In 1969, the city of Cohoes purchased the abandoned National Bank Building at the northern end of Remsen Street for $1 to save the prominent 1874 edifice from imminent destruction. As city officials began examining the building’s interior, they couldn’t find any stairs to a third floor. Eventually, they broke through a ceiling panel, only to discover that hidden away in the top half of the building was a gem of a theater, complete with a small stage, a fly space for dropping in sets, and seating for 350 people, including a wrap-around balcony. In the ensuing years, the space has been...

Every month Harold Lohner flips through the new issue of Art Calendar, a magazine that provides copious listings of exhibitions and other opportunities for artists. He regularly finds calls for submissions to shows of female artists and occasionally of gay artists. “I’m gay and an artist, but I don’t want to be a practitioner of gay art. It’s like you don’t have to be very good,” says Lohner, 48, who has been in a committed relationship for 10 years. Even in the gay community, gay art is a vague term that can encompass any art focusing on the male form or any...

In the anything-goes environment of the 1970s musical avant-garde, the late African American composer and baritone Julius Eastman was both out and outrageous. Giving his pieces names like “Crazy Nigger” and “Gay Guerrilla,” he apparently took inspiration from Richard Pryor (“That Nigger’s Crazy”) as much as from any high-minded musical theorems. Eastman’s antics even managed to rattle the Zen-like John Cage, the late and rather closeted gay composer and thinker widely regarded as a father of the experimental tradition.  In a notorious concert at the University at Buffalo in 1975,...

After gay composer Ned Rorem turned 80 back in 2003, he decided to try some things that he’d not done in a long time, like going into a bar. “Since I don’t drink or smoke anymore, I don’t know what to do in a bar,” says Rorem, who nevertheless went looking for distraction at the Townhouse, a sweaterbar on Manhattan’s upper east side. “I stayed for 28 seconds,” he says. That was long enough for a 38-year-old film and video director to take note and follow him out the door. A sidewalk conversation led to a date and now, nearly three years later, Rorem has a steady boyfriend. (James...

“I dreamed of dancing as a child,” says gay dancer and choreographer Richard Daniel. “But I thought a good Midwestern Jewish boy didn’t go to dance class.” Being a good boy hasn’t been a priority for sometime now, but Daniels, 54, still seems haunted by youth.  How else to explain his fascination with Apollo, the eternally young god of art and creativity? For “Telling Tales,” his program of dances for the Dancespace Project at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan’s East Village, which runs Sept. 29-Oct 2, Daniels boldly decided to create a new modern dance to Stravinsky’s “Apollo.”...

For more than 20 years, he’s been a star in the most elite realm of classical ballet. But his name is more like ESPN. Jock Soto was a mere 16 years old in 1981 when Peter Martins, director of the New York City Ballet, plucked him out of the company’s school. Just four years later Soto was promoted to the troupe’s top tier of dancers. “At that time I was the youngest principal. I was in shock. It was hard to live up to,” says the openly gay Soto, who is half Navajo Indian and half Puerto Rican. “But I never call myself a star, I’m just a dancer.” After a career that’s included...

His husband. Her wife. The coupling of these words may cause your tongue to stumble, but for many people in committed gay or lesbian relationships, the terms are longed-for alternatives to euphemisms like partner, companion or lover. Yet there’s far more at stake in the cause of same-sex marriage than just better terminology. Filmmaker and Troy native Jim de Seve, whose documentary “Tying the Knot” opens today at the Spectrum 8 Theatres in Albany, named his 4-year-old production company 1,049 Films because that’s the number of federal rights and privileges afforded to married...

“I’m the type, if I see something I tackle it,” says classical pianist Anthony de Mare. And he’s not just speaking figuratively. The pianist, who makes his Carnegie Hall debut on March 15, is known for throwing his bulked-up body fully into his music making. In “Playin’ Myself,” his 2001 show that toured the U.S. and abroad, de Mare recited poetry, sang and even tap danced – all while playing the piano. “Interdisciplinary pianist” is how he describes himself. De Mare, 47, has always had a knack for more than music. Accompanied by his older sisters, he started ballet and...

“Whitman and his universal message of love and tolerance and embracing real freedom needs to be heard,” says the gay jazz pianist and composer Fred Hersch, discussing his new recording “Leaves of Grass” (Palmetto). The disc features musical settings of the great gay poet Walt Whitman and coincides with the 150th anniversary of the first publication of the landmark collection “Leaves of Grass.” “Just as Whitman is eclectic, the music covers a lot of territory,” says Hersch, who wrote the piece in a mere 6 weeks. “What surprised me the most was how ultimately lyrical this whole...

“Striking frogs and getting fairies ready!” It’s the first rehearsal for act one, scene one of “Sleeping Beauty,” and Basil Twist is telling the frogs how high to hop (and when to “strike,” or leave the stage) and the winged fairies how to glide through the air with grace. A crew of 12 young puppeteers does its best to make the creatures respond. Twist and his company have come to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., for two weeks of work to stage Ottorino Respighi’s 80-minute, three-act puppet opera “La bella dormente nel bosco (Sleeping Beauty...