Events Calendar

Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle is the first solo exhibition dedicated to the genre-defying artist Matthew Flower (US, b. 1972), better known as Machine Dazzle. A provocateur commanding an expanding repertoire of stagecraft, design, performance, and music, Machine Dazzle is a virtuoso practitioner of queer maximalism’s aesthetic language of gay liberation.

The exhibition brings together more than 80 of the artist’s creations for stage, spectacles, and street theater, alongside a variety of environments, ephemera, material samples, photography, and video. Together they chronicle the metamorphosis of Flower, a closeted suburban kid from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, into “Machine Dazzle,” the queer experimental theater genius.

On view will be both Machine Dazzle’s famous collaborations with drag and performance luminaries such as the Dazzle Dancers and Mx Justin Vivian Bond, among others, as well as the artist’s recent emergence from behind the scenes to center stage of his own artistic life. Installed on two floors of the Museum, the multimedia exhibition also includes the first public installation of the more than two dozen tour-de-force costumes created by the artist for himself and his long-time collaborator, Taylor Mac, to wear in the queer performance art concert production, Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Excessive in scale, color, surface, texture, and movement, Machine Dazzle’s living sculptures constantly transform as the designer combines the familiar embellishments of drag and burlesque, such as sequins, glitter, and feathers, beads, with found fantastical and found objects, such as ping pong balls, hoop skirts, slinkies, soup cans, and more, to build and deepen the work’s narrative intent. The result is an explosive “queer maximalism” aesthetic that joyfully counters the prejudices of high culture regarding extravagance and the overly decorated and embraces these associations as queer for affirming hybridity over purity, rejecting cultural hierarchies, and valuing different kinds of bodies.

Image: Machine Dazzle photographed by Gregory Kramer, 2019.

Though separated by 130 years and an impossible gulf of personal experience, the composer Ludwig van Beethoven and the writer Langston Hughes share an unlikely bond of artistic sensibilities. Inspiration across mediums creatively energized both: Hughes was a musical historian and produced rhythmically inspired verse, while Beethoven's love of poetry gave rise to numerous immortal compositions, not least “Ode to Joy”. This co-presentation with the New York Philharmonic will feature select members of the Phil and guest artists, piano soloist Kyle Walker and the rich operatic tenor voice of Chauncey Packer.

An artist constantly pushing her expression in new directions, drummer-composer and educator Allison Miller has been leading her internationally acclaimed project Boom Tic Boom for more than a decade. Boom Tic Boom’s Dizzy’s Club set features Dayna Stephens, Myra Melford, and Scott Colley.

In 2022, which would have been the year of Lou Reed's 80th birthday, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center mounts Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars, the first large-scale exhibition featuring previously unseen and unheard work from Reed’s incredible archive.

On display from June 9, 2022–March 4, 2023, Caught Between the Twisted Stars  (a lyric from "Romeo Had Juliette") will chronicle the life's work of a prolific and uncompromising artist—songwriter, musician, performer, photographer, poet, accomplished tai chi practitioner—a story told through the voices, images, and music of Reed and his collaborators, including artists Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol, and Robert Wilson; musicians Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, John Cale, Garland Jeffreys, Metallica, Sterling Morrison, Robert Quine, Mike Rathke, Fernando Saunders, and Maureen Tucker; manager Sylvia Reed; producer Hal Willner; photographers Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Billy Name, and Mick Rock; poets Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsberg, Delmore Schwartz, and Anne Waldman; president Václav Havel; songwriter Doc Pomus; and tai chi master Ren Guangyi.

The exhibition is curated by Don Fleming and Jason Stern. Fleming served as the archivist for the Lou Reed Archive, and Stern as Reed's Technical Director and Archivist during the artist's lifetime. 

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Music & Recorded Sound Division acquired Lou Reed's archive in 2017. 

Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle is the first solo exhibition dedicated to the genre-defying artist Matthew Flower (US, b. 1972), better known as Machine Dazzle. A provocateur commanding an expanding repertoire of stagecraft, design, performance, and music, Machine Dazzle is a virtuoso practitioner of queer maximalism’s aesthetic language of gay liberation.

The exhibition brings together more than 80 of the artist’s creations for stage, spectacles, and street theater, alongside a variety of environments, ephemera, material samples, photography, and video. Together they chronicle the metamorphosis of Flower, a closeted suburban kid from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, into “Machine Dazzle,” the queer experimental theater genius.

On view will be both Machine Dazzle’s famous collaborations with drag and performance luminaries such as the Dazzle Dancers and Mx Justin Vivian Bond, among others, as well as the artist’s recent emergence from behind the scenes to center stage of his own artistic life. Installed on two floors of the Museum, the multimedia exhibition also includes the first public installation of the more than two dozen tour-de-force costumes created by the artist for himself and his long-time collaborator, Taylor Mac, to wear in the queer performance art concert production, Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Excessive in scale, color, surface, texture, and movement, Machine Dazzle’s living sculptures constantly transform as the designer combines the familiar embellishments of drag and burlesque, such as sequins, glitter, and feathers, beads, with found fantastical and found objects, such as ping pong balls, hoop skirts, slinkies, soup cans, and more, to build and deepen the work’s narrative intent. The result is an explosive “queer maximalism” aesthetic that joyfully counters the prejudices of high culture regarding extravagance and the overly decorated and embraces these associations as queer for affirming hybridity over purity, rejecting cultural hierarchies, and valuing different kinds of bodies.

Image: Machine Dazzle photographed by Gregory Kramer, 2019.

Greenmarket's gateway to the Upper West Side, the Tucker Square Greenmarket, offers locally grown produce just across the street from Lincoln Center. Seasonal vegetables range from fresh staples like corn and greens to delicacies like squash blossoms and fairtytale eggplant. Orchards boast sweet berries, stone fruit, and over 80 varieties of apples. Knowledgeable growers are at market to explain just how to care for their plants, flowers, and herb pots indoors and out.  Impeccable farmstead cheeses, fresh seafood, grass fed beef, duck and duck charcuterie, eggs, artisanal baked goods, and New York’'s only producer of both sorghum and maple syrup round out the offerings.  

In Tennessee, they call it “jookin’”: a loose-limbed, balletic blend of hip hop and modern that started on the streets of Memphis and has grown to become one of the contemporary dance world’s most vibrant and vital movements. The acknowledged wizard of jookin’ is the Bessie Award-winning dancer Lil Buck, who has performed extensively with Madonna, Yo-Yo Ma, and Cirque du Soleil. The creator and choreographer of Memphis Jookin': The Show, Lil Buck pirouettes and hovers en point in Nike hightops as he leads a cast of the scene’s leading jook dancers for this root-to-the-fruit origin story. Scored with homegrown beats that evoke the Southern clubs where jookin' got its start, Memphis Jookin’ is an exhilarating exploration of an emergent art form that has taken the performance world by storm.

See Cameren Anai Williams, Viola and Leslie Ashworth, Viola perform for Juilliard’s 2022-23 Season.

Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle is the first solo exhibition dedicated to the genre-defying artist Matthew Flower (US, b. 1972), better known as Machine Dazzle. A provocateur commanding an expanding repertoire of stagecraft, design, performance, and music, Machine Dazzle is a virtuoso practitioner of queer maximalism’s aesthetic language of gay liberation.

The exhibition brings together more than 80 of the artist’s creations for stage, spectacles, and street theater, alongside a variety of environments, ephemera, material samples, photography, and video. Together they chronicle the metamorphosis of Flower, a closeted suburban kid from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, into “Machine Dazzle,” the queer experimental theater genius.

On view will be both Machine Dazzle’s famous collaborations with drag and performance luminaries such as the Dazzle Dancers and Mx Justin Vivian Bond, among others, as well as the artist’s recent emergence from behind the scenes to center stage of his own artistic life. Installed on two floors of the Museum, the multimedia exhibition also includes the first public installation of the more than two dozen tour-de-force costumes created by the artist for himself and his long-time collaborator, Taylor Mac, to wear in the queer performance art concert production, Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Excessive in scale, color, surface, texture, and movement, Machine Dazzle’s living sculptures constantly transform as the designer combines the familiar embellishments of drag and burlesque, such as sequins, glitter, and feathers, beads, with found fantastical and found objects, such as ping pong balls, hoop skirts, slinkies, soup cans, and more, to build and deepen the work’s narrative intent. The result is an explosive “queer maximalism” aesthetic that joyfully counters the prejudices of high culture regarding extravagance and the overly decorated and embraces these associations as queer for affirming hybridity over purity, rejecting cultural hierarchies, and valuing different kinds of bodies.

Image: Machine Dazzle photographed by Gregory Kramer, 2019.

In Tennessee, they call it “jookin’”: a loose-limbed, balletic blend of hip hop and modern that started on the streets of Memphis and has grown to become one of the contemporary dance world’s most vibrant and vital movements. The acknowledged wizard of jookin’ is the Bessie Award-winning dancer Lil Buck, who has performed extensively with Madonna, Yo-Yo Ma, and Cirque du Soleil. The creator and choreographer of Memphis Jookin': The Show, Lil Buck pirouettes and hovers en point in Nike hightops as he leads a cast of the scene’s leading jook dancers for this root-to-the-fruit origin story. Scored with homegrown beats that evoke the Southern clubs where jookin' got its start, Memphis Jookin’ is an exhilarating exploration of an emergent art form that has taken the performance world by storm.

Each year, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division oversees the Dance Research Fellowship, an annual cohort of dance scholars and artists invited to research a specific aspect of dance. This year, fellows focused their research on the theme of dance and ecology. Fellows Juli Brandano, Rosemary Candelario, María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Lindsey Jones, Richard Move, and Rachna Nivas will deliver presentations in our annual symposium, culminating the work undertaken during a six-month fellowship cycle.

Join the fun on Fridays after 5:00pm for $5.00 Studio Fees.