BEYOND THE VEIL
Two exhibits highlight Muslim lives in Brooklyn
Opera about the Constitution returns to Bklyn
COURIER L 38 IFE, SEPT. 13-19, 2019
Fitting the Bill
By Bill Roundy We’ve got it covered!
When audience
members flip
through their programs before
taking in “Swan Lake” at
the Brooklyn Academy of
Music this fall, they will be
reading a publication from this
newspaper! Schneps Media, our
parent company, will produce
the covers, exterior pages, and
ads for this year’s BAMBills,
the program guides distributed
to audiences of theater, dance,
and music performances at each
of the Academy’s three venues.
The partnership between
Schneps and the Brooklyn
Academy of Music will be
win-win, said the arts group’s
director of communications.
“Schneps Media reaches
so many New Yorkers through
vital local publications.
They’re an important part of
our media landscape and we’re
delighted to work with them on
the creation of BAMbill, our
house program,” said Sandy
Sawotka. “It’s also wonderful
to have a revered Brooklynbased
company partner with our
iconic Brooklyn institution.”
Working with Schneps will
offer new flexibility: each
show will receive a program
with a custom cover, so those
who want to share the show
on Instagram can simply snap
the cover. In previous years, a
single cover had information for
all shows happening that month.
The Brooklyn arts institution
will continue to provide
BAMBill’s interior pages, with
cast lists, director’s notes, and
information about upcoming
shows, while Schneps will
handle the outside pages and
coordinate advertising with
local businesses looking for artloving
audiences.
The new BAMBills will
launch on Oct. 15, when the
2019 Next Wave Festival opens
with a new dance production of
“Swan Lake,” a re-imagining
of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece
as a tale of young girls abused
by a priest, who turns them
into swans to silence them. The
show, presented in association
Fitting the Irish Arts Center,
uses a score of traditional Irish
and Nordic score.
Running concurrently
with that dance show will be
a 24-hour performance titled
“The Second Woman,” running
from Oct. 18 to 19; a feat of
creative endurance in which
an actress performs the same
short scene 100 times, each time
partnered with a different male
actor. The audience will be free
to come and go throughout the
24 show.
Other highlights from
the upcoming season
include “Hamnet,” a show
inspired by death of William
Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son
in 1596, featuring a young actor
playing both a contemporary
tween and the 16th-century
youngster; “User Not Found,”
an immersive show about
technology that will take place
at the Grape Green Annex
coffee shop in Fort Greene;
and “Bacchae: Prelude to
a Purge” a dance-and-music
show about madness, starring
a cast of eight dancers and five
trumpeters, among others.
A star-spangled song
By Chandler Kidd Let freedom sing!
A Cobble Hill opera
company will hold a
constitutional concert next week,
singing the text of our country’s
founding document. The Vertical
Player Repertory presented “The
Constitution: A Secular Oratorio,”
earlier this summer, and the strong
response to the show caused the
company to bring it back for four
more shows, starting on Constitution
Day, Sept. 17. The performance
offers a fresh, memorable way for
people to experience the words
of the Founding Fathers, said the
company’s artistic director.
“I feel that people should know
what is in the Constitution. Singing
is a wonderful way to learn it and to
experience it — if you are listening
to the words as music it is easier to
assimilate somehow,” said Judith
Barnes.
The show features the
Constitution’s Preamble, Articles
One through Seven, and severable
singable amendments, though it
skips over some of the legalistic
language that could be confusing or
difficult for people to sing, she said.
The show’s composer, Benjamin
Yarmolinsky, set the words to an
eclectic array of musical styles,
including popular, classical, and
Baroque tunes, according to soloist
Blake Burroughs. The music
is performed by a chorus of 23
singers, accompanied by a piano.
Using a piano as the sole instrument
allows for an intimacy that would
not be possible with a full orchestra,
said Burroughs.
“The Constitution: A Secular
Oratorio” at Behind the Door
(219 Court St. between Wyckoff
and Warren streets in Cobble Hill,
www.vpropera.org). Sept. 17 at 8
p.m., Sept. 24, 26, and 28 at 8 p.m.
$35–$65.
WBy Rose Adams e’re doubling down on
Islamic art!
A pair of Brooklyn
galleries are shedding light on
the experience of the borough’s
Muslim residents through
sculptures, prints, projections,
and multimedia exhibits. The
twin display of work by Muslim
artists marks a milestone for Kings
County, according to one curator.
“There really hasn’t been
a show of Muslim artists in
Brooklyn,” said Elizabeth Ferrer,
who organized a 35-piece exhibit
for Fort Greene arts group Bric.
The two shows, at the
Bric House and the Brooklyn
Historical Society in Brooklyn
Heights, expand on the Society’s
oral history project “Muslims
in Brooklyn,” which launched
in December of 2018. The new
show at the Historical Society
consists of a single installation,
titled “An Opening,” which pairs
recordings of those oral histories
with large prints that collage
barely legible words and blackedout
sentences into black-andwhite
shapes. The images reflect
the sounds and occasional gaps
in communication found in the
recordings, which visitors can hear
through headphones, according to
the artist.
“I wanted the sounds of people
thinking,” said Kameelah Janan
Rasheed. “I kept coming back to
this idea of tuning, of coming in
and out of these stories.”
Meanwhile, the Bric exhibit
“Beyond Geographies,” opening
on Sept. 13, will offer a splash
of color, with sculptures, video
projections, and photography that
bring to life the experiences of its
eight Muslim artists.
In one room-sized installation,
Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari
projects images of jinn, spiritual
beings from Islamic mythology,
on the wall behind a statue of
a woman with tentacles and
exaggerated features, as a way of
making a feminist statement, said
the show’s curator.
“She takes one jinn that she
refigures as a feminist figure,” said
Ferrer. “It’s a way of taking agency.”
The exhibit also includes
deconstructed Persian rugs,
colorful paper boats, and photos
that communicate the complex
identities of Muslims in America.
The wide variety of art reflects
contemporary style, rather than
using Arabic script, patterend tiles,
and veils associated with older,
Middle Eastern iconography, said
Ferrer.
“Brooklyn is such a center
of contemporary creation, so I
wanted to include artists using
contemporary subject matter,” she
said. “There’s no one monolithic
Muslim identity.”
“An Opening” at Brooklyn
Historical Society 128 Pierrepont
St. at Clinton and Henry streets in
Brooklyn Heights. (718) 222–4111.
www.brooklynhistory.org. Open
Wed–Sun, noon–5 p.m. $10.
“Beyond Geographies” at Bric
House 647 Fulton St. at Rockland
Places in Fort Greene, (718) 855–
7882, www.bricartsmedia.org.
Open through mid-November; Tue–
Fri, 11 a.m.–7 p.m,; Sat and Sun, 11
a.m.–5 p.m. Free.
Schneps Media to print
BAM program guides
Arabian sights: Mona Saeed Kamal’s installation, “1001 Migrations,” at Bric’s
“Beyond Geographies” exhibit, features 1,001 paper boats to represent the
movement of people across borders.
American anthem: Soloist Byron
Singleton performs at a previous
production of “The Constitution.”
Joseph Henry Ritter
Spread her wings: A new production of “Swan Lake,” coming to BAM
on Oct. 15, will be the first show with a program printed by
Schneps Media. Marie Laure Briane
/www.vpropera.org)
/www.brooklynhistory.org.
/www.bricartsmedia.org
/www.vpropera.org
/www.brooklynhistory.org
/www.bricartsmedia.org