The idea to spend a year studying beauty was not a new one. We at LABA have spent years contemplating the possibility of having beauty as our theme, but each time we ended up passing on it. Why? We thought beauty was too simplistic, too political and, perhaps worst of all, unlikely to engender new
BY SARAH FRIEDLAND During her recent residency at the MacDowell Colony, filmmaker Sarah Friedland engaged in a deep visual meditation of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth in Hebrew). Her tools were the text, a camera and a couple of packets of articulating paper that she found outside a dentist office back in New York City. (These are the
BY BEN GANTCHER Honi the Chalk-Slinger Honi the Circle Maker is a hero, Reb Sheriff, holster packed with magic chalk. But he doesn’t come across that way when you meet him in the two stories we read this year in LABA. Sure, he’s a miracle worker, but in the first story, he’s cast as an
BY JOSH WALETZKY The major culture war of our day sets two worldviews against each other: “fundamentalist” vs. “scientific,” or “religious” vs. “secular.” This culture war has a long history, with roots in the time of the European Enlightenment. The Yiddish tale that served as the starting point for “The Last Dybbuk,” our devised
“A new day, or a new era, begins not with the start of new conditions, but with the demise of the old conditions.” Jenny Levison and Josh Waletzky discuss “The Last Dybbuk,” a devised theater work incorporating dance and music. Through it, they are investigating how we know when an ideology is no longer relevant. Come
BY ANDY TEIRSTEIN When I was a kid, I remember walking down the street, peering up at the full moon, and feeling a secret connection. It woke something in me, a kind of truth in nature, a relationship. Years later, sleeping on a mountain in Maine or in canyons out west, I would watch the
We Live For Tomorrow A Socially Aware Art Project OMTA discuss their work in progress, a new visionary playground that will look at how art can be used to heal and transform. See them present this live on March 5th, at SACRED TIME. [hr style=”striped”] Tell us about your project. “It is easier to build
Benjamin Kamine looks at how God spends the day and whether leisure is really possible for creators. [hr style=”striped”] Unlike most people, I am not particularly bothered by my lack of work/life balance. I find myself frustrated by the idea. It suggests that there is this thing called work and this thing called life. They
Get your tickets for a full season of a subversive teachings, contemporary culture and copious wine drinking. LABA: Unlimited includes access to every single cultural event of the year along with an invitation to one of our intimate study sessions. Art, music, theater and dance, all inspired by ancient ideas. LABA:Unlimited will grant you access
“For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.” A film by Sarah Friedland inspired by Hart Island and Ecclesiastes.