BerkshireWeekend Cultural Preview, Jan 19-22, 2017

A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshire region, including a sneak peek at cutting-edge performance art; a musical biography of jazz enigma Billy Tipton; an Elvis Presley birthday salute; and a whole lot more.

 

 

 

Richard Move (photo Patrick McMullan)

NEW WORK by RICHARD MOVE GETS SNEAK PEEK at MASS MoCA

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Choreographer and multimedia performance artist Richard Move will stage a one-night-only work-in-progress showing of “XXYY” in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA on Friday, January 20 at 8pm. The new collaboration, exploring the multiplicities of the gender spectrum while deconstructing the conventional binaries of male and female, is conceived and directed by Move, with an original sound score by electronic music pioneer Martux_m and costumes by theatre artist Alba Clemente. The work-in-progress showing culminates a two-week residency at MASS MoCA in collaboration with Jacob’s Pillow Dance.

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Gabriella Rhodeen (photo Marina McClure) 

‘LEISURE & LUST,’ SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE INSPIRED by EDITH WHARTON, at THE MOUNT

(LENOX, Mass.) – “Leisure & Lust,” a unique, immersive site-specific theater experience written by Sara Farrington and inspired by Edith Wharton’s life, love affair, marriage, and writing style, receives a limited run at The Mount from Friday, January 27 through Saturday, January 28.

Opening night is Friday, January 27, with a special performance in The Mount’s drawing room, followed by a talkback and reception with Farrington, director Marina McClure, and the cast. Additional performances will take place on Saturday, January 28, at 11am, 2pm, and 5pm. Each of Saturday’s performances will be presented in Wharton’s Boudoir and Bedroom. Tickets may be purchased at The Mount or by calling 413-551-5100. The Mount is located at 2 Plunkett Street in Lenox.

“Leisure & Lust” is a theatrical and psychological journey through the ravages of poverty and the oppressions of affluence in New York City in 1907. It is the story of Grace Hunter, a brilliant woman with an insatiable hunger for romance, and her tortured husband Harry, a closeted man rapidly losing his grip on reality.

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Nellie McKay

NELLIE MCKAY BRINGS ECLECTIC CABARET-ROCK to HELSINKI HUDSON

(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Cabaret-rock singer-songwriter Nellie McKay brings her uniquely eccentric blend of pop, rock, jazz and hip-hop to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, January 22, at 8pm. This time out, McKay will be featuring songs from her musical biography, “A Girl Named Bill: The Life and Times of Billy Tipton,” a mid-20th century jazz musician and bandleader who lived his adult life as a man, although he was assigned female at birth. “A Girl Named Bill” was named one of the Best Concerts of 2014 by the New York Times.

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Peter Dunning (photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures)

TONY STONE’S ‘PETER and the FARM’ GETS FREE SCREENING, TALKBACK, at MILLERTON’S MOVIEHOUSE

(MILLERTON, N.Y.) – “Peter and the Farm,” a full-length documentary by Tony Stone, about the irascible loner, Peter Dunning, will be screened at the Moviehouse on Sunday, January 22, at 11am. The event is free, and the filmmaker will be in attendance to lead a post-screening discussion and Q&A.

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Mark Gamsjager and the Lustre Kings

LUSTRE KINGS to LEAD BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE to ‘THE KING’ at HELSINKI HUDSON

(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Club Helsinki Hudson’s annual Elvis Birthday Bash, featuring the Lustre Kings plus other special guests, will take place on Saturday, January 21, at 9pm, just one week after what would have been Elvis Presley’s 82nd birthday. Elvis Presley’s impact on all music that came after him is impossible to tally. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, U2 – they’re all impossible to imagine without Elvis having paved the way. (For proof look no further than U2’s song, “Elvis Ate America.”) For several decades, the Capital District-based Mark Gamsjager and the Lustre Kings have been keeping the sound of early rockabilly alive, both in the region and across the U.S. and around the world. They bring an immediacy to the joyful music with a dark underbelly that has compelled performers like Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly, as well as Bill Kirchen, Eddie Angel and Robert Gordon, to draft them into the service of rock ‘n’ roll revivalism.

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Hashimoto, Young Girl

JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS on VIEW at THE CLARK

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – More than a century of Japanese printing traditions, represented by seventy-three color woodblock prints, will be presented in the Clark Art Institute exhibition Japanese Impressions: Color Woodblock Prints from the Rodbell Family Collection.

The exhibition explores the complex and changing relationship among artists, woodblock cutters, and publishers from the ukiyo-e (scenes from the floating world) tradition of the mid-19th century, the shin-hanga (new print) movement of the 1920s and 1930s, and the s?saku-hanga (creative print) movement that began in the 1950s. Japanese Impressions is on view through April 2, 2017.

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NICK CAVE’S SITE-SPECIFIC ‘UNTIL’ TAKES OVER MASS MoCA

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — Nick Cave, the artist known for his wearable sculptures called Soundsuits, turns expectations inside out at MASS MoCA in “Until,” a massive immersive installation. Cave uses MASS MoCA’s signature football field-sized space to create his largest and most overtly political installation to date, made up of thousands of found objects, a rich sensory tapestry. The sheer volume of material that has been gathered is astounding — 16,000 wind spinners; millions of plastic pony beads; thousands of ceramic birds, fruits, and animals; 13 gilded pigs; more than 10 miles of crystals; 24 chandeliers; 1 crocodile; and 17 cast-iron lawn jockeys.

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NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM SALUTES SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON TEAM HANNA-BARBERA 

(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – “Hanna-Barbera: The Architects of Saturday Morning” features the work of the creative team behind such memorable Saturday morning cartoons as “The Yogi Bear Show,” “The Flintstones,” and the “The Jetsons,” on view at Norman Rockwell Museum through May 29, 2017.

Before the rise of basic cable, Saturday mornings for many children in America were spent watching cartoons on one of three available television channels. From 1958 through the 1980s, a majority of those cartoons bore the imprint of Hanna-Barbera. Creating scores of popular series such as The Yogi Bear Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, and Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera was an animation powerhouse and its bountiful creativity is beloved to this day.

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