Woolf and Whitney at CityArts

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This week CityArts discovers new insight into two legendary women of the arts.

In "Torch Song Remake," Editor Armond White reviews the newly released movie Sparkle, a pet project starring and co-produced by Whitney Houston to be the late singer-actress' comeback film.

In "Woolf at the Door," Tayt J. Harlin visits an exhibition of memorabilia and letters by the late English modernist writer Virginia Woolf famous for To The Lighthouse, The Waves and Mrs. Dalloway. The Woolf collection, including books and photographs, is currently on view at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller.

In "Survival of the Arts," Elena Oumano interviews Ellie Covan, the impresario of Manhattan's adventurous performance space Dixon Place. Covan's motto? "Our focus here's more on the concept than the product."

Torch Song Remake

When Whitney Houston sings "His Eye is on the Sparrow" in Sparkle, her performance is unexpectedly good, stirring gospel. Playing the mother of three talented daughters who have formed a singing group that unravels the family, Houston's heartbroken recitation also seems to be meta-cinematic. Drawing on her character's professional disappointment, she testifies to something beyond the piddling plot and uncovers deeply reserved belief that's rarely seen in pop cinema. Read more here.

Woolf at the Door

As an undergraduate at Harvard in the sixties, William B. Beekman asked a tutor if he might read Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. The skeptical reply: "She's out of fashion." Woolf's novels had not yet received the sustained critical attention that would be sparked by the 1972 publication of her nephew Quentin Bell's two-volume biography. Beekman went on to collect letters, books, and ephemera related to Woolf for the next forty years. (His first purchase, in 1969, was a Hogarth Press edition of The Waves from the legendary Margie Cohn, of House of Books.) Seventy-five of the items now make up an enriching exhibition at the East Hampton location of Glenn Horowitz Booksellers. Read more here.

Survival of the Arts

Just before a recent performance of Dan Fishback's musical The Material World (held-over, full house, many turned away), Dixon Place's omnipotently attractive founder/creative director Ellie Covan took the stage to thank "those of you in the audience who are holding drinks" and then warmly encouraged everyone else to also visit the upstairs bar during intermission. Every little bit helps when you deliver 15 shows per week with tickets running only from $10-15, rarely $20, and you insist on paying your artists (even writers eager to read for free) while providing them with space, audiences, and the "resources and support to create new work." Covan explains, "Our focus here is more on the concept than the product." Read more here.

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