Nov 5, 2014

Obie-award winning director and playwright Richard Maxwell will present a new work this spring at The Kitchen. Maxwell and The New York City players have previously shown The End of Reality (2006) and Natural Hero (2012) at The Kitchen (for the company’s full production history please visit http://www.nycplayers.org). While anticipating Maxwell’s new work, we took a moment to look back at past critical reception of his works and saw themes that are particularly resonant with recent current events. In fact, one wonders, when looking at historical reviews from The Kitchen Archive, whether the artist’s productions—who is often described as taking up the banality of Americana, given his writing’s stinted language and his staging’s minimalist violence which appears more like contact improv... Read On

Oct 14, 2014

As part of our continuing effort to highlight artists' perspectives on The Kitchen program, we regularly invite artists, choreographers, musicians, and others to pen columns for our online blog. This week, musician and composer Jamie Stewart—whose "Metal" is currently on view through Saturday, October 18—inaugurates our occasional series of haikus by artists presenting work under the organization's banner. here are some gloomy haikus paint "LIFE" on the wall become homeless and then piss where you would have slept -- the mask of the dead not indistinguishable from Aladdin's lamp -- weep up in the sky for you almost don't exist moon like a bullet —Jamie Stewart     photo by Paula Court Read On

Sep 24, 2014

As the presentation of Trajal Harrell’s Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (curated by Matthew Lyons) came to a close last week, director and chief curator Tim Griffin spoke with the artist. Tim Griffin: What was the genesis of the series? Or better, what prompted your question, “What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing ballroom scene had come downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns?” Trajal Harrell: Around 2007 or 2008, my work started to be shown internationally, and I realized that no one abroad understood where the work was coming from. Although Judson had become well known in European contemporary dance, they weren’t familiar with the voguing tradition. And they certainly hadn’t seen how my own research on these things ha... Read On

Sep 6, 2014

On September 8 Claudia La Rocco will read from her new book The Best Most Useless Dress, a collection of essays, poetry and criticism published by Badlands Unlimited. La Rocco spoke with Curatorial Fellow Katy Dammers about the creation of this collection and her thoughts on writing. Katy Dammers: How did this book project get started? Claudia La Rocco: Several years ago, Paul Chan emailed me and said he had been a fan of my writing and he wondered if I was willing to have a conversation with him for the Brooklyn Rail. This was during the time of the ebook release of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: A Field Guide. I went to his studio and we ended up talking for four hours. We talked for so long I totally forgot I was on deadline for a New York Times piece, which I never do (I had... Read On

Aug 12, 2014

A copy of the SoHo Weekly News from 1980 shows a grainy image from Dance Day at The Kitchen: in the shadowy space of The Kitchen’s old home at 484 Broome Street, two women dance in close proximity, facing away from each other. One runs behind with clasped hands raised overhead and the other winds down to her left as if she might reach the ground in the next scene, perhaps snaking out to grab her partner. The caption reads, “Molissa Fenley and Elizabeth Streb: Boca Raton.” For those familiar with Elizabeth Streb’s Extreme Action Company of fearless and indefatigable flying dancers, or Molissa Fenley’s sinister, impassioned State of Darkness (1988), this image is like a childhood photo—a reminder of how far someone has come—epitomizing the significance of The Kitchen’s role in the early c... Read On