The Incendiary Chinese Artist Unveils His Spellbinding Practice of Painting with Fireworks.

http://art.sy/film/cai-guo-qiang-sky-ladder

In a totally Meta moment, I attended a talk with Cai in 2008 at the Guggenheim along with Dr. Ruth.

Someone who travelled from the U.K. to U.S.S.R. made me a mix tape in 1986 with a few British hits. I was living in Moscow. To give you some perspective, I must have had less than twenty tapes then and all were 3rd or 4th copies of the original. I used to play them on my Элекроника 302, one of the first mass-produced Russian tape recorders. We had LPs and my dad had a few tapes too, mostly the Beatles and Adriano Celentano. I had a Scorpions album and an Iron Maiden one, my crown jewels.

This mix tape was awesome. I would later learn that it included the original version of Raf’s “Self Control”, made popular by Laura Branigan and other songs I didn’t like as much. The second song on Side A remained a mystery, and nobody could tell me who it was. I finally lost the tape when I moved from Seattle to New York in 2006, before Shazam could identify it. It was gone and lost forever.

I remembered some lyrics and kept searching on-and-off, for YEARS. Today I found it on Lyrics.net. The song was by Marylin Martin and it’s called “Night Moves”. It’s on Youtube, including a live version.

With three shows in just over a month I didn’t get a moment to blog about them.

We saw Stick Fly on Broadway a few weeks ago, a show produced by Alicia Keys. It was a solid play, but maybe a tidbit long. There weren’t too many clichés as you may expect from a play that explores issues that “everyone can relate to”. Looks like it’s closing.

Dans un tout autre registre, Anthony and the Johnsons, which I discovered via the “Hercules and Love Affair” album years ago, gave a monumental one-time performance called “Swanlights” at Radio City Music Hall, commissioned by the MOMA. It was a much anticipated, hugely depressing, painful and beautiful show. The standing ovation lasted fifteen minutes to a closed curtain.

Finally, we went to see Traces last night by a troupe called 7 Fingers, currently playing at the Union Square Theatre. It was a fantastic show with some impressive dancing mixing street and circus. It’s the “real deal”, some critics have written. I concur. Highly recommended.