I've returned to my acting roots for my new movie, Happy Valley Retirement Village (Part 1). A comedy about a sex scandal and hidden cameras at a senior facility, it features 7 characters: Buddy, a construction worker; Basil Wraithbone, BBC reporter; Ole’ Grandpa, oldest man in the world; Katherine Heartburn, celebrated actress; Foo Chi, renowned chef; Tallulah Bankhead, infamous comedienne; & Randy Pincer, London TV fanatic.
Debut of ARTICLES on my site
I thought it fitting to debut my “election op-ed,” Myth & Power in America, as the first piece published in a new section on my site.
ARTICLES will be devoted to occasionally featuring, in their entirety, timely articles I’ve written.
"Secrets and Ciphers" in The Antioch Review
My latest essay, “Secrets and Ciphers,” was published in the (delayed) Winter 2020 issue of The Antioch Review. It makes unusual and provocative connections between many disciplines—cryptology, espionage, hackers, psychoanalysis, pornography, dance, AI—and mysterious cultural events and figures, including Freud, Alan Turing, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Amelia Earhart, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martha Graham, and Michel Foucault. The Antioch Review is available in libraries and bookstores; electronically via JSTOR; and via AR’s website.
Now online: “Characters in Limbo”
Video/multimedia artist Charles Dennis and I collaborated on a 5.5-minute adaptation of my dance solo, Characters in Limbo (Dancing Tongue Twisters), that was presented by the Construction Company in December 2019.
Watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfHA9h82D-g
New Dance, New Novel
My newest dance “Characters in Limbo” will premiere on Friday and Saturday, December 6 & 7th at 8 p.m., at Settlement House, 184 Eldridge Street, NYC, produced by The Construction Company, on a program with Sally Silvers, Alan Good, and Andrew Gurian. Reservations: 212-924-7882; tickets are $15 and can be purchased at: https://www.universitysettlement.org/us/news/PerformanceProject/fall-2019/the-construction-company/
“Characters in Limbo” is a mercurial, shape-shifting, gender-bending solo that mixes antic quick-change character voices with ‘impossible’ tongue twisters.
I’m delighted to present this piece in conjunction with the imminent publication of my new novel, So Much For Posterity, a mind-blowing thriller that is also a novel of ideas with many moving parts and eye-popping information:
Art and politics collide head-on: Steven Stabile, America’s leading culture critic, famous for his controversial hard-hitting political exposes about the Mideast’s antiquities scandals and underground sex haunts, is mysteriously drugged and lands in a psychiatric ward. Mattressa Hopkins, his protégé, comes to his rescue. After discovering their news syndicate is undergoing a secretive takeover, they find themselves in political crosshairs and surprising adventures that take them to the Capitol for the last-ever American presidential election…and the transformation of the entire U.S. government.
Now available for Kindle (https://amzn.to/2NEteo7), So Much For Posterity will also soon be available in paper from Amazon.
“A famous writer… stumbles on evidence of a sprawling network of conspirators—including some major nations… the orations are exceedingly thoughtful, in particular those on the profound political power of art.” – Kirkus Reviews
Photo: Karen Robbins
My "Glut and Indigence" essay in The Antioch Review, Spring 2019
My wide-ranging essay, “Glut and Indigence (Art, Commerce & The Potlatch),” has just been published in the Spring issue of The Antioch Review (delayed due to a printing snafu). It critiques Christo and Jean-Claude’s 2005 Central Park extravaganza The Gates, once the site of shanty villages, and explores how the excesses and stark contradictions between commerce, art spectacle, enclaves of poverty, the modern media phenomena of Times Square and Hollywood, and the decimation of warfare have uncanny parallels with the potlatch, the intentional squandering of harvest surplus reserves by indigenous tribes and peoples. The Antioch Review is available in libraries, at bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, electronically via JSTOR, or via their website: http://review.antiochcollege.org/spring-2019
Now online: "Labyrinth With Voices"
Charles Dennis and I have collaborated on a video that condenses my dance theater solo: now on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ll7rvxEsg
I started out as an actor before getting hooked on dance. “Labyrinth” features characters and comic impersonations of: Ol’ Grandpa, madcap witty Brit Randy Pincer, Basil Rathbone, Zarathustra, construction worker Buddy, and Tallulah Bankhead preparing for another comeback in “Suddenly, Suddenly Last Summer”!
"Radio Mind" in The Antioch Review
Kenneth's essay "Radio Mind," in the current Fall 2017 issue of The Antioch Review (Volume 75, No. 4), explores the broadcast fascination with the human voice and the sonic transmission of information dissemination that continues to enhance thresholds of interpenetrating message mosaics.
DANCE MAGAZINE: BEST OF 2017
Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine’s editor at large, listed my recent world premiere of LABYRINTH WITH VOICES as one of her Best Of 2017 favorites, under “Extraordinary Solos”: http://bit.ly/2lGQbIS.
“GHOSTS WALKING” IN HUDSON REVIEW
Grateful for the eminent dance writer, historian, and critic Marcia B. Siegel’s “Ghosts Walking” in the recent Hudson Review about dance, film, and history: http://hudsonreview.com/2017/10/ghosts-walking/#.WgDFDYZry-4. Her essay includes eloquent insights and evocative commentary about “SPACE CITY,” my dance movie collaboration with filmmakers Robyn Brentano and Andrew Horn.
LABYRINTH WITH VOICES: PREMIERE
I’m looking forward to debuting my latest dance, Labyrinth with Voices, produced by The Construction Company at University Settlement House, 184 Eldridge Street, NYC, at 8:00pm on Friday 12/8, and Saturday 12/9.
Labyrinth with Voices is a shape-shifting, gender-bending solo, in which I ventriloquize and impersonate 8 dramatic and ridiculous characters, famous...and infamous!
The program will include choreographer Sally Silvers and video artist Andrew Gurian, and will feature a dance tribute to the late Marjorie Gamso, curated by Carolyn Lord and Linda Seifert.
Reservations and tickets ($15): 212 924-7882. To order online: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3067178
ON THE CUSP OF SUPERSTARS
“On the Cusp of Superstars—Andy Warhol's Silver Factory as Underground," the second part of my essay/memoir about appearing in the early movies of Warhol, Gregory Markopoulos, and Jonas Mekas, has been published in the recent Spring issue of PAJ: #116 A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press). The first part, “Orbiting Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory” was published in the Fall 2014 issue; you can read an excerpt here on my site: http://www.kennethkingmedia.com/warhol.
Both parts in full are available from PAJ, here: http://bit.ly/2jtJdD2
Attached is a screenshot from Jonas Mekas’ film Award Presentation to Andy Warhol — I’m seated front left, beside Baby Jane Holzer.
SPACE CITY now online
SPACE CITY, my collaboration with filmmakers/producers/directors Robyn Brentano and Andrew Horn, featuring my choreography and dancing, music by William-John Tudor, and sets by Richard Brintzenhofe, is now on YouTube.
At last you can see my dancing online: http://bit.ly/2teRCQx
NEW PUBLICATION
My essay “Forgotten Masterpiece? Marguerite Young’s Miss MacIntosh, My Darling” is now available in the Winter issue of The Antioch Review—about the extraordinary landmark American novel that ranks with Proust, Faulkner, and Woolf—unique, surreal, and thrilling. (See excerpt, here.)
"Communicating With The Spirit World Through Dance" - NY Times, 11.2.15
Over the Halloween weekend, I presented two new dance solos: Secret Border, to an unusual electronic score, and Frances’ Unfinished Dance, a tone poem for a medley of character voices written by the late multimedia dance artist Frances Alenikoff—on a program of dances by Sally Silvers and Sally Gross, presented by The Construction Company, on Friday and Saturday, October 30th, 31st at 8 p.m., and on Sunday, November 1 at 3 p.m. at University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street, NYC. The New York Times 11/2 review: http://nyti.ms/1Mc46ya
THE SECRET INVENTION now available
My new fast-moving futurist thriller revolving around the predicament of the Adare twins is now available from Club Lighthouse Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble!
RED FOG now available
My latest novel of mystery and intrigue is now available from Club Lighthouse Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble!
