I’ve been hearing rumors about this for a while now, but now that the celeb gossip mags are starting to pick it up, I feel authorized to post about it. Millepied is doing the choreography for the upcoming film Black Swan, which Portman is starring in.

Ever since the World Series, I’d been secretly hoping for a Derek Jeter / Ashley Bouder romance (don’t know why; just thought they’d look so cute together — she seems to be his type and he needs an athletic woman to kind of play-rival him and to show him how to really jump — and how fun would it be to see him at Lincoln Center all the time!) but, okay this will certainly do as well…

Photos above from The Hollywood Gossip.

So, after NYCBallet’s Nutcracker Friday night (review coming soon), my friend Mika and I discovered a new place for after-ballet drinks and interesting foodie things — Ed’s Chowder House (located right across the street from Lincoln Center, two doors down from PJ Clarke’s and at the bottom of the Empire Hotel).

The dining area is nice, but the bar room (where you can get less expensive a la carte items — mostly fresh fish and chowders) is what really rocks. My friends and I always used to go to PJ Clarke’s, which is a bit cheaper, but it was always so crowded — both bar and resturant, the bar stools have no backs and are extremely uncomfortable, and the wait staff is always so pissy about seating you at a table if your party is not fully arrived or if you’re only getting appetizers or desserts — even if you get an expensive cocktail (or three) and a couple appetizers to share (which comes out to be far more money-wise than if you order one entree and a non-alcoholic drink). And then once you are seated the wait staff makes it their sole mission to get you out of there as soon as humanly possible, nearly opening your mouth for you and shoveling in the food. I once nearly had to smack a waiter on the hand for repeatedly trying to take my plate away… Plus, I was in there nearly every night last season, and could the hostess’s face ever register any recognition?…

Rosa Mexicano around the corner is lovely, but for me, it’s best in summer so you can sit outside. The bar is too cramped (though the chairs do have backs) and the restaurant area is not very interesting, imo, though the little swimmer guys diving down the waterfall-covered wall aligning the stairway are very dancerly and cute.

Anyway, we were extremely excited to find an excellent alternative in Ed’s! The bar area is spacious and there are multiple little tables behind the actual bar. Bar is made out of very cool material by the way — hard to describe — we weren’t sure if the objects underneath the glazed covering were sea shells, but they were very cool — do check it out! The restaurant area can get a bit pricey, but the bar serves really good a la carte items — oysters, various chowders, seafood appetizers like lobster rolls, scallop ravioli and mini crab cakes, and individually-ordered fish steaks and interesting sides like chili-glazed spinach and horseradish mashed potatoes. And they have a nice cocktail list and a pretty good wine selection. They made the best Tanqueray martini – which I now call the “Laura Jacobs martini” since she introduced me to it a few weeks ago when she and James Wolcott took us out for after-ABT dinner at Shun Lee — and it’s the best I’ve had since that evening.

And they have bowls full of chewy saltwater taffey on the way out

For the past few evenings I’ve been partaking of the Met Opera’s outdoor Summer HD Festival on Lincoln Center Plaza. The first night I went was Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. It was on a week night and the plaza was about half full. I’d bought a sack pique-nique dinner from Bar Boulud across the street — which was delic by the way (chilled gazpacho soup, baguette of brie and fresh fig spread, waffle chips, bittersweet chocolate tart, and bottle of Pellegrino). But when I took a seat in the back and began to unwrap my brown bag I realized what a commotion I was making, how dead silent it was. I waited until a noisy helicopter buzzed around above us for a few seconds to tear into my sandwich. I absolutely loved the quiet, but figured it must be because this opera was so serious and esoteric — only true opera-manes would go.

But then last night, Puccini’s far more popular La Boheme was the same. Plaza was packed. I mean, every single seat was taken (both of the fold-out variety set up by the event organizers and make-shift seats like construction cones aligning Avery Fisher Hall), there was hardly a square foot of ground to stand on all the way to the street — people were even camped out atop the temporary Koch Theater ticket trailer (until police came around telling them to get down). But once the music began, there was the same dead silence. Everyone stared up and the screen, completely captivated. It was even quiet around the food and liquor stands, where people were basically whispering their orders. Children (the few that were there) behaved, dogs (the many that were there) behaved. Well, dogs usually behave in a crowd, actually… But even the little kids seemed to know it was important to try to concentrate on the screens.

The noisiest part of the evening was when South Pacific, showing next door at the Vivian Beaumont, let out. But once the theater-goers realized there was something important going on out on the Plaza, they shushed each other and ventured up to watch — in total silence — as well.

Such a complete contrast with some of the outdoor dance festivals — Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Downtown Dance Festival, site-specific summertime events, sometimes SummerStage. I’ve heard from several people now that the Saratoga Performing Arts Center where NYCBallet has their summer season, is much the same, making me honestly not all that excited to go up there. I mean, kids are running around, parents yelling, people talking to their friends at the same pitch as if they were in a noisy bar, people unwrapping food, opening soda cans, popping gum.

So what gives? Do people just think opera is mainly about music and so to enjoy it everyone must be able to hear it above all else, whereas dance is more visual — so you can make all the noise want and not bother people because they can still see? Maybe it’s about the children — people are much less inclined to bring small kids to the opera, but they somehow think their two-year-old is going to have a deep appreciation of Balanchine or Karole Armitage or classical Indian dance. Maybe they equate outdoor dance performances with outdoor social dance events like Midsummer Night’s Swing, where you’re hardly going to disturb social dancers by talking. Or maybe there’s something about a big ole screen being up there.

I wonder if it would be different if ABT would have a summer HD festival and show outdoor broadcasts of some of the spring season’s ballets. Probably not… although the crowds were pretty quiet for the David Michalek Slow Dancing exhibit two years ago (once Midsummer Night Swing ended anyway)…

Anyway, tonight (Saturday) is Mark Morris’s Orfeo ed Euridice. I mean Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice but Morris produced and choreographed. We’ll see how it goes when there’s some dance involved… The Met outdoor HD festival continues through Monday night, ending with Anthony Minghella’s production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.

So, NORA, which I wrote a little about here, ended up being an absolutely gorgeous film — totally inventive, wholly original, told completely through dance. Honestly, I see A LOT of films and this was one of the most brilliant. It’s not long — only about half the length of a regular film (it’s showing at the NYAfrican Film Festival along with two other shortish films), and I so wish the filmmakers (Alla Kovgan and David Hinton) would have gone farther to tell more of her life. Hopefully they will someday.

Dancer Nora Chipaumire was born and raised in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), and moved to the U.S. in 1989, at age 24. Through the film she reenacts solely through movement (along with, silent-film-style, a few intermittent words on a black screen) her childhood — her dear father of whom she has few memories who was banished from the family via court order by her mother’s divorce petition, difficulties with her overbearing mother who didn’t shy away from physical abuse, her first sexual experience, falling in love, being the victim of an attempted rape, becoming involved in revolutionary activities during college, etc. She dances all parts — including that of her father and other men. (A male dancer, Souleymane Badolo, brilliantly dances the part of the court marshal with his marching legs, lifted high at the knee, coming to banish the father from the family, in one of my favorite scenes.)

The story is, obviously, very expressionistic, and Chipaumire can be quite humorous when she wants to be. In another of my favorite parts, the between-scene words on the black screen tell us that when Chipaumire was a child, her mother got a job working for a British export company. Her mother soon became smitten with all things White — white soap, white clothes, white culture basically. In the following scene, Chipaumire plays an English school teacher. To her class of Zimbabwean children, she holds up a tube of bright white Colgate toothpaste. “Colgate,” she pronounces, proudly enunciating each syllable. “Colgate,” her students say all in unison, equally proud to learn. Then, everyone squirts stark white paste out of their tubes, begins scrubbing their teeth, merrily merrily merrily. White suds roll down their chins, the white making a stark contrast with their skin. Messy as they’re getting, everyone is thrilled to be dressed in this gooey white paste. Everyone then spits bright white, milk-like liquid into their little bins and flashes to the camera their shiny white sparkling teeth, silly, hilariously phony smiles pasted over their little faces.

Immediately following this, Chipaumire transforms from her mother to her adult self — maybe, or maybe it is still her mother, but in the form of her authentic self — and stands in the school hallway, breaking into a version of the dance, Dark Swan, that I saw her do at Jacob’s Pillow (keep clicking ‘next,’ to see more pics), where she she scrubs her head, face, and upper body furiously, as if trying to get something off of her, before performing her own, beautiful African-based adagio to Saint Saens Dying Swan.

I’d loved the dance when I saw it at JP and loved it more seeing it in the context of the movie.

I think the film was made between the US, the UK, and Mozambique, rather than Zimbabwe, but the scenes of Africa are gorgeous. So rich and full of color — the clothing, the land, the dirt, the trees, the buildings, everything. Chipaumire is such a stunning presence, kind of like Grace Jones but far more artistic. She is such a beautiful, strong, powerful woman. And her dancing and choreography are astounding. The audience went wild with applause during the credits when the words “all choreography by Nora Chipaumire” rolled down the screen. Someone shouted, “Bravo.” And others echoed, “Yes, yes!” I got the sense most of the crowd was not a dance audience (where were all the dance on camera peeps, I wondered????) I wanted to shout out to these people, “Yes, see, dance is really really cool. If only you all would come to a couple performances!”

If you’re in New York, you have another chance to see it: Tuesday, April 14th at 2:40 pm at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Go here for more details on the festival, and here to read more about this gorgeous film and to see some clips. It looks like it’s playing as part of other African film festivals, so hopefully more people around the country and around the world will have the chance to see it.

I was in the bookstore the other day looking for literary magazines and somehow got caught up in the latest issue of Vogue Hommes International. I’ve been a fan of Keanu Reeves all the way back since River’s Edge (honestly) and I saw on the cover that there was an interview inside with Bret Easton Ellis (novelist, Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama, etc. etc.) Interview with BEE is pretty funny, actually, in a way it likely wasn’t intended to be. IE: interviewer: So, you were an icon in, like the 80’s. BEE: Yeah, it was hard being an icon. And confusing. Seriously. I’d get in a fight with my boyfriend and I’d be like, wait, you can’t criticize me; I’m an icon!” But my favorite BEE quote is here.

Anyway, I was flipping through and there are all these little mini interviews with and photos of writers (Stefan Merrill Block too!), architects, actors and filmmakers, of course designers and models.

(French actor / filmmaker Louis Garrel by Bruce Weber, images from here)

But not a single dancer anywhere. Why not? They’d make such good models

(photos of Sebastien Marcovici and Robert Fairchild by Paul Kolnik, from NYCB website)

(Jose Carreno and Roberto Bolle by Tommy Ng, from ExploreDance)

(David Hallberg and Herman Cornejo in Gene Schiavone pic, from here)

(Sergey Surkov, my photo; Slavik Kryklyvyy from here)

(Arunas Bizokas, my photo; Linas Koreiva, from here and here)

Vogue Hommes should so hire me to compile a dancer spread! Fabrizio Ferri can do the pictures. Maybe Bruce Weber, though he can get kind of cliched and corny… No, Fabrizio.

Then, yesterday, I saw Valentino: The Last Emperor, which was pretty good. The Dolce Vita-esque scenes were the best   And it reminded me of Fashion Week’s being moved from Bryant Square to Lincoln Center, and I thought how excellent (and fitting of course) it would be to have NYCB and ABT ballerinas as the models, an idea Kristin Sloan had proposed on the Winger a while back. Ballerinas generally have far better bodies than models. Come on!

(Stella Abrera, photo by Nancy Ellison, taken from here)

(Irina Dvorovenko, from ABT website)

(Janie Taylor, by Paul Kolnik, from ExploreDance)

How sweet would Janie look in this Valentino gown (middle, pink, image from here)

And Irina in this (image, here):

(photo of Nora Chipaumire from NYAFF website)

Today begins the New York African Film Festival, at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. I love New York for things like this — particularly the Walter Reade, which most often hosts the foreign film festivals here. There are loads of intriguing-looking films showing as part of the NYAFF — comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, political, historical, documentary — you name it. One, in particular, caught my dancing eye: Nora, about Nora Chipaumire of Urban Bush Women. I’d seen her dance at Jacob’s Pillow two years ago and she really blew me away. The film is about her return to her native Zimbabwe, where she remembers her youth. According to the description, the film “brings her history to life through performance, dance, sound, and image” and “includes a multitude of local performers and dancers of all ages.” Famed Zimbabwean musician Thomas Mapfumo composed the music. It’s showing together with another film, Coming of Age, about Kenya’s road to democracy as seen through the eyes of a young girl. There are so many films. The festival runs at the Walter Reade through the 14th, then travels to Columbia University and then Brooklyn Academy of Music. Visit their website for the full schedule.

Then, April 15th begins the Catalan Days Festival, a NYC-wide celebration of all things from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. This festival includes free food samplings, plays, film, music, literature, and of course dance. The Baryshnikov Arts Center is the main host of the dance events. Visit BAC for a dance schedule, and the Catalan Days website for the full lineup. Happily, this festival runs all the way through mid-May.

Yesterday, Ariel invited me to a rehearsal at New York City Ballet. I love watching rehearsals! Especially with performers you really like; you kind of get to know their personalities a bit more. I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about anything in detail, but can I just say, methinks Tyler Angle must be every girl’s Dream partner

(photo by Paul Kolnik, from NYCB website)

Anyway, afterward, Ariel told me about the new cafe at Alice Tully Hall, the northernmost building of Lincoln Center, that houses mainly music concerts. She’d heard the restaurant portion (apparently the mac ‘n cheese) got some negative reviews, but I thought their coffee was rich and the American cheesecake we had, which was creamy and topped with little swirls of white chocolate, was delic. The spacious cafe is on the bottom floor and, encased in glass, it lets a lot of sunlight in and gives you an excellent view of the surrounding area.

(this is facing east).

(and this south, toward the rest of Lincoln Center. Ariel picking delicately at her cheesecake in foreground )

(the renovated Juilliard School aka Irene Diamond Building atop Alice Tully Hall).

Lincoln Center’s been under construction forever, so it’s nice to finally see some of the building facades begin to crawl out from under their shells.

Also, last night I went to a very intriguing performance at Dance Theater Workshop, called Kisaeng becomes you by experimental dance-makers Dean Moss and Yoon Jin Kim. It’s on for one night more — tonight — and I highly recommend it if you’re in New York. I went to see it as part of Claudia La Rocco’s WNYC performance club. I found it to be powerful but subtle, and at least in part about the commodification of Asian women in contemporary society, although club members, who discussed the performance a bit afterward at a nearby French restaurant, saw different things. Review coming soon! In the meantime, here’s Gia Kourlas’s NYTimes write-up.