Time once again for weekend calendar picks from KC Studio editor Alice Thorson. This weekend, see the Performance Art Symposium, presented by Charlotte Street Foundation, at la Esquina. New Theatre Restaurant presents the musical Chicago, running through September 18. Tomorrow night, see Bobby Watson at the Blue Room. Luxury: Treasures of the Roman Empire opens at the Nelson-Atkins on Saturday. And Summerfest presents its first week of performances, Saturday night at White Recital Hall and Sunday afternoon at St. Mary’s Episcopal. For more events this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events.
Flesh Crisis 2016: Performance Art Symposium
July 7-9 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Free
la Esquina
Charlotte Street Foundation is pleased to present Flesh Crisis 2016: Performance Art Symposium. Beginning July 7th, this three-day event will present new, original performance artworks by seven local performance artists and 13 national and international performing artists. These performances will be shown on the evenings of July 7, 8, 9th from 7-9PM at Charlotte Street’s La Esquina Gallery (1000 W 25th Street, KC MO 64108). On Saturday, July 9th 1-3PM, Flesh Crisis Director, Jessica Borusky will moderate on artists’ talk with the participating artists at Arts Dojo (3130 Bell Street KC, MO) — a Rocket Grants funded space.
Each evening will consist of various performances—from time-based works, to technology-driven, and interactive pieces. Wednesday night, July 7th, Portland-based artist, Tabitha Nikolai will present The Adyton Nail Salon, a participatory divination through glamour; audience members are invited to receive a water-marbled manicure from which their fortune is told in a process akin to reading tea leaves, or candle magic. On Friday night, July 9th, New Delhi-based artist, B. Ajay Sharma’s performance questions the state of India’s contemporary politics and culture. Sharma’s performance combines ancient Indian rituals and yogic practices in order to address India’s cultural discourse. Local artist, Shelby Burchett will perform as her alter-ego, Goo-Witch, utilizing science and rituals to transcend audiences towards a ghostly, other-worldly realm.
Chicago
July 7 – September 18
New Theatre Restaurant
In roaring twenties Chicago, chorine Roxie Hart murders a faithless lover and convinces her hapless husband Amos to take the rap…until he finds out he’s been duped and turns on Roxie. Convicted and sent to death row, Roxie and another “Merry Murderess” Velma Kelly, vie for the spotlight and the headlines, ultimately joining forces in search of the “American Dream”: fame, fortune and acquittal.
Bobby Watson performs Check Cashing Day
July 8 @ 8:30 pm | $20
American Jazz Museum – The Blue Room
Referencing Dr. King’s metaphor of a bad check, KC alto-saxophonist Bobby Watson shares a jazz interpretation of this dream deferred using music and spoken word, all to highlight an under-explored part of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The music contains segments by poet Glenn North that directly address the political undercurrent that’s fueled much of Watson’s work. In his famous 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King, suggested that “we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.” North and Watson take the concept figuratively and literally. “The bill is up to four trillion dollars now and man, its way past due,” North implores. “What do I have to do to get my forty acres and a mule?”
Luxury: Treasures of the Roman Empire
July 9 – October 2
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
A glittering array of silver, gold and gemstones on view in the exhibition Luxury: Treasures of the Roman Empire offers a window into the lifestyles of the ancient Roman elite, who used luxury items to display their wealth through elaborate banquets, gifts and personal adornment and to thank the gods.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the exhibition showcases some of the finest surviving works by artists and craftsmen working 2,000 years ago. On display are silver statues, tableware, gold medallions and coins, and precious jewels and cameos, all celebrated for their rare materials, their refined aesthetics and compelling subject matter.
The exhibition is a treasure trove of mythology and legends. Visitors will find vivid depictions of centaurs tormented by love, Herakles strangling the Nemean Lion, Dionysos and Herakles in a drinking bout, Achilles cradling the dying Penthesilea, and the beautiful Omphale, drunk and asleep on a lion’s skin. Roman aristocrats often dedicated their luxury items to the gods, and many objects in the exhibition were dedicated centuries ago to Mercury, the Roman god associated with commerce and travel.
“Through these sumptuous objects, we can literally gaze through the window of history and understand and appreciate the culture and art of the ancient Romans,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO & Director of the Nelson-Atkins. “We can imagine the Roman banquets, the political quests for power, and the pilgrimages to offer gifts to the gods.
“We can also come to know the people who surprisingly discovered these objects many centuries later, who pulled them from the earth, cleaned them and preserved them. It is a profound exhibition with many layers of legends and stories that continue to speak to us today.”
Summerfest Concerts, Week One: Musical Voices
July 9 @ 7:30 pm
White Recital Hall
July 10 @ 3:00 pm
St. Mary’s Episcopal
The first week of Summerfest is a compelling argument that African American musical genres are at the root of the American sound. David Baker’s aptly named Roots II presents stylized versions of Louisiana voodoo rites, piano-based boogie woogie, and the celebratory dances of Southern slaves, aurally showing how those styles now permeate American musical culture. Handel’s Trio Sonata in C minor, HWV 386a displays how Baroque composers similarly used the musical culture around them as Handel cleverly wrote an instrumental opera aria in the middle of a sonata. As a counterpoint, the program’s second half presents Beethoven’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, op. 16, which not only demonstrates the German sound in music, but how a young composer finds his voice by building on past models, in this case Mozart’s great Quintet for Piano and Winds.
