June 12 was the annual Judson Memorial Church’s Kids Day. The service is conducted by the Sunday School Grand Poohbah, Andy Frantz. It’s always loving, crowded and noisy. This year Don wigs were for the wearing.
That afternoon at Judson we were treated to The Bill of Rights: Ten Amendments in Eight Motets by Neely Bruce. All proceeds went to the New Sanctuary Coalition.
On Monday we went to the last in the Studio 5 series. Damian Woetzel, the retired NYCB Principal Dancer and now the Juilliard School president, started the series. It met in City Center’s Studio 5. The audience sat in two rows of chairs that ringed the periphery while Woetzel and his colleagues discussed and demonstrated various aspects of dance. Monday evening NYCB alumni joined forces to discuss The Répétiteur’s Work. Wendy Whelan led the discussion about the répétiteur’s role, one who stages work choreographed by others. Former NYCB soloists Jason Fowler and Craig Hall discussed their work as répétiteurs for renowned choreographers Christopher Wheeldon and Justin Peck. Whelen said that being a répétiteur, her newest dance adventure, was the hardest thing she’s ever done. Young NYCB dancers demonstrated various techniques. It’s intimate and very NYC.
On Friday we made our way to Pier One, Bowling Green to see the American Merchant Marines Memorial. The artist Marisol’s bronze sculpture depicts four merchant seamen with their sinking vessel after it had been attacked. I find most contemporary realistic sculpture a failure or a joke because the subjects’ clothes are dated or don’t work as sculpture. The American Merchant Marines Memorial is perfect. The merchant marines nondescript clothing clings to their water drenched bodies. The three men are aiding their drowning comrade. The scupture’s power depends, in part, on the ebb and flow of the harbor’s tides as the water washes over the body of the dying comrade.
We ended up in Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus, the hub that replaces the Path station destroyed in 9/11. Needless to say it cost zillions of dollars and took its time being completed. It’s a spacious, white area that is a high-class mall and train station.
Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.
Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.
Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.