The class feels like a “company class” because many of Varone’s dancers are present, warming up before rehearsal. Live djembe drum accompaniment is a stimulating addition. The sound ricochets off the domed ceiling giving the Harkness Dance Center’s large ballroom space an even more expansive feel. I have noticed recently that classes at Dance New Amsterdam and Eden’s Expressway have felt overcrowded. A colleague commented that she felt cramped, like she was unable to dance fully because of all the people and lack of space. This is not a problem at The Harkness Dance Center; the huge studio offers liberation to frustrated space hogs.
Earlier this year, the Library of Congress uploaded over 3,000 historic photographs to the Flickr photo-sharing site as part of a metadata-enhancing experiment. Within 24 hours, thousands of Flickr users had tagged the photos with descriptive keywords and helped make the photo collection more accessible. You can find some fascinating photos of old New York in their photostream, including the idyllic scene above of some horseback riders trotting through Central Park circa 1912.
Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park along with the architect Calvert Vaux, filled the area with picturesque backdrops like this one that continue to attract photographers in droves. Our Photographing Olmsted class, one of many art classes now available, invites you to make Olmsted’s signature public park your personal studio this summer. We invite you to upload the results to Flickr and tag them “92Y” so we can blog them.
The 92nd Street Y and WNYC have partnered to offer a guided exploration of the Y’s impressive music archives. Sara Fishko curates and hosts this 10-part series, Music from the 92nd Street Y, which features the greatest live performances from the stage of the Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall. In the premiere episode on April 26, the Tokyo String Quartet performs music by Haydn, plus a rarely heard Septet by German composer Hans Eisler, drawn from his own music for a Charlie Chaplin film. Listen to the whole show here.
Two weeks ago, we posted news about one of last summer’s 92nd Street Y Film Campers being featured at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Downtown Youth Behind the Camera event on Sunday, April 27. And the winner is… Liza Paterson, pictured above, poses on the “red carpet” at the City Cinemas Village East Theater on Second Avenue, for her film American Idol: Stranded Version that was selected to be screened at the annual children’s film festival. Here’s a photo of her fellow budding filmmakers.
The 92nd Street Y Film Camp offers two weeks of professional instruction and serious fun for children ages 9 to 12. Register now!
What You Missed: Richard Lewis and Keith Olbermann
The “Where is Cassandra?” blog has a detailed write-up of Sunday’s talk between Richard Lewis and Keith Olbermann. On Richard Lewis:
He dispelled the myth of drugs giving artists “creativity.” As he said, (I paraphrase: I didn’t tape it unlike him), he admired Jimi Hendrix very much. Some of the riffs Jimi created in the studio were just out of this world like a UFO. But to be honest and he spoke to a lot of guys who were there in the 60s, his shows were sloppy and he’d hit the wrong notes as often as the right ones, or more often. He, Richard, felt more clear-headed, controlled and that he was doing the best work of his life now that he was sober (for 14 years). He talked about Jonathan Winters, the comic he admired the most, who was still active at the age of 82. Who was sober for 30+ years, and who had survived 2 nervous breakdowns during the time when it wasn’t fashionable to go in and out of rehab.
He told a funny joke about Oscar Levant, to whom he compared his own twitching, “When Jack Paar asked Oscar what he did for exercise, Oscar replied, ‘I trip, stumble and fall into a coma.’”
On Keith Olbermann:
He was very tall. And big. (Speaking as someone who knows one, he has a big head too.) I was very excited and pushed Jeffrey up to him. Keith was surrounded by a tight group of affluent, older, well-dressed women. Jeff was very happy. He approached Keith like a close talker and said, “You’ve been one of my true heroes. Thanks for all you’ve done.” He answered in a clear, deep, broadcaster’s voice, “Thanks very much. Jeff: “I’m a sports fan.” And: “I wish Channel 2, 4 and 7 could report news like you do.” He leaned forward and loudly whispered, “Don’t hold your breath.”
The classical cello has gone into personality deficit. In a celebrity-driven culture, an art without a visible figurehead risks media oblivion.
I put this thought the other day to Steven Isserlis, the quirky, curly British cellist who countered that maybe the cello needs a different set of values these days, less lofty and heroic, more practical and domestic. Isserlis, 50 this year, is an engaging mix of English inhibition and artistic swagger, self-deprecation and acute self-awareness.
They go on to describe how it’s tougher to be a cellist these days but Isserlis reveals what keeps him going.
One of his favourite gigs is a children’s series that he runs at the 92nd Street Y in New York, a place where kids of all ages drop in to hear Isserlis and such chums as Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk, teach, play and tell jokes. He has published two light-hearted lives of composers for children and his Wigmore Hall/Alte Oper series is a seasonal fulcrum of musical concentration. In Cornwall each summer, at Prussia Cove, he gives seminars on the values of friendship and conversation, the bedrock of chamber music.
‘Every time I go to a boring classical concert I feel so angry,’ he says. ‘It reinforces people’s clichéd and inaccurate view of what we do.’
So what’s the solution? ‘Play better. If you play better, people will listen better. If they listen, they will feel better.’
The last children’s music concert of the 2007-08 season at the Y is a program on The Life and Music of Joseph Haydn featuring Isserlis, pianist Jeremy Denk and the Orion String Quartet on May 11.
Ted Sorensen at the White House during the Kennedy Administration
Ted Sorensen was John F. Kennedy’s special counsel, speechwriter and close advisor, and his new memoir, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, explores this part of his life in intimate detail. Today, at almost 80 years of age, Sorensen is still living “at the edge of history” as an advisor to Barack Obama. He discussed both in a Q&A with Deborah Solomon in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine:
What do you make of Hillary’s comment that Obama’s promises and speeches are “just words”?
Kennedy’s rhetoric when he was president turned out to be a key to his success. His mere words about Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba helped resolve the worst crisis the world has ever known without the U.S. having to fire a shot.
Isn’t it melodramatic to call the Cuban missile crisis the worst crisis ever? What about, say, World War I?
With all due respect, with World War I the survival of the earth was not at stake.
When will the contest for a Democratic candidate end?
I think it’s likely to be almost as close as it was for Kennedy at the Democratic convention in 1960. We felt that he had to be nominated by the first ballot because if it ever went to a backroom he wouldn’t emerge. Probably the same is true of Obama.
Video: Senator Harry Reid on Iraq, President Bush and General Petraeus
When President Bush gave a speech on April 10 declaring a “major strategic shift” in Iraq following the U.S. troop surge, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it “can only be described as one step forward and two steps back.” The video above has more of his reaction.
A former boxer raised in the small desert mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, Senator Reid has earned his “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” reputation. His autobiography, The Good Fight, hits bookstores on May 1 (read more in the Las Vegas Sun) and he’ll be making a rare New York appearance at the 92nd Street Y with Jeff Greenfield on May 8 to talk about his personal journey, tireless work in the Senate and the upcoming election.
Carl Reiner—legendary comedian, actor, novelist and director—appeared at the Y on February 9, 2006 as part of the Funny People Series. In the audio clip above, he talks with Susie Essman about the rejection of his television pilot, Head of the Family, in 1959 which would later become a hit as The Dick Van Dyke Show where he began his directing career.
You can also download the MP3. [1.2 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
92Y Video: Art of the Book with Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers
In December 2006, Michael Bierut of the design firm Pentagram moderated a Poetry Center Reading Series event called “The Art of the Book: Behind the Covers” with visual presentations by superstar designers Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers followed by a panel discussion. You can read reviews of the program here and revisit the spirited debate about “The Graphic Glass Ceiling” that ensued on the Design Observer blog in its wake. Even better, watch the full 100-minute program above.
Program Notes: Chamber Music at the Y, April 29-30
Alan Alda unites his two passions, music and theater, in dramatic presentations of two colorful chamber works featuring dancer Colleen Dunn and actor Noah Wyle. The following are program notes for the performances on April 29 and April 30 at the 92nd Street Y.
SAINT-SAËNS: Carnival of the Animals Camille Saint Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and died in Algiers in 1921. He composed Carnival of the Animals in 1886.
Of Camille Saint Saëns, Berlioz once remarked, “He knows everything but lacks inexperience.” This bon mot is ideally suited to describe a man who, having composed his first piece at age three, was hailed for a time as a second Mozart; who played a piano recital in Paris at age ten and offered to play as an encore any Beethoven piano sonata that the audience might be pleased to request; who was hailed by Liszt as the greatest organist in the world; who eagerly pursued studies in archeology, astronomy and philosophy and wrote extensively in all three fields, as well as taking a vigorous part in musical polemics. And, of course, in his 86 years, he composed 13 operas, five symphonies (of which two remained unpublished after his death), orchestral tone poems, ten full-fledged concertos for piano, violin, or cello, and a large body of chamber music and other works. But he is best remembered for a private burlesque which he dashed off in a matter of days, an amusing jest called The Carnival of the Animals (this fact would have caused him deep chagrin). Unlike many other composers of the romantic era, Saint-Saëns was more classical in his orientation, preferring clarity and craftsmanship to inspiration and personal expression. Today, when so many adopt the expression of personal feelings as the height of significant statement, we rather lose track of composers like Saint-Saëns, who remind us of the opposite swing of the artistic pendulum.
The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State
Figure 42. Danish Rail System as a Linking Infrastructure. Comparable to a prospective Palestinian state, Denmark is composed of separate land areas—primarily a peninsula and two islands. These are now linked by a high-speed rail line between Copenhagen and the other major cities (the trip from Copenhagen airport to Odense is 115 miles—almost identical to the distance from Rafah Airport to Nablus—and takes only 72 minutes). The final link across the Great Belt was accomplished by the engineering feat of building a rail tunnel and vehicular bridge.
Creating a successful Palestinian state poses a wide range of political, economic, social and environmental challenges. The RAND Corporation took the task of creating a study, The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State, which has won prestigious architecture awards and the praise of leading experts. From the research abstract:
An exploration of options for strengthening the physical infrastructure for a new Palestinian state, this study builds on analyses that RAND conducted between 2002 and 2004 to identify the requirements for a successful Palestinian state. That work, Building a Successful Palestinian State, surveyed a broad array of political, economic, social, resource, and environmental challenges that a new Palestinian state would face. This study, The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State, examined a range of approaches to siting and constructing the backbone of infrastructure that all states need, in the context of a large and rapidly growing Palestinian population. The research team develop a detailed vision for a modern, high-speed transportation infrastructure, referred to as the Arc. This transportation backbone accommodates substantial population growth in Palestine by linking current urban centers to new neighborhoods via new linear transportation arteries that support both commercial and residential development. The Arc avoids the environmental costs and economic inefficiencies of unplanned, unregulated urban development that might otherwise accompany Palestine’s rapid population growth. Constructing the key elements of the Arc will require very substantial investment of economic resources. It will also employ substantial numbers of Palestinian construction workers. It seems plausible that key aspects of the Arc design can be pursued, with great benefit, even before an independent Palestinian state is established.
You can download the full report here. Two of its authors, Michael Schoenbaum—Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation—and Doug Suisman, an award-winning architect and urban planner, will present their plan at the Y on April 29.
Today’s New York Times has a flattering review of Andrew Sean Greer’s fourth book, The Story of a Marriage, which is being released on April 29.
From the beginning of this inspired, lyrical novel, the reader is pulled along by the attentive voice of Pearlie, a young African-American woman who travels west to San Francisco in search of a better life after growing up in a rural Kentucky town. Not long after her arrival, she encounters her high school sweetheart, Holland Cook, on a bench near the ocean…
During the coming months Buzz and Pearlie clandestinely meet for conversations several times at Playland-by-the-Sea, among other locations, as they negotiate the uncertain outcome of their precarious love triangle. This is where Mr. Greer’s considerable gifts as a storyteller ascend to the heights of masters like Marilynne Robinson and William Trevor. In the hands of a lesser writer this narrative might have stumbled into a literary derivation of Annie Proulx’s now famous short story “Brokeback Mountain.” But instead Mr. Greer creates a moving story that is all his own via an intimate view of Pearlie’s world, which has spun off its axis…
Later in the novel Pearlie says: “This is a war story. It was not meant to be. It started as a love story, the story of a marriage, but the war has stuck to it everywhere like shattered glass.” Mr. Greer collects these bits and pieces of glass, and creates a tender kaleidoscope of both our history and Pearlie’s heart. “I do not know what joins the parts of an atom,” she observes, “but it seems what binds one human to another is pain.”
Katie Clancy doesn’t need to stretch when praising a 
