Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

The passion of Agnes

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Director commentaries are de rigueur in the DVD age, but few filmmakers possess the élan to warrant a feature length auto-exegesis. Agnès Varda is one, and her most recent memory piece — she claims it’s her last — cheerfully dissolves the boundaries between memoir, retrospective, and installation. The film caps the Pacific Film Archive’s month-long series, "Agnès Varda: Cinécriture," and faithful attendees will be rewarded by its recollections of earlier works from La Pointe Courte (1954) to The Gleaners and I (2000). The Beaches of Agnès begins with the 80-year old Varda spryly instructing her devoted assistants. These are people willing to enter a reverie on the placement of various mirrors. "If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes," she explains of her motivation for filmmaking, before setting off on an unclassifiable daisy chain of reenactment and reminiscence. The film moves at the leisurely pace of the flaneur’s walk, the better to relish Varda’s joie de vivre and sweet bawdiness. Where to begin? With her color-bending bowl cut or Chris Marker’s grinning cat cameos? With the ephemera of Varda’s innumerable home movies or her defense of the so-called "Manifesto of the 343 Bitches"? With the many things she adores — blurry foregrounds, ancient frescoes, heart-shaped potatoes, neighbors — or her W.G. Sebald-like resuscitation of photographs? "All the dead lead me back to Jacques," she says, referring to her great love, Jacques Demy. Their life together loops Beaches with enough beautiful images to warrant several viewings. A must.

THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS

Fri/10, 8:40 p.m.; Sat/11, 6 p.m., $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk

(510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Diamond in the rough

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Co-writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made their feature debut in 2006 with Half Nelson, a movie with an iffy concept — an at-risk Brooklyn middle school student discovers her teacher is a part-time crackhead but they become best buds anyway — somehow rendered utterly plausible. That same keen sense of atmospheric and character detail, as well as resistance to sensationalism or cliché, is on display again in their new film, Sugar. The film has taken its time getting to theaters since premiering at the Sundance Film Festival more than a year ago, but it’s likely to be one of the best films of 2009, as it certainly would have been of 2008.

Sugar is also possibly the best narrative film ever about the world of pro baseball, and that’s an opinion lifted from people who care a lot more about America’s pastime than me. It may not have the sentimental or fantasy appeal of 1988’s Bull Durham, 1989’s Field of Dreams, 1984’s The Natural, etc., but as with Half Nelson, Boden and Fleck create something that’s at last deeply satisfying, though their happy ending isn’t at all one you (or the protagonist) might’ve planned two hours earlier.

Here we have baseball, football, and basketball as rivals, but in the Dominican Republic there’s just baseball, a national obsession as well as major export. There are more Dominicans in Major League Baseball than any other offshore population. For everyone who reaches that status, there are umpteen contenders, their aspirations often fueled by a desire to raise themselves and family members above the poverty line. That’s the case for Miguel (Algenis Perez Soto), a coolly self-possessed 19-year-old whose big eyes are always watchful and guarded, suggesting a mind sharply focused on advancement despite his low-key demeanor. He’s called Sugar because, he brags, "I’m sweet with the ladies" — but more seriously, "I’ve got the sweetest knuckle curve you’ve ever seen." His hopes of breaking into the majors are everybody’s, from his girlfriend and mother to the hometown friends who’ll live vicariously through his success.

His pitching skills get him plucked from Boca Chica baseball academy to a cattle-call camp in Phoenix where a lot of other Dominicans await their big chance — or discover it will never come. Sugar, however, gets hand-picked for the minor league Kansas City Knights where, after a fumbling start, he looks like star material.

But as the dream grows nearer, so does Sugar’s evolving sense of insecurity and isolation. He’s absorbed almost no English, so coaching instructions, teammate camaraderie, and even restaurant ordering remain blank mysteries. He’s housed with a well-meaning farm family whose Presbyterian pieties are equally foreign (despite his own crucifix-kissing before each game). When their corn-fed granddaughter sends mixed signals his way — seemingly more interested in spreading salvation than locking lips — our sexually experienced protagonist can only read her behavior as duplicitous. Having left school at 16, he’s intimidated by teammates like Brad (Andre Holland), a million-dollar draftee who’s always got his Stanford degree to fall back on.

Boden and Fleck did their research and then some. To their further credit, it’s all so fully integrated Sugar feels more verité than instructive. Like the performance of Soto (who’d never acted before, and might not again), the film doesn’t outline its agenda or emotions — indeed, some might find it a little too internalized and averse to melodrama. Yet it does exert a spell, building almost unnoticeably until the cumulative effect quietly exhilarates. Among so many recent movies about immigrants pursuing the elusive American Dream, Sugar is a rare upbeat one, partly because it allows that the dream might best be realized when one settles for less than it first promised.

SUGAR opens Fri/10 in Bay Area theaters.

The new razzle dazzle

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

More on SFBG:

>>Q&A with artist Nick Cave

>>A guide to artists with famous namesakes

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Where is the center of the Earth? According to artist Nick Cave, it lies somewhere between a night out at Taboo with Leigh Bowery and a Brazilian Carnaval parade. It can be found in Liberace’s glittering stage getups and Yoruba ceremonial hunting dress. Other possible coordinates include Yinka Shonibare’s Africanized rococo costumes, Cockney pearly suits, the hautest of haute couture, and the fun fur tribes of Black Rock City.

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Thankfully, for us, Cave’s crocheted, sequined, bedazzled, embroidered, dyed, and encrusted vision of the heart of the world can be found locally. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ "Meet Me At the Center of the Earth" presents the largest exhibit to date of the Chicago artist’s work, which straddles the realms of sculpture, high fashion, body art, and dance with a visual ferocity and level of workmanship that is alternately stunning and inspiring.

Cave’s art practically dares you to play chicken with your thesaurus. One would have to borrow a page (or several) from the descriptive reveries of Thomas de Quincey or Ronald Firbank to fully convey the cluster fuck of beading, psychedelic hair furs, plastic tchotchkes, yarn, tin toys, buttons, second hand sweaters, and enough sequins to cover a thousand ’80s cocktail dresses that he has quixotically and painstakingly pieced together.

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The centerpieces of "Meet Me at the Center of the Earth" are undoubtedly Cave’s Soundsuits — wearable sculptures that take their name from the sounds created by their movement. They fill YBCA’s largest gallery like some other-wordly pantheon of gods and monsters. Arranged in an X-shaped configuration with paths running down the center of each axis, the suits form a giant visual nod to the exhibit’s title. X, of course, marks the spot, and hanging above the room’s center is the Earth itself, swathed in several shades of inky sequins. On the adjacent walls hang two huge and possibly glitzier tondi — the Italian Renaissance term Cave uses for these round hangings — which serve as flattened counterparts to the globe.

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The display lets you explore the Soundsuits from every angle. Designed to cover the entire body, the suits hide any individual traces of the wearer by creating a second skin, and then some. The suits with towering, festooned cage structures — which bring to mind both Balinese funeral pyres and Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers — still have a vaguely human outline at their core, whereas the suits patterned in all sort of brilliantly colored fur-like human hair could very well be studies from an unrealized Jim Henson project. This lycanthropic aspect of the Soundsuits is explored most humorously in Cave’s more recent pieces, which take the reverse tactic of fashioning knitwear pelts for taxidermy models of bears and beavers.

While much of Cave’s work, to quote New York Times critic Roberta Smith, "fall[s] squarely under the heading of Must Be Seen to Be Believed," it also begs to be heard. It is unfortunate that YBCA wasn’t able to more fully integrate the sounds of the suits into their display. Although there is an adjacent gallery that shows several videos of the Soundsuits in action — including great footage of Cave and a posse of pom-pom covered lion dancer-clown hybrids inciting massive dance parties in public — the suits themselves stand silent. The audio/visual divide enforced by the two-gallery layout seems to point to the larger issue of static mannequins being the curatorial norm for costume and textile-related exhibits. I guess we’ll have to wait until May, when choreographer Ronald K. Brown stages his Soundsuit performances, to see Cave’s creations in action.

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Cave writes in an artist’s statement for the show that he hopes "we will dream together" One would have to have a heart of stone not to take up the challenge and the invitation delivered by Cave’s art — and implicit in the exhibit’s title — to create another scene, to go beyond what’s familiar, and to transform oneself. I left YBCA dreaming of raiding craft stores, thrift shops, and fabric outlets. I dreamed of painting the town red, cerulean, silver, magenta, and neon green with sequins and glitter. I dreamed of dancing. I’ll see you at the center of the Earth. I’m halfway there.

NICK CAVE: MEET ME AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

Through July 5, $3–$6 (free first Tues.)

Tues.–Wed., Fri.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.; Thurs., noon–8 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org


All photos by Jim Prinz

Cohen koan

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER What becomes a pop legend? Mink, knighthood, screaming nubiles, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction, or the Companionship of the Order of Canada? Nay, Lancelot Bass, to a biz looking for its next buck, it’s chart success at the beyond-ripe age of 74.

The curious case of Leonard Cohen: more than 40 years after his classic-crammed debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia, 1967), this songwriting genius saw the rocket-boost of mainstream pop acceptance last year, as Jeff Buckley’s version of Cohen’s "Hallelujah" shot to the top of the iTunes charts after Jason Castro interpreted it on American Idol. One Tree Hill starlet Kate Voegele took another stab at the tune — already a TV and film staple covered by everyone from John Cale and Rufus Wainwright to Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson. The final shoe dropped last December, when a rendition by Alexandra Burke, winner of UK TV’s X Factor, occupied the top of the UK singles charts, with Buckley’s take at #2, and Cohen’s original at #36. Cohen’s current North American tour — his first in 15 years — seems like a natural next step, especially since even the supremely gifted need to eat. (His ex-manager Kelley Lynch misappropriated millions while he was secluded as a Zen Buddhist monk in the late 1990s.)

While it’s no surprise that a relatively recent Cohen creation such as 1984’s "Hallelujah" should become a contemporary standard, working its way into Shrek (2001) and the ambivalent superhero sex scene in Watchmen, the song is still an unlikely commercial success, given its spiritual yearning and hard-boiled smarts. As Bryan Appleyard wrote in the U.K.’s Sunday Times in 2005, "it sounds like a pop song, but it isn’t …. It is a tuneful but ironic mask worn to conceal bitter atonal failure." Cohen’s "Hallelujah" is a gently meta-maniacal song rumination on songwriting and faith, clad in biblical allusions, that finds hope in submission to an uncaring muse.

However hard to picture, there are through lines between Cohen’s original, synth-driven "Hallelujah" and what some call his worst LP, Death of a Ladies’ Man (Columbia, 1977), an overwhelmingly orchestrated collaboration with Phil Spector that imploded as the producer barred Cohen from the final mix, allegedly threatening him with a crossbow.

"I’ve put my trust/And all my faith to see … /Her naked body! Oooh-oooh, oh my baby, can you see her naked body?"

Cohen never sounds as unbridled as he does on Death‘s "Memories," as youthful trysts take the fall with this mocking jack-off, the album’s centerpiece. I like to imagine his vocals were loosey-goosey placeholders. Anyone with a well-blackened punk sense of humor can appreciate the larky, screw-you ethos of this overwrought artifact, decorated with an image of the songwriter flanked by his morose then-wife Suzanne Elrod. Was this Cohen’s jokey fare-thee-well to horndog profligacy?

A cranky attack on youth and "Sound of Young America" pop, "Memories" is also the sound of Spector doffing his aviator shades and jabbing at his own mirrored eyeball and "Be My Baby" legacy. This Sha Nyah Nyah take on the same intermingling of faith and sexuality that underlies "Hallelujah" is constructed as a wall of soup, ready to splash down on Cohen’s fragile voice, sometimes subsumed by an ever-present anima: his female backup vocalists, a beloved counterpart to Spector’s highly controlled girl groups.

But "Memories" should perhaps remain in the past. For a strong hit of current Cohen go to the new Live in London DVD, which is infinitely preferable to 2005’s name-checking doc Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Released along with a CD set, this straightforward, two-hour-plus document of a June 2008 arena show in London beats all that grainy Glastonbury footage on YouTube with its graceful shots of Cohen lost in the center of "Everybody Knows," eyes squeezed closed and mic cord clenched in a fist.

The greatest pleasures come from hearing later Cohen recordings reworked by a full band and witnessing the warmth and graciousness of a songwriter humbled by his audience. "It’s wonderful to be gathered here on just the other side of intimacy," he says wryly at one point, soon segueing seamlessly into the chorus of "Anthem": "Ring the bells that still can ring /Forget your perfect offering /There is a crack in everything /That’s how the light gets in." And perhaps that’s how — and why — Cohen has gone from haunting the rooms of heartsick "Memories" to becoming the go-to guy for a shot of lyrical intelligence: he recognizes our battered souls and sings those elegant, oft-unspoken truths still lingering in the sad café of the pop unconscious.

LEONARD COHEN

Mon/13-April 15, 8 p.m., $69.50–$251

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakl.

www.goldenvoice.com

———–

DANCE ME TO THE END OF THE WEEK:

RICHARD SWIFT

Shades of Harry Nilsson: the tunesmith makes artful inroads with his soulful new The Atlantic Ocean (Secretly Canadian). With Vetiver and Adam Stephens. Wed/8, 9 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

CHANGO SPASIUK

Astor Piazzolla is grinning somewhere when this Argentinean accordion master blends the blues, fado, and chamame. Thurs/9, 8 p.m., $18. Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF. www.yoshis.com

BEAUSOLEIL

Cajun music would be swallowed up by the swamp if not for the sprightly efforts of Michael Doucet and crew. With David Lindley. Fri/10, 8 p.m., $25. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

FRIENDLY FIRES, WHITE LIES, AND SOFT PACK

The moody, broody U.K. dance-pop rockers match beats alongside the spunky post-punk San Diegans. Sat/11, 9 p.m., $15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

Bounce to this

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Hold my hair, Bethany — things are gonna get wicked. The Bay’s set to undergo a massive new-bass invasion on Saturday, April 11, and I’m kind of freaking out about it, kind of having outfit trauma, and kind of fiending for a diet coconut juice. Is that postcolonialist?

Perhaps more pressingly: are the low-frequency freakinetics of abstract dubstep, turbo crunk, and future bass vanishing into the headphone red zones of download fanboys and nightlife intellectuals? I mean, has anyone figured out how to dance to any of this mind-blowing shit yet?

That will be one of the looming, booming nightlife questions as critical darlings Flying Lotus, Kode9, and the Bug rumble through Mighty with a gig tagged "The Future," and Ghislain "King of Bounce" Poirier storms the monthly Tormenta Tropical party at Elbo Room. No question, though: both events will melt your face, so pack yourself an extra and hop between them.

When it comes to dance floor poetics, Montreal-based producer, DJ, and mentor Poirier is the shrewdest of the bunch. The Ninja Tune artist has played it both ways from the beginning, tickling cerebellums with growling reveries and laser-chopped academic beats on some tracks, while on others pumping sharp dancehall grinds and grimy ragga as his guest vocalists strike demanding political poses. It’s this second, much more party-friendly "world riddim idiom" Poirier who’ll pop up at Tormenta Tropical, touring for his new Soca Sound System EP, a pulse-pounding glance toward the Trinidadian genre that includes the infectious "Wha-La-La-Leng" with MC Face-T.

And yet, despite Poirier’s intensely straightforward dance-driven live shows and steady stream of lean-and-mean mixtapes, like last year’s excellent Bring the Fire, he’s still mostly known in the States for his forays into glitch-and-sizzle future bass territory. That may be due to his pioneering work in tearing off the 4/4 beats straightjacket and commandeering homemade, bleeding bass lines to glue his ravenously global-eared sets together. Or it may be because people still have trouble seeing the Great White North as the glorious multicultural clusterfuck it is — they’d just rather slap an abstract label on it. Whatever. "Ideas are the best plug-ins," Poirier told Cyclic Defrost magazine last year — but he knows a free mind should be followed by a bumping ass.

In terms of real abstractitude, though, Flying Lotus, the Bug, and Kode 9 swim in the deepest of waters — and each traffics in his own delightful mental aquarium. L.A.’s FlyLo may still be drowning in positive press ink from his incredible 2008 release Los Angeles (Warp) but he hasn’t sacrificed any of his experimental chutzpah, chopping up hip-hop strains into turbulent, prismatic soundscapes. He’s also the smilingest DJ I’ve ever seen. London’s the Bug brings a throbbing, postapocalyptic edge to his dub creations, and his jazz background adds an ethereal sheen to his production style. Hyperdub Records owner Kode9, from Glasgow, is the most mischievous of the trio. His output aspires to a warped dubstep atmosphere that he likens to "drinking acid rain," but he also brings some much-needed humor to the mix — and reassuring connections to dance music’s past. The B-side of his new "Black Sun" single, "2 Far Gone," is a total rewiring of Adonis’ 1986 house classic "No Way Back" that dissolves me into a nostalgic grin.

When these three bass-purveyors passed through San Francisco last year — Lotus and Kode as part of the Brainfeeder Festival at 103 Harriet St., and the Bug at dread bass throwdown Surya Dub — they put in exquisitely thoughtful and uplifting sessions. Alas, they were mostly greeted with appreciative, hella-stoned nodding from the crowd. Only a few hardcore freaks had the gumption to truly take the floor. This time, I say make like the freaks and lose yourself to the beat in your head. The bass is only the basis. It’s up to us to fill in the bounce.

TORMENTA TROPICAL WITH GHISLAIN POIRIER

Sat/11, 10pm, $10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo,com

THE FUTURE WITH FLYING LOTUS, KODE9 AND THE BUG

Sat/11, 9pm-afterhours, $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

Oprah begs for mercy

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

"Oprah begs for mercy" sounds so much like the title of one of the S/M fantasy stories you can read online that I just couldn’t resist it, but honestly, read this:

Dr. Berman: … and this is a little holster that the guy can wear so this goes around his penis.

Oprah: Oh, please.

Dr. Berman: Yeah. Around his penis for hands-free clitoral stimulation during intercourse.

Oprah: OK. You have just crossed the line with me.

Dr. Berman: OK. Are you ready?

Oprah: No, you have crossed the line with me. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Dr. Berman: All right, look. Here is the penis. (Makes shadow-puppet gesture.)

Oprah: I swear. I’m not ready for it. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for it. No. I am not ready for it. Let’s move on.

The doctor is Laura Berman of the Berman Institute in Los Angeles, where, between Laura’s therapy and her urologist sister Jennifer’s research, anyone female with enough money and not enough orgasms can get her bits seen to. They do excellent work. I’d be tempted to go myself out of curiosity if I lived more southerly and had more money and less doctor-phobia. Doesn’t Laura, usually so nice, seem to be getting something of a kick out of playing "torture the media mogul" there, though?

Funny, actually, since these appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show have sold gazillions of her vibrators and carried Berman’s name, credentials, and well-tended features with them into bed with viewers nationwide and further.

These are mostly not the penis-mounted marital aides the doctor is describing above, but the Berman Center brand’s workhorse, the Aphrodite. It’s a Magic Wand-type rechargeable nicknamed "the sure thing." How sure a thing is it, and is there anything about it that should automatically win the trust of an audience presumably tuning in more for makeovers, lifestyle tips, and celebrity gossip than for "Look, Oprah, here’s the penis … ?"

I’ve been getting floods of press releases for new toys meant for a mass audience of sex-toy newbies (it’s almost always the Aphrodite — good press that Goddess gets) and I politely reply that I’d be happy to examine one but they’ll have to send me something, and I finally found satisfaction. The Earth did not move, but MyPleasure.com, the rather sober-sided, therapy-oriented sex toy store that acts as Berman’s sales outlet, sent me a selection of hot new gear, including the Aphrodite.

I have to admit that my initial reaction to the Goddess of Desire’s pleasure wand was not "Oh, oh, oh!" but simply, "Oh." It is a dull opaque purple and quite large — a lot of purple — and not much to look at. (Check out the industrial design at Jimmy Jane or Lelo for contrast, or wait till they show up in MOMA’s permanent design collection.) I set it to charge and went away and forgot about it till deadline, at which point I discovered that the vaunted infrared feature does not work on the "high" setting, which seems like kind of a cheat. Does the vibrator itself (a large round head on an articulated neck with three interchangeable silicone sleeves) work? Yes. Yes, it does.

I am not at all convinced that it’s enough better than anything else to cure an Oprah viewers’ anorgasmia all on its own merits. Rather, I bet it’s the Aphrodite’s innate vibey goodness combined with Dr. Berman’s cred and that of the kind of sexy-sounding Dr. Sandor Gardoz, MyPleasure’s resident sexologist, plus Oprah herself, combined with the awareness that thousands of other relatable married-with-children afternoon TV watchers are using it too, that’s causing (or allowing) all the orgasms. It’s an excellent beginner’s vibrator, but I seriously do believe that a lot of those women are finally getting off with this one because so many other women are. If you think about it, this is sort of revolutionary in a way that the feminist-ish sex toy industry has been claiming but not quite earning for quite some time.

I also received an unpleasantly mauve (I sense a theme here) and flowery but otherwise nice-looking insertable thing called, redundantly, Blissful Pleasures, which is very pleased with itself for having five settings — but several of these are literally snore-y, taking long, slow breaths before revving up again, which … yawn.

And there was a "Liv" from Lelo, the gorgeousness people. It is indeed gorgeous, slim and curvy in princess pink with chrome and iPod white accents. It also has a click wheel like an iPod, though, and a learning curve as well as a G-spot one, and I am not entirely sure that it likes me. I think it would make a great gift for a geeky femme with a lot of time on her hands, but it seems a bit high-maintenance — and also, it turned itself off. This is a sex toy’s equivalent of getting up to take a phone call, and it will not be forgiven lightly.

The homely therapeutic model would never do you like that.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

“Missed Connection: Souvenirs Of Brief Encounters”

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PREVIEW If you, too, are an avid Craigslist missed connections reader, you already know about the creepy posts: "Morning gym workout — m4w — 36: Great to see you back in the gym this morning. I was beginning to think you started working out at a different time or different place." There are the hilarious posts: "Fremont Hooters Bartender — m4w — 26: What happened to that call? Did I get played?" And then, occasionally, there are the posts you think might be addressed to you: "Kinko’s Thursday at Noon — m4w — 27: To the 20-something brunette with her friend, I think she called you Michelle. I was a bit busy copying, but even with my back to you I could feel you move around the room. Any chance you read missed connections?"

I suppose that last post could also fall into the "creepy" category. But it also might warrant a response such as, "Well, I do read missed connections. But since my back was turned to you, I’m not quite sure what you look like or who you are. Were you the one printing on the neon pink paper? Tell me more."

And so it went. After a few back-and-forths, the 20-something brunette and the 27-year-old male decided to meet up. He is a robust young lad, and now we are happily planning our honeymoon.

Actually, we’re not, because the voyeur in me would never dare to respond.

Not so Climate Theatre resident artist Claudia Tennyson. Intrigued by the potential and the poetry of Craigslist missed connections posts, she’s been contacting and interviewing people who placed compelling inquiries. For all of us who are addicted to the forum but too timid to post or reply, Tennyson has translated the initial ads and her resulting interviews into a performance that includes a series of artworks that seek to embody each encounter. For fearless types, Tennyson is presenting the event as an opportunity to hook up.

MISSED CONNECTION: SOUVENIRS OF BRIEF ENCOUNTERS Sun/12, 6 p.m., free. Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St (at Folsom), SF. (415) 704-3260. www.climatetheater.com

Move(men)t: A Men’s Dance Festival

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PREVIEW In the history of dance, the male of the species occupies a curious position. In some cultures only men were allowed to dance in public. In Western aristocratic education, dancing was a requirement for a future courtier. But until fairly recently, ballet choreographers consistently undervalued male dancers, and it was women who pioneered modern dance. In the 1930s, however, Ted Shawn’s all-male ensemble did much to break down the prejudice against men in dance. In the Bay Area, every decade or so brings about a refocusing on masculine performances. There is an energy — both virile and tender — to these presentations that, in the past at least, made them very special experiences for men and women alike. Some of that, unquestionably, had to do with the testosterone that just bounced off the walls. Even so, to see so many guys cooperating with each other is still not something we are accustomed to seeing on stage. The latest incarnation of all-male dancing, "Move(men)t: A Men’s Dance Festival," now in its second year, includes Mark Foehringer, who has long choreographed for men; Folawole Oyinlola, of Nigerian descent, who excels in improvisation; Kegan Marling, perhaps best known in his partnership with Jane Schnorrenberg; and Joe Landini’s new San Francisco Moving Men. Ten choreographers in all will show their chops in the tiny but hopping Garage performance space.

MOVE(MEN)T: A MEN’S DANCE FESTIVAL Fri/10–Sat/11, 8 p.m., $10-$20. The Garage, 975 Howard, SF. (415) 885-4006. www.brownpapertickets.com

Mos Def

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PREVIEW Anyone who heard "Big Brother Beat" on De La Soul’s 1996 album Stakes Is High (Tommy Boy) was soon saying, "Who’s this kid Mos Def?" Still, it’s hard to believe that, 13 years later, the radiant voice on that track would become the ubiquitous scion of that good old Native Tongue can-do.

Mos Def can turn up simultaneously in a movie (his next project is a film version of Iceberg Slim’s Mama Black Widow) and on a television show (you catch him on House last a few weeks ago?), yet still find time to cameo on other people’s albums, win an Obie for his performance in a play (Suzan Lori Parks’ Fuckin’ A), and come out with a book (Black 2.0, due this summer). It’s like, wait a minute, there’s got to be more than one Mos Def.

His four albums explore his tortured id and black people’s rightful place as the inventors of rock ‘n’ roll and just about all forms of popular music — all that, and they still maintain the dedication to socially conscious protest we’ve come to expect from our once and future truth-tellers. His fifth, The Ecstatic, is due later this year. He’s coming to Yoshi’s in Oakland for a few sets with Robert Glasper on piano, Mark Kelly on bass, Chris "Daddy" Dave on drums, Casey Benjamin on sax, and Keyon Harrold on trumpet. Be a part of history in the making. It’s not like you have a choice. His name is Most Definite, not Think So.

MOS DEF Tues/14–April 16, 8 and 10 p.m., $55. Yoshi’s Oakland, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakl. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Marissa Nadler

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PREVIEW Who is the shy girl casting her eyes downward on the cover of Little Hells (Kemado)? Here in Hell, Marissa Nadler could be a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane. She’s the dark, downbeat cousin of the enormous-eyed cameo cutie gracing The Saga of Mayflower May (Eclipse, 2005), the sunlit warbler singing in the lawn at the first Arthur Fest, and the whimsical Rhode Island School of Design-educated artist I spoke to around the time of Songs III: Bird on the Water (Kemado, 2007).

With her fourth full-length, Nadler enters a new, more synthetic, and increasingly richer musical realm than that on her previous recordings — one outfitted with its own exquisite troubles and terrors. The almost imperceptibly swooping faux strings that strafe "Heart Paper Lover" sound like tiny planes dive-bombing a cruel sweetheart. The goth muses slumbering within Nadler’s out-folk also come to light, blinking: one imagines Mary Shelley waking to find herself in Frankenstein’s grave-dirt-encrusted shoes on the harpsichord-strewn, almost Sisters of Mercy-like "Mary Comes Alive." Still, Nadler’s voice has never sounded so fine — catching itself on miniscule beads of longing on "Rosary" and fading, delicately detuned, like a dying darling on "Ghosts and Lovers."

MARISSA NADLER With Eric Shea. Wed/8, 9:30 p.m., $10–$12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

Deathly youth

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johnny@sfbg.com

A slow descent into a blasted-out void as intimate as it is alienated, the introductory track of the Antlers’ self-released Hospice drops the listener into a sonic space somewhere near This Mortal Coil’s 1984 It’ll End in Tears (4AD). The reference point is a rich one. Jeff Buckley was given to covering It’ll End in Tears‘ opening track, the Alex Chilton composition "Kangaroo," and when Antlers’ singer-songwriter Peter Silberman’s voice enters the scene on Hospice‘s next song, "Kettering," his fallen choir-boy high tenor is a polite echo of the drowned romantic Buckley, whose equally fatalistic father Tim wrote another one of It’ll End in Tears‘ signature tracks. More blatantly, Hospice is an album all about this mortal coil, a recording that — as the title makes clear — lives near or within a threshold into death, alternately charting out or clawing at broken bonds.

Not exactly a light listening experience, whicb might be why Hospice is being greeted as everything from a work of genius (an NPR critic not only deemed it the best album so far this year, but better than anything from 2008) to an overrated angst fest (in the ever-reactive blogosphere, crankier reviewers have envisioned it as backdrop music for Scrubs and deemed it the musical form of Cymbalta). Another aspect of Hospice that triggers strong reactions is its back story, a tale of the now 23-year-old Silberman’s extended creative isolation that’s an urban version of the rural tortured artistry yarn attached to Bon Iver’s acclaimed For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjauwar, 2008).

To escape the growing chatter, it helps to engage directly with the music, itself far from devoid of cultural signposts. In crafting a 10-song cycle about life and love and death, Silberman draws heavily from the real-life stories and legends of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; one gets the impression that he uses them as a loose-fitting cover for the skeletal remains of his own recent brush with mortality. At this point, Plath is a clichéd symbol of suicidal poeticism and youthful valorizing of depression. (I have memories of a fellow Guardian editor singing "You don’t not do, you do not do" from "Lady Lazarus" in a mockery of her proper bell-like intonation during our Detroit days of being young.)

While Silberman’s invocation of Plath’s inconsolable rage and death-drive lacks humor, it isn’t stiff or overly worshipful. He makes her spirit breathe only to quarrel with it. On the anti-lullaby "Bear," animal imagery gets a bleakly comic twist missing from the heavy-handed Hughes’ favored bestial themes. The bottom line is that Silberman is a talented young singer-songwriter. Hospice is not only prodigious in its ambition, it is well-executed. The title of "Thirteen" reinvokes Chilton while the music’s glacial-yet-golden shimmer could be a missing early Slowdive track or an outtake from Gregg Araki’s 2004 film adaptation of Mysterious Skin. Like another "newgazer," Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, Silberman places the widescreen blurring soundscapes of late-1980s shoegaze bands in the service of American Gothic narrative impulses. In a perverse way, his odes to fatal anorexics and séances for long-dead writers offer the promise of great things to come.

PLAYLIST

Afrobutt, Wonderbutt (Electric Minds) Humor is at play in these neo-disco tracks and their titles, which include "Urgent Workout Required," "Torro de Butt," "Morning Bump," "Cracks All Gone," and "Wunderbutt."

Johan Agebjörn featuring Lisa Barra, Mossebo (Lotuspike) Paging Vangelis: the songwriter and studio whiz behind Sally Shapiro goes new age.

Blackbelt Andersen, Blackbelt Andersen (Full Pupp) Prins Thomas preps us for his vanilla-sented Lindstrøm reunion with this one-man act from his fledgling label.

Lô Borges, Lô Borges and Nuvem Cigana (EMI Brasil) It took me too long to realize all my favorite tracks on 1972’s classic Clube de Esquina are written by Lô. The cover of Lô’s debut album is perfection, and I am completely in love with Nuvem Cigana’s "A força do vento," "Uma canção," "Viver viver," and O vento não me levou."

Serge Gainsbourg, histoire de melody nelson (Light in the Attic) An appreciation of the recent reissue rainfall of Gainsbourg soundtracks and concept song cyles is overdue. For now, this is one of the best.

The New Dawn, There’s a New Dawn (Jackpot) Jackpot indeed — a lost ultra-collectible classic of ’60s Northwest garage rock is revived, much like Jesus.

Ofege, Try and Love (Academy) "It’s Not Easy" is kid soul at its finest, thanks especially to the singing of bandleader Melvin "Noks" Ukachi.

Arthur Russell, …The Sleeping Bag Sessions (Sleeping Bag/Traffic) Koala power! Russell used the narcoleptic furry clasper as the logo for his dance music label. This comp presents some rare treats. His collaborations with Nicky Siano as Felix are two of the best.

Stereo, Somewhere in the Night (Minimal Wave) This 1980s duo’s criss-cross sunglasses put Kanye’s venetian shades to shame. Minimal Wave delivers once again. (Huston)

Stormy weather

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› johnny@sfbg.com

It’s a pleasure to see Sean McFarland receive the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. Last August, McFarland was one of the eight artists or groups showcased in the Bay Guardian‘s second annual photo issue. The Baum Award is a national honor designated for photographers at a pivotal point in their development, and in McFarland’s case, that development is the opposite of predictable. While many photographers work toward "dazzle ’em" displays of technical virtuosity, McFarland has moved away from earlier saturated digital color images toward simple Polaroid photos that possess ominous allure.

Did I say simple? McFarland’s dreamlike images of weather and landscapes are only simple in appearance — they require subtle combinations of photography and the increasingly popular practice of found-image collage. In terms of subject matter, they personalize and miniaturize the vast and unsettling images of the semi-settled West present in the camera art of Michael Light, David Maisel, and Trevor Paglen. The title of Lindsay White’s current show at Ping Pong Gallery, "A Field Guide to the Atmosphere," might just as well apply to McFarland’s work. The atmosphere is stormy, and as troubling as it is beguiling.

SFBG In the last year or two, your work has shifted away from urban views to elemental images: sky, sea, vast land. What has set you off in that direction?

Sean McFarland I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which the earth changes. In an urban environment, we build buildings, roads, and parks, changing the landscape. These are immediate and obvious alterations of our environment. Our actions also change the landscape as we alter the climate — more frequent and powerful storms, rising seas. By focusing on making images of the natural world, of the landscape, I’m interested in making pictures of us. How we change the earth and how the earth effects us.

SFBG Your work from the earlier 2005 era reminds me a bit of a short film, site specific_Las Vegas 05, by an artist named Olivo Barbieri. It has amazing colorful aerial views of Las Vegas in which the city really looks like it is comprised of toy buildings and cars. Were you looking for that kind of "making strange" effect when presenting views some might take for granted?

SM The work I was making from 1999 until around 2002 tried to take things that were fake and make them look real. When I first started re-photographing the collages I was making (in 2003), the miniaturization effect was an unexpected but welcome result. I was working in the other direction, making the real look fake. The collages are made by hand, so the edges are rough and messy. The selective blurring of images was there at first to hide where the images were put together, but it was that transformative quality of the focus that made the process intriguing to me. With the collaged images, I was taking pictures from all over, real images of real things, and by bringing those disparate elements together, the pictures raise questions about what was actually in the photograph.

The image of the park (in the Guardian‘s August 2008 Photo Issue), for example, has the playground from Dolores Park, but with the downtown skyline and bridge removed and replaced with a sky from another city. It may be the absence of the urban center normally in the background that makes the picture seem odd, or it could be that the light from the sky is not the same reflecting off the foreground. The relationship between fact and fiction is one of the strongest reasons I work with photography as opposed to other visual art forms.

SFBG You mention collage as a part of your process. That might not be so apparent to someone who casually glances at your photography. Can you tell me a bit about your approach to collage, and also if there are any collage artists whom you especially like?

SM Lately I’ve been working to make the collage process less apparent. In the past, the images took the final form of a C-Print, made in a darkroom. Now I’m using Polaroid film. Polaroids are mementos and souvenirs of moments, places, and things that actually happened; they imply that whatever is in the picture was witnessed, was real. Since I can’t really take the images I’m making, I’m using collage to do so. A good example is my image of the airplane flying over the black ocean and white land. The picture of the plane is taken from a satellite image of Earth, the land is a photograph I made in the Exploratorium (it’s a picture of an exhibit that shows how land is changed by wind currents).

SFBG Books are a big visual inspiration to me, so I liked seeing you cite the Field Guide to North American Weather and Gerhard Richter’s Atlas as two recent sources of fascination and perhaps material. What drew you to those books and what do you like about them?

SM I enjoy those books because they are both wonderful collections. I work from an archive of several thousand images. This is probably why Atlas is so fascinating to me. It’s the source material (mostly photographs) that Richter uses in his work and it made me even more interested in his work. I like the Field Guide because all the pictures in it are of weather-based natural phenomena. Some of the photographs in it are pretty hard to believe, but actually happened.

SEAN MCFARLAND: THE 2009 BAUM AWARD FOR EMERGING AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS

Thurs/2 through May 23 ( reception Thurs/2, 5–8 p.m.), free or donation

SF Camerawork

657 Mission, second floor, SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

Go into the light

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In an online interview, experimental filmmaker and violin drone pioneer Tony Conrad relates a story: one night, underground drag superstar Mario Montez wandered into the apartment Conrad shared with filmmaker Jack Smith, and at Smith’s behest began an impromptu performance. When Smith flicked on a beaten up 16mm projector to serve as a makeshift spotlight, he and Conrad became transfixed by the play of light that reflected off Montez’s sequined outfit. While it would be glib — and certainly fun — to declare that 1960s structural film was born from the glittering gyrations of a drag queen, Conrad’s anecdote is but one development in his longstanding fascination with the excessive sensory effects of shooting light out into the void. Conrad’s 1965 16mm film The Flicker is perhaps his purest and best-known manifestation of this — 30 minutes of black and white stroboscopic bliss (or hell) that cast its long shadows over Brian Gysin’s dream machines, and more contemporarily, Anthony McCall’s striking digital light and fog projections. You’ll have the chance to see how much flashing light your eyes can take when San Francisco Cinematheque presents screenings of Conrad’s films in conjunction with the New York-based polymath’s weekend-long residency at the concurrent Activating the Medium Festival. While Sunday night’s program features The Flicker, it also puts it into context as a jumping off point for Conrad’s subsequent process-based films and public access video works, in which activities such as electrocution and cooking take on a rhythm as mesmerizing as staring into the pulsating light of a film projector.

TONY CONRAD: FLICKERING JEWEL

Fri/3, 5 p.m. (Program One: "Window, Perspective Shadow")

Sat/4, 8 p.m. (Program Two, with Conrad in performance)

Sun/5, 7:30 p.m. (Program Three: "Flicker and Process Films/Works on Video"), $15

San Francisco Art Institute, 300 Chestnut, SF

www.sfcinematheque.org

Visceral reality

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Already a veteran Irish Republican Army volunteer serving his second penitentiary term at age 27, Bobby Sands was leader of Republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze, a.k.a. Long Kesh, outside Belfast in 1981. Early that year he commenced a hunger strike joined by numerous other inmates, an action intended to define IRA incarcerates as political rather than criminal prisoners while boosting international attention for the independence cause.

After 66 days, he was the first of 10 participants to die. The strike’s cessation five months later (participants joined in at staggered intervals) was claimed as a victory by Conservative P.M. Margaret Thatcher and the mainstream British press. Yet the inmates won most of their demands, IRA membership surged, and the "Iron Lady" was thereafter target No. 1 for patriotic loathing among Irish free-staters.

Hunger is the first feature by Steve McQueen, the London photographer, sculptor, and maker of often black and white shorts created primarily for the more rarefied atmosphere of museums and galleries. Their minimalist rigor is very much present here in the exactitude of composition as well as their emphasis on physical detail and visceral experience. It took Julian Schnabel until The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) to find a full-length subject that suited his tactile sense while excusing a lack of narrative instinct or interest; McQueen’s got there on the first try. Hunger is completely realized, without compromise. It’s convincingly ugly in an aesthetically beautiful way, cool to the touch, admirably near-perfect, and off-putting.

We’re introduced to Sands only after several lesser figures take brief center stage: Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a guard whose work weighs heavily on him; new prisoner Davey (Brian Milligan), who refuses to wear "the uniform of a criminal," thus joining the already in-progress "blanket protest"; and older cellmate Gerry (Liam McMahon), who introduces him to the "dirty protest." That protest consisted of caking walls with smeared feces, directing urine into the corridor, and letting uneaten food rot. We finally glimpse Sands (Michael Fassbender) during visiting hours; he puts up a fierce fight as he and others are violently dragged to a forced shave-and-wash.

Hunger is clinical, politically neutral, almost purely observational — interested in simply displaying rather than commenting on the sacrifices made. It’s not unlike McQueen’s series of postage stamps commemorating British soldiers killed in Iraq — created as part of his role as "official war artist" — that were opposed by the Royal Mail and Ministry of Defense.

Ethical debate is limited to one, 17-and-a-half minute shot in which Bobby and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) lay out personal, political, and religious arguments for and against a potentially lethal strike. It’s only in the subsequent, equally stock-still sequence — a guard sweeping an entire hall-length of piss — that the director’s severity risks feeling schematic.

Needless to say, the final act is unrelenting, with its hallucinations, open sores, and actors starved under medical supervision to scarifying effect. But McQueen finds unsentimental poetry in surprising places throughout, from the snowflakes falling on Lohan’s beating-scarred knuckles to Sands’ lifeless face as a winding sheet is drawn over it. The institutional palette, bare-bones use of sound, even the fully exposed sinewy-to-sticklike male bodies turn docudrama into a kind of exquisite art project, at once devastating and hermetically sealed. *

HUNGER opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

MORE ON SFBG.COM

Pixel Vision blog: Johnny Ray Huston’s interview with Hunger director Steve McQueen.

Agit-aggregator

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Due to April 1 budget cuts, the original content in this space has been replaced by a selection of music news items from the wire.

MADONNA ADOPTING COUNTRY OF MALAWI


LILONGWE (Rutters) — Madonna announced her plans to adopt the entire southern African nation today after local friends told her that her adopted Malawian children, David and Mercy James, were lonely and needed companionship. In 2006 some Malawian activists attempted to block David’s adoption, but this time many are endorsing the idea of a high-flying life attached to a parent with a global pop brand. "We had no idea she would take her name so literally," opined a High Court clerk. "Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to meeting my nanny and hanging with the backstage crew at mom’s next arena show."

MICHAEL JACKSON STARRING IN LATEST TWILIGHT INSTALLMENT


LOS ANGELES (APE) — In a surprise move, Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson has been dropped from the lead role of vampire hottie Edward Cullen. His replacement: the King of Pop. Producers believe that despite his age and HIStory, Michael Jackson has the tween idol beat in the unnatural skin pallor department. "He’s much more believable as a vampire," said one source.

CHRIS BROWN PICKED LAST FOR DANCING WITH THE STARS


LOS ANGELES (FuxNews) — Just weeks after Chris Brown was charged with felony assault, commercial endorsements were suspended, and his music withdrawn from radio stations, the Putf8um recording artist took another backhand blow to his ego: he was snubbed by the entire cast of the popular TV show and picked last in a very special dancer’s-choice episode. "Sure, the guy can cut a rug," said an unnamed contestant. "But everyone saw those unauthorized TMZ pics of his last cut-up partner. Performers always say, ‘Break a leg.’ I don’t want to take that chance."

KANYE WEST: ‘YEAH, I HAVE AN AUTO-TUNE IMPLANT — SO WHAT?’


NEW YORK CITY (Eek! Online) — "It’s just another tool in the studio," hip-hop artist Kanye West said. "Now I don’t even need to touch a computer to get my sound." Emboldened by the success of the operation, West’s surgeons plan to remove a part of the G.O.O.D. Music founder’s brain and install an entire suite of Pro Tools plug-ins.

JONAS BROTHERS BUSTED IN HUMAN ANTI-GROWTH HORMONE STING


WYCKOFF, N.J. — (EmptyV.com) In an effort not to become Hanson or New Kids on the Block, Kevin, Nick, and Joe Jonas have been taking massive amounts of HAH in an effort to retain their tween demographic, allege Wyckoff police after a 4 a.m. raid on the Jonas family McMansion. "Our management told us we were taking flaxseed oil," Kevin said. "They claimed it was pixie dust," added Joe.

ALL-GIRL INDIE ROCK GROUP TAKE HAIR BAND EFFORT TO NEW LEVEL: WITH BEARDS


PORTLAND, Ore. (Ditchfork) — As one of the most pervasive trends in indie rock, beards have stood the test of time and triple-blade, pivoting shavers. One all-girl combo, however, is proving that they can play that game too: this week the Portland-based Her Suit obtained beard transplants at the O’Hare Baldness Clinic outside Chicago. The number of friends on the band’s MySpace page has risen tenfold, particularly among the follically challenged.

MP3S FOUND TO CAUSE CANCER, NEW VINYL FORMAT CONSIDERED ‘ANTI-CARCINOGEN’


SAGINAW, Mich. (AFPEE) — Scientists have determined a link between heavy use of iPods and other MP3 players and increased risk of cochlear cancer. The same team of scientists also determined a simple preventive measure: a protective vinyl coating applied to the actual MP3 players. "Vinyl is not only better," said one researcher. "It makes everything better."

NO JOKE

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND


How prescient is Working on a Dream (Columbia), when employment seems like a figment of the imagination for so many? Wed/1, 7:30 p.m., $38–$95. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. www.livenation.com

GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS AND KATE MAKI


Still, sweet waters run deep: GLS drifts softly and drowsily, with nods to country music’s storytelling tradition, whereas ex-neuroscience student Maki teamed with Howe Gelb for On High (OW OM, 2008) and gently noggin-rattling arrangements that go beyond the solo acoustic guitar. Fri/3, 9 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

LILA DOWNS


The Oaxaca native sifts together Fleetwood Mac and Lucinda Williams covers with an original, "Shake Away" — and a bared bellybutton — that seem like a Mesoamerican bid for Shakira’s Latin-crossover crown. Sat/4, 9 p.m., $30. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. www.livenation.com

LILY ALLEN


It’s her, it’s us: one of the first pint-sized, powerhouse MySpace stars chips away at detractors with the "darker, faster" It’s Not Me, It’s You (Capitol). Sat/4, 9 p.m., $30–$32. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. www.goldenvoice.com

AHMAD JAMAL


"Darn that Dream" seems so far away, yet the 78-year-old mastermind with the keys keeps working for the ineffable, last with It’s Magic (Dreyfus, 2008). Sat/4, 8 p.m., $20–$75. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF. www.sfjazz.com

BURMESE


According to member Weasel Walter, Mike, Mark, Mike, and Tissue have come out of hiding, not to play blistering noise from their new 10-inch, but to cover the Circle Jerks’ Group Sex (Frontier, 1980), fore to aft, instead. With the Human Quena Orchestra and Geronimo. Sun/5, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

Sam I am?

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

He has come, he says, to take American Jewry into the 21st century. Some members of the suburban synagogue that just hired Sam Isaac, charismatic tax attorney and single father turned rabble-rousing rabbi and spiritual visionary, are thrilled. Others, not so much. Between those two poles, and across 12 fully fledged characters, solo performer extraordinaire Charlie Varon takes us on a steadily dramatic, extremely witty, and thought-provoking ride through what he pictures as a transformative moment in Jewish identity. And transformation is what Rabbi Sam — who calls the United States the most Jewish of countries and likes to draw on Lincoln as much as that other Abraham — represents.

No doubt a little shaking up was needed at the synagogue where, as Sam reminds his audience, the young have been drifting away from the religion of their parents, and where for too long the others have gotten by on hollow nostalgia ("museum Judaism" he calls it, "with just a pinch of that shtetl kitsch"). But Rabbi Sam is as determined as he is brilliantly inspired, and with the board of directors split passionately down the middle about him, a showdown looks all but inevitable.

The crux of the matter becomes Sam’s vaguely suspicious management of an anonymous donor’s gift of $2 million, intended specifically to take Jews, and even willing gentiles in the community, on a trip to Jerusalem for a "jolt" of Judaism straight from the Holy Land that will supposedly, under Sam’s tutelage, help take American Judaism out of the past and reinvent it for the future. Slowly, as this project meets resistance from certain crotchety but not unsympathetic quarters, Sam becomes a more ambiguous figure, his embrace of certain influential members of the community beginning to smack of manipulation, his supreme confidence giving off a whiff of megalomania.

Varon’s multicharacter solo show — the first in years from the famed creator of such theatrical gems as Rush Limbaugh in Night School, in ongoing partnership with collaborator and director David Ford — is a performance tour de force, propelling a story both compellingly nuanced and suspenseful. At the same time, and despite its dozen diverse characters and muscular wrestling with the scope of Jewish identity at the beginning of a new century, there is something of a conspicuous absence at the heart of the play, especially given the centrality of Sam’s Jerusalem venture, which is Judaism and America’s inevitable entanglement in the ongoing and escautf8g catastrophe unfolding, disproportionately, for Palestinians and Jews in Israel-Palestine.

Even if it goes unstated in the play — which may simply and understandably be trying to avoid opening a can of worms, thematically speaking — it will probably strike at least some members of the audience that Jerusalem is technically an occupied city, not, therefore, open to all, but rather a principal site of contestation.

Again, it is not hard to imagine Varon and Ford wanting to skip the issue for wholly practical reasons, as an almost uncontainable distraction from the play’s wider concerns. But can it really be avoided? The modern history of Israel and the Israel-Palestine conflict surely has, at the very least, implications for the play’s theme: the nature of Jewish identity in the United States today, a conundrum that American Jewish individuals and groups consciously underscore, for example, by their vocal presence at the forefront of recent nationwide protests against the U.S.-backed Israeli military incursions into Gaza. Silence on this pressing context does not banish it from the consciousness of the audience. Rather, it risks becoming, however inadvertently, a misleading gesture of its own.

RABBI SAM

Through May 10

Thurs–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m. (except April 19, show at 2 p.m.), $18

Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF

800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org

Undead again

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Resident Evil 5

(Capcom; Xbox 360, PS3)

GAMER With sales hovering around the 35 million mark, Capcom’s Resident Evil series has become less of a cash cow and more of a cash elephant. If I explained to you that Resident Evil 5 is in fact the seventh game in the main series, you might care, but suffice to say that between a bookshelf’s worth of games, novelizations, comic books, and feature films, expectations for the most recent installment are running high.

The new title takes place in Africa, where franchise stalwart Chris Redfield has arrived to be gruff and kill things in the name of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. The world is beset on all sides by misanthropes with syringes full of tentacle-rich zombifying megavirus, and only the BSAA can keep us from being turned into creatures that look like a walking combination of ground beef and motor oil.

Redfield is joined by his hard-bodied counterpart, Sheva Alomar, a local operative who accompanies the player throughout. Cooperation is the name of the game this time around, and you’ll have to pool resources and abilities to survive. Sidekick A.I. is one of gaming’s greatest deficiencies, and though Sheva’s is certainly passable (read: not a constant frustration), simple online and same-room co-op features make two-person play the optimal approach.

The game retains Resident Evil’s infuriating "stop-and-pop" controls, rooting you to the spot every time you aim your weapon. This is ostensibly to preserve the series’ survival-horror roots, although you would be hard-pressed to find anything scary during the game’s paltry 12 hours of gameplay. RE5 plays like an action title, with streamlined item-management and save utilities and a lot of relentless gunplay.

Visually, the game is stunning, creating an atmospheric and detailed world for the player to riddle with bullets. If only the other aspects of the game’s presentation had received even half as much attention — the writing is horrifically stilted, and the story is incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems like the designers are purposefully insulting the players’ intelligence — "The power is off. Maybe there’s some way to turn it back on" — and every single point is made with a sledgehammer. Early trailers for the game brought accusations of racism (white cop mows down herds of bug-eyed Africans), and while this charge loses potency in context, the appearance of grass-skirted "tribal" zombies who literally throw spears at you is extremely problematic. Thankfully, when your back’s to the wall and you’re running out of ammo, it doesn’t really matter if the zombies are black, blue, or green.

Made in U.S.A.

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REVIEW Rialto Pictures founder Bruce Goldstein will scoop up the Mel Novikoff award at this year’s San Francisco Film Festival, but local audiences have a chance to sample his good work before then during the Castro Theatre’s run of Rialto’s freshly struck 35–mm print of Jean-Luc Godard’s widescreen, red-white-and-blue firecracker Made in U.S.A. (1967). If the picture seems a helter-skelter jumble of contingencies, it’s important to remember it was but one of four Godard movies to wash up on these shores during the otherwise turbulent 12-month period slicing through 1967 and 1968 (the other three were 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, La Chinoise, and Week End). Of these, Made in U.S.A. gives the fullest demonstration of Godard’s aim to create a cinema that could take part in the jagged incongruities of modern life. Listing the film’s tangled referents — its confluence of aesthetics, politics, and violence crucially hinges on American hardboiled pulp and the real-life murder of Moroccan leftist Ben Barka — doesn’t begin to describe Made in U.S.A.‘s unexpected pathos. For all its agitprop overtures and modernist complications, the film is also a reflective, conflicted goodbye to the writer-director’s formative romances with American culture and Anna Karina. The porcelain actress, already divorced from Godard by the time the picture was made, gives a fragmented, emotional performance almost entirely in close-up. As the long day closes on Made in U.S.A., an old confidante tells Karina’s Bogart-like investigator that obsolete categories of Right and Left cannot adequately address political problems, to which she responds, "Then how?" That broken question, the neutron star of Godard’s career, shows no sign of letting up.

MADE IN U.S.A. opens Wed/1 at the Castro. See Rep Clock.

John Jasperse Company

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PREVIEW When New York choreographer John Jasperse presented his company in its local debut in 2004, the severe and pared-down choreography of his multimedia piece California looked more New England Puritanism than California hedonism. Good for him, I remember thinking, for not having bought into popular stereotypes. Still the omnipresent leaf blower and the dancers’ self-involvement needled me. No such hint of a cultural disconnect is likely to trouble his Misuse liable to prosecution, which takes its name from the milk crates we use to store and move our belongings. The work includes a live score by Mills College composer Zeena Parkins and a found-objects design for which YBCA has sent out a call for plastic coat hangers. One wonders: when Jasperse, who has been choreographing for more than 20 years, created Misuse in 2007 and set a zero budget for design, did he have an inkling for the rough waters the country was about to enter? In retrospect, the decision has proven visionary. Misuse‘s original impetus came from a desire to hold up a mirror to a society in which Judge Judy makes more money than all nine of the Supreme Court justices combined, or in which the war in Iraq costs more than four times per day than the annual budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. No doubt, if Jasperse made Misuse today, he could come with other horror figures picked straight from the headlines. But ultimately more important than the topical resonance of this work is the integrity and refinement of Jasperse’s choreography — which is his own, yet made for us.

JOHN JASPERSE COMPANY. Thurs/2–Sat/4, 8 p.m., $25–$30. Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 978-2787. www.ybca.org

Kayhan Kalhor

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PREVIEW Kayhan Kalhor’s splendid vehicle is the kamanche, a bowed string instrument often rendered in English as a "spike fiddle." Don’t be fooled by that bit of orientalism. Neither folksy nor punk, in Kalhor’s hands, the kamanche sings an eloquent and breathless tune, as assured and unfaltering as an operatic coloratura. Partnered with the rich and flawlessly clear string-tugging of the charismatic Brooklyn Rider string quartet, Kalhor’s vocabulary of Persian classical music and Kurdish folk melody soars, now with the rush of a high speed chase, now with wrenching pathos that would move a heart of stone. Presenter SFJazz has dubbed the genre "world chill," and I would urge you to ignore it. What is world? What is chill? Both the youthful Brooklyn Rider and the seasoned Kalhoun perform in fiery earnest, with scarcely a glance at any East-meets-West gimmickry. Still, without burdening these fine players with the shlockiness of a term like "world chill" or "crossover classical," it’s fair to say this pairing builds shrewdly on the success of projects like Yo-Yo Ma’s intercultural Silk Road Ensemble and Kronos Quartet’s record Caravan, (Nonesuch, 2000) which featured Kalhor’s grandly titled composition Gallop of a Thousand Horses. As that name suggests, when alumni of the European symphonic tradition and virtuosos like Kalhor jam out, there’s no fear of the epic. Watching this group feels like surrendering to the pleasures of a sweeping cinematic journey. And I watched it on YouTube — the Palace of Fine Arts will be the silver screen.

KAYHAN KALHOR With Brooklyn Rider. Sun/5, 7 p.m., $20–$55. Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF. 1-866-920-JAZZ, www.sfjazz.org

Meaner streets

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Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned

(Rockstar North; Xbox 360)

GAMER Ever since the "next-gen" consoles shipped with capacious hard-drives and easy access to the broadband interwebs, gamers have been paying the price. Picking up where the boxed expansion pack model left off, publishers realized they could nickel-and-dime their fans with "downloadable content packs," recalling the "Batmobile sold separately" chicanery of action figure advertising and failing to deliver even the most rudimentary bang for your buck.

It comes as something of a relief, then, when a developer eschews horse armor and warmed-over levels too crappy for the retail version and provides some downloadable content actually worth the bandwidth, let alone the greenbacks. Grand Theft Auto IV makers Rockstar North restore some hope with The Lost and Damned, a worthwhile 10-hour nugget of episodic expansion that once again turns gamers loose in the open-world cesspool of Liberty City.

You play Johnny Klebitz, a surly biker with bad tribal tattoos and a cadre of "brothers" in the Lost, one of the metropolis’ warring biker gangs. Engaged in a power struggle with the gang’s atavistic head honcho and mired in the world of crime that defines Rockstar’s dystopic settings, Klebitz is soon fighting for his life.

In keeping with the expansion’s hog-wild characters, Rockstar has retuned the motorcycle physics, making two wheels the optimum number for peeling around the vast gameplay environment. Your character has access to a handful of powerful new weapons, and your easy-riding cohort is a phone call away if you’re in need of manpower, horsepower, or firepower. New multiplayer modes cater to the bike-centric gameplay, including a new race mode in which competitors with baseball bats reenact Electronic Arts’ classic Road Rash series.

The writing and motion capture is consistent with the GTA series’ surpassing quality, and Rockstar again proves that careful characterization and plotting makes for a more engrossing gaming experience than a coterie of anonymous sidekicks yelling "boo-yah!" The events of The Lost and Damned intersect intriguingly with the original game, but this is both a blessing and a curse. Despite the developers’ best efforts, Johnny Klebitz isn’t half the protagonist GTA IV’s Niko Bellic is, and the moments when Bellic shows up are an unfortunate reminder of this fact. As with Bellic, the writers make an ill-conceived stab at humanizing their star criminal in Klebitz, presenting him as a voice of reason and moderation. But this all flies out the window once he’s mowing down cops in the dozens. Then again, when you’ve got a fully automatic shotgun to play with, who cares about psychological realism?

Dirty duo

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In what maybe can only be considered a sign of the times, bad attitudes abound in two lean productions on either side of the Bay this week. The first comes courtesy of Dostoevsky, badass of 19th-century Russian literature, whose rascal Raskolnikov (an excellent Tyler Pierce) stalks feverishly across Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage in a bracingly focused new adaptation of Crime and Punishment by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus. The 90-minute intermission-less crime-and-punishment spree — which marks the return of director Sharon Ott, the Rep’s artistic director from 1984 to 1997 — is largely psychological in nature. It takes place after the fact of the double homicide at the novel’s heart without any doubt about the perpetrator or the motive — although Inspector Porfiry (a charmingly avuncular but cunning J.R. Horne), playing smooth cat to Raskolnikov’s bumptious mouse, would have his only suspect believe otherwise for now. (Delia MacDougall rounds out a fine cast as the prostitute Sonia and others in the immediate orbit of Raskolnikov’s fervid, convoluted designs.)

No, this is a man already caught; he just hasn’t realized it yet. In the play’s shrewdly concentrated vantage on the novel, it’s Raskolnikov’s slow dawning grasp of his actions and fate that matters. And even then it’s only, for Dostoevsky the Christian existentialist, the beginning, as evinced by the echoing question, "Do you believe Lazarus rose from the dead?" To this end, Christopher Barreca’s inspired scenic design evokes the reclusive and open-ended nature of his predicament at once: so daunting the difference between inside and out, but so many ready passages spring open too through these thin partitions, as a mind "unhinged by theories" contemplates what separates itself from the other.

This division comes back in an aggressively funny, coolly insouciant piece of theater terrorism now up in a laser-focused, captivating production (and I mean captivating — you don’t dare budge for the 60-minute duration) from Cutting Ball Theater. The Bay Area premiere of Will Eno’s Thom Pain (based on nothing) is nothing you want to miss, or a nothing you want very much to see, especially if you ever wondered what might have happened if Groucho Marx had postponed his birth until he might be cast in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Bay Area audiences were introduced to Eno’s blazing wit and word play last year in Berkeley Rep’s local premiere of Tragedy: A Tragedy, but Thom Pain, a tortuous and wonderfully hostile-hospitable monologue exploring that same thin membrane between a Me and a You, achieves a kind of ideal setting and performance in this intimate production executed to the hilt by a very impressive Jonathan Bock, under admirable direction by Marissa Wolf. The less you know going in, the better. Just go, dig a finger into your collar, clench you buttocks, a try not to laugh for an hour.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Through Sun/29, see stage listings for schedule

$16.50–$71

Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison, Berk.

www.berkeleyrep.org

THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING)

Through April 5, Thurs–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 5 p.m.

$15–$30

Cutting Ball Theater

Exit Theater, 277 Taylor, SF

www.cuttingball.com

Body language

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In watching Jess Curtis/Gravity in The Symmetry Project — Study #14 — (re)Presentation, it becomes immediately clear why sculptors from Michelangelo to Maillol to Moore couldn’t keep their hands off the human figure. There is a tactile quality to skin — whether it has the silken gleam of white marble in Maria Francesca Scaroni or Jess Curtis’ scuffed cragginess — that is irresistible. Given how hard these two dancers work, olfactory sensations also become integral to this latest version of an extraordinarily compelling investigation of how we perceive each other and ourselves.

Symmetry premiered last year. Now it is less monochromatic and even hints at an emotional trajectory — from the animalistic to the über-civilized. Is this an improvement? Probably, it adds new forms of inquiry. Does it make the work more theatrically accessible? Yes. Should you go and see it? Yes. Symmetry is brainy, sensuous, and asks important questions.

Mostly Symmetry is performed in the nude. The dancers at first shed false skins, i.e. fur coats, only to reinhabit them later in the form of evening wear. Though improvised, the work adheres to a strict concept: symmetry — balance, complementarities, and stability — as a physical reality. It could have been as deadly as looking at rows of cabbages or graph paper. But in Scaroni and Curtis’ bodies, both alone and together, Symmetry becomes a vibrating, pulsating state of presence by what they call an "inter-corporeal kaleidoscope of flesh."

The piece moves from a sculptural and placid connectedness to a fragmentary and volatile one (think electroshock) to Cabaret-style isolation within togetherness. In the first part it’s strong buttocks; sensitive hands and astoundingly interlocking body parts are particularly compelling. In a grand coup, Symmetry ends with Scaroni rocking on her heels and looking into the black hole of her vagina. Did she see just a kaleidoscope of flesh?

Composer Klaus Janek’s subtle underpinnings — especially the breathing section — were beautifully responsive to the dancers’ needs. (Rita Felciano)

JESS CURTIS/GRAVITY

Thurs/26-Sun/29, 8 p.m., $18–$20

CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF

1-800-838-3006

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