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The charismatic tenor Rolando Villazón, who’s in town for the Metropolitan Opera’s “Magic Flute,” and the harpist Xavier de Maistre revisit their album, “Serenata Latina,” for Lincoln Center’s “The Other Side of the Stars” series. After de Maistre gave a performance of Alberto Ginastera’s Harp Concerto, a work of dreaminess and rhythmic alacrity, in the early two-thousands, Ginastera’s widow suggested that de Maistre transcribe the Argentine composer’s songs for the harp. Villazón and de Maistre’s adaptations retain the tenderness and the dash of Ginastera’s traditional and folk-inspired melodies, alongside settings of works by other Latin American composers.—Oussama Zahr (Alice Tully Hall; Dec. 18.)
Dance
Photograph by Em Watson
Beatboxers make music with their mouths. Tap dancers do it with their feet. In “Bzzz,” those two tribes of bodily instrumentalists find common ground and join forces, the champion beatboxers Chris Celiz and Gene Shinozaki laying down astonishing layers of sound as Caleb Teicher and an expert crew of metal-shod dancers drum the stage. It’s a high-energy show, full of surprises, such as the pairing of a four-on-the-floor club beat with kick-up-your-heels Appalachian flatfooting. The title alludes to the low vibrations that the beatboxers send through amplifiers, but it also signals the spirit of the production: unafraid to be goofy in pursuit of happiness and its hum.—Brian Seibert (Joyce Theatre; Dec. 12-17.)
Movies
A new streaming service, the Kino Film Collection, offers a wide range of classics (including “Ganja and Hess”) and recent treasures (such as “Li’l Quinquin”). It also offers such delightful eccentricities as “The Girl on a Motorcycle,” an erotic extravagance from 1968, starring Marianne Faithfull as Rebecca, a former bookstore clerk who lives in France with her husband, a dull schoolteacher, while lusting after a flashy intellectual (Alain Delon) with whom she had a brief yet fiery affair. Though set in Europe, the movie is an icon of swinging England; it’s centered on Rebecca’s dreams, fantasies, and memories—especially of sexual pleasure, which the director and cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, depicts in hot-colored psychedelic abstractions. The camera pays close attention both to Faithfull’s skin and to Delon’s, but its lascivious focus is on Rebecca’s Harley-Davidson—and her leather body suit, which became an instant fashion statement.—Richard Brody
Pick Three
The staff writer Rachel Syme shares her favorite winter movies.
1. Inevitably, around this time of year, people gather on the Internet to debate what counts as a “Christmas movie.” Among the criteria: a frigid winter setting, stylish coats, and an atmosphere of loneliness tempered by glowy bonhomie. Though Robert Altman’s 1971 epic, “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”—about a cocky gambler (Warren Beatty) and a pragmatic prostitute (Julie Christie) who become business partners in a turn-of-the-century mining town—is not about Christmas in any way, it still heralds the season for me: the fur pelts, the dramatic snow drifts, the general sense of human hubris in the face of nature’s icy inhospitality.
2. Every December, I find myself yearning to rewatch Todd Haynes’s 2015 thriller, “Carol,” about a mid-century shopgirl named Therese (Rooney Mara) who enters into a clandestine relationship with a glamorous older woman named Carol (Cate Blanchett). The two meet while Carol is Christmas shopping, but what really makes the film holiday fare is its stylish evocation of a cold, bygone Manhattan where Martinis were considered a lunch food and women still wore driving gloves.
Photograph by Mary Cybulski / Fox Searchlight Pictures / Everett
3. Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” from 2018, about a real-life writer, Lee Israel, who was arrested in the nineties for forging and selling letters she attributed to famous authors, is, to my mind, a perfect December film. Melissa McCarthy plays Israel—a lonesome misanthrope who nurses highballs at the Greenwich Village gay bar Julius’ on frosty evenings—with caustic empathy; her relationship with the rapscallion scammer Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant) may be criminal, but it is also heart-thawing.
P.S. Good stuff on the Internet:
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