By Bill Roundy It’s the ’wave of the future!
A Brooklyn dance education
group will throw a block party this
weekend to celebrate its new home
in Gowanus! Dancewave will launch
its new spot at the corner of Fourth
Avenue and Degraw Street with a Grand
Opening party on June 8 designed to
introduce the group to the neighborhood,
according the group’s artistic
director.
“We are opening our doors to the
community, and we want to be as inclusive
as possible,” said Diane Jacobowitz.
“We want everyone to celebrate.”
The Saturday party will last from
noon until 4 p.m, and will be led by
master of ceremonies Chuck Chillout,
a hip-hop disc jockey with radio station
WBLS. Degraw Street will be closed to
traffic, and the roadway will host free
classes in modern, salsa, and African
dance, along with performances from
the Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy and
from Dancewave students.
Inside the Dancewave Center will be
tours, family-friendly games, and activities,
followed by a performance from
several Dancewave companies at 5 pm.
Tickets for the show are just $10.
The group used a small dance studio
at Fourth Avenue and Dean Street for
the last 11 years, said Jacobowitz, but
the new location more than triples its
space. The new Dancewave Center has
two large studio rooms, which can be
combined into a 100-seat performance
venue — a first for the organization,
which previously rented other venues
for its recitals.
The new space will also allow for
more, larger classes, especially for adult
learners. The area already offers several
venues for grown-ups looking for healthy
activities, including Brooklyn Boulders
and a Crossfit gym, said Jacobowitz, so
the dance studio will fit right it.
“It’s a heavy fitness block, so we’re
going to bring more adult classes to this
area,” she said. “It’s not just fitness —
dancing is joy — but we’re really going
to be expanding the adult programs.”
The new venue will also allow
Dancewave to hold events that go
beyond dance, she said.
“We want it to be more than a dance
center — we want it to be a community
center,” she said. “We want to open it
to poetry readings, and have art shows,
and all kinds of different events.”
The journey towards the new space
took almost 11 years, said Jacobowitz,
COURIER L 56 IFE, JUNE 7-13, 2019 24-7
and required a $5.2 million campaign to
renovate the former factory into a stateof
the-art studio and venue, accomplished
with help from the Borough
President’s Office, the New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs, and
many local supporters. Raising the cash
and dealing with bureaucracy required a
lot of work, she said.
“It’s a story of patience, perseverance,
and passion — and dealing with
the city,” said the dance director. “This
is a story of triumph.”
Dancewave Grand Opening street
party 182 Fourth Ave. at Degraw
Street in Gowanus, (718) 522–4696,
www.dancewave.org). June 8; noon–4
pm. Free.
Dancewave Student and Friends
Showcase: June 8 at 5 pm. $10.
by Bill Roundy Look, it’s been a stressful week,
so we’re just going to kick back
this weekend and open
a few beers.
In fact, let’s start
by taking a summer
Friday and leaving
work early! Cruise
down to the People’s
Playground and start
your day-drinking
at the Coney Island
Brewery (1904 Surf Ave.
at W. 17th Street in Coney
Island, www.coneyislandbeer.com),
which will launch its brand-new India
Pale Ale “Call Your Mother” at 2 p.m.
today. The brew’s name is not just
good advice — it references a song
by progressive rock band Coheed and
Cambria, which offered its own advice
on flavor and hop styles to the professional
beer makers. Band members will
be at the launch party, and then will
wander to the Ford Amphitheater at
Coney Island (3052 W. 21st St. at the
Boardwalk, www.fordamphitheaterconeyisland.
com) to
kick off the summer season
that night at 7 p.m.
The band will play with
Mastodon and opening
act Every Time I Die.
On Saturday afternoon,
enjoy a brunch of
bacon dishes and breakfast
beers! You can find
plenty of both at the Bacon and
Beer Classic, happening at Brooklyn
Mirage (140 Stewart Ave. at Meserole
Street in Bushwick, www.baconandbeerclassic.
com) at 1 p.m. and — for those
who rise late — at 7 p.m. The outdoor
festival will feature more than 50 local
restaurants competing to serve the best
bacon-inspired dishes, including bacontopped
mac & cheese, pork banh mi, or
just giant slabs of bacon, and you can
enjoy unlimited samples of each, and
then wash it down with free pours of 100
craft beers from breweries along the East
Coast (including the aforementioned
Coney Island Brewery). General admission
tickets are $69 (nice), but you can
get in an hour early with $95 early entry
or $119 VIP tickets. The festival will also
feature musical acts, games, and a baconeating
contest for a chance to win a year’s
supply of the stuff.
On Sunday, you can settle in with
some hair of the dog at an endangered
Brooklyn watering hole. Beloved dive
bar Hank’s Saloon (345 Adams St. near
Willoughby Street Downtown, www.
hcfoodpark.com/hanks) dodged death
once before when its Atlantic Avenue
spot was demolished, but its new location
is also changing hands soon, so it
will close on June 14. Stop by any time
between 4 p.m. and midnight to say
goodbye.
Theater people: Director Nicolas Norena, right, and playwright
Timothy Scott of the Million Underscores, will bring their take
on One Thousand and One Nights, titled “1001Sur,” to Target
Margin Theater on June 13. The Million Underscores
Scheherazde
goes south
By Colin Mixson They are bringing the Nights to Sunset.
A Sunset Park theater will take the classic
tales of the Arabian Nights out of the Old World
and into the New, with a new show opening at Target
Margin Theater on June 13. The production, titled
“1001Sur,” explores the timeless tales of the Middle
East through the lens of a South American bordello,
transporting audiences to the lands of ancient Persia
through the magic of Latin cabaret, according to its
director.
“There’s some cabaret-style numbers, songs from
South America that have some relationship to the stories,”
said Nicolas Norena, of the Million Underscores
company.
The tales of the “One Thousand and One Arabian
Nights” is traditionally told through the framing
device of a woman named Scheherazade, as she seeks
to placate her murderous husband, the Sultan, with
1,001 exotic spiels that end on a cliffhanger each
night, thereby persuading the great king to spare the
girl’s life and allow her to finish the evening’s yarn
another day.
Norena’s adaptation does not do away with that
story-within-a-story structure — instead, it adds the
bordello as an additional narrative layer, one that
features an Argentinian poet relating the story of
Scheherazade, who in turn describes the stories of
Arabian Nights to her cruel hubby. The resulting triple
narrative sees each story injected with the culture of
the other, as the poet’s Latin influence bleeds into the
tale of the sultan’s wife, who may in turn be telling stories
of far-off India, Syria, or even China, according to
Norena, who said that the structure of the play reflects
how the stories of Arabian Nights have traveled the
globe from one people to the next.
“These stories were basically started in China, and
were later told in India, then in Persia, and Syria and
Egypt,” he said. “The story of the Arabian Nights has
always been a story of the exotic, of people telling
stories that don’t belong to them.”
“1001Sur” is part of a three-week performance
festival called “News of the Strange Lab,” produced
by Target Margin Theater, featuring several theatrical,
dance, and musical acts from June 6–23.
Reimagine the 1,001 Nights at Target Margin Theater
232 52nd St. between Second and Third avenues in
Sunset Park, (718) 398–3095, www.targetmargin.org.
June 13–16 at 8 pm. $20.
DANCE IN THE STREETS
Gowanus block party welcomes Dancewave
New play puts Latin
Space is the place: The new Dancewave Center will soon be used as a performance space, spin on 1,001 Nights
complete with theatrical lighting, said artistic director Diane Jacobowitz. Trey Pentecost
Bklyn indulges in some day-drinking!
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