Armory Program News

Illinoise

"a visual and emotional masterpiece...visual poetry on stage...a groundbreaking piece in contemporary theater" - María Alejandra Trujillo, BNN Breaking
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“epic ... lush with theatricality ... all-encompassing yet intimate ... Drury and Peck have crafted something cinematic, a true tribute to Stevens’s original brilliance.” - Gloria Oladipo, The Washington Post
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“We’re currently living through a golden age of dance...Peck’s choreography takes little human gestures (a shrug, a lean, a glance) and amplifies them into moving sculpture...It’s undeniably beautiful." - Zachary Stewart, TheaterMania
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“'Illinoise' achieves a holistic transcendence ... May it leave behind seeds for more theater that dances, literally or figuratively, with such joyful abandon." - Sara Holdren, Vulture
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New York Times Critic’s Pick: “an unlikely and unforgettable dance-musical hybrid ... pretty much perfect ... I’ve never heard a show sound so good in the Armory’s vast Drill Hall ... The arrangements and orchestrations by Timo Andres are sublime — as are the vocalists: Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova and Tasha Viets-VanLear. They do not seem to sing so much as pour emotion into our ears... 'Illinoise' builds on its faith in the audience, trusting us to organize its various streams of information into a steady river of deep feeling inside our own heads. Or if you wind up crying, as I did, outside.” - Jesse Green, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Jeanine De Bique & Warren Jones

“De Bique’s careful attention to text brought out both the tenderness and the anxiety in this prime example of Purcell’s ability to plumb the human in the sacred.” - Emma Hoffman, Parterre Box
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The Rite of Spring: common ground[s]

New York Times Critic's Pick: "striking ... [In] their duet “common ground[s],” [Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo] share a special superpower, even in seeming stillness: the deep, magnetic history that their bodies hold... This ‘Rite,’ even more than relevant, is alive, with blistering clarity.” - Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
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"['The Rite of Spring'] production finally comes New York, Nov. 29-Dec. 14, performed at the Park Avenue Armory, a suitably epic space for this grand, apocalyptic work...'Rite' will be paired with a new duet, 'common ground[s],' for Malou Airaudo, a former Bausch dancer; and Germaine Acogny, the Senegalese dancer and choreographer." - Marina Harss, The New York Times
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Arca: Mutant;Destrudo

“enigmatic ... inventive, artistic ... [The] two-hour show was anything but ordinary. Otherworldly lullabies turned to four-on-the-floor bangers turned to breathy descriptions of the new technologies the show was using, told in an excitable flurry so intimate that it verged on the conspiratorial... The talent on display was never in doubt, though, her vocals as ethereal or city-slick as she demanded they be... Arca’s project—to draw in, wash out, blend, destroy, create.” - Juan Ramírez, Vogue
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“Arca has proven to be one of the most forward-thinking creators in pop music, constantly pushing boundaries and challenging people to see the world in new ways ... Throughout three acts flecked with spontaneous improvisations and high-tech experiments, Arca played the music that has made her such a transgressive, radical figure in the industry.” - Sacha Lecca, Rolling Stone
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“arresting high-tech video imagery ... This is restless, unsettled music, evoking both exhilaration and anxiety that a single person can produce — and can be — so many different things... a perpetual transformation” - Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
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Doppelganger

“striking…ambitious and arresting ... There’s really nothing like it in New York right now.” - Zachary Stewart, TheaterMania
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“a gripping work of site-specific theater ... [This] march to the grave felt surprisingly, and harrowingly, intimate.” - Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
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“a remarkable theatrical coup” - Kevin Ng, Financial Times
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New York Times Critic's Pick: “imaginative and viscerally shocking...Guth’s imaginative and powerful staging for his New York debut recalls history... The theatrical ingenuity and visceral force of ‘Doppelganger’ was so strong that the audience let out an audible gasp of shock. When was the last time you heard something like that in a classical concert hall?” - Anastasia Tsioulcas, The New York Times
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“breathtaking ... Park Avenue Armory once again confirms that its Wade Thompson Drill Hall is the most sensational performance space in New York City.” - Mark Rifkin, This Week in New York
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"[That] harrowing, transitional state [where you understand that you are dying] has inspired Guth’s staging of “Schwanengesang,” called “Doppelganger,” which premieres at the Park Avenue Armory in New York on Friday, [September 22]." - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Julia Bullock & John Arida

"A Soprano's Recital Captures Her Brilliant Sincerity...The Board of Officers Room at the Armory, one of the most intimate and ideal spaces for vocal recitals, is also particularly well-suited to Bullock’s specific sound. Her range is vast, with a bright, expansive top and a rich, smoky bottom. At its fullest, her instrument can engulf an auditorium, but she keeps those moments in reserve; her performances are not defined by their size. Up close in a concert like Monday’s, you can get a moving sense of her sensitivity and insightful interpretations." - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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The Doctor

“A riveting debate about identity” - Jesse Green, The New York Times
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“a masterly and timely reimaging … a nearly forensic examination of the potential conflict between religious beliefs and standards of medical care … Juliet gives a performance of quiet but galvanizing intensity [in an] absorbing drama that reverberates with grim power today” - Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal
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“'The Doctor,' which opens Wednesday at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, is a reworking of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 drama, 'Professor Bernhardi,' about a Jewish physician who refuses entry to a Roman Catholic priest trying to administer last rites to a patient dying from sepsis after an abortion. In Icke’s version, the issues go beyond questions of medical ethics and religious affiliations to include identity politics and cancel culture." - Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Pavel Kolesnikov

"Over two evenings at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan this week, the pianist Pavel Kolesnikov shared his artistry with both routes, with one concert devoted to the “Goldbergs” and the other a moodily nocturnal collage inspired by Joseph Cornell’s assemblage “Celestial Navigation”... His two Armory recitals exhibited pianism of poetic freedom, assured interpretive choices and a D.J.’s ear for subtle musical connections ... given two opportunities to reveal himself to New York, Kolesnikov came out and declared what kind of pianist he is: entirely, confidently, eloquently himself." - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Allan Clayton & James Baillieu

"The Armory’s recital series, now in its 10th year, has become an invaluable place to hear unconventional singers and programs." - Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
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Artists Studio Double Bill: Thurman Barker/Adegoke Steve Colson and Iqua Colson

"The pianist Jason Moran is also a keen programmer: When he’s not releasing an album devoted to new interpretations of works by James Reese Europe, you can often find him putting together a good show at the Park Avenue Armory.” - Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times

Recital Series: Stéphane Degout

“Hearing Stéphane Degout in the Park Avenue Armory’s baronial Board of Officers Room was to witness the exquisite union of voice and environment...[Degout’s performance of Schubert’s Nacht und Träume was] sung so beautifully and with such fervor that it was tempting to ignore the truth of it and simply glide, however sadly, on its thwarted romance.” - John Hohmann, Schmopera
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LOVE

"Zeldin’s telling grips you as it goes along and doesn’t let go" - Jackson McHenry, Vulture
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“Veristic, timely, and compellingly dramatic … delivers edge-of-the-seat impact.” - Sandy MacDonald, New York Stage Review
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“The best new play in New York … ['LOVE'] simply shows and explores. It does not shock cheaply, but rather—brutally, brilliantly, forcefully—with clarity.” - Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
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“‘Love’ is a great piece of theater — funny, beautifully staged, and with the kind of excitement that retunes your attention to tiny heartbreaks instead of just huge ones.” - Jesse Green, The New York Times
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"These are not the inhabitants of tragedy but of the tattered fabric of real life...the performances from all the actors are so finely etched that a certain sad warmth and sense of camaraderie with them accrues. As they come to know each other’s habits and personalities—almost against their will—we come to know them, too. - Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal
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Symposium: Sound & Color—The Future of Race in Design

An interview with five broadway veterans involved in the Symposium: Sound & Color - The Future of Race and Design explores race and representation in theater. - Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times
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Euphoria

"Park Avenue Armory has housed many masterpieces and 'Euphoria' is one of them. - Katy Hamer, Artnet
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"technically brilliant ... visually sumptuous, with gorgeous cinematography and choreography that float through a dreamscape of degradation" - AX Mina, Hyperallergic
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"a visual and aural feast" - Mark Rifkin, This Week in New York
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"Rosefeldt makes sure that the revolution stealthily starts at the heart of it all." - Adrian Dimanlig, Interludes
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Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)

New York Times Critic's Pick: "This rethought and more antagonistic 'Monochromatic Light' strikes a new richness in New York, and it affirms how abstraction can give form to suffering and freedom in ways more straightforward expression so often cannot … this is how you mourn and stay free." - Jason Farago, The New York Times
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“[a] ravishing new production … suffused with feeling … riveting kinetic movement and dramatically shifting hues … a form of spiritual surrender” - Nate Chinen, NPR
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"Tyshawn Sorey’s 'Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),' written for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, becomes longer and grander for the Park Avenue Armory." - Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Emily D’Angelo

“D’Angelo, at every moment yesterday, showed her range as an artist and interpreter; her voice was in turns searingly sensitive and overwhelmingly powerful, and she moved between genre and time period with ease...“[She is] an artist in total intellectual and dramatic command.”” - Gabrielle Ferrari, Parterre Box
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New York Times Critic’s Pick: “Superb … [the event] gave a small audience the treat of an intimate encounter with one of the world’s special young singers...The Heinrich Heine poem that [Clara] Schumann [in her piece "Lorelei" sets describes the Lorelei’s singing as “wundersame, gewalt’ge”: wondrous and powerful. D’Angelo’s is, too.” - Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Michael Spyres & Mathieu Pordoy

“Spyres was at home, in his element and began the downsizing process to serenade us with exquisite high notes that seemed to come out of nowhere only to blossom as the poet found his balance with love and the universe.” - John Hohmann, Schmopera
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"Magnificent...Throughout the nearly two hours of superb music-making by Michael Spyres and his pianist Mathieu Pordoy, I was distracted by the growing awareness that this tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today. The hundred or so of us in attendance surely felt united in a precious mountain-top experience." - Christopher Corwin, Parterre Box
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“Spyres interpretive instincts were at one with the music, which resounded stirringly in the intimate Officers Room.” - George Loomis, Musical America
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"Pordoy matched Spyres with lush and luxuriant playing that got its own moment under the spotlight with the Liszt solo “L’Idée Fixe,” based on the longing theme of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique.” It was an ultra-Romantic appetizer ahead of Liszt’s “Tre Sonetti del Petrarca” ... In that trio of songs, Spyres the Bel Canto star was most in his element: his tenor both riveting and rending, his high notes both tossed off and made to bloom with long crescendos." - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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Oresteia

"Best of 2022 - When I think back to Robert Icke’s production of “Oresteia,” Aeschylus’ trilogy of Greek tragedies about a family that eats itself from the inside out, I think of one moment. Klytemnestra is grieving after her husband Agamemnon has killed their daughter Iphigenia because of a prophecy that the act would grant his army “fair winds” in war. After the deed, the winds sweep in, the doors to the house are flung open, ethereal white light streams in, and Klytemnestra is caught in a frenzy of flying papers. But what made the production so memorable wasn’t just the special effects but Anastasia Hille’s electrifying performance as Klytemnestra, a woman who folds in to grief and lets it fuel her revenge." - Maya Phillips, The New York Times
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“Angus Wright is a compelling Agamemnon, rangy and silver-fox handsome with the brow of an eagle and an invisible weight on his shoulders…[His] grief and guilt are mesmerizing.” - James Frankie Thomas, Vulture, New York Magazine
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New York Times Critic’s Pick: “an emotionally harrowing retelling...[Anastasia Hille, the Armory’s Klytemnestra,] is magnificent in an incandescent, utterly sympathetic interpretation so riveting” - Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times
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Hamlet

“a sensational production...The staging is stylish…The cast is topnotch. But the big excitement here is the way that Icke, with a blend of close reading and clever invention, reveals new riches in the play, exposing layers of the text that often get stamped out by the practical exigencies of performance...Lawther, at twenty-seven, is…a hot-blooded Hamlet” - Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker
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New York Times Critic’s Pick: “powerful...Alex Lawther makes for an especially riveting hero in Robert Icke’s chic … modern-dress production at the Park Avenue Armory...a Hamlet who is tender and romantic and achingly vulnerable, like a petal falling from the head of a flower at the end of its bloom...This rendition honors Hamlet as not just self-indulgently melancholy, but as grappling with legitimate, heartbreaking loss...Icke brings a cinematic eye to the proceedings...The creative team’s visual and technical prowess — along with its provocative young lead — make this a tale of musing, mania and murder for our age.” - Maya Phillips, The New York Times
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“engaging and often revelatory...striking...a top notch ensemble...Get thee to the Armory!" - Thom Geier, The Wrap
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Recital Series: Justin Austin & Howard Watkins

"“one of the highlights of this season’s recital outings...[the Board of Officers Room] is an ideal space for allowing intimate, nuanced communication between musicians and a small audience” - David Shengold, Opera News
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“[Justin Austin's] high notes were strong, shattering, indefatigable ... Robert Owens’ Mortal Storm is no a cycle for the faint of heart, and Austin excelled in it, even finding rhythmic playfulness and a touch of sensual romance. [Austin has a] mighty lyric voice with dramatic flair.” - Oussama Zahr, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Ensemble Correspondances

“[Like] the music itself, the Ensemble Correspondances aesthetic was more about the collective than the individual. Rarely have I witnessed close up such ecstatic, communal music-making…the evening felt joyfully effortless ... often blissful. I was dumbstruck arriving at the Park Avenue Armory’s Restored Veterans Room…Before Wednesday I don’t remember gasping when I entered a concert venue.” - Christopher Corwin, Parterre Box
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2022 Recital Series: Alarm Will Sound

New York Times Critic's Pick: “There hasn’t been a performance quite like this one...an opportunity to marvel.” - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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"NYT Critic's Pick" "“[Michel van] der Aa, an artist of big swings, operates here as composer, librettist and director with the restraint of a confident master...the baritone Roderick Williams [is[ delicate and ever sympathetic, and the soprano Julia Bullock, silvery at the top of her range, equally at ease in pop directness and lush lyricism...Further tweaks have been made for the Armory’s capacious drill hall. Particularly striking now is that climactic move, an audience-spanning screen that was closer than in Amsterdam…and more immersive.” - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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Assembly

“visually impressive...liberatory” - Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergic
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“grand, opulent and smart...a rich sensory experience...light years beyond [Rashaad’s] formal forays into vogue...a lavish, bombastic affair...[Being sets] a powerful example by admitting ignorance [and] asking for help.” - Martha Schwendener, The New York Times
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"a must-see" - Stefanie Li, Galerie
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The Shape of Things

“a deeply compelling—at moments even revelatory—exploration of our socio-political moment as interpreted by one of our greatest living image-makers” - Marley Marius, Vogue
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"Starting Dec. 2, in a strong indication that the world has caught up to her, [Carrie Mae] Weems is taking over the Park Avenue Armory’s massive Drill Hall with 'The Shape of Things,' billed as 'the largest, most significant exhibition of her multidisciplinary artistic practice in the last decade.' 'She’s a 21st-century oracle,' said Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, an associate professor of the history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University. 'Carrie has been at the forefront of addressing issues to do with, not just our humanity, but the racial dimensions of it. You want to probe the history of injustice and redemption? You must understand the work of Carrie Mae Weems.' - Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times
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Deep Blue Sea

Bill T. Jones speaks with TIME about how he stays creative, why he doesn't like to use the word "dance," and how the events of the last 18 months have influenced his art. - Belinda Luscombe, TIME Magazine
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"gorgeously considered" - Helen Shaw, Vulture
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“’Deep Blue Sea’ at the Armory is a colossal undertaking both in subject matter, [inspired by ‘Moby-Dick’ and ‘I Have a Dream,’] and theatrical scope...[The] size [of the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall] is a spur to creativity but also a temptation — like a giddy great height or the ocean’s depths, it can coax a mind into taking an impulsive plunge...the work of the dancers, all exquisite technicians, is a thoroughly communal feat...visually and sonically stunning...breathtaking." - Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
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Bill T. Jones poignantly reflects on "Deep Blue Sea," which would have made its world premiere at the Armory in April, and the future of live dance performance: "[Bill T. Jones] is left, now, with more questions: 'What is my art learning from Covid-19?' he said. 'I don’t know if I’m ready for the new normal. How does my art find the new normal?'...For him, the expanse of the Armory was a way to show the fragility of a figure in a sea of space. 'We can talk about loneliness,' he said, 'but how do you show it?'' - Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Paul Appleby & Conor Hanick

“The atmospheric, wood-paneled salon evokes a vanished late nineteenth-century world … [Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room is] among New York's best recital spaces...[Paul Appleby has] focused, rounded tone, ample breath control, thoughtful phrasing, precise execution of written ornaments…one can scarcely think of another classically trained American tenor so accomplished in this special and rewarding realm [of Schubert Lieder].” - David Shengold, Opera News
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"Appleby sang the tender pieces [of Beethoven’s ‘An die ferne Geliebte’] with warmth and heartache, and brought almost eerie vitality to moments of heady nostalgia. Hanick, a brilliant pianist more often heard in thorny contemporary scores, played with crispness, nuance and grace.” - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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Enemy of the People

“The biggest, fanciest, splashiest in-person indoor theater event in New York since the shutdown.” - Helen Shaw, New York Magazine
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“A great actress of impressive range and authority, [Ann Dowd] takes command of the evening in an exhilarating way…[a] rewardingly democratic night, in a time of endless crazy.” - Peter Marks, Washington Post
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“A shiny one-woman show starring the formidable Ann Dowd…an endlessly and effortlessly compelling actor.” - Jesse Green, The New York Times
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A Complicated Collaboration for a New ‘Enemy of the People’
"Without seeing a script, Ann Dowd jumped at the chance to work with Robert Icke on his solo adaptation of the Ibsen classic. Then the debates began." - Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times
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Afterwardsness

“Newly relevant: Bill T. Jones
This choreographer, who lived through the AIDS crisis, never left the performance world, but his artistic voice is more potent than ever. After 'Deep Blue Sea,' his ambitious production for the Park Avenue Armory was canceled because of the pandemic, he told his company, 'You will be able to survive, but life will change.' He knows that firsthand. His latest ventures — 'Afterwardness,' a socially distanced work culled from archival repertory, and 'Our Labyrinth,' a video collaboration with Lee Mingwei — have demonstrated an unflinching look at the world, both as it was and as it is now.” - Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
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Party in the Bardo

“[It] would be too limiting to call it a performance or an elegy…or an installation…More than anything, ‘Party in the Bardo’ is a vibe – an hourlong immersion into an environment that is both intensely visual…and chaotically musical.” - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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SOCIAL! the social distance dance club

“It was nothing but pure fun again, and it felt more precious than it ever had.” - Michelle Ruiz, Vogue
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“To me…the protocols married the politeness of a school field trip with the novelty of an intergalactic mission. The goal was not just to be merely transported. It was akin to re-entry— back into the atmosphere, back into livable life, back into a world of performances and strangers and dancing IRL, even if barely within earshot.” - Laura Regensdorf, Vanity Fair
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“Eyes closed and inhibitions loose, I felt a sensation I hadn’t experience since the pandemic shut down…total release...It’s a transcendent experience…You lose yourself, and there’s an ecstatic feeling to losing yourself.” - Devon Ivie, Vulture
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Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce… Pandemic!

"Three years ago, the convention-busting, extravagantly costumed writer-performer Taylor Mac premiered a concert that rejuvenated the holiday-special genre with a punkish cabaret sensibility. Now retooled for the virtual era, the show is a perfect pick-me-up for those with an intolerance to the season’s usual high-fructose content (but perhaps not for their young children). Mac will host the live event, introducing segments he recently recorded at the Park Avenue Armory with a socially distant band, as well as contributions from various guests and a new animated video. (Livestream on Dec. 12 at 2, 7 and 10 p.m.; on demand through Jan. 2; taylormacholidaysauce.com.)" - Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times
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100 Years | 100 Women—Part II: 100 Women— Celebration of Commissions

Dancer Joan Dwiartanto (The Juilliard School); poet, actor, and performing artist Staceyann Chin (Park Avenue Armory), choreographer and performer Rashida Bumbray (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)--all commissioned for the "100 Years | 100 Women" project--were interviewed for a segment on NPR's All Things Considered. - Rose Friedman, NPR's All Things Considered
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"Park Avenue Armory launched '100 Years | 100 Women,' a sprawling, multimedia tribute to the ratification of the 19th Amendment on this day in 1920. Made up of new works commissioned by the Armory, the National Black Theatre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Apollo Theater, the Museum of the Moving Image, and several other leading cultural institutions, the project was meant to be unveiled this spring in the Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall; but in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, “100 Years | 100 Women” has been reconceived as a virtual experience...But if that output looks rather different than it might have this spring, its ideas are every bit as urgent and as rich—if not even more so." - Marley Marius, Vogue
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Judgment Day

“New York’s Park Avenue Armory has a penchant for risk. Boasting a cast of 16 and a monumental set that spans the entire width of its 55,000 sq. ft. Drill Hall, the bold and ambitious JUDGEMENT DAY offers chilling parallels with the US of today illuminating the corrosiveness of our own time...Park Avenue Armory promises to offer theatremakers in New York exceptional room — in every sense — for experimentation.” - Max McGuinness, Financial Times
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“Entrancing! A visual feast.” - Helen Shaw, New York Magazine
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“5 Stars. A breathtaking triumph. It leaves us mesmerized.” - Elysa Gardner, New York Stage Review
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“This feels even more monumental than Richard Jones’ 2017 ‘The Hairy Ape.’” - Jesse Green, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Barbara Hannigan

Best Classical Music of 2019: "In two programs over three days, in elegantly intimate rooms at the Park Avenue Armory, [soprano Barbara Hannigan], one of the most restlessly adventurous artists of our time, gave a pair of extraordinary performances." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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NYTimes Critic's Pick: "Barbara Hannigan blazed in contemporary music in two intimate concerts at the Park Avenue Armory...Ms. Hannigan, singing with uncanny command, wild-eyed deliberateness, spot-on pitch and eerily alluring beauty, convinced you that Mr. Zorn knew just what he was doing. Every note mattered...This was the New York premiere of ['Jumalattaret'], and it was great to hear it in the Armory’s intimate and elegantly restored Veterans Room." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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"The soprano Barbara Hannigan has given nearly 100 premieres, the majority of which were written specifically for her. She is also a master of some of the most challenging music in the repertory: Berg’s “Lulu,” Webern, Ligeti. So if she’s stumped by a new work, chances are it’s unsingable — or perhaps a masterpiece in the making. On paper, John Zorn’s 'Jumalattaret' — which has its New York premiere at the Park Avenue Armory on Oct. 15, with Ms. Hannigan joined by the pianist Stephen Gosling — looks impossible: breathless vocalise; abrupt transitions from head-spinning complexity to folk-song simplicity; and, within the span of a single measure, whispering, squeaking and throat-singing like a winter storm...'It has changed everything,' Ms. Hannigan said. 'It’s one of those pieces that was life-changing.'" - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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Antigone

“Park Avenue Armory is a cavernous dream castle...Satoshi Miyagi’s production is hypnotic and deeply moving.” - Sara Holdren, New York Magazine
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“Eye-popping design is what we’ve come to expect from shows at the Armory, and this Shizuoka Performing Arts Center production does not disappoint...Antigone is visually and aurally splendrous with hypnotically paced choreography.” - Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times
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Drill

“If somebody were to write a new Book of Revelation for the 21st century, it would read a lot like the multimedia miseries of Hito Steyerl… An oracle of our end times, Steyerl is a crucial voice in a chorus of critics seeking to untangle the problems of contemporary culture. Meandering through the artist’s milieu of dystopias on display within the Armory, one gets the sense that she is weaving together a 21st-century global tapestry.” - Zachary Small, Hyperallergic
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“One could say the times have changed, but thankfully, Steyerl’s work—which tends toward incisive videos and installations that tease out connections between global conflict, digital technology, violence, capitalist structures, and art—has not. I’d put it another way: the times have caught up to Steyerl. At the Park Avenue Armory in New York, the Berlin-based artist has debuted one of her most exceptional works to date… yet another essential work from Steyerl—and a must-see in an otherwise quiet summer season in New York.” - Alex Greenberger, ArtNews
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Everything that happened and would happen

“Visual spectacle is ubiquitous today, often set in huge, formerly industrial – or in the case of New York’s Park Avenue Armory, military – spaces… Heiner Goebbels is a master of such spectacle, and as sheer display, his Everything that happened and would happen is a prime example… Imagistically, the show is captivating… It packs a powerful, cumulative punch.” - John Rockwell, Financial Times
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“Long before 'interdisciplinary' became a cultural buzzword, Heiner Goebbels was smudging all manner of artistic boundaries. For the past three decades, Mr. Goebbels, 66, has been puzzling and invigorating audiences with works that aren’t quite concert music, theater, installation or performance art. His music has embraced rock, jazz, classical styles, voice, text and ambient sound with equal vigor. In his latest work, Everything That Happened and Would Happen, which opens at the Park Avenue Armory on Monday and runs through June 9, Mr. Goebbels takes on 20th-century European history in a characteristically elliptical fashion. He has created a phantasmagoric, ever-changing landscape permeated by spoken text and film, and populated by 12 dancers and five musicians who perform for almost three hours amid a plethora of constantly manipulated props and objects." - Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times
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FKA twigs

“…the British singer may have one-upped herself this past weekend with her new show… With a total of seven baroque-inspired looks, Twigs’s performance wardrobe at the Park Armory this past weekend was nothing short of ethereal.” - Rachel Hahn, Vogue
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“FKA Twigs dazzles… It’s difficult for a larger-than-life performer to make themselves appear like an apparition – especially one whose lyrics are so corporeal – but in that moment Twigs looked wholly otherworldly." - Claire Shaffer, Rolling Stone
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The Lehman Trilogy

"The Lehman Trilogy is so good, it expands your sense of what three actors on a stage can conjure. A spellbinding exercise in storytelling." - Peter Marks, The Washington Post
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"Genuinely epic... It’s the miracle of three men, on a nearly naked stage, resurrecting vanished lives and worlds, leaving an oddly indelible afterglow in that final fade into darkness." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times
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"This is theatrical storytelling at its most thrilling, a work of novelistic sweep and operatic crescendos, as rich in incisive character detail as it is in breathtaking visual coups. Much of the production's impact is due also to the genius of the design elements, housed to perfection in the massive Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, arguably New York's most imposing theatrical performance space." - David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
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The Head & the Load

“The South African artist William Kentridge’s performance piece ‘The Head and the Load,’ currently at the Park Avenue Armory, is by turns dumbfounding, eviscerating, and beautiful…a fusillade of arrows hitting not one but many bull’s-eyes.” - Cynthia Zarin, The New Yorker
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"A fiercely beautiful historical pageant of music, movement and shadow play." - Jason Farago, The New York Times
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“[A] frenzy of beautiful noise… On every level, 'The Head & the Load' is a feast.” - Helen Shaw, Time Out New York
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The Six Brandenburg Concertos

"A magnificent experience, grounded in the choreographer’s profound investigation into Bach’s glorious music." - Robert Gottlieb, New York Observer
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"The commonplace material brought home the dance’s sense of play, the physical joy, fellowship, competition, surprise, exhaustion and persistence. But it was De Keersmaeker’s sophisticated and idiosyncratic musical response, to both melody and rhythmic pattern, that kept us riveted." - Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times
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"Any time a new work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker arrives in New York, it’s as much a musical event as a dance one... With her latest dance, she has shed new light on the “Brandenburgs”; this is a reading of the revolutionary concertos as joyous, youthful and borderline improvisatory." - Joshua Barone, The New York Times
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"'The Six Brandenburg Concertos' is a gorgeously lyrical piece that kept those concertos in my head humming and cheerfully tumbling days after I had seen the work. It is more than just beautiful; it is restorative." - Seph Rodney, Hyperallergic
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The Damned

“Astonishing! It crackles with immediacy. Ivo Van Hove’s production scorches.” - Ben Brantley, The New York Times
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"It transcends time — 1934, 2018 — and makes a dreadful palimpsest of history and present. There’s no petty attempt at audience-shaming, no finger wagging or spurious call to action. Instead, van Hove and his undaunted ensemble simply require that we look, long and hard, without blinking." - Sara Holdren, Vulture, New York Magazine
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“In this massive, cavernous space, the master of theatrical spectacle both does what we have come to expect him to do and outdoes himself. The Armory offers a thrillingly large stage to open up his formidable box of tricks on. Van Hove makes sure our eyes are dazzled, seduced, and revolted.” - Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
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"'The Damned' couldn’t be more timely. The show crackles with so much life." - David Freedlander, Village Voice
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The Let Go

“At this anxious, divided moment in our country, we all need a place to lose ourselves.” - Melena Ryzik, The New York Times
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“A celebration of the collective differences of all who were there." - Noor Brara, Vogue
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“In Cave’s world, those who wear masks do so alongside peers and allies: they may fall into the tradition of pioneering rebels, but they never walk alone.” - Erica Getto, Brooklyn Rail
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“A hybrid of confession, supplication, confrontation, and celebration. Who knew that one could jam-pack these disparate experiences and have it feel like a blessing.” - Seph Rodney, Hyperallergic
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Yerma

"You won’t do better than Billie Piper’s powerhouse performance, a thing of such hectic emotional commitment that you fear for her actual sanity." - Helen Shaw, Time Out New York
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“'Yerma' feels new in ways both thrilling and terrifying. Stone and his cast manage to create a nightmare that is simultaneously stylized and deeply affecting — an exploration, both modern and timeless, of what happens when a desire for life turns into a death wish.” - Elizabeth Vincentelli, Village Voice
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“This production is a triumph. And it's one of the best things on a New York stage in this — or any — season.” - Jennifer Vanasco, WNYC
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“[Billie] Piper is a revelation in this shattering production.” - Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
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"One of the most harrowing — and compelling — productions you are ever likely to see.” - Ben Brantley, New York Times
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A Room in India

“[A Room in India is] unceasingly ambitious and admirable. Here is an artist…still seeking, still questioning, still as committed to laughter as she is to gravity… [Ariane] Mnouchkine’s dream is concerned not only with the search for beauty and goodness but with resistance.” - Sara Holdren, Vulture, New York Magazine
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Funny how four hours doesn’t feel so long when you are given the whole world in exchange. And that’s what’s on offer in the Théâtre du Soleil’s boundary-busting production of “A Room in India,” which opened Tuesday night at the Park Avenue Armory: The whole awful, silly, disturbing, mystifying, contradictory world in one sitting. - Jesse Green, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Barbara Hannigan and Reinbert de Leeuw

“She sang a program of songs by Schönberg, Webern, Berg, Zemlinsky, Alma Mahler, and Hugo Wolf, composers who channeled their period’s decadence into orchid-scented music. They set poetry of gloaming, of unnamable yearnings, of moonlight-streaked cities brooding in the vale — and Hannigan had a timbre for every tint. These songs can sometimes be precious and brittle, but she sang them fearlessly, like a succession of two-minute operas.” - Justin Davidson, Vulture, New York Magazine
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Répons

“…An audiovisual wonder. Pierre Audi, the Armory’s artistic director, and the lighting designer Urs Schönebaum provided a coolly gorgeous setting. The chance to hear ‘Répons’ twice, and from different perspectives, put a new light on a hyper-dense score.” - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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“Répons has done more than outlive its technological moment; it has preserved its magic. You don’t listen to its complex, enveloping nebulae of sound with the smirk of someone who knows how it’s done… Instead, you abandon yourself to a mercurial epic, a piece that refuses to settle for sedate masterpiece status… The Armory show was as authentic as a posthumous performance could be.” - Justin Davidson, Vulture, New York Magazine
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Blank Out

“Past and present, live and electronic sound, present and imaginary characters, two- and three-dimensional worlds — all interweave in a surreal tapestry of illusion.” - Justin Davidson, Vulture, New York Magazine
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“[Michael] Van der Aa is a master of many media: the production incorporated video projections of his own devising, and involved only one live performer, the luminous soprano Miah Persson. At the same time, its deft, fluid vocal writing conveyed a piercing story. Rarely have modern techniques and ancient musical virtues coexisted more naturally.” - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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“The Dutch composer Michel van der Aa proves a master of allusion in his chamber opera ‘Blank Out’… Not every composer is so versatile technologically, of course, and it remains to be seen how effective a model “Blank Out” will be for the future of opera. Mr. van der Aa, at least, can undoubtedly be counted on to continue to point up the possibilities.” - James R. Oestreich, The New York Times
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Hansel & Gretel

“'Hansel & Gretel' interrogates the changing nature of public space and our acquiescence to being watched, in an era rife with data mining and warrantless government spying. We know that corporations are profiting off our internet activity and recording our conversations, but one looming question remains: Do we care?” - Kara Weisenstein, VICE, Creators Project
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“[In] Hansel and Gretel, cameras created a visual record of our every turn and we soon understood that we had become targets to be watched and followed.” - Margaux Cerruti, Whitewall
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“Big Brother is watching at the Park Avenue Armory, where architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have collaborated with artist Ai Weiwei on a new site-specific installation… 'Hansel and Gretel,' [which] transforms the venue's vast Drill Hall into its own darkness-cloaked surveillance state, with drones that fly overhead and an elaborate network of infrared sensors that record your every step, transferring your likeness onto the gently sloping bluff underfoot… Visitors have the chance to play the role not only of the observed but also the observer.” - Samuel Cochran, Architectural Digest
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The Hairy Ape

“Mr. Cannavale’s 'Yank' really seems to incarnate the forces of brute nature. He moves as if he has to restrain his movements, so powerful are the impulses behind them he spits out his disdain for the weak.’’ - Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal
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“While this production may work most effectively as a visual feast (just wait until you see how the closed set opens to embrace the Armory’s walls), it also gives full due to the patterns of O’Neill’s language and their resonant repeated words, including stinging variations on the notion of hell and the verb ‘to belong.’” - Ben Brantley, The New York Times
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“A staggering, last-word revival starring Bobby Cannavale at the Park Avenue Armory… Full-tilt expressionism on the grandest scale imaginable.” - Jesse Green, Vulture, New York Magazine
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“Environmental theater doesn’t come any more powerful than the staging of 'The Hairy Ape' being performed at the Park Avenue Armory. Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 expressionist drama is rarely seen these days, but director Richard Jones’ production brings it to magnificent life with a visually stunning, stylized rendition that gains resonance from its overwhelming setting. You may have previously seen the play, but you’ve definitely never seen it like this…” - Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
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Manifesto

“Manifesto offers an utterly absorbing crash in 20th-century avant-gardism. In the end, the cacophony is less confusing than bracing, underscoring the alluring promise of change that inspires each new generation.” - Eleanor Heartney, ARTnews
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“If the art world gave out Oscars, Cate Blanchett should win for her tour de force of starring roles in Manifesto at the Park Avenue Armory.” - Roberta Smith, The New York Times
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“If you need more proof that Cate Blanchett is one of Hollywood's greatest treasures, make a beeline for New York's Park Avenue Armory.” - Jada Yuan, Vulture, New York Magazine
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Circle Map

“Episodes of ethereal stillness—a gentle tangle of flutes, a swish of cymbals, a glistening of harp, piano, and celesta—give way to more sharply delineated gestures, such as strutting syncopated chords in the piano or throbbing pulses in the drums… Presenting Rumi in overlapping media—the written word, the speaking voice, projected translations, musical transpositions—might have resulted in a muddle, but the production instead achieved an uncanny triangulation.” - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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“The Drill Hall is vast [yet] Saariaho’s music, with its cosmic flutings and painterly shades of instrumental color, makes use of that immensity…The spare darkness lit up by wild, uncanny sounds gave Saariaho’s language an intensity it might have lost in the bright normalcy of a concert hall.” - Justin Davidson, Vulture, New York Magazine
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“Last week, ‘Circle Map,’ a program of pieces by Kaija Saariaho, bloomed in the dark, vaulted vastness of the Park Avenue Armory. Part of it was theatrics: Mr. Audi, who is also now the artistic director of the Armory, arranged the audience in a tiered semicircle around the New York Philharmonic (conducted by Esa Pekka-Salonen), which was backed by a large screen… At the Armory, the interplay between live sound and electronics in 'Lonh' helped create a feeling of being surrounded; in the clarinet concerto, the soloist’s variety of expression…seemed to directly galvanize the orchestra.” - Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal
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‘This vast space proved ideal for the 90-minute program… It’s good to see the Philharmonic and the Armory taking advantage of Ms. Saariaho’s presence in New York…This kind of collaboration between New York institutions should happen much more often.” - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss

“Somehow at the Armory this intense listening in the dark releases sorrow, absolves, soothes wounds. In its very stylized yet direct, circumspect, respectful, and guttural way Simon's warbling choristers and companion-priests open doors for us soon-to-be travelers, letting us feel the pulse of things bigger than we are, yet things we are composed of.” - Jerry Saltz, Vulture, New York Magazine
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“Professional mourners from fifteen countries sit in a half circle of eleven concrete towers at the Park Avenue Armory…Their eerie pentatonic lament subsided, and in the vacancy of its vibratory aftermath my stomach dropped. Mourning, I understood then, is a distraction from loss; after bodies are buried and ceremonies end there remains only an empty and relentless silence." - Emily Witt, The New Yorker
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“It explores responses to grief, touching on the empty spaces, private and public, that loss produces, and the chaos, ritual and ceremony that help people fill the void.” - William L. Hamilton, The New York Times
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Martin Creed: The Back Door

"Creed thinks a great deal about the state of the world, and as simple as his work may appear at first glance, every size-order arrangement of furniture and room filled with balloons is an earnest attempt to understand the absurdity of existence." - Alanna Martinez, New York Observer
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“Mr. Creed has created a kind of anti-spectacle, a strange, discombobulated whole greater than the sum of its parts, in which the building is a co-star. He is displaying painting and sculpture to be sure, but he has also insinuated several of his performing ready-mades into the building, and they have never looked better.” - Roberta Smith, The New York Times
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"A sprawling affair that occupies the armory’s entire main floor, including not just the drill hall and the small, bunkerlike rooms that flank it but the grandly decorated, late-19th-century period rooms on the building’s Park Avenue side. This is Mr. Creed’s biggest exhibition in the United States." - Frank Rose, The New York Times
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De Materie

"Few institutions have been as adept at pushing the cultural FOMO button that New Yorkers hate almost as much as slush puddles and bedbugs. ‪De Materie‬, seems poised to become one of the most talked-about events of the spring season." - Corinna da Fonesca-Wollheim, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Roderick Williams

“Roderick Williams proved a natural and expressive communicator, with Susie Allan’s elegant playing an ideal foil for his eloquent delivery. He imbued each song with myriad colorful nuances, his rich, burnished baritone lovely throughout the evening.” - Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Lisette Oropesa

"The lovely lyric soprano Lisette Oropesa gave a rewarding performance with the stylish pianist John Churchwell, singing a thoughtful selection of songs with operatic richness and charisma." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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Goldberg

"Bach’s masterpiece is hardly simple. To perform the Variations is itself a feat of endurance, one that Igor Levit accomplishes with dancing rhythms, gracious lyrical continuity, and a steely, formidable technique." - Russell Platt, The New Yorker
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"No cell phones, no watches, no cameras. This is not the start of a Luddite how-to manual, but rather Marina Abramović's proposed requisite for listening to classical music. Put into practice in Goldberg, the Park Avenue Armory's latest cross-disciplinary commission, Abramović's collaborator, Russian-German pianist Igor Levit, is willingly entering her framework (also known as the Abramović Method for Music) to give a series of seven performances that began Monday and will continue through December 19. Each night an audience of 600 joins Levit after depositing all of their belongings into lockers and listen as he plays Johann Sebastian Bach's famed 1741 composition the Goldberg Variations." - Hayley Weiss, Interview Magazine
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"Lush, vibrant, sensitive… Igor Levit’s playing was amplified by the staging into something cosmic while retaining a tender human pulse. The effect was stunning." - Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
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"‪Goldberg‬ is a rigorous version of Bach’s intricate, ecstatic solo-piano epic. Igor Levit will play on a stage of Marina Abramovic’s devising: a motorized platform that slowly moves from the far side of the Drill Hall to the center, then turns a single revolution as Levit goes through Bach’s 30 variations." - Jason Farago, The New York Times
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Recital Series: Christian Gerhaher

"'The Book of Hanging Gardens' is an atonal song cycle based on poems that obsessively dissect a love affair in 15 feverish verses. Christian Gerhaher, who gave a vulnerable and intense performance of the work, has said that the cycle is 'like Christmas, 15 times over.'" - Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times
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HABEAS CORPUS

"The conjunction of stories from New York and Guantánamo seems to crystallize Anderson’s intention: she was drawing a line between the fear of evil and the evil that fear can create." - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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“Images can humanize, but physical presence does even more. Even in this age of digital immediacy, the power of the physical is undeniable. By bringing Gharani to New York City as a three-dimensional livestream, Anderson portrays distance and intimacy all at once; an apt metaphor for the American public’s relationship to Guantánamo.” - Cora Currier, The Intercept
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"Mohammed el Gharani, one of the youngest detainees in Guantánamo history, will sit in silence, inviting viewers to meditate on the relationships between taking time and serving time, absence and presence, what is human and what is inhuman. He will also tell stories, elaborating on the years he spent in Guantánamo." - Priscilla Frank, The Huffington Post
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"I had planned this as a meditation about real time and telepresence: how to be there and not there at the same time. Like all former Guantánamo detainees, Mohammed is not allowed to come to the U.S. I had imagined HABEAS CORPUS as a work of silent witness, deriving its power from live streaming, technology, and stillness—a work of equally balanced presence and absence." - Laurie Anderson, The New Yorker
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Tree of Codes

"Dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet Company and Company Wayne McGregor move in a serpentine and grounded manner, mimicking Jamie xx's dreamy, experimental score. Through Eliasson's projections and reflective layers, dancers are sharply reflected in a vibrant house of mirrors, allowing their bodies to extend infinitely into the distance. Unlike a typical performance, the audience is also reflected back at performers, sometimes even underneath the glow of a spotlight. You can, quite literally, see yourself in this ballet." - Haley Weiss, Interview Magazine
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"‪Tree of Codes‬ is a world where optical wonders open up doors to the unexpected. Layer after layer, the optical games continue to amuse, with dancers and sets in constant flux, keeping one’s senses alert at all times." - Gabriella Daris, ArtInfo
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"The rich meld of Company Wayne McGregor & Opéra National de Paris, their disparate training, combined with the intense sound of Jamie xx and visual elements of Studio Olafur Eliasson, gives the audience total engagement from the toes right through the head." - Pia Cotton, Wall Street Journal
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Under Construction Series: Andrew Ondrejcak

"Andrew Ondrejcak is a writer, director, and designer of performances, theater, opera and fashion shows. Watch as Andrew moves through the collaborative process of birthing a new work, ELIJAH GREEN as part of Park Avenue Armory's Under Construction Series. Inspired by August Strindberg’s "A Dream Play," the piece follows a divine spirit as it wanders through contemporary life, where each individual character is both the center of the world and a part of something larger they cannot comprehend." , American Theatre Wing
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H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS

"A shifting, spectral wonderland, where moments of thrumming noise and dazzling movement contrast spectacularly with sequences that convey a quieter more melancholy sensibility." - Gabriel Coxhead & Ali Morris, Wallpaper Magazine
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"A thrilling exhibition that shimmers between genres, from sci-fi to fantasy, children’s adventure to horror. H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS is near perfect." - Scott Indrisek, ArtInfo
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"Objects are illuminated and switched off, films begin and end, and live piano music stops and starts in a timed sequence lasting two and a half hours. But you don’t need to stay for it all to be enthralled by H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS’s spellbinding charms." - Howard Halle, Time Out New York
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"Almost every part of the imposing Armory building will be put to use for his purposes: the skylight blinds will rise and descend to create periods of darkness and light; the exterior walls will be fitted with microphones, to bring in amplified street sounds, which will be translated into piano music that will cause interior lights to surge, flicker and dim along with the urban thrum; immense screens will be used for films but also as floating walls; and the trusses will be hung with more than two dozen of Mr. Parreno’s signature sculptural pieces, translucent ghostly marquees that look as if they were severed from their worldly theatrical origins and elevated to Platonic form." - Randy Kennedy, The New York Times
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FLEXN

“Get-low, gliding, bone-breaking, connecting, pauzin, waving: Even the language of flexing, a street-dance style born in Jamaica and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, pops with energy. Flip through the enormous program book for Flexn, a show of grand proportions at the Park Avenue Armory, and you’ll find a “Flexapedia” defining these terms. It’s a glossary of action words. Flexing is doing. Dance as action, as forward momentum.” - Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
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tears become…streams become…

"Then, very slowly, water started seeping up from cracks between the black wood panels. Soon, small shiny pools started forming. As the pools grew, you saw reflections of the Drill Hall’s ceiling as well as mirror images of the people sitting around the rim. It took about 20 minutes for the entire floor to fill with water, in silence. The process was riveting. Expanding pools of water kept swallowing up dry patches of the floor that continually changed shape. Hélène Grimaud then began a 60-minute program, an inspired selection of pieces by Berio, Takemitsu, Ravel and others that in various ways explore images and sensations of water." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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"In an installation conceived by the Scottish conceptual artist Douglas Gordon, the French pianist Hélène Grimaud will perform a one-hour program of works inspired by water, as a controlled flood transforms the hall into a giant, glassy lake. In a slow creep, the water — all 122,000 gallons of it — will occupy nearly 33,000 square feet and, mirrorlike, turn the armory’s ceiling upside down, plunging it into what seems to be a bottomless, liquid-filled space." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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St. Matthew Passion

"The long, daunting passion is a ritualized form of participatory theater. Bach wrenches you out of your comfort zone as an audience member and pulls you into this story of faith and doubt, trust and betrayal, community and mob chaos. All of these qualities came through in the searing, sublime performance on Tuesday, the first of two, bringing to an end a mini-residency in New York for the Berlin Philharmonic, which had already played four concerts at Carnegie Hall." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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The Passenger

“The tension between past and present is not just embedded in the music and libretto but built right into the spatial concept of the imposing production by the director David Pountney. A two-tiered set, designed by Johan Engels, shows the airy upper deck of the ocean liner, where passengers mingle, wearing elegant suits and dresses of creamy whites. But just below, we see the hellish concentration camp, where stacked flat beds and freight bins roll in and out on railroad tracks.” - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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MACBETH

“When you have thirty guys charging through the battle in this earth, the audience needs to be expecting to interface with the, shall we say, earthly qualities of the show,” Leaver said diplomatically. - Sophie Brickman, The New Yorker
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“Mr. Branagh’s muscular, bloody, fast-paced Macbeth” begins with “a fierce, wet, muddy, bloody, intricately choreographed extended fight that takes place inches away from the audience,” signaling a “headlong rush of breathless action, [with] each scene blending rapidly into the next.” - Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
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Macbeth will get one more tomorrow after all...” - Pia Catton, The Wall Street Journal
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Recital Series: István Várdai

"Mr. Vardai’s trills unfolded with elegant grace in his soulful rendition of the Allemande, and the Courante flowed with a joyous energy." - Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times
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Recital Series: FLUX Quartet

"Brilliant performance..." - George Grella, New York Classical Review
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The xx

"The sound was as good as any concertgoer could ask for, and the group's performance matched it..." - John DeFore , The Hollywood Reporter
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"At the Armory, we were hostages dropped into the dry expanse of a field, feeling smaller but entirely alert." - Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
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Recital Series: Igor Levit

"...performer and listeners alike were unnerved to find themselves sharing a private moment in a public setting." - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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The Life and Death of Marina Abramović

"This stunningly beautiful theater production largely steps away from dimensions of the now-successful artist's life, staging a biography of her psyche instead — a far more daring strategy that brings splendid rewards. Wilson's gorgeous stage compositions immerse us in Abramovic's psychological milestones,,, The finale is visually sublime. Despite its bold title and playful frame, the production amounts to far more than a hagiography of an art star or a funeral stunt. It is an expressive metaphysical pageant, reflecting on how an extraordinary life can defy death through art." - Tom Sellar, Village Voice
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"The show unfurls in a series of loosely connected, enigmatic set pieces set to haunting music. Some of it is recorded and some of it is live: art songs by Antony, Serbian folk by Svetlana Spajic, dissonant electronics by the duo Matmos. This feast for the senses lets theatergoers draw their own conclusions — or just sit back, relax and enjoy the gorgeous scenery." - Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post
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Christian Gerhaher Recital

"In a design statement, the architects of Herzog & de Meuron, the firm behind the renovation of the Board of Officers Room, use the verb “de-layer” frequently to describe the delicate process of stripping down successive strata of paint and plaster in a way that pays respect to both the original design and the passing of time. In many ways, Mr. Gerhaher’s performance is also one of de-layering, as his utterly unaffected yet profound interpretation tunnels back through time to the emotional seed of each song." - Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times
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Massive Attack V Adam Curtis

"A full-time producer-director with the BBC, Curtis spent the better part of his off hours over a period of seven months creating the film and site-specific show, and collaborating with the band’s Robert Del Naja. United Visual Artists also had a hand in the design and staging, which will include 11 gigantic screens in the Park Avenue Armory. Meant to expose the hidden realities of “this strange anxious age,” the performance will remind audiences of the more arresting moments in politics and power over the past 30 years, Curtis said." - Rosemary Feitelberg, Women's Wear Daily
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"Inspired by a Damon Albarn opera at the Manchester International Festival in 2011, Robert Del Naja, of trip-hop progenitors Massive Attack, hatched the notion of a collaboration with documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. The result, Massive Attack v Adam Curtis, arrives in New York City this week, so TONY grilled Del Naja about the show: part cover-versions concert, part film and wholly political." - Marcia Adair, Time Out New York
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"The music Massive Attack play spans decades, from Barbra Streisand and Nirvana to Siberian punk rock and Bauhaus. Horace Andy comes out to sing the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" as video flashes images of minstrel shows and other distasteful imagery. Del Naja is particulary proud of that moment." - John Gentile, Rolling Stone
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"Immersive doesn’t really begin to describe “Massive Attack V Adam Curtis”, the multimedia onslaught currently being staged at New York City’s gargantuan, airplane-hangar-like Park Avenue Armory." - Matthew Solarski, Consequence of Sound
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"The sound is a marvel, properly immersive, but not too loud or cavernous. (United Visual Artists, the British art and design shop, is in charge of the installation and got it right.) This project was commissioned by the Armory, the Manchester International Festival, where it had its first performance last summer, and the Ruhrtriennale International Festival of the Arts. If it has a further life as a film with music, screenable without the band’s live performance, it could lodge in international culture as a perpetual undergraduate mind-blow — a more political “Koyaanisqatsi,” say." - Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
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" “Neither of us, Robert nor I, quite know what we’ve created,” Curtis tells me via Skype. “I call it a ‘provocative entertainment’ about what we’ve lived through over the past 50 years, from the idealism of the sixties through the collapse of those dreams in the seventies and their replacement by the triumph of a kind of managerial stasis, an imaginative paralysis imposed upon us by the powers that be—the marketers, the hedge-funders, the politicians, and I emphatically include the journalists in this—in which no one anymore aspires to a brighter vision of tomorrow, let alone toward the effort of realizing such a vision, in which we are constantly being told that this is all there is, this is how it has to be. But it’s worse than that,” he adds quickly. “Because we are constantly being fed these two-dimensional visions of the past, the dead past—not just in terms of fears but also desires. If you liked that, then you will love this.” " - Lawrence Weschler, New York Magazine
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The Machine

"Whether The Machine, at the Park Avenue Armory, is ultimately convincing at suggesting artificial intelligence will eventually supersede human thought capacity remains up in the air by fade-out. What precedes the questionable denouement, however, has enough high-wattage action to keep audiences enthralled." - David Finkle, The Huffington Post
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"That is a road not taken by Mr. Charman’s play, which has been staged with magnifying spectacle and at a breathless pace by Josie Rourke, the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times
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"Vigorously directed by Josie Rourke, obsession surfaces as the central theme. As The Machine flutters back and forth in time, one principal remains, and that’s the limitless power of talent unleashed by inexhaustible determination." - Celia Ipiotis, Eye on the Arts
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"The savvy opening move of The Machine, a tautly entertaining and superbly acted new play by Matt Charman is to reconfigure the central battle entirely, turning man-vs-machine into man-vs-men-who-created-machine." - Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly
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Paul McCarthy: WS

"Blood, excrement, alcohol and M & Ms flew through the air as Mr. McCarthy took down targets ranging from Walt Disney (“WS” stands for Snow White backward), himself (the ranch house was a replica of his childhood home) and America’s lust for bigness and waste." - Holland Cotter, The New York Times
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"In making the experience of his art so visceral, so gutter-level and cannily extreme, he takes us with him on this physical journey into the heart of horror. We may feel soiled by it, or disgusted, or moved. But whatever we feel, it’s likely to be strong. McCarthy saves us from the morally vacant stance of cool appraisal." - Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post
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"I will say that I’m awed by the spectacle and scale of the thing. McCarthy's ability to occupy and take over space, even the most impressive interior in New York City, is undeniable, impressive, singular. I doubt that anyone has ever been able to do this to this extent in this space before." - Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine
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"Although her name may not be a familiar one, the young actress Elyse Poppers has become the talk of New York. Paul McCarthy, the provocative, powerful and acclaimed performance artist, filmmaker, installation artist and sculptor, has discovered and uncovered his "muse." In his wildly attended, X-rated Park Avenue Armory show and at Hauser & Wirth galleries, both uptown and down, Poppers is depicted as Snow White, Natalie Wood, and herself, in a silicone sculpture so exacting as to be stupefying." - Elizabeth Sobieski, The Huffington Post
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"I am convinced that White Snow is one of the great works of our century, as sprawling, multivalent and rich as the novels that marked the turn of the 20th." - Jarrett Earnest, San Francisco Arts Quarterly
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"Paul McCarthy’s film-and-sculpture installation, “WS,” which fills the immense drill hall of the Park Avenue Armory, is basically a Yahoo epic, its satire framed in the language of Disney, Duchamp, 1950s suburbia, 21st-century greed and Craigslist pornography. The piece is grand and gross, with ambushing flashes of beauty and an X rating." - Holland Cotter, The New York Times
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" “WS” proves that the artist can still leave you feeling a bit shaken." - Rozalia Jovanovic, Artinfo
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"This enchanted forest is a dangerous one." - Kathleen Massara, The Huffington Post
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"Compared with Mr. McCarthy, even much of the contemporary art world can seem puritanical and hygienic. And in “WS” — short for “White Snow” — he has, if anything, pushed his own boundaries." - Randy Kennedy, The New York Times
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"If a little too much money was thrown at “WS,” it is merely a reminder that we have created a society where far more obscene things are happening all the time. Considering that too much money is in the hands of the undeserving few, we are relatively fortunate that some has trickled down into the messy lap of Mr. McCarthy." - Maika Pollack, Gallerist
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Trisha Brown Dance Company: ASTRAL CONVERTED

"At the Armory, though, the vastness is more sensed than seen, for once the dance begins, all the lighting originates from a relatively small stage area. Little illumination escapes. The performers materialize out of darkness, and they dance with darkness around and especially above them, alone in the cosmos." - Brian Seibert, The New York Times
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Tom Sachs: SPACE PROGRAM: MARS

"The geeks are in charge at “Space Program: Mars”, Tom Sachs’s wacky and intoxicating art immersion experiment, where limitless outer space is compressed into the prodigious but finite expanse of the Park Avenue Armory drill hall. - Ariella Budick, Financial Times
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- Tom Chen, Artinfo

"Now we have Tom Sachs, who has converted 55,000 square feet of creaking, wooden space -- run for years by the National Guard and known as the 69th Regiment Armory until its recent rebranding -- into a sprawling amusement park for space nuts and art nuts. But unlike so much contemporary art, Sachs dispenses with high production costs in favor of his signature technique: painstakingly hand-crafted, semi-functioning sculptures made entirely from salvaged quotidian materials like foam core, plywood and duct tape, all held together with hot glue and household screws." - Emily Nathan, artnet
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Week of May 28, 2012, The Approval Matrix places Tom Sachs: Space Program Mars as Highbrow Brilliant! - The Approval Matrix, New York Magazine
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"A sculptor best known for his duct tape, foamcore and construction-barrier reproductions of Modernist furniture and buildings, guns, Hello Kitty dolls and even Nazi death camps, Sachs is now leading visitors to the Park Avenue Armory around his own private Red Planet. Temporarily ensconced within the armory’s vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall, it has a beer cooler, a hot peanuts dispensary and the aforementioned espresso machine, all stripped of polish and ready to rocket. Definitely bring the kids. “Space Program: Mars,” a collaboration between Sachs, Creative Time and the Armory, is an inner-space playground for the whole family. It’s also a serious artwork." - Linda Yablonsky, The New York Times
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"Now “Space Program” -- a deadpan trip to Mars -- has landed in the 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall of Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory. It’s a huge installation of sculptures hand- crafted from plywood, foamcore, glue and steel. There’s a mission control, a spacecraft, a launch platform, a roving vehicle and a Darth Vader beer dispenser." - Zinta Lundborg, Bloomberg Businessweek
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"Picture an overgrown, hyperintellectual kid who’s obsessed with space travel—you know, the type who can recite the dates and details of every NASA mission. Then imagine what would happen if you gave that kid unlimited access to an old hardware shop, encouraged him to scavenge bits of wood, old toilets and discarded refrigerators from the street, and then let his imagination run wild in the 55,000-square-foot interior of the Park Avenue Armory. You would wind up with artist Tom Sachs’s monumental installation, Space Program: Mars..." - Marisa Cohen, Time Out New York Kids
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"Now we have Tom Sachs, who has converted 55,000 square feet of creaking, wooden space -- run for years by the National Guard and known as the 69th Regiment Armory until its recent rebranding -- into a sprawling amusement park for space nuts and art nuts. But unlike so much contemporary art, Sachs dispenses with high production costs in favor of his signature technique: painstakingly hand-crafted, semi-functioning sculptures made entirely from salvaged quotidian materials like foam core, plywood and duct tape, all held together with hot glue and household screws." - Emily Nathan, artnet
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"This Mars mission will go only as far up as the Upper East Side. The air its astronauts breathe will be of a late springtime New York City composition. The landing module from which they emerge will be made mostly from three-quarter-inch plywood and screws. And the surface their motorized rover explores will consist not of rocky red soil but of the flat century-old pine boards that form the immense drill floor of the Park Avenue Armory at East 66th Street, where for a month beginning Wednesday Mr. Sachs will become the latest artist to take on the daunting space." - Randy Kennedy, The New York Times
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Tune-In Music Festival

"The Park Avenue Armory is one of the grandest, most amazing performance spaces in New York City, but Friday's performance began simply and intimately. Philip Glass and Patti Smith, two icons of a certain age, walked out onstage with their arms around each others' shoulders, like two old friends. The carpets in front of the stage, where people in the cheapest (and best) seats in the house, worked at recreating the environment, as Glass described to us, of his loft decades ago. Though a recreating, the effect worked." - Steven Thrasher, The Village Voice
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"If artists and pieces that transcend genre boundaries have become the norm, we partly have the trailblazing example of Mr. Glass — who early on absorbed crucial elements from Indian music, and later collaborated with pop troubadours and master musicians from around the globe — to thank for it." - Steve Smith, The New York Times
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"For his 75th birthday, Mr. Glass played the nearly four-hour movement [Music in Twelve Parts] in its entirety at the Park Avenue Armory on Saturday night, joined by two people who were around for the work’s composition—Jon Gibson, a member of the Ensemble since 1969, on woodwinds, and Michael Riesman, Mr. Glass’s musical director, on keyboards. An endurance test for both musicians and audience, Music in Twelve Parts is often maddening, but also frequently divine. It made for a pretty unorthodox birthday party." - Michael H. Miller, NY Observer/Gallerist NY
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Merce Cunningham Dance Company

"And so you observe this grand farewell with an extraordinary sense of achievement and, paradoxically, potential. Above all, these artists dance intensely in the moment, coolly taking astounding risks. At every point in its history the Cunningham company has included several of the world’s most exceptional dancers; these glorious final heirs of the tradition, glowing with youth and beauty, make the choreography as sensuous, as rich and as complex as it has ever looked." - Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
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"Over the New Year’s weekend, when I took a breather from the theater, I found myself enthralled by performances from the worlds of dance, music and, believe it or not, sports, that left me feeling blissfully re-energized. The most significant was the final stand of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Park Avenue Armory. Had I not filed my top 10 list weeks earlier, this would have made the cut." - Charles Isherwood, The New York TImes
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"[Merce Cunningham Dance Company] itself will fold on New Year's Eve, after what will no doubt be a well-attended valedictory performance at Park Avenue Armory." - Goings On About Town, The New Yorker

STREB: Kiss the Air!

"The high point is a cascading fountain made of falling bodies instead of water jets. The performers launch themselves from multiple levels of a platform, free-falling onto mats. It has the surreal beauty of cliff-diving, only timed and synchronized." - Leigh Witchel, New York Post
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"Twenty dancers leap, fall, and fly through an elaborate set that encompasses a 21-foot rotating ladder, hoops, and water (ponchos are provided in case you don't want to get wet). The result is a thrilling performance to marvel at that conjures up memories of watching the circus or seeing a favorite superhero take flight." - Ann Binlot, ArtInfo
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Shen Wei Dance Arts

"The Park Avenue Armory is its own majestic universe. How can a regular-sized human traverse the enormity of the stage space sans roller skates? How does one avoid tripping over a humongous layered skirt and float on stage? Or run into the dark? This past Thursday the artists of Shen Wei Dance Arts spent hours working out such details." - Christine Jowers, Dance Enthusiast
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Royal Shakespeare Company

As You Like It Review “As You Like It manages to juggle mismatched lovers, Sapphic cousins, exiled noblemen, rustic vaudeville and ruminations on time and the stages of man, all with equal verve and no small dose of melancholy. That it happens in the Forest of Arden, where all these elements criss- cross and intertwine, add to the growing sense of wonder and merriment." - Jeremy Gerard and Philip Boroff, Bloomberg
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"The winter’s wind seems particularly biting in the forest of Arden that has sprung up in the Park Avenue Armory, just as the summer’s heat has begun to reach a peak. If you’re looking for an escape from swampy weather, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of “As You Like It” might prove just the ticket." - Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
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As You Like It Review "The chemistry between Stephens' witty Rosalind (who later poses as the male Ganymede) and O'Neill's off-handedly virile Orlando is so combustible that Bunsen burners would shatter. The mere way he looks at her and the way she's seized by passion make not only their hearts beat faster, but might even cause heart-pounding among ticket buyers." - David Finkle, TheaterMania
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"The Royal Shakespeare Company Rebuilt Its Stratford-upon-Avon Theater Inside the Park Avenue Armory" See time lapse installation video and more. - Benjamin Sutton, The L Magazine
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"I have to say, of all the amazing things I have seen in the armory over the years, this promises to be one of the best." - Wendy Goodman, New York Magazine
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"A once-in-a-lifetime theater-going experience begins this week in New York City." - Jane Levere, Forbes
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"The company has created a simulacrum of the new RST auditorium for its six‑week season in the Park Avenue Armory in New York this summer, where it will present five plays to give eager American audiences a chance to see the productions in the kind of surroundings they could have enjoyed in Stratford-upon-Avon." - Charles Spencer, The Telegraph (UK)
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"Shakespeare enthusiasts, get thee to the Armory...." - Patrick Healy, The New York Times
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RYOJI IKEDA the transfinite

“The transfinite,” a huge, immersive, electronic light-and-sound installation by the internationally celebrated avant-garde composer Ryoji Ikeda, is spectacular, trippy and fun. It is hard to imagine anyone of whatever age not enjoying its sensational effects.” - Ken Johnson, The New York Times
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"An engaging, involving symphony of sound and vision, “the transfinite” is best seen if you give yourself over to it, allowing it to merge with your soul." , This Week in New York
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"Ryoji Ikeda's the transfinite, a math-driven, psychedelic sound and light show at the Park Avenue Armory." - The Approval Matrix, New York Magazine
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"Music and math are brothers. I have been obsessed by mathematical beauty for years, but I never really studied it. I dropped out of my university and didn’t attend art or music school. When I listen to classical music, like Bach, it’s so mathematically beautiful––it feels natural for me, as a musician, to dive into the mathematical world." - As told by Ryoji Ikeda to John Arthur Peetz, ARTFORUM
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“In its combination of aggressive grandeur and obsessive detail, of magnification and miniaturisation, of focused chime and cosmic roar, the piece makes visitors feel at once like colossi and specks.” - Ariella Budick, Financial Times
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“brilliant and enthrallingly beautiful.” - George Grella, Classical TV
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Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts

Unless you’ve got something substantial galloping in the frisky bull market these days, you know it’s a bitch of a world out there. In New York, even the weather has gone fiscal: pinched and recalcitrant, snow showers landing on the daffodils, wiping the spring smiles off our sappy faces. So what do we hard-done-by people need? A freebie of pure, runaway, skipping-through-the-puddles joy, and this week we got it, courtesy of Joanna Rose and her 650 red and white quilts. - Simon Schama, Financial Times
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Tune-In Music Festival: ARCO

"The pièce d’occasion turned out to be ARCO, a surprisingly mellow yet stubbornly complex essay in communal mysticism. The institution’s [Park Avenue Armory's] first-ever commission, it placed the tireless conductor Paul Haas and a reasonably conventional orchestra called Sympho on the floor, flanked by an appreciative audience on three sides. In the course of the 90-minute performance itinerant instrumentalists and singers popped up to enrich textures and attract attention in various distant perches...For at least one witness it seemed most rewarding to just sit back, relax and enjoy the exotic ride." - Martin Bernheimer , Financial Times.com
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Tune-in Music Festival

"...there are pieces such as John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit, in which 78 percussionists with portable instruments drifted freely about the Park Avenue Armory’s spacious Wade Thompson Drill Hall last month. They strummed glockenspiels, triangles and piccolos while audience members circled around them, some staking seats on the hardwood floors." - Rachel Stern, Our Town
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"For the three remaining events this week, new-music ensemble eighth blackbird sought works that would resonate in the space. “We all in eighth blackbird were nervous about…whether we could come up with a program that would be ambitious enough to take advantage of a space that huge,” flutist Tim Munroe says." - Amanda Angel, Time Out New York
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"During Georg Friedrich Haas’s “In Vain,” the listener experiences a heightened state of awareness, becoming acutely attuned to the intricacies of a psychedelically beautiful soundscape that often unfolds in total darkness." - Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times
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"More than 200 avant garde musicians will take over the Park Avenue Armory this week for the first ever Tune-In Music Festival." - Abbie Fentress Swanson, culture.wnyc.org
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No stranger to ambitious projects, the ensemble eighth blackbird has programmed and will perform at the inaugural Tune-in Festival at the Park Avenue Armory from February 16-20. - Amanda Angel, WQXR 105.9 fm
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Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway

"Although the painted surface is flat, somehow for a moment one expects the figures again to be sculpted volumes. It is this kind of set-up that delights Greenaway. Look what can be done with light and space! In these moments the experience is truly magnificent." - Henry McMahon, artcritical
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"IF you had tied on a blindfold, suspended disbelief and allowed yourself to be carried last week to a particular location just off Park Avenue near 66th Street, your reopened eyes would have had trouble telling that they were not inside the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, looking at a sight everyone knows and few have actually seen: a magisterial painting of 13 enrobed men seated oddly on one side of a long dinner table." - Randy Kennedy, The New York Times
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"[Peter Greenaway] has created a dialogue between painting and film." - Pia Catton, The Wall Street Journal
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"There is a feeling around that the laptop generation believes there is no painting before Jackson Pollock and no cinema before Tarantino, and we have to prove them wrong," he [Peter Greenaway] said. - Katherine Bindley, The Wall Street Journal
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An engaging interview with Peter Greenaway about his latest project at Park Avenue Armory opening December 3, 2010. - Alexandra Peers, New York Observer
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"Peter Greenaway’s ‘Last Supper’ Coming to the Armory" - Kate Taylor, The New York Times
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CARNIVAL

Wonderful photos of Park Avenue Armory's CARNIVAL! - Katie Sokoler, Gothamist
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Open Studio: Yoshitomo Nara + YNG

"The cutesy yet devilish cartoon characters created by the Japanese neo-Pop artist Yoshitomo Nara will soon be familiar sights on the Upper East Side landscape. " - Carol Vogel, The New York Times
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Christian Boltanski, No Man’s Land

For this week’s issue, Gus Powell photographed the French artist Christian Boltanski installing his piece “No Man’s Land” at the Park Avenue Armory. - Honore Brown, The New Yorker
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"...it’s hard not to see it as a version of that childhood game, and as an embodiment of a similar, albeit more intense, kind of perplexity and heartbreak." - Dorothy Spears, The New York Times
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Stifters Dinge (U.S. Premiere)

"...equal parts musical performance, theatrical presentation, art installation and environmental space." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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"The Park Avenue Armory has become a favored space for grand avant-garde productions. Next comes 'Stifter's Dinge,' a multimedia exploration (complete with five player pianos) of Romanticism and ecology by the dynamic German composer and arranger Heiner Goebbels." - Goings About Town: On the Horizon, The New Yorker

Events in honor of Merce - Memorial

"The Park Avenue Armory occupies most of a New York City block. Its main hall measures 55,000 square feet, and the curve of its roof soars to 80 feet....full of people—clumped or wandering singly—it resembles as much a grand 19th-century train station as it does a drill hall. Merce Cunningham would surely have enjoyed the dance that eddied and flowed over the vast floor at the Memorial in his honor." - Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
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“The startling 1881 structure, built to house the Seventh Regiment in Tiffany splendor (those were the days), is now a massive and inventive art and performance space.” - Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
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"What an extraordinary place!" - Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
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Les Éphémères

"The acting is of that sublime but unshowy order generally only achieved by true theatrical collectives...exemplary. The musical score by Jean-Jacques Lemêtre is among the finest I’ve yet heard for a theatrical production and is beautifully integrated." - Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
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Ernesto Neto: anthropodino

"Shen Wei imagined "anthropodino" as the dancers’ natural habitat...this was an affair to remember." - Lynda Hammes, The Economist
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"Shen Wei Dance Arts (whom you might remember from the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony) performed last night inside Ernesto Neto’s giant, interactive, multisensory Park Avenue Armory installation, anthropodino. If you weren’t lucky enough to be there...watch this video." - Jonah Green, New York Magazine
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"Equal parts exhibit, amusement and play space, the Park Avenue Armory’s first-ever commissioned art installation, Ernesto Neto’s anthropodino, completely reimagines the cavernous drill hall." - Patrisha Holly Zabrycki, Time Out New York Kids
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"A spectacular installation of gauzy Lycra fabric, dangling pods, dinosaurish wooden bones and cavernous interiors. Occupying much of the Park Avenue Armory's 55,000 square foot, 80-foot high Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Mr. Neto's ethereal construction glows like a magical destination in a children's movie." - Ken Johnson, The New York Times
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"...curvaceous, diaphanous, voluptuous, lissome...fleshy, glandular, uvular, uterine...inside the armory's vast drill hall, one of the largest unobstructed spaces in the city, the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has been hard at work...building a sprawling version of one of his signature biomorphic sculptures that requires all of those words and a few more to describe adequately." - Randy Kennedy, The New York Times
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"Imagine monumental, amorphous shapes of gossamer-thin fabric sacks that resemble teardrops... now picture them hanging from a bizarre weblike environment. That's what will emerge when the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto takes over the cavernous drill shed at Park Avenue Armory." - Carol Vogel, The New York Times
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Die Soldaten

"It is good. It is very, very good." , Financial Times
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"Over the years some daring directors and conductors have walked into the Armory and become immediately enthralled with its potential..." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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“Something radically different… in the vast Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory.” - George Loomis, The New York Sun
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“An amazing, alarming spectacle that is nearly as formidable as the infernal devices suggested in the score… Subtle, no; awesome yes.” - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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“A miraculous realization of an opera once deemed unperformable.” - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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"This momentous presentation made a strong case for Zimmermann's opera as a landmark 20th-century achievement." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
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"Best use of an unexpected space. The Drill Hall in the Park Avenue Armory revealed itself as a venue of choice for large-scale, avant-garde extravaganzas..." , New York Magazine
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"One of The Top Ten Best Performances of 2008." - Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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Stravinsky’s Sacred Masterpieces

"A fantastic place to play..." - Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times
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“Close your eyes, imagine yourself in some gigantic high-ceilinged cathedral ….a different way [to hear music] with its own rewards. …I liked the Armory a lot.” - Bernard Holland, The New York Times
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“Impresarios, directors and conductors are salivating at the possibilities…the vast Drill Hall, with its arching steel trusses and vast floor, is one the largest ‘indoor spaces in the city, the kind of industrial-style chamber that other cities have available to mount unconventional productions.” - Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times
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Whitney Biennial

"At a time when performance and interactive art are so prominent, the Park Avenue Armory gives curators a variety of spaces in which to explore many art forms." - Carol Vogel, The New York Times
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“The Armory itself, exposing its wood-paneled rooms and military décor to live performance art, may have been this biennial’s best surprise.” - Kim Levin, Artnews

"Marina Rosenfeld: Screw Hannah Montana-Real Teen Music Hits the Park Avenue Armory at the Biennial." - Shakthi Jothianandan, Time Out New York
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“...at a time when performance and interactive art are so prominent, the Park Avenue Armory gives curators a variety of spaces in which to explore many art forms.” - Carol Vogel, The New York Times
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“This year’s Whitney Biennial is upstaged by a thrilling new venue... the Armory is one of the most impressive and fascinating buildings I have visited...” - Adrian Searle, The Guardian
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High Resolution

"The Park Avenue Armory has been undergoing a striking makeover seen by a dedicated conservancy." - Karen Rosenberg, The New York Times
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Aaron Young: Greeting Card

"...a trip to the Armory is worthwhile…the scale of Mr. Young’s effort is stunning." - Roberta Smith, The New York Times
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