NYC events in November 2021

The 2021 TCS New York City Marathon is back in person this year to the relief and excitement of the world's runners. The world-famous race was virtual last year due to the pandemic, so it's fair to assume that runners will be even more excited to run this year.

The week-long festival will take place from November 8-14, and is set to feature some of the most exciting voices in comedy right now. Some top names from this year’s lineup includes Vir Das, Tim Dillon, Colin Quinn, Michelle Wolf, Norm MacDonald, Megan Stalter, Ronny Chieng, Jon Lovett’s Lovett or Leave It, Smart Funny & Black Live, Nick Kroll, Alok, Marc Maron, Brian Regan, Gary Gulman, Bill Maher, Michelle Buteau, Andrew Santino and more. The lineup was introduced in a video posted to social media featuring various essential workers, including firefighters, food cart workers, and medical staff, from across New York City. More than 200 comedians will take part in the celebration of comedy, which was canceled last year due to Covid-19, and features over 100 shows taking place across the five boroughs, including shows at the Apollo Theatre, Beacon Theatre, Carnegie Hall, and Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. 

Tickets to skate at The Rink at Rockefeller Center are already available, with the famous skating rink's opening date slated for Saturday, November 6. The Rink will be open daily from 9am until midnight, and if you've never closed down the rink for that last late night skate, 2021 should be your year. Admission prices range from $20-$54 per person depending on the date and time of day. Skate rentals are available for $10. Local skaters can also purchase a membership to have access to the rink and unlimited skating throughout the season. 

Although most of Hilma af Klint's work is held by the artist's official foundation and isn't currently on view anywhere, New Yorkers will get to browse through a rare set of her watercolors through December 18 at the David Zwirner gallery on 69th Street. Dubbed "Tree of Knowledge," the exhibit focuses on the artist's 1913-1915 series of works, which were recently discovered by the art world. If the success of the Guggenheim's 2018 exhibition "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future" is of any indication, we expect many people to flock to the Upper East Side gallery in the next few months. 

If you're eager to embrace the raging '20s we were promised (and not the pandemic '20s we were given), an enormous new nightclub has your back. Nebula will bring a multi-level 11,000-square-foot club to 135 W. 41st Street on Friday, November 5. With a capacity for 700 guests, Nebula will be the largest club to open in Manhattan in years. A 5,500-square-foot dance floor offers plenty of space to show off your moves, plus a mezzanine level and lower level with three private club rooms dedicated to private groups (complete with their own dedicated bathrooms) lets you customize your going out experience. Think: Over-the-top karaoke nights, a seated dinner for twenty or a small dance party with your closest friends. A movable ceiling, composed of six massive video panels, which are able to move and tilt individually or come together to form a venue-spanning screen, allow Nebula to change themes nightly. A cosmic night sky or hypnotic, rhythmic pulsing lights can change the vibe for an ever-new nightly clubbing experience.  

The NYC Winter Lantern Festival is returning for the 2021 season with three major events that will help illuminate the cold season! The first will kick off on October 22, with a drive-through experience at the Nassau County Museum of Art. Dubbed "A Bug’s Night," this experience will let you navigate across over 20 acres of vivid lanterns and holiday lights. Festive holiday lights, projection mapping and handmade lanterns in the shape of flowers, bugs, animals, and more will create this bright experience. Like all three Lantern Festival installations, this will run nightly through Sunday, January 9. Adding to that first festival, will be an escape at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island. The botanic garden will be illuminated for over eight acres. In addition to the lantern display, a live DJ, projection mapping, food vendors, and more will keep the party going. 

The beloved New York holiday train tradition at the New York Botanical Garden is back for its 30th year!

The garden will become a mini-train depot with its collection of 25 G-scale model trains that'll chug along a nearly half-mile track (which is also overhead) by 175 miniature NYC landmarks like the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and Rockefeller Center—all made of natural materials such as leaves, cinnamon sticks, twigs, bark and berries. 

Tickets are on sale now for the show, which begins November 20.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a tiara in this new biomusical about Diana, Princess of Wales, whose marriage to Prince Charles came undone in a sea of tabloid ugliness. Reprising the roles they played at La Jolla last year, Jeanna de Waal and Roe Hartrampf play the royal couple, flanked once again by Judy Kaye as Queen Elizabeth II and Erin Davie as Camilla Parker-Bowles. Christopher Ashley (Come from Away) directs; Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, who wrote the 2010 Tony winner Memphis, are the writers.

Out of all the yuletide razzle-dazzle NYC has to offer, the Dyker Heights Christmas Lights 2018 display is by far the most spectacular. (Sorry, Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree). Each year, over 100,000 people flock to the Brooklyn nabe to witness some of the most over-the-top Christmas lights we’ve ever seen­—think huge inflatable Santas and snowmen, and houses that blast Christmas carols from loundspeakers. There is a lot of ground to cover, as many houses in the area participate over multiple blocks and avenues. (We’re talking tens of thousands of lights).

Miracle has announced that they'll be returning to New York City, for pop-up bars bursting with decor, themed drinks and holiday cheer. Both Miracle and their sibling concept Sippin' Santa, will partner with new bars and feature new drink menus this November. For 2021, Miracle will also add a Brooklyn location, at the new Williamsburg bar Thief, which will pause its Friesling service and go full-on North Pole as it's festively transformed to Miracle on Union. East Village bar The Cabinet will be Miracle on 9th Street and Boilermaker will be Sippin' Santa. Expect to be swept into a whole new festive world with each bar decked out from floor to ceiling in holiday everything.

Inside Chelsea Market's old boiler room, there's an art show opening today that explores New York City’s past and potential future with trippy digital art that unfolds all around you. "Machine Hallucination: NYC" by Refik Anadol was originally on view at ARTECHOUSE two years ago when the venue first opened, but for the first time, NFTs will be available to visitors who want to purchase pieces of Anadol's art. "Machine Hallucination: NYC" is NYC's latest immersive experience that uses artificial intelligence and the latest technology to map a massive dataset (more than 100 million publicly available photographs of New York’s iconic architecture and urban landscapes without people) and shows AI re-imaginings of NYC set to "awe-inspiring" sound design by Berlin-based composer Kerim Karaoglu who used New York’s sound archives with machine intelligence. 

If theater is your religion and the Broadway musical your sect, you've been woefully faith-challenged of late. Venturesome, boundary-pushing works such as Spring Awakening, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Next to Normal closed too soon. American Idiot was shamefully ignored at the Tonys and will be gone in three weeks. Meanwhile, that airborne infection Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark dominates headlines and rakes in millions, without even opening. Celebrities and corporate brands sell poor material, innovation gets shown the door, and crap floats to the top. It's enough to turn you heretic, to sing along with The Book of Mormon's Ugandan villagers.

No show in town offers as intimate an experience as this interactive experience in Bushwick that has been created to be performed for just five audience members at a time. A surreal look at the nature of ritual and ceremony, Bottom of the Ocean is the third production from Andrew Hoepfner’s company Houseworld Immersive, and draws on techniques that Hoepfner explored previously in Houseworld and Whisperlodge. It is staged at Gymnopedie, a multiroom space that has been created by restoring 5,500 square feet of the 19th-century basement at Bushwick United Methodist Church. 

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel at the Vatican is one of the must-see artworks of a lifetime, and for a limited time, its likeness will be right here in New York City. SEE Global Entertainment is bringing its "Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition" to a (currently unannounced) location in NYC this fall, allowing New Yorkers and tourists to get up close and personal with the fresco that draws about 5 million people each year. While seeing it in person is incredible, seeing the details and Michelangelo brushstrokes is not really possible since it decorates the chapel's ceiling and wall while hundreds of other tourists crowd around it. And while this exhibit isn't the real thing, it does give you a chance to spend time you wouldn't normally have with the art.

The Shed's galleries are being transformed daily with multi-sensory installations that immerse the viewer to inspire reconnection to nature.

Presented by The Shed and Superblue, "Fragile Future" by Amsterdam-based artists DRIFT takes its audiences on a journey through multiple installations that encourage exploring the universal search for origin, destination, and connection, as well as the power to be found in relinquishing control when embracing change.

Set to a soundtrack by ANOHNI, the journey begins with the shimmering lights of  "Coded Coincidence" that follow the flight pattern that elm seeds take each spring so that viewers can see the "necessity and beauty of coincidence and its essential role in our natural processes and evolution." As they fall to the ground and fade, "Ego," a large block made of hair-thin illuminated threads is suspended and morphs in mid-air. Another installation, "Fragile Future," brings nature and technology together to evoke a utopian vision of the future of our planet, "wherein two seemingly opposite evolutions have made a pact to survive."

As the final installation, "Drifters" uses a series of projected films to represent a portal to another world with a group of concrete blocks that float through environments in NYC and other locations and pass through lush nature and dystopian urban settings in search for their origin and destination. On select dates, "Drifters" will become a surreal immersive performance that spans The Shed’s four-story-high, 17,000-square-foot McCourt space.

Let it GLOW at the New York Botanical Garden this year at its second annual NYBG Glow! The outdoor light experience will brighten up the grounds with thousands of energy-efficient LED lights and festive installations. After dark, you can walk this expanded 1.5-mile colorful experience with even more illuminated displays than last year, including plant stories, and whimsical, picture-perfect installations reflecting the surrounding gardens and collections with the Haupt Conservatory and Mertz Library Building as glowing centerpieces. It's all an ideal backdrop for a family holiday photo op. Plus, there will be dance performances, ice carving demonstrations and other seasonal activities (and snacks) to enjoy. Tickets, which can be paired with Holiday Train Show tickets for a little bit more money, are on sale now. Learn more about the new safety measures online. All ages. 

The recent eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland inspired interdisciplinary artist and musician Jónsi (of Sigur Rós) to create two new sound installations and sculptural works that infuse the senses, including ambient sounds, mechanically generated frequencies, samples from nature,  his own voice as well as earthy, atmospheric fragrances that help to transport viewers. On the ground floor, visitors enter a darkened room that has a central plinth surrounded by about two hundred speakers that'll play a choral hymn in four parts added to soundscapes of gritty rocks and searing lava. It'll be layered over with smoky, tar-like aromas of fossilized amber to further transport his audience into the belly of a volcano. 

In the upstairs galleries, resin and obsidian glass sculptures sit at each end of one room while crackling sounds play over visuals of burnt walnut trees, showing how destructive volcanic forces are. Another sound installation affixed with flower-shaped metallic discs and LEDs, pulsates with light in short bursts, blinking slowly at first before swelling into rapid-fire successions—a nod to Brion Gysin’s 1960s "Dream Machine."

All of this launches in tandem with the release of Jónsi’s third solo musical album that is also inspired by the volcano.

Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? The zingy Broadway musical Six celebrates, in boisterous fashion, the union of English dynastic history and modern pop music. On a mock concert stage, backed by an all-female band, the six wives of the 16th-century monarch Henry VIII air their grievances in song, and most of them have plenty to complain about: two were beheaded, two were divorced, one died soon after childbirth. In this self-described “histo-remix,” members of the long-suffering sextet spin their pain into bops; the queens sing their heads off and the audience loses its mind. 

Photoville is back in its 10th year and the second to bring photography to every borough of New York City. You won't want to miss this year's Photoville because it is packed with 75 exhibits outside and free online programming for photo lovers between September 18 and December 1, including panel discussions, interactive workshops, one-on-one safety clinics,  professional development opportunities with Diversify Photo and Leica Camera, Photo Wings and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.

Jukebox musicals come and go, but Britney's music is forever. And surprisingly, the "…Baby One More Time" artist has never had a Broadway musical inspired by her discography. That's about to change as the Washington D.C.–based Shakespeare Theatre Company produces the Broadway-bound musical Once Upon a One More Time, based on Britney's iconic hits.  Playing from November 30 through January 2 at Sidney Harman Hall, Once Upon a One More Time tells an original story by Jon Hartmere (bare, The Upside) through the music of Grammy Award winner and pop icon Britney Spears. The plot is not quite out of a 1990s music video, but it promises to be engaging.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman

[Note: This is a review of the 2019 Broadway premiere of Slave Play. The production will return to Broadway for an eight-week encore run at the August Wilson Theatre on November, 2021, with Antoinette Crowe-Legacy taking over as Kaneisha.]

 23Jeremy O. Harris’s lacerating play, a sold-out succès de scandale Off Broadway last season, has now moved north to Broadway, and it feels wonderfully incongruous on the mostly staid Great White Way. Brash, smart and gleefully confrontational, this is the kind of show that starts arguments. It begins on a perverse antebellum plantation, but as it moves forward, in three very different acts that successively reframe what we have seen before them, it keeps you off balance; even afterward, you may feel staggered. As I wrote of its incarnation at New York Theatre Workshop, “Slave Play is funny, perceptive, probing and, at times, disturbingly sexy. It snaps like a whip, and its aim is often outward.” Whatever you think it is, it's almost certainly not what you think. (Click here to read the entire Off Broadway review.)

Director Robert O’Hara has reassembled the play’s original cast, with one exception: Joaquina Kalukango now plays the pivotal role of Kaneisha. The Broadway production is, perforce, a bit broader than the one at NYTW—especially in the bravura comedic performances of Annie McNamara, whose molestation of a four-poster bed is horny physical comedy for the ages, and James Cusati-Moyer, whose character throws a spectacular diva tantrum when asked to confront his own whiteness. For most of the night, in the four interracial relationships that Harris depicts, the nonblack characters dominate: They really, really want to make sure they’re being heard. But the final stretch belongs to Kaneisha, and Kalukango navigates it with openness and strength. Surprising and transgressive though it often is, Slave Play is not after shock for shock’s sake. What it administers, with thrilling success, is shock treatment. 

John Golden Theatre (Broadway). By Jeremy O. Harris. Directed by Robert O’Hara. With ensemble cast. Running time: 2hrs 5mins. No intermission. 

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RECOMMENDED: An interview with Slave Play writer Jeremy O. Harris

Get a rare glimpse of one of the major art forms of the Hispanic World from 1500 to 1800—polychrome sculpture. The Hispanic Museum & Library is hosting the first exhibit in New York to feature this kind of art in two decades. Over 20 sculptures, including major works by women artists such as Luisa Roldán and Andrea de Mena, show how the stylistic conventions of Spain were adapted in the New World. Among the works on view, visitors will see a monumental relief of the Resurrection attributed to Gil de Siloe, 16th-century reliquary busts by Juan de Juni and "St. Acisclus" by Pedro de Mena. A section of gilded figures will showcase sculptures from Latin America characterized by an impressive range of scale and emotion, including a 16th-century relief of Santiago Matamoros (St. James the moorslayer) from Mexico and the "Virgin of Quito" or "St. Michael" as well as Caspicara’s "Four Fates of Man." Expect to see works by El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, and Sorolla; sculpture by Pedro de Mena and Luisa Roldán; Latin American paintings and sculpture by Vázquez, Luis Juárez, López de Arteaga, Rodríguez Juárez, Caspicara, Campeche, and Arrieta.

The Bronx Zoo’s sparkling seasonal celebration featuring animated lights and LED displays of animals from around the world is back this year. Expect the zoo to have close to 260 animal lanterns across five geographically representative lantern safaris from various corners of the world. This year are 79 new lanterns representing 30 new animal species, including an all-new walrus and guanacos! Not only that, but there will be a Forest of Color with 21 all-new larger-than-life lanterns representing toads, frogs, snails, sunbirds, turtles, moths, butterflies, and more. Entertainment will include holiday-themed music, ice carvings, costumed characters, stilt walkers, a holiday train, a wildlife theater, souvenirs and seasonal treats like hot chocolate and s’mores. 

Learn about the lives of Green-Wood Cemetery’s permanent residents on this trek, which rotates among three routes (so check the schedule ahead of time if you’re set on seeing a specific tombstone). All tours include a look at the cemetery’s historic chapel and Battle Hill, where George Washington led the Continental Army in the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776.

The Brooklyn Museum is giving The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute a run for its money this year with its high fashion exhibit featuring the House of Dior. The major exhibit — co-curated by Dior scholar Florence Müller of the Avenir Foundation Curator of Textile Art and Fashion at the Denver Art Museum — thoroughly explores the high fashion history of The House of Dior, which dates back to the turn of the 20th century, when the brand's namesake Christian Dior founded the label. The multi-gallery exhibit brings many of Dior's sources of inspiration to life, including flowers, nature, classical and contemporary art, featuring artwork from the Brooklyn Museum's collections. Objects on display will be primarily from the extensive Dior archives and some 200 haute couture garments as well as photographs, archival videos, sketches, vintage perfume elements, and accessories.