There was a certain magic in New York last Wednesday night – an unknown and unexpected thrill in the air. Knicks fans held their breath in preparation for Game 4, and a few blocks away, at the Town Hall Theater near Times Square, Performa: Live on Broadway — a vaudeville-inspired feature for one night only — brought together 14 acts and more than 50 performers, spanning music, theatre, dance, comedy and visual arts.
The non-profit organization Performa was created in 2004 by art historian and professor Rose Lee Goldberg, who is now the organization’s founding director and chief curator. It commissions artists from around the world—many of whom are visual artists who have never performed live work before—to create new shows that take place throughout New York City. The sprawling, three-week November Biennale has become a cult favorite in the art world.
The Town Hall has its own history of unexpected, strangely related nights. It was built in 1921 by women’s rights advocates who designed it with democratic seating (they literally coined the term “no bad seating”). One November night, one of its founders, Margaret Sanger, was arrested on stage for talking about birth control. Her supporters followed her into the street, singing the song “My Country Is Mink.”
More than a century later, the place was crowded with anticipation. Notable guests included Solange and Tina Knowles, actress Alia Shawkat, MoMA head of performance Lizzie Gurvin and former New York Times chief art critic Roberta Smith. Artist Laurie Simmons was also there to watch Regret music– a three-act film that premiered at the inaugural Performa Biennale in 2005 – and is presented with live singers and musicians for the first time. Meryl Streep, who plays the title role, once told Simmons she belonged on Broadway. Twenty years later, Simons told the Observer: “It kind of was.”
Zigzag lines climbed the stairs as people waited for refreshments. Nearby, others ran their hands over Barbara Kruger’s red-letter hoodies: “I want it, buy it, forget it.”
Amid the pre-exhibition hype, the Observer caught up with Ernestine White Mefeto, the Sells Foundation Curator of African Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Performa “has had a real impact on the New York ecosystem,” she said, creating spaces that see “a diverse range of artists and visitors, whether they are young children or adults.” The clue was in the room: “The six-year-old in a gorgeous silver dress with her mother, to grandma—they’re all here.”
The show opened with a rerun of Chair/pillowa 1969 work by legendary choreographer Yvonne Rainer. The dancers moved the white bed cushions and circled metal folding chairs, sitting and standing with careful, expressionless precision. As Susetta Godona, a longtime Performa affiliate, told the Observer, one of the organization’s gifts is the opportunity to experience historical performances “that our generation never had the possibility of seeing.”
Then, late-night comedian and comedy writer Casey Jost joked that he found old Yelp reviews from the 1920s backstage. “These are all true,” he deadpanned. “Five stars. I saw a little basketball team that hadn’t been established yet, the Knickerbockers, playing in the street. They were on a winning streak until President Harding came to the third game. Warren G. Harding, you tyrant.” Later, he left fans confused as to whether his white hair was dyed or natural.
Some great performances followed: multidisciplinary artist and musician Lonnie Holly, chosen by The Guardian as one of “30 acts to see before you die”, playing the piano; And a sequence by Marcel Dzama Living on the Moon (for Lorca)his 2023 commission Performa, which features a live dancer as a shimmering, slightly eerie golden butterfly, set against a projected black-and-white film.
Julio Torres, the award-winning SNL writer and comedian, took the stage next, walking around with a curved metal bar strapped to his chest, a Diet Coke can dangling from the end. When he caught it, he missed, and failed again. “I went to Barry’s Bootcamp, and they installed it on us to…run faster. It’s a great workout, I’m not going to lie. It keeps you constantly striving toward an unattainable goal,” he explained matter-of-factly. Throughout the act, he passed his prized soft drink. When he finally struggled across the stage floor and managed to secure a Diet Coke, it was empty. “Now, what did we learn today?”
Anne Emhoff brought a tender ache with a piece taken from her Death: House of Hopeand its 2025 operation at the Park Avenue Armory; Goldberg, a longtime friend and now collaborator, specifically requested this love song. “You have to do this,” Emhoff remembers saying. It opened with flashing red lights and a loudspeaker singing the numbers — hours, minutes, seconds — while a lone ballerina swept across the stage. Between arabesques and pleats, she walked, hands on her hips, looking at the audience as if it were a studio mirror. It was the kind of performance that makes you put your hand to your heart. “Live performance is a weak field,” Imhoff said. “It doesn’t produce things. It’s such ephemeral things, such beautiful, magical moments. You have to protect them.”
The lights appeared. Red banners with white letters were distributed on the orchestra benches, and Joost ordered the trembling arms to raise them above the head, each at a perfect angle. From the balcony, the words come together, some crooked, some slanted, and the whole thing is very imperfect. On cue, Ghost photographed him. People rose from their seats to look: the letter was parts of Barbara Kruger’s letter Untitled (Questions)He asked: “Who is outside the law? Who is silenced? Who is bought and sold? Who dies first?”
Another favorite, the footed serpent, entered the stage in the fog. He wears a black boxing glove in one fist and a red glove in the other and sings “Wander.” He told the Observer that he was interested that night in “suspension of disbelief, and inviting others to suspend disbelief.”
Live performance has a way of doing that. Simmons told The Observer that she found the night to exceed her wildest expectations and reflected on what the live performance stirred up in her. “This kind of straightforward, unexpected thing that can go wrong is very similar to what making art looks like. I’m not talking about having a polished presentation… I’m talking about what happens in the studio when you actually make things. That unexpected part, at least for me, for the artist, is what’s really exciting.” Watching her piece live, I thought everything could go wrong. “But you know what? None of that matters. Everything is fine at the moment.”
There was sadness beneath her joy. “RoseLee keeps the idea of performance art alive,” Simmons said. I arrived in New York at the height of the matter. “Believe it or not, there was a point where money didn’t rule the market. It was ruled by ideas about the avant-garde. I would sit in a gallery on the floor and listen to Laurie Anderson play her violin. There was so much to see, and you didn’t have to pay a dime.” She said Goldberg “is keeping something alive that could easily die with everything else dying right now.”
Goldberg knows this fragility. In an age where, as she puts it, “no one has time to read or look or see,” she appreciates the opportunity for audiences to sit for an hour, their interest “on new ideas.” Someone recently came up to her about a piece they saw and said, “I’ll never forget it.” I loved it. “This is a good housekeeping stamp of approval, as you will see things in the performance that you will never forget.”
And so, in an unexpected twist of its own, the Knicks completed their historic comeback, winning by one point with one second left in the game. New York miracle. The city roared, still in disbelief, and full of hope. It turns out that the unexpected can be very sweet.
