Selected Performances – June 01, 2013

Tommy Tune’s Steps in Time
“A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance.”
Anyone who loves musical theater has to have a soft spot for Tommy Tune, and this autobiographical revue—which he’s performed on the road for years—is landing on its ideal home turf, backed up by the Manhattan Rhythm Kings. (NYMag)
The Town Hall, June 1, 8 p.m.

Shostakovich Trilogy
Russian classics, twisted.
Alexei Ratmansky’s ballets are often worth seeing twice, as they reveal little stories within abstraction, complexity within apparently simple arrangements. He matches wits with another Russian subverter of expectations, Dmitri Shostakovich, in a trio of new pieces—­Symphony No. 9, Chamber Symphony, and ­Piano Concerto No. 1—that also show off ABT’s best dancers. —(Rebecca Milzoff NYMag)
Premieres May 31 at American Ballet Theatre.
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Michael Blake Band Plays the Music of John Lurie*
For a generation or two of New Yorkers, John Lurie’s name will always be synonymous with the Lounge Lizards, the so-called “fake jazz” band he led in the 1980s and ’90s, until chronic Lyme disease caused him to withdraw from the scene. His fellow saxophonist and composer Michael Blake was a member of the band for a while, and so he has both the insight and the temperament to carry out this tribute, featuring Ryan Blotnick on guitar, Landon Knoblock on piano, Michael Bates on bass and Greg Ritchie on drums. (Chinen-NYT)
Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village
At 9 and 10:30 p.m. / $20 cover, which includes a drink.
corneliastreetcafe.com / (212) 989-9319
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Eliane Elias
A Brazilian pianist with a transparent touch and a fondness for subtle harmonic shading, Ms. Elias is also a singer of breathy composure, as she demonstrates on her new album, “I Thought About You: A Tribute to Chet Baker” (Concord Jazz). The album is being released on Tuesday, the first evening of her five-night engagement here with a typically strong supporting cast. (Chinen-NYT)
Birdland, 315 West 44th Street
At 8:30 and 11 p.m. / $40 cover, with a $10 minimum.
581-3080, birdlandjazz.com
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Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm dates and check times, as schedules are subject to change.
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SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS @ 
3 Chelsea Galleries & 2 Museums: 
(WestSide Manhattan)

Richard Serra: ‘Early Work’ (through June 15)
This terrific exhibition looks back on five formative years in the career of the world’s most admired sculptor. One room contains objects made of lead, rubber, wood and stone produced by basic procedures like cutting, folding and tearing. A second gallery features works made by propping up four-by-four-foot lead panels and a single slab of hot-rolled steel, eight feet tall and 24 feet long, that juts from a corner into the room with grand implacability. (Johnson-NYT)
David Zwirner, 537 West 20th Street,
517-8677 / davidzwirner.com.

Rodney Graham (through June 15)
In four giant photographic transparencies mounted on lightboxes, the versatile Vancouver artist Mr. Graham ponders a man’s middle age with comical ennui. Each is a fictional self-portrait of the artist as a construction worker, a scientist, an aging punk and an old hippie in a kayak. They are funny and touching because of the disproportionate relationship between their grandiose scale and their goofy images, which resemble those of downbeat Father’s Day greeting cards. (Johnson-NYT)
303 Gallery, 507 West 24th Street,
255-1121, 303gallery.com.

Wolfgang Tillmans (through June 22)
The nomadic German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans addresses globalization in a curiously offhand way. This is true even in his latest works, which assert themselves more strongly as art objects thanks to Mr. Tillmans’s experiments with inkjet printing; they are lush and almost painterly in their rich concentrations of pigment. Only after connecting the dots of the installation — which moves from downtown Los Angeles to Kilimanjaro, a Masai hut to a construction site in Shanghai, a car headlight to a close-up of mold spores — do you sense transformation and upheaval.(Rosenberg-NYT)
Andrea Rosen Gallery, 525 West 24th Street,
(212) 627-6000 / andrearosengallery.com.
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‘Claes Oldenburg: The Street and the Store’ and ‘Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum, Ray Gun Wing’ (through Aug. 5)
‘Performing Histories (1)’ (through Aug. 5)
‘Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light’ (through Aug. 12)
Museum of Modern Art: 11 W 53rd St,
(212) 708-9400 / moma.org.
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‘A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial’ (through Sept. 8) 
International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street,
(212) 857-0000 / icp.org
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