78 Days of Fun

Photo: SD Photo/Retna (Beyoncé); Robert J. Saferstein (The Wiz); Rosalie O'Connor/Courtesy of American Ballet Theatre (Sylvia)

June

22 Single ladies celebrate: Sasha Fierce herself (a.k.a. Beyoncé) takes over Madison Square Garden.

23 Catch one of fourteen features from south of the border during the Hola Mexico Film Festival at the Quad Cinema.

24Mahler!The New York Philharmonic performs Symphony of a Thousand at Avery Fisher Hall.

25Ashanti takes her turn easing on down the road with LaChanze in the City Center Encores! production of The Wiz.

26Take a seat at City Opera at the River to River Festival and hear Massenet’s charming one-act love story La Navarraise.

27 Zone out stoner-style during BAM’s All Night Bong movie marathon with Smiley Face, Pineapple Express, and Friday.

28 Check out the opening of this year’s award-winning design of P.S. 1’s new outdoor installation, Afterparty. Plus: Gay-pride parade (a Sunday long reputed to be almost always sunny).

29 American Ballet Theatre’s fiery Sylvia features an angry goddess, a testy nymph, and Orion himself. Hope for spunky Michele Wiles in the title role.

30 Austin, Texas, instrumentalists Explosions in the Sky—creators of “cathartic mini-symphonies”—take over SummerStage.

Photo: Peter Mountain/Courtesy of Universal Pictures

July

1Peter Terzian reads from Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums that Changed Their Lives at the Bryant Park Reading Room.

2 Wake up early to nab tickets for self-proclaimed theater geek Anne Hathaway’s Shakespeare in the Park turn as Viola in Twelfth Night.

3 Can Target inspire art? The Ontological-Hysteric Theater examines Brooklynites’ shopping habits in the possibly hilarious Behind the Bullseye.

4 Conor Oberst comes to the River to River Festival, while the New York Philharmonic does Gershwin for its “Born on the Fourth of July” concert.

5 Contemplate the rural life with a trip to Socrates Sculpture Park to see “State Fair,” a group exhibition where artists riff on farming and pageantry.

6Beat the heat with Public Enemies, the action-packed Depression-era drama with Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard.

7 Delve into French experimental theater with Ariane Mnouchkine’s dreamy Les Éphémères at the Park Avenue Armory.

8 Argentine songstress Juana Molina joins São Paulo singer-composer Curumin and Buenos Aires mash-up king El G at SummerStage.

9Choreographer Shen Wei reveals his troupe, Shen Wei Dance Arts, in the complete version of his iconic triptych Re-(I, II, III).

10 Indulge your inner child with fourteen classic arcade games like Donkey Kong, Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, and Space Invaders at the Museum of the Moving Image’s interactive “Behind the Screen” exhibit.

11 Head-bang with toddlers to punk-rock duo Japanther during WhitneyKids Punk Rock! 

12 Make the day trip to Bard to catch the last performance of a rare revival of Lucinda Childs’s Dance, the choreographer’s 1979 masterwork.

13 Head to KeySpan Park to worship two musical veterans of the stage: indie pioneers Yo La Tengo and alt-rockers Wilco.

14Tonight at the Hispanic Society: “Sonic Episodes: An Evening of Audio Works,” part of Dia’s alfresco event series.

15 Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black bring their absurdist antics to Gowanus’ Bell House before the premiere of their new Comedy Central show.

16 Jack White’s new new band, The Dead Weather, thrashes out lean blues rock in a show at Terminal 5.

17Bliss out while Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel fall in and out of love in the highly anticipated, fantastical (500) Days of Summer.

18Go to the Siren Music Festival, anchored by Built to Spill, Danish duo the Raveonettes, and cheeky boppers Micachu & the Shapes.

19It’s been over a week since its release. Bypass the lines for Sacha Baron Cohen’s long-awaited and litigious Brüno.

20 Take in “Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings From the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection,” on the wall at MoMA.

21 Pack a picnic and dance barefoot as activist and songwriter Jackson Browne hits the stage in Prospect Park for Celebrate Brooklyn!

22 Adventurous new-music ensemble Alarm Will Sound plays interpretations of Aphex Twin tunes at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

23 Fun-loving composer and violist Ljova (a.k.a. Lev Zhurbin) brings his raucous Kontraband to the Jewish Museum.

24 Budapest’s Béla Pintér and Company premieres its rowdy, farcical Peasant Opera.

25 Choose between two quality Russian dramas: Maly Drama Theatre’s Life and Fate or Boris Godunov at the Park Avenue Armory.

26 They just want to please the ladies: Masters of the slow jam Ginuwine and Joe croon their best at SummerStage.

27 Get riled up at Madison Square Garden with Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown tour.

28 Attend BAM’s 30th-anniversary screening of The Muppet Movie; bone up on Jim Henson lore beforehand at “Muppets History 201.”

29 When do patriotism and terrorism cross paths? Find out at We Declare You a Terrorist at the Public Theater’s Summer Play Festival.

30 South African a cappella virtuosos Ladysmith Black Mambazo break out their moves for BAM’s R&B festival at MetroTech. 

31 What’s summer sans Judd Apatow? Funny People opens. Plus: Rebel Without a Cause at Film Forum.

Photo: Antoine Tempé/Courtesy of Lincoln Center (Urban Bush Women); Daniel Boud/Retna (Swift); Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment (Julie & Julia)

August

1 Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, formerly of Luna, perform their hauntingly evocative score to Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests at Prospect Park.

2Ninety-year-old Merce Cunningham’s troupe performs a signature minimalist, site-specific Event at Rockefeller Park.

3 Furniture with SMS and Bluetooth capability? Marvel at technologically unusual works by Israeli designer and architect Ron Arad in “No Discipline” at MoMA.

4 Beach-read snobs, take note: Thomas Pynchon’s new hippie-noir book, Inherent Vice, now available.

5 Music collective Bang on a Can’s new offshoot, Asphalt Orchestra, covers everything from Stew to Björk at Lincoln Center Out of Doors.

6 Expect lace and air guitar at Celebrate Brooklyn!’s Purple Rain sing-along in Prospect Park, marking the 25th anniversary of Prince’s album.

7 Julie & Julia, Paper Heart, and G.I. Joe (a.k.a. Oscar bait, twee overload, and blockbuster) hit theaters. Choose one or all three!

8 Special guest Andrew W.K. ups the energy during Radio Happy Hour, an old-timey live variety show at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

9 Head to Second Stage for the last evening of Vanities: A New Musical, Tony-winner Judith Ivey’s adaptation of Jack Heifner’s beloved play.

10 City Ballet and ABT’s seasons are over, so head to the Joyce for your pointe-shoe fix: Tulsa Ballet’s diverse, extraordinarily talented troupe.

11Ten storytellers take the stage and spin five-minute tales about food during the NY Moth StorySLAM at the Nuyorican Poets Café.

12Euripides’ The Bacchae features Jonathan Groff, and André De Shields at Shakespeare in the Park.

13Settle into an easy groove when hip-hop pioneers (and lyrical mavericks) De La Soul take over the Nokia Theatre.

14 Bring special brownies to the opening of Ang Lee’s film Taking Woodstock. Also: Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company at SummerStage.

15 Animal Collective touches down at the Prospect Park Bandshell, and Long Island surfers compete at the Bunger 21st Annual Surf Contest.

16Sixteen days, twenty venues, over 1,300 performances. Take in what you can at the New York International Fringe Festival.

17Arrive early to snag a spot in Bryant Park at the sunset screening of Spielberg’s 1977 Oscar-winning sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

18Ease into the week with a peek at Richard Avedon’s emblematic photographs in “Avedon Fashion 1944–2000” at the International Center of Photography.

19Escape to an air-conditioned theater for the romantic Time Traveler’s Wife, with Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana.

20Gape at the wild, organic moves of Brooklyn’s fiercest dancing ladies, the Urban Bush Women.

21Scale the multilevel Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit inside the Guggenheim.

22Pianist Emanuel Ax, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and the Mark Morris Dance Group perform together at Mostly Mozart.

23Brace for blood. Tarantino takes on Nazi Germany in Inglourious Basterds, which opened on Friday.

24Walk west for Christopher O’Riley’s classical-piano takes on Nirvana and Radiohead at the HighLine Ballroom.

25Urban bachata pioneers Bachata Heightz perform a mash-up of rock, hip-hop, R&B, and mambo in a free show at Highbridge Park.

26Head to the Brooklyn Museum for lo-fi video works by feminist artists at “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video.”

27It’s a love story, baby: Taylor Swift brings her guitar and songwriting chops to Madison Square Garden. Resistance is futile.

28Big Fan, the directorial debut from the writer of The Wrestler, opens at the Angelika, starring Patton Oswalt as a N.Y. Giants obsessive.

29Add a touch of class to the end of summer at the perennially underrated Bargemusic; nothing’s quite so calming as listening to a string quartet (the Voxare, today) on a small barge in Dumbo.

30RadioTheatre’s yearlong celebration of Edgar Allan Poe’s 200th birthday continues at Under St. Marks.

31Discover rescued rarities at the Met Museum’s “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.”

September

1Catch the tail end of “Claes Oldenburg: Happenings Films” at the Whitney, a series of previously unseen works from the sixties.

2Watch adorable Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, hilarious bass Peter Mattei, and up-and-coming soprano Joyce DiDonato when the Met HD screening series shows the farcical Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

3The German-Australian glass whiz Klaus Moje’s 30-year retrospective “Painting With Glass” nears its close at the Museum of Arts and Design.

4Attention, Office Space fans: Extract—the new Mike Judge movie, with Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, and Kristen Wiig—opens today.

5Dance like crazy at the final P.S. 1 “Warm Up” party of the season. Remember: There are ten long months until the next one.

6Snag a ticket to one of Broadway’s award-winning showsHair or the timeless West Side Story—while the current casts may still be in place.

7Catch Philip Seymour Hoffman onscreen—before he appears as Iago in the Public Theater’s Othello—in The Boat That Rocked.

78 Days of Fun