Gertsen
Named after 19th-century revolutionary writer Alexander Gertsen, this club is anything but revolting. Gertsen is on Gertsen Street, now rename Bolshaya Nikitskaya, around the corner from the Kremlin and caters for the face control crowd. The doorman will check you out on the videophone before letting you in. Inside small lounges run off hallways to a dancefloor the size of a handbag. It’s all very cool but not particularly buzzing quite yet.
A Karen Carpenter Christmas
In their peculiarly off-kilter way, The Marsh gets into the holiday spirit with the return of their wildly popular production ‘A Karen Carpenter Christmas’. This popular seasonal treat recalls the Christmas television specials of the musical brother-and-sister duo during the 1970s, but maintains a theatrical thread as well. The production imagines Karen struggling to find her holiday spirit after she tries to create her own television special on the heels of scathing review in ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine. While it does have send-up characteristics, the play holds a certain reverence for Karen and her brother, and is actually a heart-warming tribute suitable for the whole family.
Sculpture Biennale
Carrara is Tuscany’s ‘Marble City’. The 10th biennale celebrates the town’s long relationship with the characteristic grey local stone. The exhibition traces the last 100 years of sculpture in the region, with particular reference to some of the major artists, past and present, who have worked there. Familiar names include Henry Moore, Joan Miro, Ferdinand Botero, Igor Mitoraj and Marino Marini. Some 130 works, including marble and bronze sculptures, plaster models and sketches, are on show in various squares, parks and galleries around town.
Voici: 100 Years of Contemporary Art
The exhibition has a perfect setting, the recently restored Hall of the Palais des Beaux-Arts. Victor Horta’s building is internationally recognised and has recovered its original purpose as an exhibition space for sculpture. This exhibition aims to make art accessible to the masses and therefore merely presents works of art without explanation. There are 200 works on display, chosen by philosopher and critic Thierry de Duve. Artists include Manet, Matisse and Chagall, as well as the lesser-known individuals such as Pavel Tchelitchev.
Tape
This one-act play by Stephen Belber was a hit at Louisville’s prestigious Humana Festival. It’s set in a dreary Michigan hotel room, where two ex-high school buddies – a filmmaker and a drug dealer – hold a wary reunion. The drug dealer coerces a confession out of his friend of a possible date rape 10 years earlier. Belber shifts the moral ground, tossing out new information. When the alleged rape victim appears, more questions of jealousy, responsibility and punishment arise.
Atelier Pietro Longhi
This is the place to come should you suddenly require fancy dress in this city obsessed with dressing up. From traditional carnival costumes, military and professional uniforms to tails, suits and ballgowns, this place has it all. They will hire, fit and even alter costumes after the third ice-cream of the day has distorted your statistics – but beware, it doesn’t come cheap, but you will do well to find a larger selection in town.
Nonsolovino
Marina di Pietrasanta is one of the most pleasant resorts on the Versilia coastline, and after a day on the beach, the little town of Pietrasanta is a great place to haunt. Nonsolovino is one of many good restaurants, but offers particularly good value for money in a contemporary setting. The four-course menu is fixed but changes daily. You might be offered a range of antipasti including hummus, a delicate asparagus flan and quails’ eggs followed by courgette soup. Two main courses could be a carpaccio of smoked, cured meat topped with rucola and a spicy chicken stew. Dessert is extra, and on Thurdays, couscous is served.
Acoustic Swiftness
Guitarist Javier Guiterrez began pulling together a Latin jazz band in the late-1980s. It crystallised into Acoustic Swiftness, one of New Orleans’ most entertaining club bands. Backed by congas and timbales, Guiterrez cooks up a danceable, upbeat sound that is heavy influenced by his native Bolivia’s Andean folk music, blended with bossa nova, flamenco, traditional jazz and even some classical European music. Acoustic Swiftness has all the variations and surprises of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, using music, instead of words, for their type of magical realism.
net.congestion
This festival is organised as an international meeting point between music, sound, visual and performing arts, film, documentary, activism, tactical media, club culture and streaming media. Artists and technicians from around the globe will be tapping into the future potentials of the fusion of internet and broadcast media. Performances, exhibitions and workshops will be spread across De Bali, Melkweg, Montevideo, Paradiso and De Waag.
