Merce Cunningham: 1919-2009

UPDATES:

Here’s a piece I wrote for The New York Press.

L. Ro. has a post up at WNYC.

According to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company website, the studio will be accepting visitors until 9:00pm tonight.

Also, Merce’s obit by Alastair Macaulay in The Times.

TONIGHT @ The Delancey

In light of Claudia La Rocco’s insightful piece on the negative impact capital campaigns and anchoring real estate ventures can have on the missions of small arts organizations, it’s probably more important than ever for us all to start giving money to venues like Dixon Place to support actual programming!

Plus, this party, colorfully titled “PUSSY FAGGOT” (here’s some fab background in the Village Voice) is bound to be epic, with the fiercest queer performers coming out of the woodwork to celebrate Dax and his return to the HOT! Festival. Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman are slated to be there, along with a host of other transient downtown artists.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION ALERT: My very own Collective Opera Company will be doing an opera intervention/interactive performance of two excerpts from our upcoming project, SCARLET FEVER, an opera transposition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s iconic (and hilarious) novel, The Scarlet Letter!

Come out and support some hot Hot HOT performers while raising cash for ye old Dixon Place.

It’s here. It’s queer…That pretty much sums it up.

MONDAY, APRIL 6, ’09
Earl Dax Birthday Party + HOT! Festival Money Maker =

“PUSSY FAGGOT”

9PM-4AM

The Delancey Lounge
168 Delancey (between Clinton & Attorney)
Advance Tickets $16-ish with code “hotfest (must purchase in advance!)
Regular Advance Tickets $18 / $25 at the door.

Click through for fierce elaboration from Dax on what, exactly, “Pussy Faggot” is…

(From Earl Dax)

Ever have one of those experiences where you’re sitting alone in your room – perhaps you’ve smoked a joint or you’re high on endorphins after a workout or you’re on day three of the master cleanse – and you come up with an idea that amuses you to no end? “Frigging hilarious!” you think to yourself. Time goes by; the moment passes; and that’s the end of it. Then there are times where you take that amusing (possibly absurd) idea and run with it! If you’re Dynasty Handbag the results can be ingenious. In the case of my arrestingly titled birthday celebration-slash-HOT! Festival benefit party, the outcome thus far has been decidedly mixed.

As I question why PUSSY FAGGOT made it beyond the confines of my room and my own perverse mind, I realize that, like many of the performers whose work resonates with me most strongly, I was motivated by a desire to speak an uncomfortable truth. With Dixon Place unavailable as a venue for the benefit party, Dana, the manager of The Delancey Lounge, graciously offered to make that venue available. I have scarcely set foot in the place since the untimely demise of Unisex Salon, a performance-driven nightlife event I co-produced there a couple of years ago. Bittersweet memories of that party and that time were unavoidable – both for me and (presumably) for many of the performers I would invite to perform. I viewed taking the epithet that had been hurled at me on my last night as a co-producer of Unisex as a cheeky act that robbed the term of its power to injure or wound. Like Kiki and Herb’s relationship to the word “retard,” I thought, “PUSSY FAGGOT, I own that term!”

I actually invited the co-producer of Unisex to be involved with the benefit via email. When I didn’t hear back from him, I sent a message via Facebook which read in part:

“of course this is the first thing i’ve done [at the delancey] since unisex, so i can’t help waxing nostalgic. i don’t know how good humored you are about the whole thing, but i think it would be great if you wanted to be the host or something. you hosted my very 1st bday in nyc at happy endings, so it seems fitting on a number of levels.”

I never heard back, so I presumed he was uninterested or unavailable. After fielding a phone call from the editor of the Village Voice who was investigating claims of libel in conjunction with the PUSSY FAGGOT VOICE Choice; receiving a cancellation from Modern Gypsies; and being told I have to pay for another security guard after the management at The Delancey had to field a enraged phone call, it’s clear that my former collaborator doesn’t share my sense of humor about the past. Though I hardly see how publicly recounting my debasement while curled on the floor in a fetal position is – as he asserts – humiliating to him. (I feel a strain of Leslie Gore coming on: “It’s my party, and I’ll be a pussy faggot if I want to!”)

My intent was merely to reconvene many of the people who made Unisex Salon such a remarkable scene for a brief time, and pimp my birthday to raise much-needed cash for the 18th Annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival. I presumed that whatever wounds there were from those days had healed, and enough time had transpired that we could look back and laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Then again, humor has always be a coping mechanism for me. I do apologize to anyone who might not share my perspective and has taken offense or otherwise been upset. (I know. I’m a total pussy faggot for saying sorry! Only sissies say they’re sorry, right?)

;*)

ANYWAY, the course has been set, and the party will go on. Thank goodness there will be 2 for 1 drinks from 9:00 – 10:00 because I will need to fortify my nerves! However, the evening’s true balm is the eye-popping line up of talent. I am truly humbled that so many people volunteered without hesitation to bring their artistry to the evening. I never ask for birthday presents (I usually revert to the cheese-o-rific “Your presence is a present.), but this year i’m asking you to buy a ticket to this jam-packed evening of entertainment in support of the 18th Annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival. The Delancey is giving us 100% of the door, so your contribution goes straight to supporting the festival. While it is a benefit, I also want it to be accessible, so if you purchase in advance with the code hotfest you’ll save $10 off the $25 price of admission at the door!

It’s a ridiculous bargain, folks. Confirmed talent includes such legendary performers as Justin Bond, Kenny Mellman and Sherry Vine. Emmy-winning composer and performer Lance Horne takes a break from his busy schedule to stop by. Meanwhile singer songwriters Scott Matthew, Jennifer O’Connor and Clint Michigan’s Clint Asay and Amy Bezunartea provide beautifully written songs, each with their uniquely compelling vocal styles. Oh, and the delightful Rosateresa Castro-Vargas emerges from the subway to enchant you with her operatic voice and warm, angelic demeanor.
West Coast flavor comes courtesy of San Francisco chanteuse Veronica Klaus and the swingin’ Terese Genecco. Original Cockette Rumi makes a special appearance with DVD copies of Elevator Girls in Bondage for sale, and recent SF-transplant Ali Wong will have you pooping youself with laughter. (Marga Gomez insists she’s bound for comedy stardom!) Recent Portland émigrés Lee Kyle and Ferro (together they’re 2/3rds of The Gender Fluids) underscore the ‘hot’ in HOT! Festival with physical and provocative performances.

You’ll also catch performances by Chris Rael and Dan Fishback in advance of their upcoming Dixon Place shows Araby and You Will Experience Silence. Later in the night Adira Amram and the Experience blow it out with a full-band set while smokin’ new trannies on the scene She-Dick tear it up so that “Philadelphia’s drag pariah,” Needles Jones, can tear it all down!

Finally, there’s a a rabble rousing crew from the days of Unisex Salon including Epiphany, Trina Rose, Joseph Keckler and the return of “NYC’s Hottest Fat GoGo” Glenn Marla! And through it all DJs MondoLucien and Amber Martin keep you dancing!

If you have made it this far, you are committed. (And should be!) But since I’m probably now speaking to about, oh, 7 of you, I’ll just ask that you help me get the word out about this event. It’s actually kind of a bummer to throw a big benefit party on your birthday when your job is throwing big events and shows year-round. I’m not complaining mind you. Well, okay, maybe i’m kvetching just a little. But if you can help me get people out for this, that would be the best birthday present EVER! Seriously.

Thank you in advance for your support!

~Earl

(p.s. Thanks to www.eastvillageboys.com for providing the design for our limited edition PUSSY FAGGOT tote bags and to J. Morrison for silkscreening them. If the response on Facebook is any indication, they won’t be around for long!)

Right now, there’s a pretty raging debate over the use of animals in performance over at L. Ro.’s Performance Club. C.C. is like “umm, dogs can’t consent to making art,” and others are like, “well, he’s having fun, so chill the fuck out!”

People are also commenting about other aspects of National Theater of the U.S.A.’s latest offering at P.S.122.

Also, here’s a little lag-time for you.

After C.C. posted this piece of arts news gossip here, and this one here, The Times decided to cast the official seal of approval on these days later.

Here’s Dan Wakin’s take on the Brooklyn Philharmonic “belt tightening.”

And Roslyn Sulcas confirms our blind item about 3 dancers being “fired” from a major NYC modern dance company, which turns out to be Merce Cunningham.

I guess when The Times reports on something stat, it’s breaking news. But when they drag their heels it’s responsible journalism.

I don’t know what’s going on with the folks over at WNYC. They just can’t seem to figure out how to solve a problem like La Rocco (Claudia La Rocco, that is…)

Does everyone remember the good old days when L. Ro. had her own blog, and it was like a huge success?!

And then remember when they took her blog away for no reason and folded her posts into the creepy Art.Cult thing, which we settled for, even though we pretty much had to skim past the other bloggers (maybe except for Nathan Lee’s film posts). Then there was that aborted attempt at a “live-chat” that lasted all of fifteen minutes. And then L. Ro. started the fiercest Performance Club, which is totally galvanizing a community of performance goers to see shit and then actually talk about it afterward?

And then, last week, they mysteriously started listing all of L. Ro.’s posts under “Performance Club,” even if the post had nothing to do with Performance Club?

Well now…they’ve created some new “Performance” page, under which they’re filing all of L. Ro.’s posts along with some other random radio interviews and such.

I just don’t get it. All the people want is their L. Ro., straight up, unfiltered, with the pulp, and without any fuss.

Don’t make me hate WNYC. I love WNYC. We all do. I was even listening to the Takemitsu/Adams double header last night on the radio. It was awesome, and I don’t even like Adams.

But please, please, please: For god’s sake, just give Claudia La Rocco her own god damned blog. She deserves it, and her people need it.