My friend Erin Gilbreth recently started her own theater company here in New York called American Bard Theater Company. They specialize in putting on Shakespeare plays. Tonight, they open Measure For Measure at the Roy Arias Theater Center on 43rd Street. See their website for more info. And watch the promo video below. So excited!
Yesterday I was walking along 65th Street and, maybe I just haven’t walked down 65th Street in a while, but I just noticed on the side of the street across from Juilliard, they now have these little two-sided block panels. On one side, they have an advertisement for something going on at Lincoln Center – an opera, a symphony, a ballet, but on the other, they have brief moving pictures. One set is of dancers warming up, another of musicians. One is of waiters who decide to break-dance out on the sidewalk. There’s no sound, but they’re fun just to watch. And the street is lined with benches so you can sit and stay for a while.
It felt a bit like Paris to me 🙂
I also noticed a poster (below) on the Broadway side of Lincoln Center, advertising Lincoln Center Books. Sorry my photo isn’t so good – the sun was in my eyes!
Apparently Lincoln Center and publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. have entered into a joint venture to publish books of importance to Lincoln Center and its patrons. The books will bear both brand names.
This book – The Man with the Golden Flute – is the autobiography of Sir James Galway, an eminent flutist from Belfast.
They have several on their list. You can search the list on their website.
Not to be melodramatic but waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Worst thing about last night’s Yankees / Rangers game: not going to be able to watch certain New York City Ballet dancers (no names mentioned 🙂 ) getting plastered at a certain Lincoln Center-area bar during the World Series.
Seriously, I am so upset…
Photo of Derek Jeter taken from here.
Last night my neighbors were really noisy so I recorded Dancing With the Stars and went out to a bar to watch the Yankees. While watching the game (which we won!), I chatted a bit with a guy I met, and throughout the course of our conversation I mentioned that I was a dance fan / former ballroom dancer and from Arizona. He asked me if I was a Diamondbacks fan, and I said no, I was horrendously upset when they beat us in the World Series in 2001, even though I went to high school with the then-pitcher Curt Schilling… I’d worked downtown and Lower Manhattan just desperately needed a parade – something happy – that year; I think the series just became a symbol of much more than what it was because of what had happened. Plus, the Diamondbacks are a newish team and didn’t exist when I was growing up in Phoenix, so I didn’t really have a connection with them.
Anyway, so the guy asked me if I was a Cardinals fan. And I’m such a dork, I know nothing at all about any sport but baseball. I said, “What, is that a minor league team?” And he started laughing. He said, “No. Football. You know, Kurt Warner, the Super Bowl?…” All I know of the Super Bowl is Mark Sanchez :S I laughed and said I didn’t know football. He said, “Well, you’re rooting for Kurt Warner, right? I mean on Dancing With the Stars?” And then I put two and two together and realized that the football guy this season is the guy he’s talking about. So, Kurt on DWTS played for Arizona, who knew 🙂 And, look, he had A-Rod’s number…
Anyway, so on DWTS, I thought Michael Bolton rightly went home last night, even though I felt badly for him regarding Bruno’s nasty comment, which I didn’t think he deserved. I didn’t think his was the worst jive ever in 11 seasons; there have been too many untalented people on the show (Kate, Cloris, Buzz) or contestants who refused to work (that guy who was partnered with Ashley several seasons ago whose name I can’t now remember) for that to be correct. But I think Michael was having a hard time, it would have been an uphill struggle, and someone had to go. He might have improved but I think I’d rather see if The Situation can.
And regarding that whole spiel about the audience booing: I hadn’t even known there any controversy as to whom they booed – I thought it was clear it was the judges’ relatively low scores for Jennifer and Derek. Apparently some thought they were booing Tom Bergeron’s interviewing Sarah Palin?… Did you guys think that?
Football photo by Rob Schumacher, taken from AZCentral. DWTS photo taken from ShowStalker.
So for after-ballet drinking and snacking, here are three new Lincoln Center-area places I’ve recently found:
First is Atlantic Grill, on 64th between Broadway and Central Park West, which has taken over the old O’Neals – which was there for 46 years and it’s a royal shame it’s gone! I mean, really, 46 years is a pretty long time and that place was legendary. Anyway, Atlantic Grill is pretty good. I actually like the bar area better than when it was O’Neals. They have tables and chairs surrounding the whole bar instead of that back-looking bar across from the regular bar that O’Neals used to have, which I found awkward and tended to make it very crowded. They still have two TVs in the bar area. The dining room decor is a bit different but layout’s still the same. The food is very different though. Generally a bit pricier and menu is comprised mainly of fish, raw oysters, seafood, sushi, and even caviar. And, most importantly, decent cocktail menu, although the bartender tried to sell me on their version of a cosmo. And I don’t drink cosmos.
Expensive though their main dishes are, I find their reasonably-priced appetizers very filling. I had a poached shrimp salad one night and small plate of cavatelli with clams the other, and both of them filled me right up. I couldn’t even finish the pasta.
I guess I don’t often eat oysters because this was the first time I’d heard of the Naked Cowboy.
A bit farther up Columbus, Jalapeno, a Mexican restaurant, just opened (I don’t always keep track of cross-streets but I think it’s between 68th and 69th). I was raised on Mexican, and I declare Jalapeno one of the best Mexican restaurants I’ve found here in NY. Prices are totally inexpensive too.
I had this enormous chopped beef burrito and this huge frozen drink (whose name or contents I now can’t remember – sorry) and my bill came to barely $20.
They have a small bar and one TV, on which, the night I was there, they were playing a Yankees game 🙂 Not many bars and restaurants do that, especially after football season has started, so it made me extremely happy. It’s small, but pretty cozy if you can get a table along the window. And a serious Mexican cocktail menu.
Papacito in Washington Heights is still by far the best Mexican in the city, hands down, but for the price, location and margarita list (and attention to baseball), Jalapeno is very good.
And right next door to Jalapeno is Bomboloni, which specializes in Italian gelato (they usually have about six flavors) and bomboloni (which are small, very delicious donuts). And real Italians work behind the counter 🙂 They recently added this charming little sidewalk cafe. Definitely my favorite dessert place since Cafe La Fortuna sadly closed a couple years ago.
After hearing via Gothamist that New York City Ballet was opening the first Bryant Park Fall Festival, I trekked down to the park last night, scored a perfect seat at the Southwest Porch – well, maybe not perfect; it’s a little far from the stage, ordered a drink and snack and waited for my friend to show up and the public rehearsal / performance to begin.
Unfortunately it never happened. About ten minutes before 6, the waitress came rushing to my table, asked me if I could pay now as it was about to thunderstorm badly. Thunderstorm? At the beginning of the day, there was no such thing in the weather forecast. I almost didn’t believe her until about two minutes later a man came out onstage and announced that, due to the weather, the performance would be canceled. And the waitress and announcer were right: about five minutes later the thunder erupted, the rain began. New York weather has been crazy like this for a while now, like the past two / three years. I guess it’s the ozone. You just can’t plan an event outdoors anymore.
Anyway, I did get to see Wendy Whelan and Sebastien Marcovici (I think) rehearsing Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain (I guess, in retrospect, an apt title), which is one of the ballets they were supposed to perform. And NYCB begins their first ever fall season tonight, inside, at the Koch Theater.
I do really like Southwest Porch during the summer. Their ginger margaritas are excellent; their S’mores are a lot of fun (though you usually need to ask for extra graham crackers). But I discovered last night that I am not a fan of their flavored popcorn. I had the ancho chile / lime flavor and it was just way too much seasoning. You couldn’t even taste the popcorn. My mouth was on fire.
I had such a nice time at the Brooklyn Book Festival yesterday, despite the rain. I’ve gone to this festival for the past several years; they have readings, panel discussions, and other various quirky little things throughout the day. This year I was planning on listening to a crime fiction panel moderated by Michael Connelly, a set of debut author readings that included Sean Ferrell and Tanya Wright, another set of readings that included Elizabeth Streb – who is an innovative choreographer and now an author too, and a panel discussion about the economic crisis and what to do about it, amongst other things.
But I ended up doing none of that because my friend, Goodloe Byron, and I ended up getting a last-minute table he’d requested earlier from the organizers. So, I sat outside all day with my books, meeting book lovers, chatting with them about my novel, and personalizing their books. It was my first time ever doing this and I had no idea what to expect, but people were so amazingly cool! People were congratulating me for publishing my debut novel, remarking on the cover, asking me about the novel’s plot, about the publication process. After a couple hours, I ran out of books and my friend, Nicole, graciously watched my half of the table while I ran home to get more. When I returned she told me she’d sold my last copy by telling people who’d approached the table about my awards and reviews, and kind of sweetly reprimanded me for not having that info on a sheet at the table. Methinks sometimes your friends are better sales-people for your books than you, the writer, are 🙂
Anyway, unfortunately at that point it began pouring, and I didn’t even want to take the additional books out of my bag so as not to ruin them (we didn’t have a table with a tent). And it ended up raining the rest of the day, pretty hard. So I left early. Still, I had one of the happiest publishing days of my life. I haven’t sold many print books – the vast majority of my sales have been on Kindle – and there’s something so incredibly cool about selling an actual, physical book — watching people regard the cover curiously, peruse the back, flip through it, and then being able to sign it for them, watching them walk away with it in their hands.
And just meeting people! I really had a blast. I want another festival. Soon.
Anyway, literary blogger Edward Champion has some interviews of BBF participants posted at his blog. The third one happens to be of my friend, Michael Northrop, talking not about his own novels but about his participation in a One Story magazine promotion at the festival. Fun!
Oh and photo above, by me, is of a non-festival-related protest against police brutality that happened to take place on the courthouse plaza, where we were.
Off to the Brooklyn Book Festival! I’ll be sitting outside at a table with author Goodloe Byron of Brown Paper Publishing, weather permitting. Please don’t let the rain be too bad :S
Photo taken from here.
It’s the anniversary again. And everyone who has read my blog for some time now knows that on this day, every year, I always link to the best essay ever about NYC – step down E.B. White! – by Colson Whitehead.
Above image by Peter Kelly, taken from here.
I spent much of this and last weekend up in Washington Heights / Inwood, the area north of Harlem and just below the Bronx on the west side of Manhattan. I have several friends who live up there and are trying to convince me to move. It’s really beautiful, much of it inhabited by Dominican immigrants. A-Rod was born there and his father once had a shoe store somewhere in that neighborhood – I really wanted to know where that was!
The top photo is taken more from the Inwood area (the northernmost part of Manhattan), and you can see George Washington bridge, which connects Manhattan to New Jersey. The river is the Hudson.
Kids playing baseball in Inwood park. The diamonds were really full and the teams looked serious! Like a training ground for little athletes 🙂
I found the best Mexican restaurant in the city, Papasito, on Dyckman Street, the border between Inwood and Washington Heights. It’s a funny area – there will be a very chi chi block, even a gated community – which I don’t know I’ve seen anywhere else in NYC, and then right across the street a far less privileged area. There was this tiny section of Dyckman with these five-star restaurants, such as this one. And right across Broadway, totally different story. Anyway, I had the best chili relleno I have ever had in my life at Papasito!
Here’s my view from the restaurant.
The restaurant’s the one with the green lettering in the middle of the picture.
And this is down the east side of Dyckman. I met the sweetest Dominican man working in a bodega where I bought a bottle of water. So polite! He kind of reminded me of a Dominican version of Dolores’s father in Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love 🙂
This is Fort Tryon park. Beautiful! Lots of kind of scary-looking cliffs though. It leads up to the Cloisters, an old monastery that houses some of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Medieval collection.
The Cloisters.
Dominican pic-nic-ers in Fort Tryon park, right across the street from Papasito. The Dominicans really know how to throw a party – they had bouquets upon bouquets of colorful balloons everywhere, lots of food, and merengue music!
This is from the southern part of Washington Heights, in Riverbank park, which is actually in Harlem. So many parks in Manhattan along the river that I never knew of.
More parties in the park, back in the upper end of Fort Tyron park.
The Cloisters gardens / lower end of Fort Tryon park.
Staircase with murals and graffiti painted along the side, leading down from Fort Tryon park, lower end, to Broadway.
I found this really cute arty area right underneath George Washington bridge!
Cute little restaurants and wine shops. And books and art for sale outside on the street.
Off the arty street, a staircase leading up to one of the exclusive, gated areas.
One of the “exclusive” buildings – i.e. there were “private” signs everywhere. Beautiful building though.
Another park along the Hudson. Men playing dominoes, others relaxing on park benches.
Children playing in sprinklers.
A nice, middle-class area in the middle of the Heights, around Columbia Medical School.
Ditto.
This is taken back in my current neighborhood. You can see how far up the bridge is, if you can make it out in the distance. Overcast day!
Cute little outdoor cafe I just found right in my area, on the riverfront. Never knew it existed!
How awesome is this!: “Tonya Plank’s SWALLOW is a real page turner, & she shows that lawyers get as intensely nervous as dancers.” From Wendy Perron, E-I-C of Dance Magazine, via Twitter. I’m so giddy 🙂 I’d run into Ms. Perron at an Alvin Ailey season preview Tuesday night and when she told me she was reading my book and enjoying learning about my other life, I almost fell off my chair! I can’t even express how honored I am that she even decided to pick the book up!
The Alvin Ailey season preview was excellent, by the way. Their NY City Center season doesn’t begin until December but I think it’s going to be really fantastic. We got to see a sneak preview of The Hunt, by Robert Battle (incoming Artistic Director), which is an African dance depicting how men prepare for an actual hunt but that also serves as a metaphor for how dancers train and prepare to execute a difficult dance. I can’t wait to see that one in full, as well as The Prodigal Prince, by Geoffrey Holder. That one originally premiered in 1968 and Holder was there to talk a bit about it. Really sweetly funny man! It’s about the Haitian artist, Hector Hyppolite, known as “the Haitian Picasso,” and it’s a narrative filled with lots of beautiful African dance. We also saw Camille A. Brown’s Evolution of a Secured Feminine, which I remember from a Fall For Dance program a couple of years ago. It’s a one-woman solo that I liked very much and will, for the first time this season, be performed by someone other than Brown herself.
I enjoyed seeing all my favorite Ailey dancers again – and on a small stage this time (it took place in the Citicorp theater in the basement of their studios instead of City Center), and I was particularly happy to see Briana Reed again. She is one of my favorite women in the company – strong and very dramatic and an intense mover – and I missed seeing her last season. I think she was out with an injury for most of it.
Also, Judith Jamison revealed that Ailey will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Revelations this season, which means the cast for some performances will be increased to 50 dancers! They’re also making a film about that dance, which will be shown at all of the performances, and there will be a lot of live music, some of which Jamison will herself be conducting. Sweet Honey and the Rock will also perform live. And, there will be nice tributes to Denise Jefferson, Joan Weill, and to Jamison, who will be serving her last season as Artistic Director.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking of moving out of New York for a while, but I’m now thinking I’m going to wait on that for at least a few months. There are too many exciting things happening this fall – from Ailey’s season, to New York City Ballet’s first ever fall season, to ABT’s first Nutcracker, to of course the regulars like Fall for Dance and the Guggenheim Works & Process series. I think I need to wait a bit. Plus, I’ve made so many wonderful friends here, and I’m so involved in the dance scene, and every time I think of leaving NYC it really saddens me. But of course with the internet, friendships can easily survive physical distance these days. And I’m sure there are dance scenes everywhere, maybe just not of the same intensity. Who knows, maybe I just need a top-floor apartment somewhere else in the city… Upstairs Godzilla has moved out but her furniture-throwing legacy — an extremely creaky ceiling that sounds like it’s going to fall every time the new upstairs neighbor so much as shifts his weight (and which the landlord won’t fix) — remains…
Oh, one more thing (I know this post is very rambling): Ms. Perron mentioned to me that she saw a preview of Mao’s Last Dancer, which she thought was very good, and that it opens this weekend. So, I know one thing I’ll be doing this weekend. So excited for good ballet movies!
And I almost forgot… Friday night is the pro Latin competition, meaning Yulia Zagoruychenko and Riccardo Cocchi will be dancing, but I have a ticket to ABT and I really, really need to see my fave Marcelo Gomes dance Oberon in The Dream and Jose Carreno and Diana Vishneva in the pas de deux from MacMillan’s Manon. I may go to MDC Saturday night for the pro Rhythm and Standard, and the professional showdances. I always like Rhythm and you don’t get to see that in the international competitions. Anyway, here’s the info if you’re in NY and want to go. This is the most prestigious ballroom event in the Northeast; all of the top dancers usually compete. I highly recommend it if you want to see great ballroom.
