Thursday: Live! at the Library: R&B and Soul Line Dancing with Queen Nur
Step, slide, and salsa your troubles away at this week’s Live! at the Library, the Library of Congress’ late-night series that takes place every Thursday. Led by storyteller, teaching artist, and folklorist Karen “Queen Nur” Abdul-Malik, explore the long-standing tradition of line dancing in Black communities—collective group dances without partners, frequently taught at local churches, gyms, and community centers across the country, particularly in urban areas. Queen Nur is the 2022 awardee of the Library’s Community Collections grant in partnership with the American Folklife Center, which supported her research and documentation of the Soul Line Dance Community across Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware. She brings this expertise to the Library to teach dances like the Chicago Step and the Philly Bop. All are invited to dance in community with each other, no experience needed. Local DJs AJ Rivers and Chris Blues will play a great selection of R&B and soul tunes ranging from Stevie Wonder and Prince to contemporary hits, and the event will be hosted by performer and producer Kenny J. In addition to the dance workshop, all exhibitions at the Library including the Black History Month display themed “African Americans and Labor” will remain open until 8. p.m., as well as the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building collections and the Main Reading Room, which is typically reserved for researchers. Happy hour drinks and snacks will be available to purchase in the Great Hall. Line Dancing with Queen Nur starts at 6 p.m. at the Library of Congress, 10 1st St. SE. loc.gov. Free, but reservations required. —Tali Natter
Saturday: DIG! XX at Alamo Drafthouse
It comes as little surprise that Dave Grohl introduces the 20th-anniversary screening of DIG!—in his usual fanboy hyperbole—as the best, most accurate rock documentary ever made. And as much as I enjoy rolling my eyes at everything Grohl likes to peddle, it’s hard to argue that there’s a more entertaining look into the American underground of the late ’90s and early ’00s. This thing isn’t just warts-and-all—its warts have warts. Like Boyhood for guitar-obsessed men-children, filmmaker Ondi Timoner followed the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre over the course of eight years into the heart of alternative rock darkness. What Timoner captured is a unique look at the death knell of the music industry through the prism of two wildly different artistic paths—the Warhols’ shiny alterna-pop vs. BJM’s self-destructive psych rock. Upon its initial release, both bands disavowed the film but DIG! XX gives us more of just about everything—additional temper tantrums, new narration from BJM’s Joel Gion—and a brief coda reaffirming that, for better or worse, the more things change the more they stay the same. DIG! XX screens at 9:15 p.m. at Alamo Drafthouse, 630 Rhode Island Ave. NE. drafthouse.com. $11. —Matt Siblo
Tuesday: Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy Play R.E.M. at 9:30 Club
Michael Shannon has developed a reputation as a brooding, intense actor, so perhaps it is no surprise that he’s also an accomplished singer. Then again, maybe his side gig is better-known nowadays, since he was a highlight in the recent postapocalyptic musical The End, and he’s been known to perform with Yo La Tengo during their legendary Hanukkah performances. Either way, while many actors have failed aspirations to be rock gods, Shannon is the real deal, and to prove it he is going on tour with members of Bob Mould’s band to perform the R.E.M. album Fables of the Reconstruction in its entirety (plus some rarities afterward). The album, R.E.M.’s third, is a good fit for Shannon because it is moodier than their earlier work, and it is hard to imagine the same actor from films like Take Shelter performing “Shiny Happy People.” Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Fables may not be as highly regarded as Green or Automatic for the People, but cult favorite tunes such as “Driver 8” have helped the record improve its stature. Shannon’s vocal performance doesn’t exactly copy Michael Stipe’s, but he sings with enough sincerity and clarity so, if you squint, you can almost imagine you’re seeing the legendary rock band. And since R.E.M. have given Shannon and his band their official blessing, you can be forgiven for indulging in a little fantasy at the show. Michael Shannon, Jason Narducy, and friends play at 7 p.m. on March 4 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $35. —Alan Zilberman
Ends Soon: E. Brady Robinson at Addison/Ripley Fine Art
Power Aesthetics, Baltimore-based photographer E. Brady Robinson’s exhibit at Addison/Ripley Fine Art, consists of a few visually distinct portfolios, tied together by a shared focus on her city’s creative communities in dance, roller skating, and street culture. A sizable fraction of Robinson’s images are high-contrast silhouettes that bear more than a passing resemblance, in both color choice and style, to the mid-2000s Apple advertising campaign for the iPod.
The slight twist with Robinson’s work is that her high-contrast images retain just enough detail to communicate squiggles of beards and curls, as well as a muted sense of patterns on clothing and the occasional artful foreshortening of the subject’s fingers. Robinson’s other works include more conventional portraits, featuring subjects she knows from the arts and culture community; one notable portrait depicts a skater turning away from the camera on a rooftop parking lot. Many of Robinson’s highly reflective images are large, ranging in size from 24-by-16 to 45-by-30 inches. But a series of smaller works—each 6-by-4 inches, lined up one after the other on a surface in the gallery—offer a new and welcome wrinkle. Thematically, the smaller images use the same bold colors and mix of portraits and skate-gear close-ups as the larger works do, but the smaller ones come across less as artworks than as trading cards, almost urging the viewer to collect them and trade. Power Aesthetics runs through March 8 at Addison/Ripley Fine Art, 1670 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Tuesday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. addisonripleyfineart.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson
Recommended Stories
#Brady #Robinson #DIG #City #Lights #Feb #27March
Leave a Reply