Vance Garrett Productions Blog

“Hyperballad” (Robyn covers Bjork)

Vance — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:43:05 +0000

“Coquet Coquette” (of Montreal)

Vance — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:41:49 +0000

Favorite Mix for the ‘10 Summer Soundtrack

Vance — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:19:58 +0000

Thank you PUNCHES! for the soulful, sexy fresh set.

SOMEBODY HAS TO HELP YOU by PUNCHES!

“Summer Perfected”: Pines 2010 Event Schedule

Vance — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:21:48 +0000

Beer Garden, Low Tea, Middle Tea, High Tea, U Party, Melt!, Porsche, Pavilion, Soaked!…

With over a dozen events every weekend, something’s bound to tickle your fancy…

“Tightrope” (Janelle Monae)

Vance — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:21:18 +0000

NY TIMES: Blow Up “At a 60s Flick, Mod Reigns”

Vance — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:52:35 +0000

Congrats to everyone who helped make Blow Up a huge success!

July 1, 2010, 9:31 AM

Nocturnalist | At a ’60s Flick, Mod Reigns

By SARAH MASLIN NIR

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

It was a mod night when Future Cinema, an English company that screens films, celebrated its New York opening at the Shangri-La Studio on Sutton Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Up a candlelight-flickered staircase, through a darkroom cobwebbed with clotheslines bearing ruby-lit pictures, past a writer’s desk strewn with photographic proofs, guests at a film screening in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stepped into the past on Wednesday night: a Swinging ’60s photo studio where a Britpop band rocked out while a gaggle of actors with Twiggyesque doe eyes struck poses in the center of the room, vying for their moment in front of a photographer’s lens.

It was the New York opening of Future Cinema, an English company that screens films, and it was held at at the Shangri-La Studio on Sutton Street. The film was “Blow-Up,” the 1966 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, set in London and starring an Austin Powers prototype — an ennui-ridden fashion photographer named Thomas (David Hemmings).

The intent was for guests to feel as if they were models at a casting. As the line to enter stretched down the sidewalk before doors opened at 8 p.m., guests said, a vintage British car pulled up, spilling forth a live-action “Thomas” followed by a cluster of screaming girls, who would later become the mod models in the photo-shoot-turned-party. [Read more...]

NY MAG Summer Guide: “Prince of the Pines”

Vance — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:43:37 +0000

Prince of the Pines

Is a gay ghetto still relevant in the summer of 2010? One 27-year-old real-estate investor thinks so.

From left: The Pines, 1976; The Pines, 2010.

(Photo: From left: Tom Bianchi; Ian Allen)

Of the seventeen resort microclimates of Fire Island arranged along the picturesque, deer-overrun sandbar a short train-and-ferry commute from New York City, the Pines is easily the most fabled. Imagine, as many young men have, an entirely gay beach town full of contradictions—glamorous and skanky, bacchanalian and fussy, semi-nude and upmarket—a place where, as Andrew Holleran put it in his 1978 Gatsby-inspired gay novel Dancer From the Dance, “You may lose your heart. Or mind. Or reputation. Or contact lenses.”

Now imagine being 27 and owning the bars, restaurants, and the nightclub at the heart of it all. [Read more...]

And That’s What It’s All About.com

Vance — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:05:37 +0000

Thank you About.com!

Vance Garrett

Meet the Black Party Director and Scenarist

By David Sokol, About.com Contributing Writer

“A shrine of pillar candles and pictures of lost revolutionaries sits in one corner of the room. The trail of roses leads the men upstairs into the big room. We discover an unfamiliar cavernous hall. Glimpses of bars, ropes, candles, and petals appear in the distance, but a scene at the very center of the room illuminates the whole space…For about one hour, we see one gorgeous, impeccably dressed man dancing the tango, alone. He uses prison bars as his partner…”

This is just one of the scenes in Vance Garrett’s remarkably thorough treatment for the Black Party. The 13-page document also describes walls plastered with revolutionary paraphernalia and ticked with the chalk marks of a prisoner tracking his cell time. And of nuns muttering a blessing to the Virgin Mary — probably begging her for forgiveness — as each Black Party attendant checks his belongings at the door.

Garrett has been working for The Saint at Large since 2005, with increasing responsibility for the look and feel of the Black Party. Today he is its director and scenarist — this year mixing Argentine culture, the political upheavals of the Infamous Decade, leather and bondage, and high camp into one coherent, stimulating, storytelling dance party. (Read more…)

Rites XXXI: The Black Party

Vance — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:57:58 +0000

Congrats to TBE’s Ben Hartley on ENRON!

Vance — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:14:45 +0000

Congratulations to THE BROADWAY EXPERIENCE’s BEN HARTLEY on being cast in ENRON!

From BroadwayWorld.com:

The upcoming Broadway production of Lucy Prebble’s critically acclaimed play ENRON, directed by Rupert Goold, is proud to welcome actors Jordan Ballard (Hairspray), Brandon J. Dirden (Prelude to a Kiss), Anthony Holds (Spamalot, Pal Joey), Ty Jones (Judgment at Nuremberg, Henry IV, Julius Caesar), Tom Nelis (The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Aida), Jeff Skowron (The Lion King, High Society), LUSIA STRUS (the upcoming untitled Gus Van Sant project), Ben Hartley (Swan Lake, The Little Mermaid) and Ellyn Marie Marsh to the company.

They join the previously announced Norbert Leo Butz, Gregory Itzin, Stephen Kunken, Marin Mazzie, Noah Weisberg, Rightor Doyle, Ian Kahn, Mary Stewart Sullivan, Madisyn Shipman, and January LaVoy.

ENRON will begin previews on Broadway on April 8, 2010 at The Broadhurst Theatre (235 W. 44th St. between 8th and Broadway), in preparation for an April 27, 2010 opening.

Tickets are currently on sale via Telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6200. The Broadhurst Theatre box office will officially open March 11th. (…)

Ben Hartley was first seen on Broadway in Matthew Bourne’s Tony award winning Swan Lake followed by Fiddler on the Roof, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Disney’s The Little Mermaid & City Center Encores! staging of Follies. West End productions to include Cats, Fosse, Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella & The Carman. He was part of The Most Happy Fella & Pirates of Penzance at NYCO & Hello, Dolly at The Papermill Playhouse. He was also a member of The Met Opera Ballet and English National Ballet. Modeling work has included companies such as Ericsson, Aveda & has been featured in New Yorker Magazine and American Vogue. Ben is the founder & director of The Broadway Experience musical theater program based in NYC for aspiring triple threat performers. tbenyc.com (Read more…)