Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually or in person in New York City.
Pop & Rock
Let the Glitter Bombs Stream
Disco’s foothold in pop has grown considerably this year — even though the world’s dance floors have never been so quiet. While Dua Lipa strapped on her roller skates and tipped her cap to Madonna’s “Confessions on the Dance Floor,” Jessie Ware went full-on Studio 54 with “What’s Your Pleasure?,” her album from June. Other recent dabblers in the genre include Selena Gomez and Doja Cat.
And then there’s Kylie Minogue. Both Lipa and Ware have been vocal in their admiration of the Australian singer, who, despite occasional dalliances with other styles (country on 2018’s “Golden” or techno on 2003’s “Body Language”), has been a reliable producer of disco-pop for decades. In fact, “Disco” is an apt title for her 15th studio album, due out on Friday. The record is packed with glitter bombs; there’s nary a ballad to be found.
To celebrate the release, Minogue is presenting “Kylie: Infinite Disco,” a ticketed digital concert that will stream several times, including at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. It’s no D.I.Y. affair, unlike many virtual performances in this era. Fans can expect a characteristically glitzy performance from Minogue, complete with lasers and a full backing choir. Tickets are $20 and available at dice.fm.
OLIVIA HORN
Art & Museums
Safe Viewing, All Around Town
Throughout this year, galleries have been trying to come up with safe ways to display art to the public. For “Paper Mirror” — the latest installment of 601 Artspace’s “Storefront Exhibition” series, which closes on Monday — the married artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy recreated, with intricate line drawings, the reflection of buildings across from the gallery’s facade window, establishing a type of wider narrative on whether storefronts serve as the clearest indicator of urban health (or lack thereof). On Saturday, from 2 to 4 p.m., the McCoys will discuss the project in a socially distanced chat in front of the installation.
The city has been historically at odds with street art, but it is occasionally embraced, in the right context. For the latest Houston Bowery Wall, located on Houston Street between Elizabeth and Bowery Streets, the muralist Raúl Ayala pairs Black figures with mythical creatures. Further north, in front of the Vessel at the Hudson Yards for the public art initiative HYxOffTheWall, Elle and Key Detail have created two large-scale murals that celebrate the city’s resilience.
Nearby at Lehmann Maupin, Billie Zangewa portrays, in scenes composed of vividly colored silk, what that resilience was borne out of: our isolation after spending months at home. On view through Saturday, the exhibition is indoors, but the gallery is enforcing mask wearing and social distancing.
MELISSA SMITH
Dance
‘Move’ Mixes Gloss With Depth
Starved of live shows since March, dance fans have gone online for archival recordings and short new works created in quarantine with generally low production values (but with many gems among them). This month, though, Netflix has stepped up with the debut of “Move,” a five-part documentary that applies the streaming service’s high-gloss aesthetics and sharp storytelling to some of dance’s most revered figures.
The first episode focuses on the captivating artists Jon Boogz and Lil Buck, who have expanded the parameters and perceptions of the street-dance forms popping and jookin. (A scene of Buck slithering on the hood of an old Buick is a treat that only film can deliver.) Subsequent episodes feature the dances of the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, the pioneering Spanish flamenco phenom Israel Galván, the ferocious Jamaican dancehall performer Kimiko Versatile, and Akram Khan, the British dance maker of Bangladeshi descent who weaves classical Indian dance and contemporary dance into gorgeous theatrical tapestries.
Each an hour or less, the episodes mix handsomely shot dance excerpts with interviews and insight into the artists’ personal worlds, connecting their work and their lives in ways not generally seen onstage. Savor with restraint, or binge at will.
BRIAN SCHAEFER
Theater
Channeling the Other Side
“What if I told you there was a reason for it all?” declares the alt-right country singer Tammy Faye Starlite at the top of her new show “Standing By.” Claiming to know the causes behind the disease, geopolitical displacement and chaos that have plagued us this year, she dissects modern America through classic rock and country songs, in preparation for the “great awakening,” a rapture-like event she mentions in the show.
Starlite is the persona created by the left-wing artist Tammy Lang, as an exercise in empathy toward the positions of those on the other side of the political spectrum. But Lang knows there is no place for contempt when you’re trying to see the world through the eyes of others.
And so when Starlite unironically turns to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” or the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to prove her points, she reveals a literalist — someone whose fear is real, albeit misguided.
“Standing By” is the first show in Ghost Light Series of livestreams from Pangea. Starting at $20 for individual viewers, you can stream a 48-hour rental through showtix4u.com until Nov. 23. If you’ve seen Starlite perform live, you know her rawness and magnetism are breathtaking. But in the intimacy of this filmed version, we have an opportunity to listen without distractions. May it grant us some sympathy as well.
JOSE SOLÍS
CLASSICAL Music
Whispery Timbres and Dense Hazes
The chamber ensemble known as counter)induction is celebrating its 20th anniversary with an album titled “Against Method,” which is scheduled for release on Friday. Though focused on experimental repertoire, the group isn’t beholden to any single trend line in contemporary American classical style. Pieces by the band’s artistic directors, Douglas Boyce and Kyle Bartlett, open the set and give a sense of the variation to come.
Boyce’s opus, “The Hunt by Night,” has a gamboling quality, derived from jaunty interplay between piano, cello and clarinet. Bartlett’s “Before” vaults from whispery timbres to percussive outbursts. Elsewhere, the composer Alvin Singleton — a distinguished elder whose works are too rarely heard in mainstream concert halls — finally gets a premiere recording of a 1997 composition, “Ein Kleines Volkslied.”
The Mozart reference aside, Singleton’s item is best appreciated as a part of his consistently striking catalog. In the second minute, entertaining handoffs between the electric guitar and bass clarinet prepare the listener for subsequent pairings (as with the vibraphone and piano, heard together in the third minute). The ensemble’s lineup adds a few guest players here to meet the composer’s instrumental requirements. Whether taking on Singleton’s crisp, songful cries or his denser hazes, this retinue handles the composer’s quick-changing music with grace.
SETH COLTER WALLS
Comedy
Being ‘Ticked Off’ Becomes Him
In April, a clip of a middle-aged man spitting vitriol (and actual spit) from behind the wheel of his car went viral, as his pleas for the federal government to help working Americans survive the pandemic reached millions of viewers on Twitter and Facebook within days.
That man was the 59-year-old comedian Vic DiBitetto, and it wasn’t his first brush with video fame. His 28-second “Bread and Milk” video from 2013, which lampooned supermarket hoarding, has more than 19 million views on YouTube.
The Brooklyn native and former Staten Island school bus driver, who now lives in New Jersey, has other comedy credits, too. Back in the early 1990s, DiBitetto performed on “America’s Funniest People,” and he played a security guard in “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.” But DiBitetto really took off this year with his “Ticked Off Vic” videos — imagine the TV anchor from the 1976 film “Network” crossed with Andrew Dice Clay espousing the workingman values of Bruce Springsteen.
To hear what’s on DiBitetto’s mind in real time, he’s headlining a stand-up show at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday at Nowhere Comedy Club, a virtual space created by comedians to fill the void left by the lockdown. Tickets, which start at $20, are available through Eventbrite.
SEAN L. McCARTHY
KIDS
The Met’s Scene for Teens
Most adolescents love congregating, a pastime that the pandemic has severely limited. But since crowds aren’t a concern on the internet, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has adapted Teens Take the Met! — its twice-yearly free festival for ages 13 to 18 — into a virtual event that’s bigger than ever: Young people anywhere can attend.
On Friday from 3 to 8 p.m. Eastern time, the museum will present more than 30 activities on the @metteens Instagram account and the social media platforms of partner organizations, like Lincoln Center and the New York Public Library. Participants are encouraged to register online, but they must do so by noon on Friday to enroll in several offerings that are on Zoom. One is the new V.I.P. Lounge, a cyberspot for meeting friends, making art and hearing music from the D.J.s at Building Beats.
The opportunities for imaginative leaps include movement sessions with Teens@Graham and the program Airheads: The Science of Flight with the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Attendees can also make activist posters with El Museo del Barrio, create poetry with Urban Word NYC, investigate Shakespeare with Titan Theater Company and do improv with ArtsConnection. While visual-art workshops abound, teenagers can also explore subjects like contraception, civil rights and healthy relationships. (A full schedule is at metmuseum.org.)
LAUREL GRAEBER
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