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4 MUSIC REVIEW 6 BOOK REVIEW A golden anniversary for jazz One old lefty in New Orleans. BY JON PARELES struggles to make 2 MUSIC REVIEW Bad Bunny’s ecstatic career sense of the new revue. BY JON CARAMANICA world. BY DWIGHT GARNER
NEWS CRITICISM TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019 C1
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MICHAEL KIMMELMAN ART REVIEW
RICKY RHODES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES A Ghostly Residue of Bodies in Motion
historic preservation, to collect dust from ster, he applied it to the hall’s east wall, the The artist and architect Jorge Jorge Otero-Pailos EVOCATIVE AND EASILY OVERLOOKED, Westminster Hall, the oldest building at latex acting like a sponge, absorbing dirt Otero-Pailos at his exhibition “Répétiteur” by Jorge Otero-Pailos, occu- Britain’s Parliament. and other particles. Reinforced with fabric “Répétiteur,” installed in a sealed in latex the sweat pying an obscure rehearsal room at City A storied space with immense stone walls and peeled off in long sheets, it skinned, or rehearsal space once used by and smudges at a dance Center, is on view this week only. Time is and a hammer-beam roof commissioned by cleaned, the wall, returning the stone to its Merce Cunningham’s dancers. short. Richard II, Westminster Hall is where the original color. troupe’s studio space. Time happens to be Mr. Otero-Pailos’s English established a court system, held But the sticky latex also collected residue subject. Back in 2010, Artangel, the London- Anne Boleyn’s coronation banquet and — smoke, tobacco, sweat, dirt — left over Répétiteur based arts nonprofit, commissioned Mr. tried Charles I for treason. centuries. Cast, the latex created a kind of New York City Center Otero-Pailos, the Spanish-born architect, Mr. Otero-Pailos’s medium is natural liq- ghostly double of the wall — a skin, made artist and Columbia University professor of uid latex, a conservator’s tool. At Westmin- CONTINUED ON PAGE C2
JAMES PONIEWOZIK CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK Darkness Visible in ‘Game of Thrones’ ‘Hamilton’ as Art Show? ‘The Long Night’ episode cast A Test Run in Chicago many flickering shadows. By MICHAEL PAULSON
THE NIGHT WAS DARK and — from what we CHICAGO — Audrey Burcham and Grace could see of it — full of terrors. Troelstrup got up at 5 a.m. Saturday to be In the aptly titled “The Long Night” sure they’d make it on time. By 7, three episode of “Game of Thrones,” the Night hours before a large “Hamilton” exhibition King brought his teeming army of the un- opened here, they were standing at the dead to assault the defenders of the living at front of the line with their moms. Audrey, 12, Winterfell. He is evidently not a morning was clutching an Alexander Hamilton doll person. The army arrived under cloak of as well as a hard-bound collection of inspi- darkness, and the hour-plus combat that rational tweets from Lin-Manuel Miranda ensued unfolded with all the chromatic vari- and, of course, a Playbill; Grace, 13, was ety of a goth teenager’s wardrobe. wearing a gold star “Hamilton” knit cap and This was something we have seen, or toting “Hamilton: The Revolution,” the ex- rather not seen, before. Funereal color pal- planatory book known to fans as the Hamil- ettes have become a signature of ambitious tome. TV drama. The likes of “Ozark” and “True “We’re obsessed,” Audrey said. Grace Detective” externalize their angst by paint- nodded in agreement. “Hamilton is our life LYNDON FRENCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ing the world in shades of black and blue. now.” A “Hamilton” Playbill held by Naturally lit night scenes and gloomy filters Hamilfans (yes, that’s what they call a fan at a new exhibition in have rendered expensive widescreens into themselves) have a lot of ways to engage Chicago inspired by the play. charcoal rubbings of semi-perceptible HBO with the juggernaut musical. There’s the CONTINUED ON PAGE C6 The Dothraki charge in Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” used darkness and light. CONTINUED ON PAGE C5 C M Y K Nxxx,2019-04-30,C,002,Bs-4C,E1
C2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019
JON CARAMANICA MUSIC REVIEW A Pop Recalibrator Is Still Changing It Up Bad Bunny’s revue spanned show was an ecstatic and relentless career- collaboration “Mia” is — a song designed spanning revue, made even more impres- for smooth absorption that never pushes his career. All three years. sive by the fact that his recording career is the edges of Bad Bunny’s gifts. just three years old. Midway through the show, he was joined EVERY SONG BAD BUNNY performed at Mad- Bad Bunny emerged in a reflective laven- by the Puerto Rican reggaeton star Ar- ison Square Garden Saturday night came der trench coat, his hair the color of a Penn cángel for a couple of songs, including “Tu paired with its own specific, vivid, elaborate tennis ball, with pointy fingernails to match. No Vive Asi.” (Arcángel was arrested on graphics. The visuals took over screens that From the beginning of his set, he mixed in Thursday in Las Vegas on a misdemeanor hovered above the arena floor and the his early songs — which were more domestic battery charge; his appearance cross-shaped stage, which was a huge straightforward Latin trap — with more re- here was a surprise.) The Dominican- screen itself, giving the effect that the rap- cent ones, which draw on a broader musical American rapper Tali Goya also appeared for one song. per was swimming in a pool of his own cre- palette. Bad Bunny released “X 100PRE” just be- But the more crucial pairing came toward fore Christmas, putting an exclamation the end of the night, when Bad Bunny was Bad Bunny performing “La Romana.” The song starts Performed at Madison Square Garden point at the end of a year that, even without it, very much belonged to him. He’d already out as a trap boomer with bachata over- on Saturday. tones but shifts gears into something more been one of the most versatile and busy col- pulsing and urgent. That’s when El Alfa, the laborators in the increasingly fluid space titan of Dominican dembow, shows up. At ation, a video-game protagonist sprouting where Latin trap flirts with reggaeton, and this show, he ran onstage in a jacket covered out of pixels and into real life. also Latin pop, bachata and hip-hop. And in flames made of sequins, rapping in the During “Tenemos Que Hablar,” the jumpy thanks to his appearance on Cardi B’s “I rat-tat-tat style that he’s been honing since pop-punk song from his debut studio album, Like It,” for a time the No. 1 song in the coun- the early 2010s and which he showcased so “X 100PRE,” the screens were filled with lo- try, he leapfrogged his way into becoming effectively on last year’s bruiser of an al- gos of rock bands of varying punkness: the one of the most recognizable voices in pop bum, “El Hombre.” Ramones, Hüsker Dü, Blink-182, Linkin music. Just a couple of years ago, the full ascend- Park and many more. It was a statement At this show, he pivoted among his many ance of an artist like Bad Bunny into pop’s about building bridges, but also audacious styles: brawny rapping on “Caro”; conver- mainstream would have been far-fetched. flag-planting: Those bands could belong to sational calm on “Otra Noche en Miami”; But thanks to his sui generis charisma and anyone who ever played a Warped Tour, swinging melody on “Diles,” his first single, style, he’s been instrumental in bringing sure, but they also form part of the DNA of released in 2016. Sometimes, on record, Bad Latin trap to audiences far beyond the gen- one of the most vital and unusual global pop Bunny’s singing seems like a byproduct of re’s roots. El Alfa is much more of a forceful idols of the now, a Puerto Rican rapper-sing- his rapping. But onstage, on songs like “Solo literalist than Bad Bunny, and dembow er with an uncanny knack for melody and de Mi,” he was comfortable leaning into the hasn’t traveled as far as Latin trap yet. But an extravagantly colorful style. full tenderness of his voice. And in the con- when the two men were onstage together, Which is to say, punk is an attitude, and CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES text of this performance, it was also clear that gap seemed small — the stuff of last Bad Bunny has it in spades. This sold-out The Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny at Madison Square Garden. how direct, and almost cloying, his Drake year, but maybe not next year.
MICHAEL KIMMELMAN ART REVIEW
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICKY RHODES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES A Ghostly Residue of Bodies in Motion
CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1 via a skinning process, which collected, Répétiteur among other things, particles of real skin. Through Sunday at New York City Center, The project preoccupied Mr. Otero-Pailos Harkness Studio; nycitycenter.org. for several years. When he finished, he hung the casts from the hall’s ceiling like two enormous tapestries — honey-colored and translucent, glowing like amber in the boxes have an accompanying soundtrack: light coming through Westminster’s tall, audio clips that Mr. Otero-Pailos took from arched windows. videos of Cunningham preparing his troupe That exhibition, presented by Artangel, to perform three works — “Exchange” opened in 2016, just after Britain voted to (which premiered at City Center in 1978), leave the European Union, and not surpris- “Roaratorio” and “CRWDSPCR.” ingly it provoked some Britons to interpret And so, like “The Ethics of Dust,” the latex tapestries, with their odor and “Répétiteur” involves an act of historical hints of flaying, as a metaphor for national conservation, which in this case meditates martyrdom and decay. on the specific relationship between archi- Over the years, various artists like Eva tecture and dance. Each dance rehearsal or Hesse and Rachel Whiteread have trav- performance, after all, takes place in a par- ersed similar terrain using latex casts. For ticular architectural space from which the Mr. Otero-Pailos, the goal is to capture ar- dance is as inseparable as it is from its own chitecture’s “intangible heritage,” as he choreography or dancers. Or as Mr. Otero- calls it. His works save not a building’s Pailos has put it, a film of a dance is no more walls, floors, windows or doors but remains an adequate record of the dance than a pho- of architectural habitation: whisperingly tograph of a demolished building can sub- faint but still visceral remnants of actual stitute for the actual building. bodies that occupied real space. In essence, “Répétiteur” restores what’s Westminster belonged to a series of missing from such a film — conjuring up not projects Mr. Otero-Pailos has undertaken just the architecture of the practice studio at called “The Ethics of Dust,” a phrase bor- City Center but also what you might call the rowed from the 19th-century critic John For “Répétiteur,” top and ers in a particular studio at City Center He produced six casts, currently dis- architecture of time, study, repetition and Ruskin. To Ruskin, great historical build- above, Jorge Otero-Pailos whenever the company performed there. played in four-foot-square light boxes on pain that went into the making of Cunning- ings spoke volumes. Restoration desecrat- made latex casts of the During rehearsals, the troupe would lean shin-high platforms or podiums, placed ham’s art. ed architecture by removing traces of the woodwork, vents and against the walls to rest, leaving finger- around the studio, now renovated, accord- We talk about preserving prized build- past. But properly conserved, a building re- electrical outlets of a prints and sweat in the stucco and plaster. ing to the same grid system that Cunning- ings and places. But architecture is more tains evidence of the passage of time, lay- dance troupe’s rehearsal Not long ago, City Center decided to re- ham used to deploy his dancers, a system than bricks and mortar. It is the spaces we ered like sediments of the earth. space, preserving traces furbish the room, whitewashing it and refin- based on the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. devise in which to live our lives, dream “Répétiteur,” at City Center, in effect does of sweat and fingerprints. ishing the old wainscoting, so beforehand What results is visually minimalist and dreams, struggle and invent things. This is for Merce Cunningham and dance what Mr. Otero-Pailos arranged to make latex low key to a fault. But it’s also kind of haunt- the larger point of Mr. Otero-Pailos’s work, “The Ethics of Dust” aimed to do at West- casts of the woodwork, vents, electrical out- ing. Doubled in number by the mirror that too, capturing vestiges of steps taken, leaps minster. Cunningham rehearsed his danc- lets and so on. fills one long wall of the room, the light made.