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A preview of diverse happenings in Queens, the borough the never sleeps

Reinas
Photo courtesy of the Queens Economic Development Corporation

BY TAMMY SCILEPPI

“It’s hot. It’s cold. It’s sunny. It’s rainy. The weather is so random these days. Luckily, Queens fun is predictably awesome with Latin dance, improvisational jazz, some one-person plays, and sculpture,” said Queens Economic Development Corporation Tourism Director Rob MacKay.

“Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.” – George Gershwin

Remember those legends as you celebrate international Jazz Day at Resorts World Casino, April 30 at noon. Cool jazzy sounds are piped throughout the casino with video montages. Then, listen to the Masahiro Sakuma Trio play some raw riffs reminiscent of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and others at Bar 360. During Jazz Happy Hour (3 to 6 p.m.), enjoy a unique drink called Bee’s Knees. (110-00 Rockaway Blvd., South Jamaica)

Harriet Ann Jacobs – who was born a slave in North Carolina in 1813 – once wrote, “No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.”

Her words are given a voice during a 60-minute, one-person adaptation of Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” during Queens College’s Evening Readings, on April 30 at 7 p.m. The audience discusses the story with guidance by a teaching artist. (Aaron Copland School of Music, Choral Room 264, vicinity of Kissena Blvd. at Horace Harding Expwy., Flushing).  

Every month should be Earth Month.

Alley Creek and Little Neck Bay Clean Water Update – May 1, 6:30 pm. Representatives from the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection, NYC Parks Dept.’s Natural Resources Division, and the coalition Storm Water Infrastructure Matters, review local issues and solutions for rainwater and sewage management. (Alley Pond Environmental Center, 228-06 Northern Blvd., Douglaston).  

It’s a happening event! Join other musicians on May 1 at 7 p.m. – at Flushing Town Hall’s monthly Jazz Jam – and bring Louis Armstrong’s sounds to life, under the direction of saxophone legend Carol Sudhalter. Don’t play? Just drop by, listen and enjoy. (137-35 Northern Blvd.).

An LGBTQ musical at Thalía Spanish Theatre? Ah, si!  And Sunnyside will never be the same!

See Queens of the Night: Reinas de la Noche, do their thing through May 19. Featuring fabuloso Colombian transgender artist Pamela Sue Martin. Fridays & Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 4 p.m. (41-01 Greenpoint Ave.).

Retro films are fun to watch, especially when you See It Big!

This program screens 32 action films (many in 35mm prints), including “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Anne of the Indies,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and all six “Mission: Impossible” movies, at Museum of the Moving Image until July 7. (36-01 35th Ave., Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District).

He’s known for his abstract sculpture, garden design, and set design for Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and George Balanchine. Popular creative Isamu Noguchi, was among the most renowned contemporary Japanese artists in the U.S.  He once said, “The art of stone in a Japanese garden is that of placement. It’s ideal does not deviate from that of nature…” And, after WWII, bravely announced, “But I am also a sculptor of the West. I place my mark and do not hide.”

In the early ‘50s, Noguchi befriended another influential Japanese artist, Hasegawa Saburô, who was a writer, art historian, and abstract painter with an interest in combining Western-style abstraction with East Asian calligraphy. In Paris, Saburô studied the work of Mondrian, whose style he found inspirational.  During a visit to New York in 1951, the artist gave lectures on Zen and East Asian aesthetics that were attended by Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and other famous painters.

Don’t miss “Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa in Postwar Japan,” a traveling exhibition examining the impact these artists had on each other’s work. Almost 90 works trace the time they spent together during the fragmented post war world. On view May 1 – July 14 at The Noguchi Museum (9-01 33rd Rd., LIC).