THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020 7
ILLUSTRATION BY BARBARA OTT
New York’s downtown-theatre scene
is used to making fabulous things hap-
pen despite inhospitable circumstances
(rising rents, janky venues). Now, with
live performance shut down and the
theatrical economy in tatters, some of
the city’s creative misfits are banding to-
gether. The Trickle Up is an online artists’
network that includes more than fifty
downtown luminaries, among them the
performance artist Taylor Mac, the bur-
lesque star Dirty Martini, the puppeteer
Basil Twist, the cabaret queen Bridget
Everett, the actor André De Shields, and
the playwrights Annie Baker, Suzan-
Lori Parks, and Lynn Nottage. Each is
contributing three original videos to the
project, at trickleupnyc.org, which is ac-
cessible for a fee of ten dollars a month,
and will benefit artists living below
the poverty line.—Michael Schulman
THEATREONLINE
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PODCASTS
The Other Latif
For years, the “Radiolab” reporter Latif Nasser
believed that he was the only Latif Nasser.
But then he learned about another one. “That
other Latif Nasser?” he says, “is Detainee 244
at Guantánamo Bay.” (Cue the propulsive
doumbek music.) This “Radiolab”-produced
series, which Nasser reported for three years,
explores the story of Abdul Latif Nasser, a
studious Moroccan Muslim from a loving
suburban family who, after cryptic adven-
tures abroad in young adulthood, ended up
at Guantánamo, uncharged and untried—and
has remained there for eighteen years. Nasser
plunges listeners into post-9/11 legal paradoxes;
investigates matters in Casablanca, Cuba, Af-
ghanistan, and Sudan, including Osama bin
Laden’s former sunflower farm; and inter-
views everyone from Nasser’s relatives and
defense attorneys to the rueful general who
built Guantánamo. Though a reining in of
gee-whiz “Radiolab” aesthetics would have
improved it, “The Other Latif” is a magisterial,
emotionally compelling feat of reporting, with
countless chilling takeaways.—Sarah Larson
Telescope
In a moment when people and podcasts are
abruptly refocussing, this new series, from the
Los Angeles-based producer Jonathan Hirsch
(“Dear Franklin Jones”) and his company
Neon Hum, manages to show the long view
and the granular at once: each episode features a
thoughtfully produced story, reported by Hirsch
and his team, that homes in on the experiences
of individuals now. (Call it “This Pandemic
Life.”) Among them: Thomas, a laid-off set
dresser in Hollywood (“Maybe eventually I’ll
start working at a grocery store”); Drew, just out
of jail and stuck inside (“Everyone’s now kind
of experientially on my level”); and Eric, long
known as the Pied Piper of Pasadena, who aims,
by playing the recorder in his car, to “recalibrate
people for a moment.” The Pied Piper drops
some of the series’ heaviest wisdom: “What we
need to get out of this fix is to communicate,” he
says—even if it’s with a plastic recorder at a stop-
light. “It seems too simple, but it’s true.”—S.L.
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DANCE
Martha Graham Dance Company
On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, Amer-
ica’s oldest modern-dance troupe has been pre-
senting “Martha Matinées” on its YouTube
channel. Alongside recorded performances,
the company’s artistic director, Janet Eilber, and
many generations of Graham dancers sheltering
around the globe chime in, via live chat, with
illuminating facts, insights, and anecdotes. It’s
fun to watch with them. On April 15 and April 18
(the company’s ninety-fourth birthday), the fea-
ture is “Appalachian Spring,” probably Graham’s
best-loved work. This vision of pioneer America,
austerely yet tenderly balancing hope against
fear, was made in 1944, a time of crisis. The
footage screened here, in its hard-to-find com-
plete form, is of a theatre performance by the
original cast, including Graham in her prime and
a very young Merce Cunningham. For maximum
impact, the silent film has been synched with
the dance’s great Copland score.—Brian Seibert
Merce Cunningham for All
Merce Cunningham, who died in 2009, would
have been a hundred and one on April 16. It’s a
perfect excuse—as if we needed one—to catch
Alla Kovgan’s excellent film “Cunningham,” re-
leased last year and now available for streaming.
Originally shot in 3-D, the movie shows, often
up close, the rigor, power, and raw excitement
of Cunningham’s dances in a variety of settings:
the courtyard of a palace, the top of a skyscraper,
a forest clearing. You can’t take your eyes off the
dancers, or quite believe what they’re doing with
their bodies. The events surrounding Cunning-
ham’s centenary, last year, also included a trio of
synchronized performances—one in London, one
in L.A., and one in New York—in which dancers
performed a total of a hundred solos created by
Cunningham in the course of his career, which
began in the nineteen-fifties. The dances were
arranged into a sort of symphony, unspooling in
overlapping waves across the various stages. All
three performances, collectively titled “Night of
100 Solos,” can be watched on the Merce Cun-
ningham Trust’s Vimeo page, at vimeo.com/
mercecunninghamtrust.—Marina Harss
OntheBoards.tv
Since 2010, the Web site run by On the Boards
theatre, in Seattle, has been amassing an unsur-
passed collection of high-quality, full-length,
streamable recordings of American contem-
porary dance. It’s all free through the end of
April, although you are encouraged to pay a
small fee, half of which goes to the artists. The
best selections include Beth Gill’s mesmerizing
“Electric Midwife,” Tere O’Connor’s masterly
and mystifying “Bleed,” Okwui Okpokwasili
and Peter Born’s haunting “Bronx Gothic,” Kyle
Abraham’s civil-rights-era-inspired “When the
Wolves Came In,” and Ralph Lemon’s elusive
but suddenly timely “How Can You Stay in the
House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?”—B.S.
(www.ontheboards.tv)
Paul Taylor Dance Company
Now that we’re stuck at home, we can catch
up on all the documentaries—including dance
documentaries—that we’ve been promising our-
selves we’ll get to for years. There are some really
good ones out there, including “Dancemaker,”
a 1998 film by Matthew Diamond that tracks
the creation of Paul Taylor’s tango-inflected
work “Piazzolla Caldera.” The footage recorded
in the studio is especially fascinating. Taylor,
then sixty-seven, laconically directs his dancers,
asking them to try this, then that, until they hit
upon something that works. He calls it “fooling
around,” but it’s clear just how much concen-
tration, and sweat, goes into each phrase, each
transition. The film is available on the company’s
YouTube page, along with a recording of his 1965
work “From Sea to Shining Sea”—a stinging sat-
ire of the American mythos, featuring a bedrag-
gled Lady Liberty, a hapless Superman, and a
tough-acting all-American cowboy—and a short
documentary on its 2014 revival, on the occasion
of the company’s sixtieth anniversary.—M.H.
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MOVIES
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Anybody schooled in “This Is Spinal Tap” could
be forgiven for assuming that there was no
further amusement, let alone rarer emotions,
to be mined from heavy metal. Somehow,
though, Sacha Gervasi’s documentary digs
deep into a real-life case—the attempted res-
“the tender light of objects that talk and dream
in their sleep.”—Andrea K. Scott (bureau-inc.com)
