Visions of sugar plums: Nutcracker at UPAC and Bardavon
Friday-Sunday, Dec. 7-9: Ready for your annual visions of sugarplums? Two top-shelf regional productions of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker are in the works for this weekend.
Almanac Weekly
Sections
Kids’ Almanac (12/6-13)
Into the Light at Kaatsbaan; Holiday Cookie Decorating for Kids; Frozendale; Snowflake Festival
Saving the world, one stitch at a time with “slow fashion” advocate Katrina Rodabaugh
Friday, December 7: Book signing/discussion at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck: I’d “left fashion out of my own quest for a sustainable lifestyle. I’d been thinking a lot about food and housing, but not so much about clothing.” Katrina Rodabaugh went on a “fashion fast,” pledging not to purchase any new clothing for a year, focusing instead on making simple garments, buying secondhand and mending what she already owned.
Carole Kunstadt pays tribute to firebrands Margaret Fuller and Hannah More in her WAAM exhibition
Opening Saturday, December 8: The show includes 90 antique irons. Their flat bottoms have been collaged with pages from More’s book, variously scorched, cut, woven and layered with textiles, thread, lace, fur, tacks and sandpaper. “It’s very inspiring to see how dedicated these women were in their convictions. They had very strong voices, despite all the obstacles of their times.”
Wendy Whelan dances in The Day at Catskill’s Lumberyard
Friday/Saturday, Dec. 7/8: The Baryshnikov-lauded dancer and cellist Maya Beiser join forces with seminal modern dance choreographer Lucinda Childs to create The Day, an evening-length work with music by Pulitzer Prizewinning composer David Lang. This bold new work explores themes not easily grappled with – memory, aging, death, the survival of the soul.
Comet over the Hudson Valley and other cool stuff for December
Comet Wirtanen will soon pay Earth its closest-ever visit. It should be large and blobby-looking, appearing as a fuzzy glob the size of the full Moon.
Orange Is the New Black star Lea DeLaria sings at Bard
Saturday, Dec. 8: The television performer will bring her sassy and swinging interpretations of holiday classics to the Fisher Center stage with her all-female jazz trio.
Harry’s next act: Water St. Market developer revels in new stage of his career
Live theater, Lipstein said, can be subversive in a powerful and positive way. People enter a theater hoping merely to be entertained. But if a truthful moment happens, if the connection is made between what and who is onstage, people leave the theater feeling more empathetic, less encumbered by those personas, than when they entered. You can see the world premiere of Hannah Benitez’s Adaptive Radiation at the new Denizen Theatre in New Paltz on Wednesdays-Saturdays, December 6-30.
Banjo god Tony Trischka and ethnomusicologist Tim Eriksen to perform old-time yuletide gems
Friday, Dec. 14 at Towne Crier Café in Beacon; Sunday, Dec. 16 at Ashokan Center in Olivebridge: Tim Eriksen is known for teaching the musicians for the film Cold Mountain to sing the eerie pentatonic scales of the Sacred Harp tradition. It’s a style of performance that evolved out of the use by circuit-riding ministers in the 19th century of a hymnal for illiterates that taught tunes using “shape notes,” and hearing it is guaranteed to capture your interest.
Erica’s Cancer Journey: “Erica’s State of the Plate Address”
I make champion eater Sonya “the Black Widow” Thomas look like she’s picking at her plate. I’m also chewing away because I’m eating my feelings: My beloved neurosurgeon has Elvised. Left the building. Gone. Totally out of the blue.