Best Great Big Night of Culture and Class

Today, with a bit of a shrug and a "Hey, why not?" I signed up to go with Emily to see the ABT dance Swan Lake at the Met.  I guess, incredibly, this was my fifth ballet?  I settled into my rather good seat and said to myself, "Okay, world's most famous ballet.  Here we go."

I was not ready for what happened.  By the time the swan lady was dancing at her lake (you know, Act II) the audience was losing its collective mind.  People were shouting out in praise and honor right in the middle of everything, the staid Met crowd was clapping and screaming whenever the spirit moved them.  The opera house roared and rumbled with applause.  I hadn't experienced anything like it since witnessing the audience's response to Song of the Moon in the first act of Rusalka in 2004. (see, it's not like I hadn't left the house before.)

For me, Swan Lake was a slow burn, but at some point (like watching Breathless) I found myself drawn in, swept up, and enthralled.  I find myself completely without the vocabulary to understand what I saw or how to explain it to you, like if you took a Beduin to the Arctic Circle and showed him the Northern Lights or, more accurately, if you took a polar bear to Arizona and showed him the Grand Canyon.

While the Swan was pretty great and the clear crowd favorite by a hundred miles, and in fact probably astoundingly great, I just don't know astoundingly great ballet when I see it, my favorite dancers were the swans.  When they quiver down into the fog beneath the rising sun at the very end of the ballet?  It was nearly more than this poor guy could take.  Riding home on the train tonight, walking home down Hester, I battled a lump in my throat.  What on earth happened to me tonight?  Swan Lake, what did you do to me?

Additional Observations:

• Even though she was evil, I guess, it did kind of seem to me that Sigfried and Odile had a more reasonable and real basis to their relationship.  I'm sorry it didn't work out for them.
• When the Odette first appears, and the harp music plays?  Doesn't that sound just like the start of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past?
• All I knew about the Swan Lake music before I got there I learned from music boxes from my youth.
• The funny thing is now I'm reading reviews of this production online and they're not kind. (Not kind at all.)  Well, what do I know?  Clearly nothing!

Best Art Show I Nearly Missed

On Saturday, the very last day possible, I saw the Billy Childish show at the Lehmann Maupin gallery just a few blocks from my apartment.

Who is Billy Childish?  Well, according to the wall text . . .

But according to me: Billy Childish is a British punk rock musician whose music I was introduced to in 1995 and for a good many years I was nearly obsessed with.  Ask me what my favorite band of all time is and I'll hem and haw trying to pick between the Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, and Thee Headcoats.  

Billy also paints and writes, and his painting has improved.  He's a big deal now, to the gallery folk.

I was partial towards his volcano work.

On the second floor of the gallery there was a room exhibiting some of his books and records.  If you were at the show with me you would have had to listen to me pointing to each record, one at a time, saying: "Got that one, love that one, don't have that one, don't have that one, got that one . . . no, not that one, that one, bought that one two days before going into the MTC, bought that one the other week when I was in California, don't have that one, never heard of that one, totally have that one . . ." and on and on.

And these are barely a drop in the album bucket.  I was kind of disappointed in the number of compilations and retrospectives on the wall.  Those ones don't count.

And the books!  Books whose names I had only seen in Maximum Rock n Roll articles or read on websites of the late mid-nineties.

Self published (well, technically it's all self published) work of the late 70s, early 80s.

That book there, in the lower right hand corner, was the object of an impossible and fruitless search during college.  And then Saturday there I stood, staring it down, a pane of glass keeping me from flipping through its pages.

One more painting.

And just an office.  For selling you these paintings, if you're ready for one.

Best Saturday Afternoon Open Studios

Another sunny Saturday morning/afternoon in my neighborhood!

I walk all the way up Bleecker (and beyond) on my way to Elijah's house.

Puffy coats and cigarettes and wondering which way to Magnolia Bakery.

After breakfasting at Elijah's (which would have been a good time for a picture or two) went up to Hunter College's open studios for the fine arts students.

This spooky automaton rolled around the gallery on his own.

Found myself standing in front of a projection of a dancer dancing in front of a projection of a dancer.

Spent a bit of time trying to find Erik's studio space.

A candelabra candle.

Found him.  There's Erik.  Brothers of brothers-in-law sizing each other up.

Man with a sword gets a laugh.

And I did.  And this is why I have a clown nose in my bag now.

Time to go!

Best Fact-Finding Visit

So, the New Museum has this new exhibit called "Experience" by a fellow named Carsten Holler.  The centerpiece of this exhibit, the thing that has New York all worked up, is a 102' long twisting slide that runs through the museum from the fourth floor to the second floor.  Thursday night was free night so what better night to go, right?

(This is a blueprint poster of the slide.  I bet you anything you can buy this poster)

Well, turns out the slide was closed for "maintenance" for the evening.  Wow.  What a coincidence.  Free night and we can't all ride the slide?  Guess I'll come back some other time and pay to ride.  (that's what the museum people hoped I thought)

But if the slide weren't closed, this would be where the giant line to put on a helmet (rolls eyes) and start your ride would be.

And here's the slide snaking through the third floor.

And here's where the slide spits you out on the second floor.  Why can't you see anything?  Because the walls are lined with flashign fluorescent tubes.  I still have a headache from it.  Really, it was unholy, and I didn't see any epilepsy warnings anywhere.  Helmets everywhere to protect you if you go down a slide but no warning that the second floor will give anyone and everyone a nauseating splitting headache.  It made me lose my appetite.

It was a lot of work but I eventually got a picture where the lights were off for a second.

But there was other stuff of Holler's that you could see/experience.  Like looking at bird cages.  With real, chirping birds inside.

Or waiting in line to go on this super-slow Merry Go Round (imagine a Merry Go Round that is not moving at all and then slow it down a little more and you've just about imagined the speed of this ride's rotation) and then deciding it's not worth it and not riding.

(Hmmm . . . I think I promised to post this picture?  A promise I'm quite happy to keep.  That's Kelley there and then that's Aubrey over there)

And a tunnel to walk through.

There were also goggles you could wear that made everything be upside down and a mysterious enclosed tank that I think you walked around naked in and got all wet?  DON'T QUOTE ME ON THAT!  I just know people would go into it and later come out all wet, but their clothes were dry.

In conclusion . . . I left the exhibit three and a half hours ago and I still have this headache from the second floor.  But also, I am curious about that slide.  So probably I'll be back and probably the New Museum will get $12 from me.