The Modern R. & B. of Olivia Dean and Baby Rose
Many people consider virality to be synonymous with a kind of overnight celebrity for artists, but these days it is usually a mere spike along a more drawn-out stretch of unnoticed labor. Case in point: the British singer Olivia Dean. Since 2021, Dean has enjoyed several viral breakthroughs—a clip of a show, at London’s Jazz Café, that exploded across socials that year; another of a casual performance of the song “Dive,” which made the rounds on TikTok in 2023—all while climbing the usual rungs of the industry ladder: signing with Virgin E.M.I. before moving to Capitol UK, doing late-night shows, releasing a graciously received début, playing Glastonbury, securing home-town acclaim. Virality finally tipped over into ubiquity this year, with the hit single “Man I Need,” from the record “The Art of Loving,” making Dean a sensation and paving the way to a Grammy for Best New Artist and to three Brit Awards, for Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, and Pop Act.
“The Art of Loving” pulls all the work of her journey into focus, embodying the charms of a carefree style that eases through a sentimental wonderland. Her songs have long evoked weightlessness, but “The Art of Loving” finds its star growing into a warm vintage pop-R. & B. sound, its audience embracing the more assured performer at its center. On tour, with a stop at Madison Square Garden (Aug. 14-15 and 17-18), Dean is joined in concert by Baby Rose, a singer with a similarly old soul and timeless voice, whose new album, “YEARNALISM,” traces desire along a pilgrimage across the R. & B. canon.—Sheldon Pearce
About Town
“I must admit, a stroke at thirty wasn’t in my five-year plan . . . or my ten-year plan or fifty-year plan,” the eponymous star of “Cat Cohen: Broad Strokes” deadpans in her new one-woman musical comedy, directed by Alex Timbers. The stroke, caused by a hole in her heart, is just one entry in the sprawling hypochondriacal catalogue raisonné that powers the show. Dressed, like a Renaissance duchess, in a sparkly lavender corset with puffy taffeta sleeves, the “young for my grade” raconteuse pinballs from topic to topic: her first migraine with a visual aura at twelve, the “stroke of unluck” that upended a summer trip to Europe, a parade of clinicians. Cohen’s songs, co-written by David Dabbon, often play like impressions of impressions, but her physical comedy shines.—Rhoda Feng (Lucille Lortel; through Sept. 25.)
In its forty-fifth iteration, the Battery Dance Festival holds on to its signature virtues: location (outdoors, with a backdrop of New York Harbor at sunset) and variety (a grab bag of local and international companies). It’s like a neighborhood recital, with guests from around the world and the Statue of Liberty presiding. The varied programs, all free, include U.S. premières of work from Brazil, Romania, Spain, and Taiwan, and, per tradition, one evening is devoted to Indian dance. The host company, Battery Dance, turning fifty this year, presents new pieces by Sidra Bell and the former New York City Ballet star Jock Soto.—Brian Seibert (Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Park; Aug. 10-16.)
Benedict Lombe’s two-hander romantic drama “Shifters” begins—if a show this gleefully indifferent to chronology can be said to begin anywhere—at the wake for the beloved grandmother of Dre (Daniel Ezra), where he is blindsided by the arrival of Des (Heather Agyepong), a close friend who vanished from his life years earlier. Lombe then shuffles the chronology like a deck of tarot cards: at sixteen, the pair clock each other as the only Black students in their philosophy class; some time later, Des frantically searches for a missing painting she’d made; in their thirties, after the wake, they sift through Nana’s belongings while circling the life they failed to build together. Not every philosophical detour lands, but Agyepong and Ezra negotiate the play’s hairpin turns with the effortless accord of a pair of figure skaters.—R.F. (Cherry Lane; through Sept. 13.)
In recent years, a small loft above a beauty-supply store in East Williamsburg has emerged as a hotbed of dance experimentation. This incubator is called Pageant, a community space run by young choreographers and artists, who present scrappy and adventurous work. A contemporary equivalent of SoHo lofts or East Village theatres in the eighties, it has now attracted the imprimatur of the Museum of Modern Art, which is hosting a daylong marathon of short pieces by many Pageant artists. Here’s a chance to catch up on the scene in concentrated form, and without a trek to East Williamsburg.—B.S. (MOMA’s Kravis Studio; Aug. 21 and 30.)
Matt Johnson’s “Tony” is a charmingly superficial bildungsroman about how, in the summer of 1975, the brash and callow college student Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sessa), who went by the titular nickname, found his culinary calling. The dramatic recipe involves equal parts literary ambition, risk-taking, and chutzpah, with a dash of substance abuse, cooked on the high heat of adolescent lust that brings Tony to Provincetown in pursuit of a schoolmate named Nancy (Emilia Jones). Misadventure and misbehavior leave him stranded on the porch of a sympathetic chef and restaurateur (Antonio Banderas), whose kitchen offers a tumult of volatile personalities and whose soulful wisdom confers a sense of adult responsibilities. If the movie plays like a just-so story, it also movingly suggests the caprices of chance in every seeming destiny.—Richard Brody (In limited release; in wide release Aug. 21.)
The Jazz Generations Initiative is an organization set on bridging generational and disciplinary divides by emphasizing the ways in which jazz is informed by its in-person community. Its New York chapter “puts jazz in motion” around the city by arranging various events, and in conjunction with those efforts the drummer and composer Savannah Harris, as part of J.G.I.’s Continuum Fellowship, curated a show featuring the experimental soul artist KeiyaA, the saxophonist and bandleader Immanuel Wilkins, and the bassist and d.j. Ọmọ Igi. These musicians have different creative sensibilities, but, as the J.G.I. banner clearly understands, they exist along a shared artistic spectrum and are united in purpose.—Sheldon Pearce (Public Records; Aug. 12.)
A New Yorker Quiz
It’s August already! To mark the occasion, we’ve asked our critics to choose some of their favorite songs, books, and TV shows of the year—so far. See if you can guess what they picked.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet: