Live from Saturday Afternoon!

Emily Gordon: It’s going to be a bit easier to blog many-venued events like this when New York becomes (surely it will?) an all-WiFi-city, like the pleasingly cutting-edge Salem, Mass., or, soon if controversially, Philly. Anyway, I’m in Bryant Park, having just heard an intriguingly academic, consciously nonpolitical, occasionally contentious dialogue between Mikhail Baryshnikov and New Yorker dance critic (and occasional writer of book reviews) Joan Acocella. She pelted him with questions about his switch to modern dance and his relationship to classical ballet, and he was firm in declaring his devotion to Downtown, his indignation that young artists can’t afford to see any art (when he moved to the city, he said, he saw dance, Broadway shows, theater, or some other performence every night), and his hope that he’ll be able to make a difference with his new West 37th St. performance space. Which we were all sitting in; nice acoustics!

We also saw a nine-minute archival film of Baryshnikov dancing a somber, poignant modern piece (I didn’t catch the whole name, so if someone else knows it, please write in). I’ve never been witness to a more moving spectacle of mortality. Watching the great dancer sit on a stage with his fists clenched or one hand in his hair, the other covering his thigh protectively, and willing his head to turn toward the screen, where his younger self is holding himself on one leg in a mastery of time, space, muscle, and feeling—how could you not tear up at the ridiculous shortness of our lifetimes and the frailty of the human body? The whole thing made me want to be, and want all of us to be, worthy of Baryshnikov’s passion for saving and bolstering an arts community that has allowed him to take so many mighty risks. There are quotes, lots of ’em, so I’ll post presently.

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |

Themes So Far: Birds, Gates

Emily Gordon: Tomorrow morning, more about Chang-Rae Lee, Lorrie “American Idol” Moore, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, and Star Question Girl of the Night. These themes have emerged: birds (my glass bird earrings from Catbird, Birds of America, “My Bird Problem,” a lot of birds and undoubtedly some blokes sighing over Jonathan Franzen’s fuckable shame spiral), and Gates, as in Christo and Jeanne-Claude. As my astute friend Tiffany pointed out at Zadie and Jonathan Go to White Castle, the New Yorker Festival bags, resplendently orange for fall, look just like old Central Park sculptures retooled into handy squares. And then Franzen mentioned those very Gates in his essay! Plus birds! It was a night full of serendipity, especially since it turns out that Lorrie Moore lives on my sister’s street. And my sister’s house is covered in orange trim. Gates orange. Now where’s Jonathan “Saffron” Foer to complete the picture?

23 September 2005 | uncategorized |