Othership, the SoulCycle of Spas

The International Center of Photography, founded, successful 1974, by the lensman Robert Capa’s member Cornell, was dedicated to what Cornell called “concerned photography”—the benignant of engaged photojournalism practiced by Robert and his adjacent associates Werner Bischof, Andre Kertesz, and Leonard Freed. The depository has broadened its absorption considerably since then, but photojournalism, mostly ignored elsewhere, continues to beryllium its beardown point. Weegee is the brash, entertaining headliner astatine I.C.P. close now, but it’s a quieter companion show, “American Job 1940-2011” (through May 5), that feels particularly urgent. With photographs, astir each from I.C.P.’s collection, by respective generations of acrophobic photographers, including Danny Lyon, Gordon Parks, Robert Frank, W. Eugene Smith, and Susan Meiselas, “American Job” is simply a amusement astir radical astatine and retired of work. The curator, Makeda Best, grounds it successful images of the crushing regular and casual camaraderie of the bureau and the mill floor. But pictures of picket lines and protestation marches are regular reminders that jobs tin beryllium terminated, denied, oregon made unbearable. Best wants america to retrieve that 1 of the show’s astir celebrated photographs, Ernest Withers’s 1968 changeable of massed Memphis sanitation workers holding signs that work “I AM A MAN,” is, archetypal and foremost, a papers of a labor-solidarity march.

“American Job,” for each its instructive underpinning, is ne'er adust oregon didactic. Best keeps it crisp by skewing her representation enactment to lesser-known and anonymous work, including a fig of news-service images. A grid of pictures by the Fort Worth workplace lensman Bill Wood gives the amusement a detour into deadpan realism: a slope nether construction, a pistillate with her bureau equipment, a acceptable of filing cabinets. Louis Stettner, similar astir of the photographers here, keeps it personal; his portraits of mill workers are artfully atmospheric. Accra Shepp closes the amusement with a bid of empathetic, full-length portraits of Occupy Wall Street protesters successful 2011 and 2012, astir holding homemade signs. Following a conception titled “When Work Disappears,” Shepp’s pictures connection an appropriately unfastened ending, anticipating this precise infinitesimal and the protests to come.—Vince Aletti

About Town

Off Broadway

In Lisa Sanaye Dring’s soapy “Sumo,” a play astir a cutthroat Japanese grooming facility, a newbie wrestler, Akio (Scott Keiji Takeda); the bullying apical dog, Mitsuo (David Shih); and a susceptible pugnacious guy, Ren (Ahmad Kamal), each vie for carnal and motivation primacy. Flimsy dialog dominates each contest, however: “Tell maine the communicative again,” 1 antheral says to his lover, successful a mode nary existent idiosyncratic ever does. Ralph B. Peña directs a formed that excels mostly astatine the margins—Earl T. Kim is sweetly diffident arsenic a assured loser—and successful well-staged matches, meticulously designed by James Yaegashi and Chelsea Pace. But, though the playwright introduces intriguing provocations astir sumo’s past etiquette, she chiefly demonstrates that cliché is simply a slayer successful the ring.—Helen Shaw (Public; done March 30.)

Dance

At eighty-three, Twyla Tharp shows nary signs of stopping. The touring programme marking her sixtieth twelvemonth choreographing includes a caller work: “Slacktide,” acceptable to Philip Glass’s mildly evocative “Aguas de Amazonia,” which Third Coast Percussion plays live, connected customized instruments. The main event, though, is simply a revival of a little-seen creation from 1998, “Diabelli.” Tharp, mounting herself the situation of Beethoven’s mammoth and adventurous Diabelli Variations, responds with her ain ideas astir taxable and variation, employing her formidable powers of invention and wit. It’s a large show of virtuosity, but riding connected the wit of the people it stays light.—Brian Seibert (City Center; March 12-16.)

Hip-hop