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One of the great pleasures of going to clubs in the nineteen-eighties and nineties — back when now defunct venues like the Clit Club and the Pyramid Club and Jackie 60 had live performance — was what you could find on a night out. Aside from a temporary love, or a new friend, you could easily stumble upon fabulous stage shows that were presented with such seriousness, often, that you wondered if — while watching the amazing Duelling Bankheads, for instance, or so many people who got up so brilliantly as Stevie Nicks on the Night of 1000 Stevies — you were high on the entertainment, or on dancing with your chosen community, or just amazed by what New York had to offer by way of creativity. Looking back, I can see that, for me at least, it was the combination of all three elements together that gave such hope about Manhattan’s ability to foster noncommercial glamour, and to support young performers who were trying things out and seeing what stuck.
The shows I loved the most were at Jackie 60, spearheaded by the irreplaceable Chi Chi Valenti and Johnny Dynell, the resident d.j. Among a host of unforgettable performers was the great Richard Move, whose channelling of Martha Graham in all her glory — from “Lamentation” to “Clytemnestra” — was further enhanced by the interviews that Move, as Graham, conducted onstage. Move’s work was that not of a satirist but of a believer, of a terrific dancer who inhabited Graham’s genius. That melding of fact and fiction, truth and spectacle, will be on display in “Martha@BAM — the 1963 Interview,” at BAM Fisher Fishman Space, Oct. 28-Nov. 1, as part of the Next Wave Festival. The show re-creates an interview that Graham gave at the 92nd Street Y with the dance critic Walter Terry, played by Lisa Kron. You just know that Move — having lived with Martha so long, and with such love — will take us to places with their artistry and Graham-fuelled dreams that we couldn’t even imagine. — Hilton Als
1906. Father is off to the North Pole with Admiral Peary. Leaving New York Harbor, he passes a ship teeming with immigrants, including the Jewish Tateh and his daughter. Back home in New Rochelle, Mother takes in an indigent Black woman and her baby; the woman’s pianist lover soon comes calling in a Model T. So swirls the melting-pot plot of Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, and Terrence McNally’s 1996 musical “Ragtime,” adapted from E. L. Doctorow’s impressionistic 1975 novel about the dawn of twentieth-century America. Lear deBessonet’s kinetic revival conjures the churn of the times and their emotional reality. Over a century later, that reality — hope, horror, dizzying uncertainty about the future — hasn’t gotten any less American. — Dan Stahl (Beaumont; through Jan. 4.)
