carré @thewoostergroup NYC

WHAT TO SEE THE WEEKEND IN NYC #WTSTW

Briggan Krauss with Raha Raissnia: Cosmography
The Kitchen
February 25–February 26, 2011 @ 8pm
Tickets/Info–>

This latest audio-visual project between long-time collaborators saxophonist, composer, and sound artist Briggan Krauss and abstract painter and film artist Raha Raissnia features all new music for Krauss’ stellar trio H-alpha (Ikue Mori on laptop, Jim Black on drums, and Krauss) plus an additional five-member ensemble conducted by Skuli Sverrisson. Best known as a member of the legendary group Sexmob, Krauss explores otherworldly sounds and sonic textures with composed passages as well as structured improvisation in this new work, and Raissnia creates an evocative vocabulary of shifting light forms through a new live cinema performance built from video, film, and slide projections.

Additional performers include: Brian Drye, trombone; Peter Evans, trumpet; Michel Gentile, flutes; Mike McGinnis, clarinet; Sarah Schoenbeck, bassoon; and Karen Waltuch, viola.

Verdensteatret’s And All the Question Marks Started to Sing
Dance Theater Workshop
Feb 24 – 26 at 7:30pm, Feb 27 at 5pm
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Norway based Verdensteatret returns to New York after their highly acclaimed Concert for Greenland (2005) and Louder (2008). And All the Question Marks Started to Sing stretches the boundaries of live performance. Situated in a tension between theater, visual art, robotics, and sound, this work demonstrates a deep fascination with all kinds of animation—a strange and somewhat miraculous activity of breathing life into dead objects, stiff figures and frozen images. A landscape of kinetic sculptures, literally “played” and manipulated by members of the company, creates a world in constant transformation.

And All the Question Marks Started to Sing is the inaugural event of FuturePerfect 2011, a new performance, art & technology initiative in New York City. Produced in partnership with leading national and international cultural institutions, FuturePerfect highlights new hybrid performance practices, media forms, and artistic ideas that emerge as digital technologies evolve and become ubiquitous in contemporary culture. futureperfectfestival.org. And All the Question Marks Started to Sing is also presented as part of PS122’s 30th Anniversary Season.

The Wooster Group’s version of Tennessee Williams’ VIEUX CARRÉ
Presented by the Baryshnikov Arts Center
Wednesday, February 2 through Sunday, March 13, 2011
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Like Williams’ first big success The Glass Menagerie, Vieux Carré (1977) is a “memory play,” set in the boarding house in New Orleans where Williams himself stayed as a young man during the Depression. The young writer, as narrator, remembers his artistic and sexual awakening there. Inhabitants of the house swirl up out of the writer’s mind as archetypal Williams characters, longing for release and haunted by thwarted dreams. In The Wooster Group’s version of Vieux Carré, the Group experiments with new modes of expression for Williams’ lyric voice.