These shots were captured by photographer Brittany Solem for our October/November 2017 print issue.

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Arien Wilkerson in Hartford’s Willie Ware Park. Photo by Brittany Solem

Arien Wilkerson on his genderfluid approach to fashion:

“I want to have my ass out if I want have my ass out, I want to have my titties out if I want to have my titties out. That’s it.”

On his contextual gender fluidity:

“I definitely identify as non-binary. I feel like the hard part about my gender is having to correct people a lot. I’m okay with they, them, him, his. When we’re going out and we’re partying, it’s all girl all day long. When we’re at the club, my gender is straight up femme out the ass. In corporate settings, it’s non-binary. In the ’hood, it’s he/him/his.”

On the label “boy”:

“When I was studying African dance, everything was boy, boy, boy. I actually liked it because it was so innocent and playful. African dance has so much energy and I feel like a little boy when I’m doing it.”

On his reluctant participation in youth sports:

“My mom used to make me play basketball. You know how it is when you’re just a young queer kid who knows he’s queer—and your mom makes you play sports.”

On his “rockstar lifestyle”:

“I totally believe in the rock star lifestyle—but when rock star lifestyle can cross over into high art and fine art…you got me! But when that same rock star lifestyle doesn’t cross over into that shit, I’m like ooo, ew you sloppy. You better have some dope-ass motherfucking shit if you’re going to act like that.”

On financial sacrifices for his work:

“When I say no money, I mean no money for me. If Arien wants to go to the mall or get some ice cream, he can’t.”

On persistence:

“I’ve learned that if you want something, you’re gonna call that person. You’re gonna email this person. Then if you want something else, you’re going to Facebook friend-request everyone in that company, like all their photos, and then contact one of them. Throw yourself out there.”

Read the full profile on Wilkerson that appeared in the October/November 2017 issue of Take here.

Top image of Arien Wilkerson by Brittany Solem

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Nine-year-old Arien Wilkerson stands on his grandmother’s porch, popping, locking, and dancing along to the jeers of his North End neighborhood friends who yell, “Do the Michael Jackson! Do the Michael Jackson!” This makes Wilkerson’s mother wary. If her son bends to their will now, then who knows what they’ll get him to do later in life? “My mom would say, ‘Stop putting on a show for people; this isn’t HBO!’” Wilkerson remembers. “‘They want HBO, they can go watch it in their living room!’”

Nearly 16 years later, Wilkerson is walking through his favorite spots in the North End of Hartford. It’s a neighborhood pegged with familiar labels like “pretty rough part of town,” “scary,” and, according to a notable Hartford publication, “one of the capital city’s neediest areas.” Wilkerson doesn’t deny this perception, especially when he points to specific spots on his block: the place he found a dead body; a backyard where he saw his neighbor being chased by police; the corner where his childhood friend, Kerry Foster Jr., was shot 13 times.

It’d be easy to think of Wilkerson as someone who’s persevered as a dancer despite his disadvantaged surroundings. But it’s his life in the North End, with all its complexities, that yields the knowledge he taps into when choreographing performances and connecting with a live audience. “My energy and my purpose, my ’hood-ness, my queerness, my blackness—it all definitely comes from these streets,” he says.

Wilkerson in Hartford’s North End, Connecticut, by Brittany Solem

Wilkerson started dancing at the Artists Collective when he was 12 years old. He speculates that his mom brought him to dance because of a heavy suspicion that her son was queer (her hunch was correct, as it turns out). She figured the arts could provide her boisterous child with a safe space for expression and even social mobility.

After just one class, head instructor Jolette Creary demanded that Wilkerson come back. “People are born with some type of supreme talent, and I was born with this inner cunning, and a desire to be on stage and map it out. Jolette knew,” explains Wilkerson. “The minute I hit the stage, it was a wrap.” He danced in his first show one week later. Wilkerson quickly became Creary’s star student, assistant, and rehearsal director. This success led him to the unprecedented position of entering Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in his senior year of high school.

Deborah Goffe, dance maker and director of Scapegoat Garden, was impressed with Wilkerson even before she saw him dance. “There was a way that he was watching the dance that seemed to be beyond his years, and deeply attuned to what is possible in dance.” Goffe has worked with Wilkerson since these early years, and is clear about the nature of their bond. “Back and forth between teacher and mentor, but also as a colleague. Iron sharpening iron, in some ways.

“He’s dynamic and a gorgeous performer,” she continues. “He really cuts through space in a way that’s compelling for people.”

Wilkerson hangs out in one of his childhood haunts, Willie Ware Park. By Brittany Solem

Wilkerson dances with seamless variety, marrying nearly a dozen disparate styles of dance in just a few awesome moments. “Movement can be so enticing, attractive, hypnotic, and so alluring,” says Wilkerson. “I dance for the dogs a lot”—his grandma has two teenie mutts—“and they love it; they sit and watch. They’re so intent. You can hone somebody like that.”

This fluidity and variety is not exclusive to his approach to movement. In the same way Wilkerson transitions from modern dance to breakdancing to ballet to jazz to West African dance, he’ll take you on a winding conversational ride in which he shamelessly professes his love for barebacking in the same moment he hands you a book on labanotation (a system to analyze and record human movement). His performative affect never wanes and is in constant flux.

His time at the Artists Collective and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts certainly shaped Wilkerson. But it was Israel that birthed the transgressive queer consciousness and playful approach to identity that sets him apart from other dancers. “I was sitting at home, dreaming of wearing dresses and skirts,” he recalls. “When I went [to Israel] and I saw the fashion and all the gender-fluid people and all these big-ass, beardy, tattooed punk dudes fucking gender-fluid men, I was like, ‘Oh, this is hot.’ It was then and there that I knew I could be myself, and someone would love me crucially.

“I was more like Kanye in high school,” he continues. “But when I went to Israel and came back, I realized I can be Mykki Blanco. I can be Junglepussy. I can be an intelligent, brown, queer, forward person who doesn’t have to rationalize who I am and what I want.” Undeniably, our social institutions present a specific set of challenges for individuals who are unapologetically intelligent, brown or black, queer and forward. Even Wilkerson, with his endlessly candid joy and intense work ethic, cannot fend off all the flies buzzing around the stinking pile that is institutional racism.  

“I’ve been there,” says Goffe. “I’ve been the only choreographer of color in Hartford who gets ignored.”

Wilkerson responds to this fucked-up system by divesting from institutions that do not want to understand his message. On social media, he posts detailed call-outs about the lack of access and visibility for people of color in Hartford’s performing arts scene. “I try to have more tact than I used to have,” he admits.

Some people find his approach to critiquing these structures confusing, because part of his audience is white. Wilkerson explains, “The white folks who come to my performances come because they want to learn something. They want to reevaluate. People say, ‘Think about the fact that your [production] crew is all white’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but they fucking know. They get it.’”

Wilkerson’s not interested in bending to the will of certain arts organizers, or in making work for the sake of funding. Instead, Wilkerson envisions the work he wants to make, then personally funds his performances. “I don’t want to do this thing where I only go to places that have money, and I only make their work,” he explains, “because then I’m building a repertoire of work I don’t even like.”

Even though Wilkerson had several sold-out shows in 2016, and about a half dozen other performances commissioned or accomplished though TNMOT AZTRO, his performance art and dance installation company, he still can’t attain a stable position in the system. After selling out three Projector Series shows at Real Art Ways in 2016, “I’m still broke and I was not getting funding,” he says. “So I was either tricking or working at a restaurant in order to make money for putting on shows and paying artists.”

“He’s doing the hustle a la 1974,” says Goffe.

“Why is it that I have to live in the community, work my ass off, and [they] hire people from Los Angeles to perform here?” Wilkerson asks. “Just give me the space, give me the crew, give me the money, and stand the fuck back.” This is partly why he doesn’t perform in classic prosceniums or black box theaters. Recently, he’s been performing in galleries and museums, fully embracing the challenge. “I like working in those confines because they have mad rules. So many things you can and cannot do. I love that we’re a company from the North End performing around thousand-year-old paintings.”

In EQUATORS, Wilkerson responds to climate change using an eroticized queer aesthetic. Photo by Brittany Solem

EQUATORS, which was staged at Housatonic Community College, is the most recent piece produced by the TNMOT AZTRO team and explores the intersection of environmental justice, racial justice, and “how racial divides are manifested in homes, neighborhoods, and geography due to impacts of zoning, segregation, and gentrification.” Clearly, Wilkerson’s intellectual and creative preoccupations are varied, vast in scope, and a bit daunting.

Wilkerson is particularly taken with a specific element of the sculpture David Borawski installed for him to dance through during EQUATORS: the metal chain he uses to pull himself up. “Right now, I definitely still feel like I’m on that chain. I still feel like I have to wake up every morning on that chain. I have to take myself to sleep at night holding the chain. Having something hold you up is such a gratifying experience, but also scary.”

Though there’s no doubt Wilkerson is a rogue, hustling to fund his own shows while actively raging against the institutions that still aren’t quite sure what to do with him, he does have a lot of staunch supporters. His newest group of dancers at TNMOT AZTRO are enthusiastic, skillful, and ready to support their fearless creative director. He is nearly in tears when he talks about his new team. “I’m such a baby. I’m so emotional. I cry,” confesses Wilkerson. “I’m a crier.”

Additionally, there are some organizations and individuals outside the world of dance and performance art that have the cultural clout needed to support Wilkerson’s mission. This past summer, he became the youngest person to receive the Spirit of Juneteenth Award from the Amistad Center for Art & Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum, which celebrates community and cultural leaders. And Kristina Newman-Scott, Connecticut’s director of culture, values his transgressive approach to public discourse and performance. “He’s definitely one of our change agents,” says Newman-Scott. “He’s not afraid to ask questions, or tell you what he’s thinking”—she laughs—“which is appreciated. For him, being young, African American, male, queer, and coming from the world of performing arts, it’s never going to be easy.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” she adds, “for Arien to be the next Alvin Ailey?”

Certainly, Wilkerson could easily head back to the tattooed boys in Tel Aviv, or dance with his friends in different companies across New York City. But that’s not his definition of success. “I’m very invested in bringing high art and fine art back to the ’hood, and back to where I grew up,” he says. His biggest preoccupation is with “build[ing] a language where young queer people and young black people can talk about art. [The North End] is rough and I can’t fight that,” he continues. “I can’t be the guy who’s like, ‘stop the violence, stop the madness,’ but my art can.”

Despite his lack of reliable funding, Wilkerson wants to stay in Hartford. He wants to show the North End his truth, instead of leaving it behind. “I don’t want to do that to Hartford,” he laments. “I don’t want to threaten my city. I feel like I already threaten people enough.”

This piece originally appeared in the October/November 2017 issue. If you’d like to read more articles from that issue, click here.

Subscribers can also see an exclusive gallery of outtakes from our amazing photo shoot with Arien Wilkerson.

Arien Wilkerson – Dancer, Artistic Director – TNMOT AZTRO
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Top image: EQUATORS at the Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Photo by Brittany Solem

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“There is power in art,” writes Connecticut’s director of culture, Kristina Newman-Scott, in the strategic plan she helped create for the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development’s Office of the Arts when she first took over in 2015. “Its power comes in its messages. Its power comes in its ability to agitate for social change. Communities convene because of the power of art. The voiceless find words through the power of art. There is power in the emotional reactions art evokes in people. There is power in the reflective spaces art creates. And there is power in the way art allows people of all backgrounds to relate to each other.”

We asked Newman-Scott to tell us about how she hopes to speak art-truth to power as she implements this strategic plan.

Take: You were an artist in Jamaica. How does being an artist inform your work as director of culture?
Kristina Newman-Scott: In a developing country like Jamaica, you really have to think about how you’re going to use this [artistic] skill set to make a living. Because I was able to invest in my voice and the thing that spoke to my heart, it gave me the confidence about where I could use this skill set. It’s not just the act of painting: it’s about building relationships with people. If you know how to speak “artist,” you know how to go further and deeper. It let me develop programs that I knew—even if I grew up in Jamaica—were relevant to art students in America. No one is teaching us [in art college] about pricing or how to market yourself. I knew those things firsthand. I realized, especially when I got into government, that this wasn’t commonplace.

T: How did becoming a U.S. citizen in 2013 influence your work as an artist and in your job?
KN-M: In America, a lot of our efforts when engaging with immigrant communities are built on American formulas. Because I grew up in a different country, I’m always curious how it works for different people. I created the first human-centered strategic plan for Connecticut. [The plan, known as READI, uses five guidelines—relevance, equity, access, diversity, and inclusion—as required criteria for all policy and programs.] Our population is changing quickly; I want to know what works for us here and how we fit folks into it, but also how we can challenge ourselves about how we think and develop our programs.

We will not be investing any dollars in Connecticut that are not aligned with this plan. Our office is really challenging itself every step of the way. Are we leading by example? How are we responsible for things that are not working well? This comes from my background in Jamaica, being an artist, and my curiosity growing up. My father was a Jewish black; I was raised Roman Catholic. I am quite the mongrel, as we would say in Jamaica. I want to make sure others have a space at the table, not just major thought leaders. The kid who creates art on Saturdays and works three jobs . . . that kid deserves a place at the table, too.

T: In a 2015 TEDx talk, you quoted your grandmother saying to you in Jamaican, “What is fi yu cyaan un fi yu,” which means “If it belongs to you, it is yours already.” How have you made this job yours?
KN-M: I came into this job, and there was no job description. I knew there were certain things that had to be done for federal funding. That’s where you start. I‘ve been able to make it mine with things like READI. I’ve given space to my team to push back and come up with ideas that might be horrible—but that’s great. I celebrate risk and failure, because that’s where innovation lives. Just because of that same curiosity, I can push back at my team, too. As you can imagine in government, you do something one way, and that’s how it’s done. I don’t care what we do; I want to know why we do it. I like to unpack and rebuild. I’m not afraid of finding issues and problems.

T: What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure?
K-NM: When I came into this office, there was no social media on the historic preservation side. My staff was swamped. Two years in, we’re on every social media you could want to be on. We do e-newsletters. We host statewide conferences for the arts and historic preservation, too. I’m committed to serving my community the best way I can. The fact that READI is something that is real and tangible and guides how we function—I’m so proud of that. I’m bringing READI to historic preservation, too. We’ve got to think about how all that we’re doing aligns with social justice. It’s all about leading from a human-centered point of view.

T: What is the role of the arts and preservation in our society, especially in times of political crisis?KN-M: We’re not going to be remembered for trash pickup. When people are studying our culture hundreds of years from now, it’s going to be about how we communicated with each other. The culture and the arts are what’s going to continue our story of humankind. Arts and culture communicate in ways that the barriers of languages sometimes fall short in. When you go to foreign countries, one of the first things they’ll ask about is our entertainment. They’ll want to know about Beyoncé or some movie or artists. We go to places to enjoy culture. As we are trying to attract people to our state, they’re going to come because Connecticut is a place of great historical and cultural treasures.

Kristina Newman-Scott | Illustration by Brittany Loar

Kristina Newman-Scott – Connecticut’s Director of Culture
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I don’t know about you, but when I travel these days, my itinerary is all about food. As Anthony Bourdain (and so many others before and since) have taught us, you get to know a place by eating its food. But there’s so much great food out there; it’s tough to choose just a few great places to eat. Enter food truck festivals.

The New England Food Truck Festival, scheduled for September 2-3, will feature a variety of trucks from all over New England and the Northeast, and food from around the world, everything from Polish and Indian to Laotian and Mediterranean. The festival can satisfy less adventurous comfort-based culinary tastes, too. Always wanted to try a steamed cheeseburger? Walk 20 feet in that direction. Square donuts? Walk 50 feet over there. All varieties of barbecue and sandwich are represented here, plus a few specialty carts (grilled cheese! WAFFLES!). Here’s a sample of the trucks you’ll find at this food-lover’s weekend.

Away Cafe
A food truck from the Boston area with a lot of range. They’ve got classic fair food in addition to Thai, Cuban, and Italian.

Clyde’s Cupcakes
Sweet bakery treats from New Hampshire. All the cupcakes you could ever want. End of story.

Friskie Fries
Do you want fries with that? Why, yes, you do. Crispy hot fries with a variety of toppings, in fact; all fresh from Rhode Island.

Kettle Girl Popcorn
Kettle corn is that elusive mix of salty and sweet that is mostly irresistible once you’ve had a taste. It is especially irresistible if the kettle corn is from this food truck, from deep in the heart of Connecticut. Go ahead. We dare you to eat just one handful.

Makin’ Jamaican
You may not be able to make it to Jamaica, but you can enjoy some of its tasty treats, thanks to this truck. Rated one of the 10 best food trucks in Massachusetts!

Nora Cupcake
Hailing from Connecticut, Nora has cupcakes for everyone, including vegan and gluten-free options. Who could say no to 50 Shades of Chocolate?

Nom Nom Hut
Want a little kashi katsu, aka pork on a stick? You know you do. This is Japanese food at its best.

Open Season
This Rhode Island truck got game—as in venison chili, bison burgers, elk hot dogs, and wild boar quesadillas. Game on!

Redbean Coffee Roasters
A cup of Redbean is going to help you through this food fest, believe us.

Red’s Street Kitchen
A Rhode Island truck with a passion for street food. Their slider sandos, as they’re called, include Portuguese burgers, a Chimichurri cheesesteak, and the Cubano.

Say Cheese!
The answer to answer to many of life’s conundrums is to say cheese, IMHO. This truck, based in Worcester, Massachusetts, takes the lowly grilled cheese and moves it up several notches. Two options include the wedge (blue cheese crumbles, cheddar, bacon, and tomato) and the picklebac (cheddar, bacon, and dill pickles).

Shuckin’ Truck
You can’t get your seafood any fresher unless you grab it from the sea yourself. The fresh shellfish and fish on this truck are either fished by local fisherman from Point Judith, Rhode Island, or from the Salt Pond Oyster Company.

Spuds Your Way
It’s a meal in a peel as this Connecticut baked-potato wondertruck likes to boast. And they’re not kidding. Their Supreme Baked Potato includes butter, sour cream, bacon, chives, and shredded cheese as well as your choice of steak, grilled chicken, burger, turkey burger, or Buffalo Philly chicken. Phew!

Sultan Kebab
Kebabs, falafel, and baklava are coming to your mouth from this truck that calls Connecticut home.

Ted’s Restaurant
If you haven’t tried a steamed cheeseburger, this is your chance. Ted’s, which also has a restaurant in Meriden, Connecticut, is apparently the only restaurant in the U.S. to solely serve steamed burgers.

Teri-Yummy
If you’re into teriyaki, this truck from Boston has it all—chicken, beef, shrimp, shrimp and chicken, vegetarian—you get the idea.

The Whoopie Wagon
For all of your whoopie-pie needs and desires—and you know you have them. Based in Massachusetts.

Tony’s Square Donuts
This Connecticut truck serves up donuts with more surface area for your munching pleasure. Tony—and his donuts, of course—have been featured on Donut Showdown. He didn’t win, but his unique donuts remain winners here.

Trolley Dog
Their dogs are handmade, all-beef and, apparently, gigantic. What else do you need to know? Based in Natick, Massachusetts.

Zinneken’s
This Boston-based waffle truck is owned by Belgians who decided they needed to bring the authentic, liege-style Belgian waffles of the youth to the U.S. All we can say is, lucky us.

New England Food Truck Festival
$5 per person
Sept. 2-3
Mohegan Sun
Winter Parking Lot
1 Mohegan Sun Boulevard
Uncasville, Connecticut
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Chances are good that if you grew up anywhere other than a city, you’ve been to a drive-in movie theater at least once. Maybe you were a kid and a night at the drive-in movie theater was a way for your parents to get out of the house and not hire a babysitter. Or maybe it was as a teen when the local drive-in movie theater was the perfect place to gather with friends (maybe even a few who got in for free hidden in the trunk) and party while taking in the latest flick. Whatever the scenario, for many of us, the drive-in movie theater was a rite of passage.

We can thank New Jersey auto-parts salesman Richard Hollingshead and the size of his mother for coming up with the idea. Apparently his mother found traditional movie theater seats a tad confining. So he placed a 1928 projector on the hood of a car in his driveway, and tied sheets to the trees in his backyard. Voila! An American tradition was born.

After further experimentation, Hollingshead received a patent for the idea in May of 1933, and created Park-In Theaters, Inc. in Camden, N.J. He charged 25 cents per car and per person to see Wives Beware, a British comedy. The drive-in movie became an icon of American culture, after his creation, especially in the 1950s and 60s following World War II. Parents, children, and teenagers would travel to them frequently on the weekends, and it was considered one of America’s favorite pastimes. At one point in time, the U.S. boasted 5,000 drive-ins open across the country. Today, about 400 drive-ins remain in the U.S., with some of the best ones located right here in New England.

Drive-in Movie Theaters in Massachusetts

LEICESTER TRIPLE DRIVE-IN

The Leicester Triple Drive-In has three screens for movie viewing. At $28 a carload, one can drive over to Leicester to see a drive in movie with family or friend, and order food from their snack bar. Customers love the friendly and welcoming staff there, which makes for a great movie experience.

Address: Route 9, 1675 Main Street Leicester, Massachusetts 01524
Phone Number: (508) 892-4400
Hours: box office opens at 6:00 pm; open Friday-Sunday from mid-April/early May through the last Sunday of August.
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MENDON TWIN DRIVE-IN

The Boston travel guide,10best.com, lists the Mendon Twin Drive-In as a must-see attraction. You can see two movies for $27 a car, and enjoy concessions from their snack bar, ice cream window, or Pop’s Beer Garden, added in 2014. The very adult 5000-square foot patio offers six draft beers, wines by the glass, fire pits, and a view of Screen One. Mendon Twin Drive-In opened June 14, 1954 and is celebrating its 63rd year.

Address: 35 Milford Street, Mendon, Massachusetts 01756
Phone Number: (508) 473-4958
Hours: Fri: Open 6:00 pm, Sat: Open 6:00 pm; rain or shine; open seven nights a week Memorial Day to Labor Day; open weekends only other times of the year.
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WELLFLEET DRIVE-IN THEATRE

Wellfleet Drive-In is the only drive-in theater located on Cape Cod. With a playground and mini-golf course, it’s very kid-friendly. Fodor’s Travels lists it as one of America’s best drive-in movie theaters by Fodor’s Travels.

Address: 51 State Highway, Route 6, Wellfleet, Massachusetts 02667
Phone Number: (508) 349-7176
Hours: Open mid-May through September; box office opens at 6:30 pm; shows rain or shine.
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Drive-in Movie Theaters in Maine

BANGOR DRIVE-IN

The Bangor Drive-In is back in business, reopening in July 2015 after an initial run that lasted 35 years. Equipped with twin screens, the drive-in is open in the summer, and is pet-friendly. Yes, Fido is welcome. Bangor Drive-In is also available for event rentals if your’e tired of Chucky Cheese birthday parties.

Address: 1674 Hammond Street Hermon, Maine, 04401
Phone Number: (207) 922-3878
Hours: spring 2017 opening date TBD; open rain or shine
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SACO DRIVE-IN

The Saco Drive-In season begins in May. Food menu options include hot dogs, nachos, and mozarella sticks.

Address: 969 Portland Rd, Saco, Maine 04072
Phone Number: 207-286-3200
Hours: gates open at 7 pm; May-September
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SKOWHEGAN DRIVE-IN THEATRE

The Skowhegan Drive-In Theatre has replaced its old 35-mm film projection equipment with new digital equipment to bring it up to speed to show the latest films. They’ve also renovated the concessions both, so there’s plenty of tasty options for everyone.

Address: 201 Waterville Rd, Skowhegan, Maine 04976
Phone Number: (207) 474-9277
Hours: rain or shine; generally open from Memorial Day to Labor Day
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Drive-in Movie Theaters in New Hampshire

MILFORD DRIVE-IN THEATER

The Milford Drive-In Theater has a new digital projection and Dolby digital sound system, and is also pet-friendly. Open since 1958, the drive-in also has its own web app so it’s easier to check out the latest information regarding movie times and weather reports.

Address: 531 Elm Street Milford, New Hampshire 03055
Phone Number: 603-673-4090
Hours: box office Friday & Saturday: 6:15 pm; box office Sunday-Thursday: 7:15 pm; closes in relation to the weather (updates posted on website); open mid-April
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NORTHFIELD DRIVE-IN

The Northfield Drive-In is a bit of an anomaly since half the drive-in is in New Hampshire while the other is in Massachusetts. This theater opened in 1948, and weekly movie selections include at least two shows.

Address: 981 Northfield St., Hinsdale, New Hampshire
Phone Number: (603) 239-4054
Hours: showing movies Friday-Sunday; open during the summer
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WEIRS DRIVE-IN THEATER

Weirs Drive-in Theater was one of the first drive-ins to open in New Hampshire, and is still owned by the same family that began operating it 40 years ago. Equipped with a snack bar and four different screens, Weirs Drive-in typically offers something for everyone on its screens.

Address: 76 Endicott St N Weirs Beach, New Hampshire
Phone Number: (603) 366-4723
Hours: spring 2017; open 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm
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Drive-in Movie Theaters in Connecticut

PLEASANT VALLEY DRIVE-IN

Pleasant Valley Drive-In is located in the middle of nowhere in the tiny town of Barkhamsted. But don’t equate location for the quality of the facility. Pleasant Valley Drive-in offers a variety of concessions, including burgers, pizza, clam boats and fried mozzarella. The theater also welcome pets. Open since 1947, the theater can host up to 250 cars. Fridays is  “Carload Night”, where you can fill your car with as many people as you’d like—all for only $20 per car.

Address: 47 River Rd (Rt. 181) Barkhamsted, Connecticut 06063
Phone Number: 860-379-6102
Hours: weekends in early spring through fall (including early October if the weather is warm); gates open and tickets are sold at 6:30 pm
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MANSFIELD DRIVE-IN THEATRE AND MARKETPLACE

The Mansfield Drive-In Theatre and Marketplace is a drive-in and flea market rolled into one. The drive-in plays a double feature every night, and is open from April to September. The flea market, open on Sundays, is home to a variety of vendors. So come early to shop before the movies.

Address: 228 Stafford Rd., Mansfield Center, Connecticut 06250
Phone Number: (860) 423-4441
Hours: April & May, Fridays-Sundays; June, Fridays-Sundays, and Wednesdays; mid June, July and most of August, open every night; September-Mid-October, Fridays & Saturdays; gates open at 7:15pm (October 6:45pm); open rain or shine
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SOUTHINGTON DRIVE-IN

The Southington Drive-In originally opened in 1955, finally closing in 2002. The drive-in reopened in 2010 after Southington voted to purchase the property and expand it to the Recreation Park nearby. The drive-in has been able to donate $33,000 to 14 local non-profit civic organizations in Southington since reopening.

Address: 995 Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike, Southington, Connecticut
Phone Number: (860) 628-22
Hours: ticket booths open at 6:00 pm; June through September
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Drive-in Movie Theaters in Vermont

SUNSET DRIVE-IN THEATER

The Sunset Drive-In Theater is aptly named. You can catch a beautiful sunset before catching a flick on one of four screens. The drive-in counts a snack bar, playground, and mini-putt area among its amenities. Hot rod and classic car owners get special treatment here: the first two rows are reserved for them.

Address: 155 Porters Point Rd Colchester, Vermont
Phone Number: (802) 862 – 1800
Hours: open from mid-April on
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FAIRLEE MOTEL AND DRIVE IN THEATER

If you’re passing through Vermont and need a place to stay, and want something fun to do, the Fairlee Motel and Drive-In Theater might be just the ticket. Dedicated to staying up to date with the newest digital trends, the drive-in is currently raising funds for a new projector to keep the drive-in open. The drive-in is open seasonally, but the motel is open year-round.

Address: 1809 US Route 5 N, Fairlee, Vermont 05045
Phone Number: (802) 333-9192
Season/Hours: late spring through summer; gate and snack bar open at 7 p.m., first movie shown at dusk; seasonal schedule: every weekend, starting April/May; every night from July 4th weekend through Labor Day weekend; open Friday & Saturday only through Columbus Day weekend
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Drive-in Movie Theaters in Rhode Island

RUSTIC TRI VUE DRIVE-IN

The Rustic Tri Vue Drive-In has three giant outdoor screens and a full concessions stand. With digital projection for all their screens now, you can see the latest movies while enjoying the view from your car. The space is also available for rental for birthday parties or summer bashes.

Address: 1195 Eddie Dowling Highway North Smithfield, Rhode Island 02776
Phone Number: 401- 484-5452
Hours: opening April; open seasonally April through October
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The post Pass the Popcorn! 16 New England Drive-in Movie Theaters appeared first on Take Magazine.

Some people look at the breadth of our planetary pollution problem—in particular the plastic clogging our oceans and seas—and just throw up their hands. Amy Merli started Trashion Fashion, a Hartford-based program that uses fashion and design to educate communities about the problem of waste. By turning unrecyclable, uncompostable materials into wearable art, Trashion Fashion sends a strong message about what we choose to throw away, and the possible opportunities beyond the garbage bin that exist for items like K-cups.

Merli, whose background is in stage management and dance, launched the idea in 2011. “It was one of those things I saw at a runway show,” she says. “I saw something made from trash and I was like, ‘Oh, that’d be really cool to put that together, but bring it together with dance.’”

Trashion Fashion show, photo ??

Since that first trash-as-fashion show, Trashion has grown throughout Connecticut and expanded into New York and Washington, D.C. Trashion Fashion visits schools and, online, has reached 45 different countries, many of whom have contributed designs to Trashion Fashion shows.

There’s a “nice, growing movement of environmental enthusiasts and activists” in Hartford, Merli says, which is something she loves about the city. Connecticut’s efforts in general to be a green state have kept Merli here since childhood. She grew up in Harwinton, where her mother strictly enforced recycling, and studied dance at the Hartford Conservatory.

Now, she finds herself surrounded by likeminded people with similarly enthusiastic ideas about upcycled trash. “Last year, we had this artist who had been collecting gum wrappers since the ’70s,” Merli says. Other students and artists have used little bits of plastic and styrofoam to create clothing, or old wires and CDs, shower curtains, bubble wrap and, of course, K-cups. One person made a piece out of crotcheted VHS tapes.

Trashion Fashion 2013, Hartford, photo Steve Lashever

Merli encourages her designers to use materials that can’t be recycled. If you glue together and paint a bunch of tissue and newspaper, you’re essentially rendering formerly recyclable material into nonrecyclable material, which is antithetical to the spirit of the show. By focusing on garbage that truly can’t be reused, she says, you start to pay new attention to the little items we throw away but don’t think about.

“People who come to the show or the designers who are involved, as they start to investigate their lives, they’re not passengers,” Merli says. “They’re active members of life and society. And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s these little doohickeys that I get at Home Depot and can’t throw away.’ Thinking of trash this way is “an investigation of your whole world,” she says. “I’m giving people trash OCD.”

Trashion Fashion, photo Steve Lashever

That’s the objective of Trashion Fashion: to start a dialogue. “This is a a platform for something we all connect with,” Merli says. “We want to have that conversation. ‘Wow, that’s made from what?’ And it’s like, ‘Let’s talk about this. Let’s go into it.’ We use fashion to make a statement. To actually make change.”

Trashion Fashion
Hartford, Connecticut
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Top image by Sabato Visconti

The post Waste Management appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our December/January 2015 print issue.

The Green Mountain State’s most famous musical product is almost certainly the jam band Phish. If that quartet, formed in Burlington in 1983, earned a reputation for playing extended improvisations and working in the spiritual and musical wake of the Grateful Dead, MV & EE took shape largely in the twenty-first century, in the southern end of the state around Brattleboro, still playing off many elements of the Dead’s legacy but with drastically different results.

Valentine and Elder are also a couple. Unlike Phish, MV & EE are unlikely to sell out Madison Square Garden anytime soon, but the duo operates on a whole other level, making deeply psychedelic, small-batch, boutique, esoteric folk music that’s tinged with noise. Or maybe it’s indie rock tinged with folk. Either way, their recordings and performances are highly improvisational and experimental. The music of MV & EE embodies a thread of the reality of their home state: it’s both earthy and spacey, and it’s all propelled by a spirit of intrepid self-reliance.

This year was a big year for Valentine and Elder. A new MV & EE double album, Alpine Frequency, came out in the summer, at about the same time Valentine released a solo double album as well. “They were both pretty large records,” says Valentine. “We try to make a record that someone ideally is going to go back to and revisit. So we try to make the album have a certain depth or trajectory. There were several years of work on both of them. Hopefully that will tide some people over for a while.”

Photo by Paul Specht

Valentine’s new record is called Midden Mound, which, if you’ve forgotten some of the terms from your college anthropology class, is basically a prehistoric trash heap made up of shells and bones and other stuff. It’s a meaningful pile of refuse, dense and old, yielding secrets to those patient and learned enough to sift through it. The title seems to fit right in with the concept of “sonic agriculture” Valentine has spoken of, a utilitarian, plow-sow-and-reap vision of music making, with natural forces and human labor producing fertile results.

“I can’t get out of the underground,” jokes Valentine about the record’s title. But then he adds, “I thought [the title] worked for that body of work specifically; it’s definitely the remains of a certain sonic settlement of mine.”

That’s not all just talk. Sound attains something close to physicality in Valentine’s solo work and in the music of MV & EE. The music and the recordings are more about textures and resonance than melody, lyrics, and song form. The attention to the physical extends to the packaging and marketing of the music as well. Both new records were pressed on vinyl in addition to being available in other forms, such as CDs and MP3s. The duo often creates limited-edition original artwork to go along with some of their small-batch releases or to bring to shows, to make each record one of a kind.

Valentine’s connections with recorded music—with vinyl in particular—go back to his formative musical experiences.

“I’ve always been around records,” he says. “My parents collected records. They had a record library. They encouraged me to use the turntable. I heard a lot of music growing up that was interesting to me. I worked at record stores since I was a teenager. I stayed working at record stores. I was a lifer, a record-store casualty.”

Selling records has never been the most remunerative line of work, and surviving by playing DIY avant-garage folk presents challenges. But Valentine and Elder approach the work with a flinty Yankee ethos. They are impressively prolific, releasing an average of two records a year, which brings their total to something like 32 since 2001. They also run a boutique record label that releases limited pressings of live recordings, packaged with original artwork. Oh, and they have a two-year-old daughter. So they keep pretty busy.

Elder does work as a freelance graphic designer, and she says their living space reflects the creative multitasking that goes on there. “You should see our house— it’s part house, part workshop. It’s all blended together,” she says.

MV & EE possess a particular kind of twenty-first-century musical eclecticism, drawing on the Old, Weird America of Harry Smith’s epic Anthology of American Folk Music, steeped in old-time music, country blues, and field recordings (the duo was asked to contribute a song to the highly regarded 2015 tribute record to English singer and folklorist Shirley Collins), and yet their work is also in conversation with some core ideas of contemporary classical music, minimalism, and free jazz.

Photo by Paul Specht

“That’s very natural,” says Elder. “If you look at our record collection, we’ve got our Carter Family and our Sonny Sharrock records right next to each other.”

She grew up in Virginia, where singing was a regular part of her extended family gatherings. “I kind of brought the Appalachia to the table,” Elder says. “I grew up thinking that everybody just got around the piano on Sundays and played different songs.” That included folk songs and plenty of religious material, sources that MV & EE have returned to.

“I played sax in elementary school,” says Valentine. “I got kicked out of the school band for trying to play like [keening iconoclastic saxophonist Albert] Ayler. I got booted.”

Valentine got one strand of his musical education for free by auditing classes in the Conservatory of Music at the State University of New York at Purchase, where several pioneers of experimental and computer music taught and where the homemade instruments of maverick composer Harry Partch were housed at one point.

Extended drones, ominous echoes, alternate tunings, dub effects, and spooky war whoops all make appearances on Valentine’s new solo record. Two-chord vamps attain a mystic density as they’re prolonged. It fits right in with the MV & EE oeuvre. The DNA of much of MV & EE’s material seems like it can be traced to either “Dark Star,” the Dead’s epic interstellar exploratory vehicle; “Cortez the Killer,” Neil Young’s mythic caveman-like protosludge masterpiece; and “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” David Crosby’s haunting and beautiful comedown opus. Those are good genes, at any rate.

Valentine and Elder make the most of what they call the global I-91 corridor—a joking way of referring to their spiraling network of friends, fellow musicians, and collaborators. And the town they live in, outside of Brattleboro, is something of a magnet for other creative people.

“We’ve been here for 13 years,” says Elder. “Everybody who lives in this area whom we’re friends with is here for the energy. It’s still a very important reason why we’re here.”

But the actual I-91 connection links them to likeminded artists from New Haven, Connecticut, through western Massachusetts and up through Vermont. Contributors to the new batch of records include J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Pete Nolan of art-noise trio The Magik Markers. And the band has recorded on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! record label, based in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

For MV & EE and for Valentine’s solo album, recording isn’t just a matter of heading into the studio with some tunes, some guitars, and rolling tape. Bits are recorded in Valentine and Elder’s home studio or sometimes at a friend’s place, or while traveling; then sometimes layers are added on elsewhere. Some tracks might take shape in a living room and others in a fancy studio. The setting needs to be conducive to improvisation, which is central to much of the duo’s work.

“I have pretty elaborate recording techniques deployed that we use now,” says Valentine. “And they’re primitive, too, in some cases. There are techniques used to sometimes make one performance sound like multiple ones. The mood of the moment was more important than the technicalities.”

MV & EE balance the raw and the refined, the overstuffed and the stripped down. “It’s sometimes very minimal, sometimes very maximal,” says Valentine.

Photo by Paul Specht

For all of their folk tendencies and pedigrees, MV & EE can also sound like a stoner rock outfit, with lumbering bass lines and bruising drumbeats anchoring their unison singing and slashing guitars, like on “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample)” from 2007’s Gettin’ Gone. Though the deep psychedelic connection is clear, there’s also a classic rock aspect to some of MV & EE’s eclecticism. “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample),” for instance, is followed by a song called “The Burden,” which has gentle finger picking and high, atmospheric pedal steel guitars. It’s a pairing that might be at home on Led Zeppelin III, where the howling stomp of marauding invaders gives way to soothing and dreamy acoustic songs rooted in traditional folk music. “I’m in such a trance state usually when I’m playing,” says Elder.

That textural and tonal perspective is what helps the music withstand repeated listenings. “We try to keep it interesting for ourselves as much as for people who might be hearing it,” says Valentine.

But—as with something like a Fela Kuti record, an Indian raga, or a piece of music by La Monte Young— sometimes the music of MV & EE and Valentine’s solo work are meant to possibly scramble one’s sense of time: to transport the listener into a slow-drip mindset, where a pattern repeating for 15 minutes somehow becomes more gratifying and meaningful than one that stops after 3 minutes. Sometimes that aesthetic can be at odds with the demands of the marketplace. Valentine had originally planned on making Midden Mound a triple record, but he decided to settle on a double album.

“I kind of peeled that concept back,” he says. But he will be releasing the material that would have been that third record as another single solo album in 2016.

Valentine and Elder don’t have an elaborate promotional machine behind them. They do much of the behind-the-scenes logistics themselves, booking and publicizing shows. So if people are possibly starting to hear their music more and know their name after years and years of productivity, it’s because the world is beginning to come around to them. The combination of heavy rock, obscure folk, and experimental music is perhaps less of a head-scratcher than it was 20 years ago. “People are a little more ready for what we’re doing now,” says Valentine. “People are catching up to the sound.”

One senses that being creative and productive is just the way Valentine and Elder live their lives, and they’d be playing music every day and handcrafting one-of-a-kind art to go with it whether or not they had fans and a career. “I just like to make things,” says Valentine. “It’s probably why I like living up here.”

MV & EE–musicians from Brattleboro, Vermont
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The post Small-Batch Mystical Folk Noise appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a performance space in the furthest corner of Housatonic Community College, Arien Wilkerson steadily paces towards the middle of a darkened set. Red, white, black, and silver chains hang from beams out of sight. Black and white buckets litter the floor, while above them, two strangely familiar red gas cans seem suspended in mid-air.

Wilkerson lies on his back and tugs at one of the chains, struggling to pull himself up while an ominous symphony of brass and string instruments meld with a cacophony of insect noises, the kind of bugs that chirp and whine during the hottest days of summer. By the end of EQUATORS, Wilkerson has changed outfits five times, rearranged the buckets according to a mysterious map projected above the set, and nearly seduced each audience member with several sexually charged spotlighted dance solos.

Through movement, sound, film, and conversation, Wilkerson and his team want to explore how the most marginalized populations on the planet will experience the adversity associated with climate change. Additionally, they want to lend dignity to the spaces where young black men are murdered by police, the same places rogue politicians characterize as “hell.” “[We are] taking weather and environment and transposing that upon a dark feeling of exhaustion and death,” says Wilkerson, “not just losing people. but the way that environment feels during that loss.”

Despite the artistic examination of the clash of climate, human-made boundaries, police violence, bodies and our environment, EQUATORS is a legitimately entertaining piece. Wilkerson is an expertly expressive dancer. He’s been dancing since age 12 and has been traveling the world, honing his talent, since he was 16. His decade-plus experience studying movement is on full display here, as he steps, pops, and strides through the buckets, chains and hanging gas cans with the purposeful movement of a mountain cat or a busy New York City commuter.

When away from the props on the set, Wilkerson is moving in almost complete darkness, save the special lighting for solos done in key parts of the set, “I can roam in the darkness throughout the entire piece or I can step into the light,” says Wilkerson “We wanted to light the show like a work of art and not a dance piece.”

Though the performance as a whole is a thoroughly collaborative production, (set design by David Borawski and lighting design by Jon-Paul Lorroco), it’s Wilkerson’s queer aesthetic that makes the performance unique. “It’s queer as fuck,” says Wilkerson. “This is the queerest thing I’ve ever done. I wear a lot of dresses, I wear a lot of platform heels, I want to just take it there. I was feelin’ some type of way after Moonlight, and just wanted more of that proper representation of queer people.”

Unorthodox lighting techniques, transgressive gender expression through costuming, and the practiced movement of a queer body stand out in EQUATORS, asking audience members to interrogate their expectations of someone like Wilkerson, a young, black, queer person presenting himself not as a disenfranchised minority identity category but as an individual within a fertile creative climate asserting his expertise and wielding his kinetic power.

Wilkerson plans to expand the performance and stage EQUATORS in different locations throughout Connecticut via an upcoming sponsorship from Real Art Ways.

Arien Wilkerson – dancer, artistic director TNMOT AZTRO
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Top photo Arien Wilkerson performing EQUATORS at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut | All photos by Brittany Solem

The post Crossing Equators with Arien Wilkerson appeared first on Take Magazine.

Western-Massachusetts-native-turned-fake-judge John Hodgman always says, “Specificity is the soul of narrative.” In other words, the more precise a story is, or the more unique the subject matter, the better. Through specificity of content and approach, artists can present audiences with unique characters, stories, and experiences.

The same logic applies to film festivals and the cinema they celebrate. In addition to the dozens of big film fests across the region, film junkies and industry folks alike have privileged access to niche New England film festivals in every state. Movie lovers can see everything from queer romance to cinema written, produced, starring, and directed by folks with hearing impairment. Some of these festivals are right around the corner, while others are still accepting submissions. All reveal subjects that are unique and satisfyingly specific.

AIP Film Festival
April 2 – April 8
Cinestudio
Hartford, CT

Hartford’s beautifully designed 1930s-era movie theater continues its yearly film fest for Francophiles, April in Paris, which goes beyond the French New Wave and into the realm of contemporary cinema. Prospective moviegoers have nine opportunities to see French films produced from 1982 to 2016, all of which examine the exceedingly relevant, “effects of crossing borders, from the political to the personal.”

Wicked Queer Film Festival
March 30 – April 9
Various venues
Boston, MA

Laverne Cox in Free CeCe! | Director Jac Gares, 2016

The 33rd incarnation of Boston’s film festival revealing and unpacking the queer experience through documentary, comedy, and drama will feature internationally renowned voices of the queer community and emerging artists alike. Queer film enthusiasts of all kinds have dozens of chances to see films across the city in a new neighborhood each night.

Maine Deaf Film Festival
April 28 – 29
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME

The 15th annual Maine Deaf Film Festival is the longest-running and perhaps the only film festival of its type in the nation. Programmed and planned in collaboration with students and boasting content exclusively created by deaf folks across the region, MDFF skillfully solves some of the problems of underrepresentation of people with hearing impairments both in front of and behind the camera.

SENE Film Festival
April 25 – 29
Various venues
Rhode Island

With dozens of films ranging from experimental shorts to feature-length animated dramas, SENE provides attendees nearly endless opportunities to pick their vast or small corner of the world to explore. The Wednesday night screenings of experimental films and documentary features is both a can’t-miss evening and an excellent example of the range and specificity of topics explored throughout the festival.

New Hampshire Film Festival
October
Various venues
Portsmouth, NH

Still from All The President’s Heads | Director Adam Roffman, 2016

With the time for submissions still open, we can’t say for sure what niches the New Hampshire Film Festival will investigate. However, if last year’s programming is any indication, cinephiles will delve into some strange and specific topics. For example, All the President’s Heads, a film about a history devotee who saves two dozen, massive presidential busts from destruction after being displaced by the building of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

Independent Television Festival
October 11 – 17
Various Venues
Manchester, VT

Okay. . .this isn’t technically a “film festival.” However, was True Detective (the charcoal dark, riveting serialized HBO murder mystery disguised as a police procedural) a television show or more of a seven-and-a-half-hour movie split into manageable 54-minute chunks? As the line between prestige television and film blurs more each day, so will our categorizations for the sake of this list. Anyway, ITVFest still counts because it’s a moving image festival celebrating a niche part of a hulking industry, a section of the industry that often gets ignored in cinema as well; the independents.

Global Roots Film Festival
April 7 – 9
Contois Auditorium
Burlington, VT

Still from Ladies & Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen |
Directors Donald Brittain & Don Owen, 1965 | Presented by VT PBS and RETN

This niche film festival is brought to us by the Vermont International Film Foundation which also presents the yearly Vermont International Film Festival. The Global Roots Film Festival endeavors to bring Vermonters, “great films from the countries of many of the New American communities. . .to foster a greater understanding of our diverse cultures.” This year, Global Roots turns the lens towards contemporary films coming from Quebec.

Top image, still from Signature Move | Director Jennifer Reeder (2017)

The post 7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss appeared first on Take Magazine.