Check out the gorgeous girls who graced our True Beauty issue cover! Exclusive backstage footage right here from the cover shoot with photographer Marc Baptiste.

Flashing lights, eclipses, fog, ice and moss — it is not the coming of destruction, but Olafur Eliasson’s rather pleasant exhibit, “Take Your Time”, opening this weekend at MoMA and PS1.

“Take Your Time” is the first show in the U.S. to exhibit a wide range of Eliasson’s projects. In addition to the retrospective, six new works will debut among the 40+ installations, photographic and print series on display between the two museums. The large-scale pieces use nature’s elements and technology to, according to MoMA, “create unique situations that shift the viewer’s perception of place and self.

”Step into the spectrum this weekend and experience it for yourself.

Sunday April 20 – June 30 at

MoMA

11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019

E or V train to Fifth Avenue/53rd Street

PS1

22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens

E or V train to 23rd St./Ely Ave. stop. While still in the station, follow signs to the 7 train to exit onto Jackson Avenue. Walk right one block to 46th Avenue.

She’s only 22, but she’s got the flow of a hot shot diva. Since she first started singing in Phillie’s jazz clubs when she was only 16, Melody Gardot has perfectly borne her name. But ask Melody and she’ll tell you that music means more to her than that. Music, she’ll tell you, saved her life.

After a very serious bike accident, it was thanks to her music therapy sessions that Melody got back on her legs. She still bears repercussions from her accident, walking with a cane and wearing tinted glasses. Writing her first songs during a convalescence, Melody’s first album, Worrisome Heart, is the perfect reflection of those past days, mixing pain and uncertainty with classical but audacious style and creating an intimate atmosphere at the intersection of jazz and blues.

Check her out on tour now in Europe.

It’s easy to go wrong with a fictional documentary about a white man saving a young woman of color. Real easy. So easy, in fact, that I’m pretty happy I don’t see such films very often.

Holly is different. No one, including the white man, Patrick (Ron Livingston), moralizes or apologizes except once, when he explains:

“Look, I know how it works alright? I walk by a 100 kids a day grabbing for handouts, fucking pushing bullshit souvenirs and I know you can’t help them, you can’t even try. You give them money, someone takes it…Then you develop this glazed-eye stare, you know? And you never stop. And then you’re fine. As long as you don’t look in their eyes you’re fine.”

And it’s pretty clear he’s uneasy that he did stop instead of continuing his live-and-let-survive gambling, boozing road trip to nowhere, Cambodia.

Holly (Thuy Nguyen), the 12-ish year-old girl he stops for in the infamous K11 prostitution village, doesn’t offer holy guidance or sit on a pedestal of corrupted innocence. She’s not a rosy-faced, wide-eyed little girl; she gets messed up, even if we never really see how deeply it goes. It’s part of the child/woman we have to accept her as, laced with cynical wit and steeped in stubbornness. She let her family in Vietnam sell her, after all, so they wouldn’t have to sell her little sister into back alley yumyums and boombooms.

For all the latent tragedy, however, Holly is surprisingly drama-free. We see Patrick, Holly and even Holly’s Mama San dealing and struggling with life — to uneven success and varying degrees of evil — not dramatizing cultural politics. There is a time and a place for that, but the strength of Holly is that it doesn’t go there.

The time and the place to check out Holly is next Friday, April 25th in NYC for the start of Holly’s limited run. E-mail TRACE here for your pair of tickets.

There are musicians in every city. Every block, every street and every community grows and pulses as music scenes merge and continue to build. It takes something special to break open the walls and pull together all types of personalities and gain an eclectic but die hard fan base. You must have the “it” factor.

The band Little Dragon entered my world as an accident. I stumbled on their myspace page a few months ago, and found myself returning every couple of days for a fix of their amazing sound. The singer, Yukimi Nagano has a voice that soothes the soul while tickling the eardrums. The band, tightly knit and visually intriguing, deliver songs that reach deep into your bones and beg you to be present.

Although they have not yet made it to NYC to play, they have been doing tons of shows everywhere from California to Sweden, where they are based. Yukimi gave me scoop on what’s behind the group and what drives the force…Fall in love here.

TRACE: How did Little Dragon come together to become the masterpiece it is growing into?

Yukimi: We met in highschool and have been doing music since forever it feels like! The name Little Dragon came about later when we realized we needed a name 4 years ago.

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Drawings coming out of nowhere; evanescent female figures with flowers blooming out of their eyes or mouth. That’s Noumeda Carbone’s world. Her art reveals her personal path, a crossroad composed of many sources.

Raised in France from an Indian-French mother and an Italian father, Noumeda has been immersed into an ocean of art at a very early age. Graduated from the Instituto d’Arte of Florence and collaborating with international art magazines (Rio, Kult magazine), she is used to mixing drawings, photographs, watercolours and even collages, managing to build a world full of lightness and dream-like effects — as if the Alice in Wonderland set had met animés and geishas. A world where everything could be possible.

There is a season for everything. A time to cry, a time to love, a time to laugh…and a time to dance so hard your body burns for weeks. Spring has sprung and it’s about time we join the universe in its celebration.

Welcome to Afro Blue, The Launch Party. The only rules are:
1. No wallflowers
2. No standing round and not dancing
3. No holding back when the music moves ya
4. Dress fashionable and comfortable

This event takes place at Tillman’s and will be bumpin’ all night with everything from soulful house to world rhythms, a beautiful crowd and it will all stream live once the party starts. Presented by Gibril of the GiKu Experience (Giant Step Jukebox), be prepared to sweat!

No cover (for all of you “striving” artists)

The Japanese street couture label, Rocksmith Tokyo is one of the fastest growing independent street wear labels on the Japan-U.S. fashion scene. Rocksmith’s success story hails from the much-welcomed renaissance of the underground creative industry that has begun to reclaim the lead in design and production from the monopoly of corporations.

Rocksmith was founded in 2002 by DJ Masterkey, Japan’s number one hip-hop DJ, whose record label The Life Entertainment partnered up with NYC-based Kilo International to take the goods worldwide. Having U.S. partners Erik and Kenshin on board bringing the NYC flava, the brand is ready for a complete global takeover.

Attention to detail is what makes Rocksmith stand out amongst the rapidly proliferating street wear labels. Using clothing as a vehicle of art, Rocksmith delivers sophisticated cuts reminiscent of the minimalist aesthetics of 1920’s art deco combined with carefully selected fabrics — Erik and Kenshin regularly travel the globe to hand-pick fabrics — and brilliant visual references steeped in 80s and 90s hip-hop and pop culture.

Check the fly 2008 Spring collection featuring the zip-off sleeved Boom Box Windbreaker, the French terry and velour Rich Boy Hoody, the gold satin Raising Hell Baseball Jacket, the weightless all-nylon Slash Windbreaker and the clean cotton Allante Barracuda.

From The Cool Kids, Mickey Factz, Theophilus London aka KAPPS to Hollywood Holt, Mano, and Steedlord, you’ll see the new generation of hip-hop heads rocking these goodies on the regular. Also make sure to peep the new collection of Rocksmith’s twin-brother, Kilo Goods offering limited edition couture for lovers of the Miami fresh. Get yours at Karmaloop.

Or, e-mail TRACE here with your details. Yep — we’ve got gear to give away!

It’s pretty easy to recognize the iconic mark of Claw Money — which is part of the point of a good tag. Once upon a time, good tags would hitch rides on metal subway cars, screaming “Look! I’m here, too!” You could spot a piece a mile away and know who did it by the style alone. Soandso was all over the A train line and whatshisface was king of the F.

Claw’s design collaboration with Boost Mobile, which drops for public retail today, seems a long way from this, but if the point is to tag early and tag often, then she still might win — even if she’s bending the rules a little.

Maybe it’s all the same thing in the end, but one thing is for sure: whether painting the metal tanks of subway lines or printing on the mobile device cases of her own line, the Claw Train doesn’t stop!

For three days in three different locations this week, 2008 Dare to Dream Media & Arts Festival (April 16-19) is bringing together artistic talents from diverse backgrounds to celebrate and honor the experiences and contributions of immigrants in New York City. At the same time, it will also introduce alternative educational models aimed at nurturing global consciousness among underserved youth.

Produced by Bronx-born, Dominican community activist and visionary Joel Mejia, the Dare to Dream Media & Arts Festival is also the culmination of the Dare to Dream Project, a media arts initiative that uses immigration as a basis to teach media and arts to inner city youth.

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