 |
| David Byrne at the Panorama Festival on Randall's Island on July 29, 2018 |
New York City’s live entertainment industry continues to
chart a new course for 2021. Innovation will be key to its success. Part of the
challenge is the ability to present safe events for reduced-capacity and socially-distant
audiences.
The massive Park Avenue Armory is hosting Social Distance Hall, a season of
commissioned works created by artists during and in response to the pandemic. A
dance performance entitled “Afterwardsness” was scheduled to open the season on
March 24 but was postponed several days ago after three members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Company tested positive for COVID-19. The series is now due to open on April 9
with “Social! The Social Distance Dance Club,” a dance party conceived in part
by David Byrne. The season will conclude with “Party in the Bardo,” a
collaboration by Laurie Anderson and Jason Moran utilizing guitars by Anderson’s
late husband, Lou Reed.
All events will be held in the armory’s 55,00-square-foot Wade
Thompson Drill Hall.
The Productions
“SOCIAL! The Social Distance Dance Club” (April 9-22) is a 55-minute interactive music and movement-based experience conceived by choreographer
Steven Hoggett, Tony Award-winning set designer Christine Jones, and musician
David Byrne, who has been socially-distant from his former band mates in the
Talking Heads for decades. The audience is invited to dance in their own
socially-distanced spotlights to a DJ set by Natasha Diggs and follow a
pre-recorded idiosyncratic instructional voice-over by Byrne with choreography
by Yasmine Lee. Limited to 100 ticketholders, each member will have a six-foot
diameter circle in which to dance and move, spaced out from surrounding circles
to provide proper social distancing at all times. "Moving free-form or in sync
with the spoken choreography, audience members take part in a communal moment
of cathartic release in an anxiety-ridden time," according to a press release. A teaser video featuring Byrne
dancing in his kilt is on the Park Avenue Armory’s YouTube
channel.
“Party in the Bardo” (dates TBA), is a collaboration between
jazz pianist, Oscar-nominated composer Jason Moran and
multi-Grammy Award-winning performance artist Laurie Anderson. Anderson and
Moran will perform each night, underpinned by the soundscape of “Lou Reed:
Drones,” a sonic installation utilizing guitars from Reed’s collection and
curated by Reed's former guitar technician Stewart Hurwood. Over a series of days
devoted to sonic meditations for the city of New York, Anderson and Moran will
invite multiple musicians each day to create their own layer of sound over the
Drones.
 |
| Laurie Anderson at the Tibet House US benefit at Carnegie Hall on February 26, 2020 |
Safety Protocols
Park Avenue Armory will enforce strict health and safety
protocols that include wearing masks at all times, point-to-point choreography
that ensures that artists, patrons, and staff are socially distanced at all
times, and contactless temperature checks and ticket scanning outside at the
door. The venue will have no points of gathering in the building or on the
sidewalk and no retail concessions or food and beverages sales. Rest room
use will be limited to one person at a time, with cleaning between each use. The
air will be refreshed three times pre-show and post-show. The promoters claim
that air volume inside the barrel-roofed venue will be comparable to being outdoors.
All tickets will be electronic/mobile-only and are available
for purchase at www.armoryonpark.org; no tickets will be sold onsite. By purchasing
a ticket, ticket buyers consent to being Rapid Tested for COVID-19 on site at
Park Avenue Armory. For entry to the venue, all audience members will be
required to respond to a COVID questionnaire and provide contact tracing
information.
Further information is available at www.armoryonpark.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment