A Judsonite group attended Alice Elliot’s Miracle on 42nd Street. The documentary about Manhattan Plaza is part of the architecture & design film festival. It tells the saga of Manhattan Plaza, a 484 West 43rd Street residential complex that opened in 1977. The majority of the tenants are in the performing arts. Director Alice Elliot captures the drama, the angst of neighbors afraid they’d be kicked out of their humble dwellings, performers at first loath to live in that neighborhood (Hell’s Kitchen) and then clamoring to. There are interesting interviews with Angela Lansbury, Giancarlo Esposito and a slew of other celebrities who have lived there. We saw it at Cinépolis Chelsea. Have you noticed that movie theaters are installing upscale, first class allurements? There are reclining leather seats you can adjust. Legs up? Press a button, Want your backside warmed? Press a button. Airport-like bars, an ad suggesting delicious food (popcorn, more popcorn) delivered to your seat.
It’s always a joy to see a legend in action. Wendy Whalen retired from the New York City Ballet a few years ago. She is now the Associate Artistic Director of the company. At the Joyce she danced in The Day, a moving and moody piece, conceived by Maya Beiser and choreographed by Lucinda Childs.
Alicia Alonso the great Cuban dancer, has died. She was 98. In the late 1930s Alonso and her husband, Fernando, traveled to NYC to establish dancing careers. Alicia Alonso was a soloist with the American Ballet Caravan which became New York City Ballet in 1940. She suffered detached retina which put a hold on her dancing but she persevered. !n 1943 she was asked to dance Giselle at Ballet Theatre. She danced the role until 1948. Other roles included: in Swan Lake, Antony Tudor‘s Undertow (1943), Balanchine’s Theme and Variations (1947) and deMille’s dramatic ballet Fall River Legend. She returned to Cuba in 1948 to found her own company, the Alicia Alonso Ballet Company. It eventually became Ballet Nacional de Cuba.
Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder.
Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.
Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person 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: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed ? Remorse over screwing up an important case? His corrupt boss being a trustee of the Windsor School? His girlfriend marrying his boss?