New Cafe at Alice Tully Hall

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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 😀

 

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.

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(this is facing east).

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

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(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.

Join Claudia's Performance Club!

If you’re in New York, please do join the performance club dance writer (and my friend) Claudia La Rocco has set up over at the WNYC blog!

I had to miss out on last month’s performances, but this month the group is seeing Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (which I went to last week and will post about very shortly) and Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment, a new dance by a Korean-American woman about black identity politics, which looks fascinating and which I can’t wait to see.

I think she has it set up so that you can either go to these performances with the group, or go see them at another time more convenient to you, and then everyone will discuss them online at the club’s WNYC forum.

In the meantime, or if you’re not in NY, watch the video and interview she posted. This is from Cedar Lake’s performance of the Didy Veldman dance that I’d gone on about earlier. I love the slow motion fight scene!