E-Mail This Article to a Friend In the flesh and on the stage Elaine Belsito back at 108, the Boston Music Awards, Hip-Hop Peace & Unity Festival, and more

108 in the flesh

At around 6:15 last Friday night, Elaine Belsito stood in the center of 108, Kate Ledogar’s new Somerville gallery, and stripped. Repeatedly. Right down to her bra and red-and-white-striped underwear. In full view of anyone strolling past or driving by. In the process, she strewed a wardrobe’s worth of colorful clothes (all too small for her) on the floor to a soundtrack of Madonna, Fleetwood Mac, and the Pretenders. About 20 people watched, some sitting against the walls of the gallery, others lingering outside on the stoop and the sidewalk. But 108 isn’t a strip joint or some seedy peep show. Belsito was doing her performance piece "If You Lost Five Pounds, You’d Be Perfect," which had aroused a lot of attention with neighborhood complaints, police presence, talk of permits, and press coverage from Boston to South Africa.

Despite the rumpus, Friday’s performance was tasteful and tame. Spectators (not a police officer among them) looked on with bemused, curious, and thoughtful expressions. It was, after all, art — ostensibly Belsito’s enactment of "the internal audience that women always carry around." Some cyclists riding by stopped and spent a few moments, helmets on, watching. Young women in business casual walked past, looked in, looked down, looked back, watching this curly-haired woman get red in the face trying to shimmy into a flowered mini-skirt. An older woman watching from across the street giggled as Belsito almost toppled over trying to zip the unzipperable. There were no leering old men hooting, guffawing, or shouting obscenities. No catcalls or crowds swarming the sidewalk for a better look. "Where’s the wine and cheese?" one audience member wondered.

That’s not to say that the performance didn’t draw attention. Ignoring a green light half a block away, an MBTA bus driver stopped his packed vehicle in front of the gallery and every passenger peered toward 108. A black Pathfinder passed the gallery, reversed back down Beacon Street for a better look, paused, and screeched off again. A cross-looking woman in pink sweatpants and house slippers emerged from a neighboring house with a scowl. She approached the gallery, shook her head, and made her way back home.

After about an hour, and entangled in a painfully tight haltertop, Belsito took a bow. One audience member who’d watched the entire performance walked away with a smile. "Somehow," he whispered, "the neighborhood will survive this."

Elaine Belsito will give the final performance of "If You Lost Five Pounds, You’d Be Perfect" this Friday, July 18, at 6 p.m. at 108, 108 Beacon Street, in Somerville. Call (617) 441-3833.

BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

Boston Music Awards

After 15 years, the Boston Music Awards has moved on to new digs and new ownership. The BMAs, which were created by Candace Avery and Peter Gold, have been bought by Sports & Entertainment Matters, which is described in a press release as "a firm that specializes in developing branding initiatives, programs, and events for corporations, nonprofit and public entities." The company CEO is Chip Reeves, former sports agent and president of Bob Woolf Associates in Boston. SEM partner Scott Bernstein is familiar to local-music-scene folks from his years with the Hard Rock Café, where, after working at the Boston restaurant, he went on to serve as the company’s US director of marketing.

The new BMAs have also convened an advisory board comprising some of the biggest names in the local performance-arts and music-industry scenes: Wang Center CEO Josiah A. Spaulding Jr. (the BMAs will return to the Wang Theatre on September 6 after spending several years at the Orpheum), Clear Channel Entertainment CEO Don Law, Lyons Group CEO Patrick Lyons, Newbury Comics CEO Mike Dreese, and WBCN program director Oedipus. Other board members include Cecily Foster, director of special events and community affairs for Mayor Tom Menino; Patrick Moscaritolo, CEO of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau; and J. Curtis Warner, assistant VP for community and governmental affairs at Berklee College of Music. New branding is also being created for the BMAs, with a new design by Peter Moore, who created the logo for Nike’s Air Jordans and Greg Norman’s Shark.

Proceeds from the BMA concert will be used to establish a scholarship fund for young musicians. The BMA concert itself will kick off this year’s NEMO Music Conference event, which SEM also bought. The NEMO panels and showcases will take place September 5 and 6.

The BMAs were established to honor Boston-area musicians. In the past, this has included anyone from present club bands to superstars who long ago passed through town and moved on. The awards ceremonies have included appearances by Aerosmith, Bobby Brown, Paula Cole, Extreme, Pat Metheny, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Carly Simon, Donna Summer, and James Taylor. Nominees for the event are chosen from ballots sent to about 250 local-press and music-industry people. The winners are voted on by these industry reps as well as the public. (A link to NEMO and the on-line ballot may be found at www.sematters.com.)

Among the nominees in 32 categories for the 2003 awards are Aerosmith, Cave In, Dropkick Murphys, Godsmack, John Mayer, Staind, James Taylor (all for Act of the Year); Boston, Evan Dando, Aimee Mann, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Mr. Lif, Susan Tedeschi, Peter Wolf (all Album of the Year — Independent Label); as well as Bleu, Howie Day, American Hi-Fi, Chick Corea, Guster, Jo Dee Messina, Dar Williams, the Damn Personals, Piebald, the Gentlemen, Blake Hazard, Consonant, and, needless to say, many more.

Tickets for the BMA concert, at $28 to $100, are on sale at the Wang Theatre box office, 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District; or call (800) 447-7400 or visit www.wangcenter.org.

Hip-Hop Peace & Unity Festival

It used to be that Boston was The City Without Hip-Hop. Things have changed. This weekend, July 18 and 19, the Boston-based Inebriated Rhythm and Grit Records is presenting a Hip-Hop Peace & Unity Festival. The centerpiece will be a free concert Saturday at City Hall Plaza, but there will also be an event Friday to "raise proceeds for youth programs that have been crippled by statewide cutbacks to community social programs," according to a press release issued by the presenters. This event will take place at Dorchester’s Strand Theatre, where KRS-One will be the featured speaker on the topic of "The State of Hip-Hop and Social Responsibility." A round-table discussion will follow with KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Pharoahe Monch, Ed O.G., Shuman, Illin’ P, Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, and State Representative Marie St. Fleur. The evening will also include performances by Luv, Dezmontero, and the Foundation. The City Hall Plaza concert will include artists from the fundraiser as well as PMD, Electric, Insight & Edan, L da Headtoucha, T-Max, Reks, Checkmark, and Swann Notty.

The Hip-Hop Peace & Unity fundraiser takes place this Friday, July 18, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Strand Theatre, 543 Columbia Road in Dorchester. Tickets are $15, or $10 for those under 18; call (617) 282-2000. The Peace & Unity concert takes place this Saturday, July 19, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. at City Hall Plaza; for information, call the mayor’s office at (617) 635-3911.

WHAT’s dinner with Andre

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater recently announced the addition of renowned actor, director, and guru Andre Gregory to its board. The adventurous answer to summer theater on the Cape, WHAT is practically in the water, by Town Pier in Wellfleet. Gregory, who’s best known for his weighty prandial conversations with Wallace Shawn in the 1981 Louis Malle film My Dinner with Andre, lives in Truro for six months of the year. The 69-year-old sage was also the director of the Manhattan Project, which was known for its 1970s staging of Beckett’s Endgame, and the director of what many regard as one of the best productions of Uncle Vanya ever, the 1994 film Vanya on 42nd Street.

As his first act as an official WHAT board member, Gregory will participate in an August 12 benefit teach-in on "the new McCarthyism" titled Dissent = Democracy, to be held at the theater. And he’ll be in august company: other participants in the 7:30 p.m. event include Eric Bogosian, The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger, playwright and WHAT artistic director Gip Hoppe, Norman Mailer, Marge Piercy, and Howard Zinn (whose son, Jeff, is WHAT’s other artistic director). Tickets to the event are $27, or two for $50; call the WHAT box office at (508) 349-6835.

Hot Wednesday nights at the MFA?

Well, the Museum of Fine Arts itself is air-conditioned, but its current blockbuster, "Thomas Gainsborough, 1727-1788," is a hot ticket, and the good news is that on Wednesday evenings through September 10, you can beat the heat, or the rain, and see this show for just $10, or $7.50 for children under 17. You don’t even have to buy tickets in advance, the MFA assures us — just turn up any time after 4 p.m. Remember, too, that admission to the rest of the museum is free after 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, so even if you’ve already seen "Thomas Gainsborough," you can check out the MFA’s new $20 million Degas, La duchesse de Montejasi et ses filles, Elena et Camilla, and its new seven-figure Sargent portrait, Charles Stewart, Sixth Marquess of Londonderry, Carrying the Great Sword of State at the Coronation of King Edward VII, August, 1902, and Mr. W.C. Beaumont, His Page on That Occasion, and the new gallery devoted to the arts of Colonial Boston that’s been opened in anticipation of the expanded MFA’s American Wing. The museum, at 465 Huntington Avenue, is open Saturday through Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. and Wednesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. (Thursday and Friday only the West Wing and selected galleries are open after 5 p.m.); call (617) 267-9300.

Coolidge happenings

The Coolidge Corner Theatre, which not long ago was on the verge of closing for good, will celebrate the completion of the second phase of its renovations next Thursday, July 24, at 7:30 p.m. with a special screening of a restored print of Singin’ in the Rain. The renovations were supported by a two-year challenge grant of $50,000 from the Brookline Community Fund earmarked to upgrade capabilities for live performance and community programs in the 600-seat main auditorium. In May 2002, the Coolidge Corner Foundation announced its plans with the unveiling of a new Art Deco–style marquee. Other renovations include the installation of a new Dolby digital surround-sound system and the ongoing restoration of the historic wall murals and the plaster crown detail of the proscenium in the main auditorium. The Coolidge is at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline; for programming information, call (617) 734-2500.

Blige on Blige

R&B diva Mary J. Blige hopes to impart some of her newfound wisdom when her record Love & Life (Interscope) drops on August 26.

"It’s about life and it’s about love and in life we fall in love and we always looking for love in all the wrong places," a radiant Blige said breathlessly during a promotional stop at South End eatery Bob the Chef’s on July 8, where a crowd of about 50 DJs, journalists, and record-label folks had gathered. "We never look for love inside of us. But what’s happened is, I found the love in me, so I’m able to do a beautiful thing around me."

So the 32-year-old Blige is spreading the love. Describing herself as "spiritually successful," she is engaged to a man she won’t identify but who is the inspiration behind the first single, which features Method Man, and no doubt the root of her current happiness. " ‘Love @ 1st Sight’ is what I thought about my fiancée when I first met him, and I thought, ‘Damn, this is it.’ I believe this is it."

Blige has reunited with P. Diddy, who produced her stellar first two albums, 1992’s What’s the 411 and 1994’s My Life (both MCA). The two — R&B/hip-hop’s reigning diva and producer — represent the bread and butter of the genre, and having enlisted contributions from Eve, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, and 50 Cent, she hopes they’ve crafted another classic. "We did the ‘No More Drama’ remix together, and it was the fact that the remix was doing better than the actual record. ‘No More Drama’ is a big concept record. But the remix did really well at radio, and that made Puffy say, ‘You know, we should do the album together’ because our chemistry was still there. And then I did a show at Radio City Music Hall, and I invited him as a guest, and he told everybody that we were going to do the album together, and the crowd went ballistic. And then he called me a couple months later and said, ‘I’m serious,’ and I said, ‘All right.’ After that response, yeah!"

But did the diva really swear off drama for good with 2001’s No More Drama (MCA)?

"The bottom line is, when I say, ‘No more drama,’ a lot of us might agree, but it’s so hard to keep it down because we got to deal with our self, we got to look at ourselves and say that, ‘Damn, I’m my own worst enemy. I’m causing so much pain because I let myself get so emotional over a whole bunch of things and it’s so hard.’ But once you go through enough pain, it starts to get easier for you."

Ah, we get it: from drama queen to healing queen.

"There’s songs on there like ‘Don’t Go’ when you make a mistake with a person and you have to admit that you made a mistake; ‘Not Today,’ where the women are tired of the men who are watching them and they’re like, ‘Not today’; and then there’s love songs like ‘Feel like Makin’ Love,’ you make up, you break up. For the most part it’s about love, it’s about life, real life, and in real life everything is not . . . " — she laughs giddily, to illustrate the point. "Although we would like it to be, it’s not."

BY NIKOLAS MARKANTONATOS