My dad and I visited my grandmother in New York City for Passover last weekend. We enjoyed not one but two seders, and also went into Manhattan for some tourist-ing. Here were the highlights of our trip into the city.
When I was looking up things to do in NYC over the weekend, I happened across the website of this museum. It's managed by the American Kennel Club. It's a bit overpriced at $15 per person for a museum that takes less than an hour to go through. But I'll consider it a one-time donation to the cause. It was cool seeing paintings, drawings, and sculptures of dogs, and they have a library full of dog books, too! Here are some of the pieces we saw:
I'm partial to the Frenchie myself. Image found here
These Great Danes were spectacular! Image found here.
This is the skeleton of Belgrave Joe, the dog that helped establish the fox terrier breed. He died in the late 1880's, and his skeleton was kept at the Royal Veterinary College in England before going to the museum. Image found here
Architecture
I love the top of the Chrysler Building. It is so cool!
After the museum trip, we walked around the 42nd Street area and saw some of my favorite spots, including the lobby of the Chrysler Building and Grand Central Station. I also discovered that the nearby Chanin Building has an art deco style to it, so I enjoyed that as well.
These first two photos are from the mural that is on the ceiling in the lobby of the Chrysler Building. The mural, called "Transport and Human Endeavor," was created by Edward Trumbull. He painted it on canvas, and then it was cemented to the ceiling. The mural is one of the largest paintings in the world.
The design on the elevator doors features wood from several different trees, including Japanese Ash, Oriental Walnut, and Cuban plum pudding wood. Image found here.
Grand Central Station with the MetLife Building behind it.
The ceiling in Grand Central is so cool: the zodiac signs span the whole thing, with lights marking the main stars. Image found here.
I had never been inside the Chanin Building before, but they had these really cool metal pieces of artwork in their lobby. I wish they sold postcards with these designs!
I always love visiting Bryant Park, no matter what time of year it is. My dad and I got very expensive sandwiches at the Breads Bakery food kiosk in the park, and then sat in the sunshine enjoying our lunch. It is rather cliché, but I love doing that kind of thing!
*I'm sorry that I did not take most of the pictures included in this post. It's just that I actually wanted to enjoy the experience and enjoy the moment, instead of taking pictures the whole time!
I have seen three plays, two ballets, and one concert this month, and it's only half-way over! I already wrote blog posts about the New York City Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet, and Brave Spirits' "As You Like It." Rather than write separate blog posts for the others (I have a bunch of events coming up for work, so I just don't have time!), I thought I'd sum them up here.
I read about this play in the DC Theatre Scene e-blast. Since the performance was held at the Writer's Center in Bethesda (SUPER closer to where I live), I definitely wanted to see it.
This Michael Hollinger play was put on by the Quotidian Theatre Company. It is about a typist who, after her author boss passes away, still hears his voice and is continuing to type his book. The cast was very small: Carol Spring played the typist, Steve LaRocque was the author, and Stephanie Mumford played the author's wife. I thought all three actors did a great job in encompassing their characters. The story had some sad and serious parts, but overall was very witty. As someone who can be sensitive to noises, the incessant ringing of the telephone and typing of the typewriter were at times obnoxious, but all in all I very much enjoyed the production.
This show has been going on for decades at the Kennedy Center (the website says there have been more than 13,000 performances). I had heard about it, but all I knew was that it was an interactive play. I can't believe I waited so long to see it: it is HILARIOUS! The premise is that there has been a murder in the building that houses a hair salon, and the audience is there to help solve the crime. The first act is just getting to know the characters (the sassy gay hairdresser, Tony Whitcomb (played by Brad Letson), was my favorite), and it ends with the murder; the second act gives the audience the chance to ask questions about the murder and then vote on who-dun-it. I am not sure how much the first act changes, but the second part changes depending on how the vote goes. And the show is updated every so often, so many of the jokes were timely (think Trump jokes, etc.). I was laughing out loud the whole time, and I would highly recommend it! I've even see it again, since it's different every time!
I had seen this group perform previously at the Strathmore and the 9:30 Club. This time I got to see them at U Street Music Hall (I don't think I'd been there since 2016!).
The opening act was Valley Queen, whose female vocalist sounded just like you'd expect from an indie band. I liked it, don't get me wrong, but it was a little expected. Here are some of their songs:
The Wild Reeds then played a (very long) set. We didn't get out of there until nearly 11pm, and it was a Tuesday night! I do like their music, but I was actually falling asleep while I was watching. Here's just a taste of their stuff:
Lose My Mind
Don't Pretend
Giving Up On You
They did a Tiny Desk Concert, too!
The arts are one of my favorite parts about living in DC: there's SO much here!
I saw the Mariinsky Ballet at the Kennedy Center several years ago when they performed Swan Lake(read that blog post here). They are a Russian-based company, and the famed George Balanchine got his start there. I was dying to see them again, and was disappointed when the MyTix tickets sold out so quickly for their performance of Le Corsaire. But I was able to find discounted tickets at the last minute, and went to the show last night!
I had no idea what Le Corsaire was about, so I very much appreciated the synopsis in the program book. This ballet has been around for more than 150 years, and composer Adolphe Adam (the program lists his name as "Adan" incorrectly) wrote the music based upon Lord George Byron's poem, "The Corsair."
The prologue is a brief scene of a ship caught in a storm. Images of rain and clouds were projected onto a transparent screen, and the effect was pretty realistic! A large piece of blue, billowing fabric mimicked the waves of the ocean, which was really cool.
The girls dance on the beach where the pirates' ship has landed. Image found here.
The three men (who call themselves pirates) are shipwrecked on the shore, and a couple of them were shirtless (yum). A group of women comes to their aid, and their flowy pants made me think of Jasmine in Aladdin (or the costumes for the Arabian Coffee dance in another bullet, The Nutcracker). Conrad (played by Xander Parish) falls immediately in love with Medora (played by Yekaterina Chebykina), but the Turkish police show up and take the girls prisoner, selling them to a slave-trader named Lankedem (played by Philipp Stepin).
While a slave market is, well a slave market, this part had the most BEAUTIFUL set! It was so colorful and larger-than-life. The costumes mirrored that, with robes and turbans and gem stones of all colors of the rainbow. I'm sorry I couldn't find a photo of it; it was amazing!
I wasn't crazy about the dances during this part. There were several groups of women dancing for the men (it was hard to understand who was who), and their dancing included a lot of back-bends, which can seem impressive, but for fellow yogis like me, isn't really all-that. Their long wigs distracted me, and they wore bangles to create sound while they danced, but it really wasn't that effective (I think they were going for the sound of coins on one of those skirts, but sounded more like clunky wood). And the tutu that Medora's friend Gulnara (played by Maria Shirinkina) wore wasn't great: it looked like swatches of different fabrics were simply sewed onto a basic white skirt (see the photo below). When the men and women danced together, the lifts were unimpressive; the men just lifted the women up and moved them to different parts of the stage, as if they were carrying a heavy box or something. And the dancers would break character and bow to the audience, which I think took away from the story.
I just wasn't impressed by this costume. It looks crafty... Image found here.
The pirates are able to help the girls escape (capturing Lankedem at the same time), and they flee to a cave (which is VERY large with rocks shimmering with gold). There was a lot more dancing, but the principals almost made it a spinning contest, which I think is a cheap trick in dance (and every time Chebykina turned she looked scared to death). Some of the costumes felt very out-of-place, like the bedazzled suspenders worn by Ali (played by Timur Askerov) or Medora's magenta tutu (when everyone else is wearing the flowy pants or multi-colored skirts). But Askerov was probably my favorite dancer of the night: his jumps were very high, yet he landed without making a sound!
Does this look like what you would wear inside of a cave? I didn't think so. Image found here.
All of the men wore these gross wigs and drew on fake facial hair. Ew. Image found here.
The girls want to leave, but Conrad's friend Birbanto (played by Yuri Smekalov), wants to keep them there. With the help of some other bad guys (who held their capes up much like the crocodiles in Fantasia), and a sleeping potion to give Conrad, the women are then taken back to the slave market.
The final scene is in the palace of Seid Pasha (played by Soslan Kulaev). The palace is very sparkly with peacock-inspired decor and a fountain in the background. He purchased Gulnara previously, and she has been a part of his harem since. He now wants Medora to join his harem, too. Both women dance for him, Shirinkina in a slightly better tutu than the first one and Chebykina in a pink number that fits the setting better than a tutu (for the story, at least).They are joined by many other women (and young girls) in pink who carry stiff feather boas (in the shape of an arch); they had terrible blonde wigs on, too. This was probably my favorite dance portion of the performance because of the classical bits.
In the end Gulnara and Medora are able to run away with Conrad and Ali. The story ends with them sailing away on the boat (with much better weather).
A few notes about my experience:
1. When the men lifted the women in dance, some of their fake facial hair (which I assume was drawn on with make-up) would get onto the white tights of the women. So Chebykina and Shirinkina had to dance with dark smudges on their tights! I can't believe this problem wasn't discovered during a dress rehearsal. You'd think someone would have thought about this.
2. I LOVED the music of this piece. I can appreciate classical music, but when I'm at the ballet, it usually just becomes part of the background for me. But this time I think I liked the music better than the dancing itself!
3. Several of the men around me were reading the synopsis of the story to their wives/dates. Were those women incapable of reading? I found it very patronizing, and I wasn't even involved!
4. Because I bought a subscription to the next ballet season, I got a free drink ticket as a "thank you." So nice!
I want to support local theater, and lately I've seen a number of shows. However, I frequently end up disappointed: the stories are usually weird, depressing, or both. For example, I saw "Separate Rooms" by the 4615 Theatre Company a few weeks ago, and it was awful. The acting was bad, the story made no sense, AND I sat on an opened safety pin that was stuck in my chair. Hmpf.
After that experience, I told myself that the next play I saw would have to be something I had already heard of. So when I saw a deal for tickets to see Brave Spirits' "As You Like It" on TodayTix, I figured I couldn't go wrong. A Shakespeare romantic comedy: who doesn't like that?
I have never read this play, nor had I ever seen it performed, so I was excited to experience such a classic. I realized that I did know parts of it from pop culture. The quote, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players," is from this play, and in the movie Never Been Kissed, Drew Barrymore's character reads about Rosalind and Orlando. And because Shakespeare uses many of the same themes and plot lines in his plays, I felt very familiar with the jokes around mistaken identities and lovers meeting in forests (think A Midsummer Night's Dream).
I thought the play was well-cast, and the actors were quite talented. Farrell Parker and Rebecca Speas, pictured above, played the cousins Rosalind and Celia, and their on-stage chemistry was very believable. Ben Peter was a great Orlando (such a cutie!), and Megan Reichelt played her two male roles quite well (and I knew I recognized her from somewhere: she was in a Flying V play I saw a few years ago). A number of the actors had good singing voices, and they had great timing for their jokes. And while I thought some of the side-romances were a bit unnecessary, that's how Shakespeare wrote the story, so oh well.
Touchstone's fling with Valley girl Audrey was a little silly and didn't add anything to the story. Image found here.
Occasionally the actors broke the fourth wall and interacted with the audience. Those sitting in the front received programs like you might at a wedding, and I was handed one of the love notes Orlando leaves in the forest for Rosalind:
When you smile at me, I lose myself You give me this feeling that makes me overwhelmed. When your hand is in mine, I totally feel fine, And that's the reason I had to make you mine.
I really enjoyed this play, but my main complaint is that it's a bit long. And not only that, but the second act is longer than the first! Usually you're guaranteed that the second half will be shorter, so when the first act was exactly an hour, I thought for sure we would be done by 10:15 at the latest. But no: the second act was nearly 90 minutes long itself! It was late, I was tired, and I was getting so antsy that I actually pulled the script up on my phone so I could follow along and see how close we were to the end. So steel yourself if you plan to see it (it's playing through April 27th in Alexandria) for a long (but fun!) night. (Actually, looking at the website now, it does say the play is two-and-a-half hours long...) Here's a review by the DC Theatre Scene if you're interested: https://dctheatrescene.com/2019/04/13/as-you-like-it-review-to-brave-spirits-show-we-say-we-do/
Last night I went to the Kennedy Center to see the New York City Ballet for the fifth year* in a row! I went with a friend who hadn't been to a ballet since she was a child, and certainly had never seen the ballet at this remarkable venue. So I was excited to share the experience with her!
There were four pieces in last night's performance. Here's a little taste of each of them:
This piece was choreographed by Gianna Reisen, who is only 19 years old! This is quite the accomplishment! But, I will say that her inexperience showed in the piece. I didn't feel a sense of cohesion throughout the performance; things felt a bit disconnected and didn't flow as well as I'd like. And some of the moves were a bit too literal, like dancers pointing at each other. And this is not a reflection on Reisen, but a few of the ballerinas had permanent smiles on their faces, even during the darker parts of the show; it was like they were trained as pageant contestants, always smiling no matter if it's inappropriate for the moment. But there were positives to the youthfulness of the piece. Because younger dancers from the corps de ballet were dancing, I felt like I was watching the emotions of teenagers, from flirtation to angst. There was definitely a fun energy about the piece overall. And the costumes were lovely!
See what I mean? Image found here (photo by Paul Kolnik)
While the first piece was the most amateur, this may have been my least favorite part of the night. The two ballerinas, Abi Stafford and Teresa Reichlen, wore ponytails instead of chignons, which was very distracting, and their costumes were a little too child's-sailor-dress for me. I appreciated the militaristic uniformity of the men's movements (which never turned homoerotic, surprisingly), but the juxtaposition of that with silly moves like heel-toe steps and skipping around stage was jarring. Joseph Gordon and Russell Janzen, the two highlighted male dancers, were so clearly principals compared to the other men on stage; I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing...
This piece opened up with the principal Gonzalo Garcia, and I was immediately blown away. He was AMAZING! He is incredibly strong and muscular, and so in control of his body. Sterling Hyltin, his female counterpart, didn't stand a chance in holding a candle to him. I love when male dancers wear white tights! But I did enjoy the purple costumes, which included shades of lavender, lilac, and eggplant (although the other men wore white socks, which made them look like Jazzercise instructors). There were fun parts to this piece, like when the men would dance for the women and vice versa, and there were parts where the moves just seemed to say, "I just want to dance it out!" I think this was my favorite part of the show.
This Balanchine piece was actually performed by the New York City Ballet the first time the company performed at the Kennedy Center, which was in 1974. But these were updated costumes, bedazzled with Swarovski crystals. I am a sucker for a sparkly tutu and tiara, so I was in heaven as they glittered in the light, even when the dancers were standing still. However, other than the costumes, I actually don't remember anything about the piece being particularly striking. I don't recall any pas de deux moves that were out-of-this-world, or any lifts to write home about. While I was completely enamored with the costumes, a dance cannot rely solely on that to be interesting. AND one girl fell. Oops!
If you want to get really old-school, you can watch this piece from a 1973 performance:
There were so many curtain calls throughout the performance that my friend joked, "My hands are bleeding!" But, even still, the company will return for the 2019-2020 season, and I guarantee I'll be buying tickets!
*Please read my blog posts about the other times I saw this company perform in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
I realize my birthday isn't until the end of this month, but I like to plan ahead (as well as extend my birthday celebration for as long as possible). I also recognize that people usually make gift wish lists for Christmas or wedding registries. But Christmas is so far away, and the likelihood of a spinster like me ever creating a wedding registry is improbable.
Hence this birthday wish list. If anyone out there wants to help me celebrate my big 3-0 with a special little something, here are some ideas:
Anything related to barre classes: As a member of Bar Method (and previous member of Pure Barre), I am always in need of barre socks, and I will never spend the money myself on their high-price tag items like branded tank tops. But if I owned these things, I'd wear them all the time (last month I went to Bar Method 19 times, which averages to more than four times a week!).
Dartmouth gear: Continuing the athletic theme, I would love to have some cute work-out Dartmouth clothes. All I have are T-shirts, and now that they're nearly ten years old...I need an upgrade. The Dartmouth Co-op has a great selection!
Sheet masks: I hate the fact that I love these because they are clearly bad for the environment (so much waste!). But they do make at-home facials so easy and fun!
Michael Kors perfume: I love the scent Michael Kors by Michael Kors (very original name, clearly). But it is rather expensive, which is why I haven't bought a new bottle for myself. I'm currently wearing hopeful, a scent from Francesca's, which smells very similar to the Kors one. But unfortunately that scent has been discontinued, and I'm almost to the bottom of the bottle, too!
.jpg){kind=link}
