Category: Uncategorized

There are things I do inside of Hill Auditorium and there are things I do not.

I do:

1) Look like #college—why walk into one of the best performance halls looking like I’m an adult? Bust out the sweats, baseball cap, and leggings—who are we kidding? It’s not like I wanted anything else besides extra credit. Tchaikovsky does not equal an A or warrant actual pants.

2) Eat yogurt with the metal lid, not with a spoon—everyone knows concerts happen at dinner time, so why should I be punished for my ingenuity for not even using a spoon? I mean, concert etiquette aside, this gurl gots to eat; I don’t care if the band is playing at pianissimo, my stomach is at fortissimo.

3) Clap like my life depends on it—if I don’t, people might think I’m disengaged, right? Also if I clap last, it’s an automatic win…so “oh well” that the band started playing something new.

4) Talk obnoxiously—I don’t care if I just got off stage, from playing, to sit in a seat or if I’m already there, concerts are just fancy TV’s. I’m here for my own “entertainment” and no one else’s.

I don’t:

1) Do anything else. My rules (above) are law. I eat copious amounts of yogurt in public, dress like it’s a post-Saturday Sunday everyday, clap like no one is watching, and talk like you actually care.

I think that most times I go to any type of “classier” event (where classy means anything else besides a football game most days) that these rules apply to everyone. I admit that there is a time and a place for no pants, for slopping on goopy foods, playing the stupid clap-last game, and talking so loud that people think you’re furious but really just happy.

But Hill Auditorium is never the place.

My carceral-stystem-self-fully-indoctrinated-by-the-system-of-normalization-that-Foucault-describes-aka-my-being demands some type of behavioral rules to live by. That and my gay sensibility for acting just so at such events. Either way, I feel like such “audience participators” should all be either A) drawn and quartered, or B) put in a room together to see how long they would last—and let’s be real, not long.

However, being with such people can further provide entertainment. Think of yourself in a Kierkegaardian way where anything that happens—good or bad—as something to entertain your dreadful, angst-ridden existence that’s going along only further into the nothingness of life. While the concert occurs on stage you can enjoy that for it’s own sake: ambitious program wonderfully selected, decent musicianship, good conducting, perfect concert hall. You can also enjoy the audience constantly making a fool of themselves: picking their noises at the rhythm of notes played with pizzicato, eating foodstuffs during every first movement, and violently sneezing on fermatas.

All in all, going to a concert isn’t just going to a concert. It’s entering a space where the possibilities for entertainment are endless. The stage, the seats, the people, all have a potential to keep you going for hours upon hours.

Scandinavian crime dramas filter over to the US slowly- slowly, but surely. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has in recent years made a name for itself. Henning Mankell’s Wallander novels have similarly given rise to a long-running Swedish television series, and become so immensely successful that the BBC has started to air an English-language one of its own. BBC’s Wallander is comprised of a mainly British cast, though many minor characters are themselves Swedes or natives of whatever setting they are in. It is filmed in Sweden, and any text that appears— street-signs, documents, the lettering on the side of police vehicles— are in Swedish. And somehow, it feels entirely natural, despite the fact that everyone speaks English.

Wallander is a quiet affair, stretched across an open landscape, a great Scandinavian landscape, under a wide expanse of sky. It’s not particularly gritty, but there is nonetheless a very real quality to everything. The people are earnest, if not to others then at the very least to their own desires and ends. The colors take on a cool cast, a just very slightly washed out. They’re clean, in a whitewashed boards and birchwood sort of clean; plain, but not glossed-over. In this way, the cinematography is deceivingly simple, but astoundingly beautiful. There are little gems everywhere: poppies in a frosted meadow, a moth fluttering against the window, an undulating flaxen field.

This production is a well-shot series that never feels like it tries too hard. Even the darkest moments are never too horrifying; they might be tense, fraught with danger, but never quite jumping-in-your-seat, eye-shieldingly terrifying. It’s not about spectacle and never about special effects, but about the characters and about the story, about cool logic and human emotion all at once. The titular Kurt Wallander is played by Kenneth Oddslot Branagh, who does an admirable job in channeling the constantly exhausted (but strongly principled) police detective who sees far more in lifetime than anyone rightly should. The poor man falls asleep in his car, at his desk, in his chair, but seemingly never in his own bed. Wallander is very good at what he does, but out of a sense of nobility tends to dash into danger without feeling the need to notify his colleagues, and even worse, grows very emotionally attached to the victims he sees.

Having never seen the Swedish-language program, I can neither counter nor affirm the frequent insisting that it is better acted, more faithful to the tone of the novels, or generally better than the BBC version. However, I can confidently attest that BBC’s Wallander is a production of integrity and quality. It is subtle. It is not afraid of a quiet, low-key flow of events, but at the same time is never stagnant. It is a long drive across a wide landscape, a watery sun through the trees, and the house by the sea. It is the quiet little town and not-so-quiet happenings, and the road that curves the next hill and disappears into the distance.

BBC Wallander has just concluded its third series of three 1.5hr. episodes. PBS has also recently picked it up in the US.

Over Fall Break I had the luxury to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Monday. As any veteran Museumgoer could tell you, the Met is not open to the public on Mondays. Yet, I have the good fortune of having a mother who happens to be a volunteer at the Met (a love for art clearly runs in my blood!) and was thus able to traverse through the halls uninterrupted.

Being at one of the world’s greatest museums, entirely empty, was like nothing else in the world. The euphoria I feel whenever I step in a museum is indescribable – being surrounded by such vast amounts of beautiful treasures fills me with endless enthusiasm and joy. But being able to explore the museum without hundreds of people – people pushing, shoving, and ruining the ambiance, was an experience in and of itself. The unique ability to stare and reflect on a Manet or a Rodin in complete silence, deepened both my understanding and love for the works.

Last spring I studied abroad in London, where I spent every weekend exploring Europe’s cities – Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Dublin, Sevilla, Florence – a countless number of artist havens. My prerogative in my travels was to visit museums in every city , to take in as much art in one day as I could. From the Museo del Prado to the Musee D’Orsay to the Picasso Museum, I found myself surrounded by people speaking languages I hardly understood (my Michigan-level comprehension of French and Spanish could only take me so far!) and felt more concerned about keeping my belongings in check and not bumping into fellow tourists  than I did on taking in Guernica.

Thus, as I only have now realized, there is something truly magical about viewing works of art in the sanctuary of one’s own privacy. Being able to muse on my thoughts uninterrupted, thinking about and questioning the works, without distraction, was the most enlightening artistic experience – creativity was endless, comprehension had no boundaries.

In light of a seminar presented by my business school’s namesake, Stephen M. Ross, I was inundated with paranoia upon hearing about Mr.Ross’ Hudson Yards Development, a new real estate venture along Manhattan’s west side from 28^th to 43^rd street west of 8^th avenue.  With the growing popularity of the Highline, rumors of retail giants moving in, and the Hudson Yards Development, there will undoubtedly be a much needed surge to the consumer economy as tourists move in and spending increases.  But what does this mean for the residents, cultural integrity, and artistic haven that these neighborhoods once hosted? Is this an inevitable change that must take place in order to progress and improve the economy? Or is there an alternative that can dually increase spending while maintain cultural integrity?

Mr. Ross is the founder and Chairman of The Related Companies, a real estate investment firm.  He has developed a portfolio of real estate ventures in metropolitan cities nationwide, such as New York City, Las Vegas, and several others in California. He has grown his company by investing in transformative properties, such as the Time Warner Center on the Upper West Side of New York City, as well as affordable living housing throughout the city.

In 2005 the city rezoned the area from west Chelsea to herald square to convert current manufacturing space to residential and commercial developments and named it the Hudson Yards Development. The Hudson Yards area will have the capacity for approximately 26 million square feet of new office development, 20,000 units of housing, 2 million square feet of retail, and 3 million square feet of hotel space, says the Hudson Yards Development Corporation.   With the luxury brand Coach leading the pack and incepting construction of the first building in the Hudson Yards Project, retail giants such as Sephora plan to move in and draw in shoppers, tourists, and new residents alike. Local boutiques will have to compete with mass producing low mark up companies that move in.  Even now, the art spaces are strained to compete with restaurants, retailers, and luxury brand boutiques.

Even since 2009 the commercial effects of the Highline have challenged  West Chelsea’s establishments and integrity.   The restaurants became increasingly trendy and decreasingly delicious; the people migrate from uptown to counterfeit “bohemian” lofts; and slowly, the art increasingly high profile, decreasingly raw and native.  And while Mr. Ross explained in his presentation to the students of the Ross School of Business that he and his partners keep cultural integrity in mind, such as making the “Jazz at Lincoln Center” the highlight of the Time Warner Development, phrases such as “New York’s Next Great Neighborhood” on the company’s web page indicate a more transformational pursuit.

What I fear most is that the Hudson Yards  turns the area into an amusement park of sorts, as Jeremiah Moss discusses in the New York Times article “Disney World on the Hudson,” losing all integrity for the raw gritty New York feeling that tourists hate, and New Yorkers love. Native artists have noticeably begun to flee the West Side for lower-profile neighborhoods tucked away from media hounds and tourists.  And while Chelsea can already be deemed a commercialized, yuppie area, any remnants of authenticity that I know it to possess may be stripped away even further. What will become of the neighbors that envelope the Hudson Yards Development?  More importantly, what will happen to the art that spawned there?

I love the morning. I don’t love getting up in the morning, but I really love the morning. The air is different in the morning. It is dense with possibilities. Maybe I’m a gushing romantic, but the air makes getting up a whole lot easier.

This past Friday I took a bus up to North Campus, my lukewarm tea in hand, and walked to the Walgreen Drama Center. It was rainy, but not yet miserable yet. Only a sprinkle. Inside of the Arthur Miller Theatre, there was a large projection screen with the image of a man walking back and forth projected on to it. On the left of the stage was an intricate set up of electronics, to the right, a few miscellaneous items strewn about the floor in a line. I noticed two balls, roughly the size of a bowling ball. One was a globe, and the other was just black.

The Argentinian Dance Company, Grupo Krapp, has been in residence for the past couple weeks. I’ve been sick and busy (for a number of reasons) and couldn’t make the various workshops and talks they had around campus. But this Friday show was my final shot to see them. And so I did.

Grupo Krapp is named after a Samuel Beckett play, Krapp’s Last Tape. This particular play happens to be one of the two Beckett plays I’ve ever seen, which means I was able to brag about this to my girlfriend and pretend that I know more about theatre than her (I don’t). Krapp’s Last Tape is a one man show, a piece about an old man looking back at his life through a serious of tape recordings. The main character, Krapp, makes one recording a year on his birthday, chronicling the events of his life. Before he makes his tape for his 69^th birthday, he listens to one from his 39^th birthday. It’s a really remarkable and emotional play. Samuel Beckett never struck me as the most inviting or emotional playwright, but in Krapp’s Last Tape, Beckett takes a firm look at life, laughs at its inconsistencies, and cries at its tragedies. I think Grupo Krapp tries to do the same thing.

It’s difficult to call what Grupo Krapp does dance. There was a lot of acting, a lot of feats of physical strength, a lot of multimedia components, but never so much dancing in a traditional sense. In one awkward scene, titled “Duet A,” two dancers paced around stage replicating the first experience they had dancing. Their shoulders were raised, their movements sharp and stiff. It was a peculiar kind of dancing, but after some observation, really quite beautiful. These performers were replicating a beautiful point in life, a point of no expectation and only passion. Or maybe lust. Or maybe boredom. I’m not quite sure. Either way, it was beautiful.

The piece they performed was called “Adonde van los muertos (Lado B).” The performers told us it was about death, but only a in few scenes did the show actually simulate death. The rest of the show was…well, it was incapable of description. It involved a game of soccer played onstage (an audience volunteer joined the cast, as they were down a member). It involved two performers below a large cloth and replicating (to an unsettlingly successful degree) the movements of a horse. It involved a performer simulating the motions of a robot, complete with sound effects. The dialogue was sparse, but biting and confounding. It reminded me very much of the twists of Beckett’s language in “Waiting for Godot” (the other Beckett play that I’ve seen). The piece opened with a projection of a short film, where several people were interviewed about their thoughts concerning death. They asked these interviewees what they imagined death would look like, should it be captured in a physical object. One person said death couldn’t be an object, that death was the opposite of an object. Another paused, perplexed by the question. He quietly answered that death looks like a black ball.

The question of meaning always comes up when I see a production like this. I don’t think I understood a lot of what Grupo Krapp put on stage. I only remarked in the beauty of it, in the entertainment of it, and in the absurdity of it. But when the production finished and all of the cast members had left the stage, I noticed that the black ball that was lying there since the very beginning was still there. They hadn’t oddslot touched it during the whole production. It was subtle. It was small. And it was terrifying. But it made sense. There was indeed a logic to this performance – that was the black ball of death that the young man in the opening sequence had mentioned. The performance didn’t have to mean anything specific. But it meant something. The fact that the work had an internal logic was the important part.

I thought a lot about Grupo Krapp this morning. How they are pushing the boundary of what dance is and what art is and what a performance is. How I would have loved to play soccer with them put probably would have done so horribly that they would have picked someone else instead and started the show over. How they are so incredibly deliciously esoteric and I love it. How the air in that theatre was dense with sunrise and dense with possibility. Maybe I’m a gushing romantic, but the air makes getting up and going off and doing work that much more inspiring and exciting.