John Kelly Channels Joni Mitchell at Real Art Ways

John Kelly: Paved Paradise Redux

Friday, January 23: 8 PM
Saturday, January 24: 8 PM
Sunday, January 25: 3 PM

Hartford Connecticut – Real Art Ways presents John Kelly’s Paved Paradise Redux: The Songs of Joni Mitchell from Friday, January 23 – Sunday, January 25. Kelly transcends mere imitation as he channels Joni Mitchell in a show that the New York Times calls “alternatively worshipful and uproarious.” Performances on Friday and Saturday, January 23 and 24, are at 8 PM. The performance on Sunday, January 25 is at 3PM. Tickets are available online before Friday, January 23, as well as by phone. Tickets before Friday, January 23 are $22, $18 for Real Art Ways members. After 1/23, tickets may be purchased at the box office for $26, $22 for Real Art Ways members. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood. For tickets and information, go to realartways.org or call 860.232.1006.

John Kelly first inhabited Mitchell’s persona at Wigstock festival in 1985. Since then, his loving homage has captivated audiences, including Joni Mitchell herself:

I felt like I was Huck Finn attending his own funeral or Jimmy Stewart in that movie where the angel walks him back through his life. I was braced for a lampooning, and I didn't expect to be so touched. - Joni Mitchell

Artists Zeccha Esquibel (as Georgia O’Keefe on synthesizer and piano) and Blake Newman (as Vincent Van Gogh on bass) will join Kelly onstage.

Praise for Paved Paradise Redux:

...it feels as if there's really only one word for the way Kelly plays with a famous, complicated persona and with our own ideas of the person behind that mask. It's genius.
- Louise Kennedy, The Boston Globe

Mysterious tightropewalking fabulousness.
-David Frankel, Artforum

There's drag, and then there's transformation through spiritual osmosis, and that's what John Kelly accomplishes with this tribute to the queen of the singersongwriters. Every blue note, every toss of the golden mane captures Ms. (Joni) Mitchell's singular aura and communicates why a man like Mr. Kelly would fetishize her persona rather than playing just another variation on Joan Crawford. Magnificent.
-Ann Powers, The New York Times

ABOUT JOHN KELLY
John Kelly originally trained as a dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. He has created more than 30 performance works which have been performed in Italy, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Slovenia, France and Scotland in venues as varied as, The Anvil, The Pyramid Club, The Kitchen, Carnegie Hall, Edinburgh International Festival, American Repertory Theater, PS 1, The Warhol Museum, The Belasco Theater, The Whitney Biennial, Dance Theater Workshop, Central Park Summer Stage, The Sundance Theatre Lab, La MaMa, Performance Space 122, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Kelly as Joni Mitchell

Real Art Ways is supported by Real Art Ways Members,
The National Endowment for the Arts, The Warhol Foundation,
The Wallace Foundation, The Greater Hartford Arts Council,
The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, and
The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.


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