Category Archives: 10: Reflection

Still Can’t Describe NYC, and That’s OK

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I’ve been a New Yorker my whole life. If there is one thing that I have learned about the city, it’s that you can’t define it, or really even describe all it offers.

The city really has so many different “zones” to it. In Manhattan, you may feel the effects of rigid social class structures like the ones depicted in “Wall Street”, but if you come to Queens, you will probably experience something different.

Manhattan:

nyc NY

 

Queens:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

My point is that I don’t think that there really is any one piece of artwork that is “most truthful” in displaying New York City. This city is one that you just can’t describe- and that is what makes it so unique.

Think about it. The fact that we are able to find so many films, plays, and other works of art about New York City just goes to show that there is so much more that meets the eye when it comes to the city. In Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”, Scorsese showcased the “underworld” of New York City, one that was filled with crime. Adversely, Blake Edwards’ “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” depicts a more materialistic New York City that is filled with glitz and glamour.

Taxi Driver NY

 

 

Breakfast NY

 

So which film had it right? Neither. At least, not fully.

But still, we can’t discredit the films that try and show what NYC is. Everyone has their own opinions. But is it really possible for a director to accurately capture all that NYC has to offer? How could you depict life on Park Ave, when half of it resembles the exorbitantly rich and the other half represents the poor in the Bronx? And in that same token, not forget to depict life in Queens ranging from the bustling Jackson Heights to the laid-back, residential Bayside? Kudos the director who could do this, but I have yet to see a film about New York City depicted in this fashion. I can’t blame them either! When people want to watch a film about the city, they want to hear about the city that “never sleeps”, which is usually just Manhattan.

Even though it’s clear that artwork depicting the city is somewhat exclusionary, I can’t help but be thankful for that. I live in Queens, which in my opinion is the best borough in the city. Thankfully, it is also a “hidden treasure”, meaning all the hipsters and tourist haven’t yet discovered how cool Queens is. But much to my dismay, Lonely Planet ranked Queens the #1 place to visit in 2015, citing the fact that it truly is just an overall awesome place. I can only hope that Queens stays as it is, without the hipsters and tourists for as long as possible. It would be horrible for Queens to be a victim of gentrification. But I can almost guarantee that if it did, there would be a lot more films and artwork about it. (Mini-rant over, sorry.)

Queens NY

I have to say my favorite work of the semester was Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage”. I loved this play mainly because it did not seek to characterize New York City itself, but rather the people in it. New Yorkers are a breed of people all their own, and I believe that the play depicted this well. No matter how much class or status anyone in the city may have, I think we all possess a certain “kind of crazy” and are not afraid to get downright rude. I mean what other cities do you keep your head down when you walk in an attempt to avoid eye contact and not talk to anyone? Where else can you find people who can talk on the phone, eat breakfast, jaywalk, and hail a taxi cab at the same time? I’m pretty sure that you will only find that in the city, and this is what I believe artists should try and capture.

god of carnage NY

Overall, I believe that New York City is so unique because of its inhabitants, who all share commonalities while still making up the most ethnically and culturally diverse city in the world.

 

 

Lonely Planet’s Rankings:

http://www.weather.com/travel/news/lonely-planet-top-american-destinations

“New York, Concrete Jungle Where Dreams are Made Up”

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In my first blog I wrote about how each person perceives art differently, so I’m going to write my last blog about how each person perceives New York City differently. I say this in the least cheesy way possible, but let’s face it: New York City is a work of art. From the complex architecture of each and every skyscraper to the hand drawn graffiti on the sides of bodegas, New York City represents art in every way.

I would have never expected to learn so much about New York City in my first semester of college. I’m not going to lie, when I first found out that we would be taking a class called “The Arts in New York City” I was a bit apprehensive. I’ve never been that person to go out of my way to visit a museum or even to go to my high school productions, so this class definitely made me feel some type of way. After spending weeks upon weeks in this class, I’m glad I can say that I truly enjoyed every aspect of it. From watching movies that I never thought I’d watch to visiting historic areas of New York City to attending performance upon performance, I have learned more in the past few months about New York City than I’ve learned in the last 18 years.

It’s not easy to pick a favorite. We’ve analyzed each piece so in depth that I’ve grown to love even the ones that I was traumatized by (Birds With Sky Mirrors). But I can say that I found The Muppets Take Manhattan to be the most true to New York City. Yeah, let’s face it, the film with puppets represents New York City better than Robert DeNiro did. Now, I’m not saying that DeNiro didn’t do an outstanding job, because we all know he did, but The Muppets Take Manhattan showed a different side to New York City, a side that many people fail to acknowledge.

This film goes over many different topics that are true to New York City. So many people come here thinking that they are going to “make it big” and become famous or wealthy, but the reality of the matter is that becoming successful takes a lot more than just coming to the Big Apple. The film also shows the many different types of people that you’d find here. Different types of social classes are displayed, such as the students, the waiters, and the big shots on Broadway. All in all, although there are so many people surrounding you, it is so easy to remain anonymous. Another theme represented in the film was robbery. While walking through Central Park, Miss Piggy’s purse gets stolen. With the economic hardships many people face today, some people feel that stealing is the only option they have left. Although all the little rats going into the restaurant was supposed to be a funny scene, it holds true to a major rat problem that New York City faces. Rats surround the streets and buildings of New York City, leaving residents at risk of being bitten and catching diseases or just leaving many kitchens filled with filth.

Although New York City may not be what many people dream it is, it is obviously a quite unique place. Why else would everyone be dying to come here? People don’t come to freeze in the cold weather in the winter, that’s for sure. New York City is home to many natives and becomes home to many foreigners. Whether you work on Wall Street or are just visiting Times Square, New York City will hold a special place in your heart, and that is what art is all about.

New York, New York

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I love New York City, which was why when starting class this semester I was really excited. The class was called Arts in New York City, what else would we possibly be talking about? Throughout the course I had the task of watching movies with different stories to tell and different meanings. The one common factor between them being that they were all set in New York City. An interesting thing about this is that they all shared a different representation of what the city was. It is difficult to say which was my favorite because they all had a certain feel about the city that I agreed with.

For example in Wall Street themes of greed and moral ambiguity are explored. The movie’s big antagonist, Gordon Gecko is a stockbroker who so famously states, “Greed is good”; I agree with this representation of wealthy people in the city. Some of them do happen to be incredibly vain and frankly, really full of themselves. It reminds me of the story of the past seminar class’ encounter with two women at the opera. They were judging the students and thought little of them when in fact by acting that way they made themselves look mean and I can imagine, really stupid.

On the other side there was The Muppets Take Manhattan, where a group of friends try to make it in the Big Apple. Some might call me gullible but I seriously do believe that people can come to the city and achieve their dreams. Now let me clarify a bit, when I say dreams, I don’t mean everyone can come here and become big and famous. I mean that New York is a place where you can do something positive for yourself. Not just as an actor or singer but as anything, you can be happy in the city, it is possible people!

Like I talked about in my NYC Films blog the city to me is certainly not exactly like what was depicted in the Muppets film or what was depicted in Wall Street. New York City is not perfect, nothing in the world is. Everything has its good and bad parts. Like in Do the Right Thing we see racial tensions and stereotypes collide in a NYC neighborhood. I do agree that, even though it is the 21st century race is still a problem in this country and especially in NY, the so called ‘liberal haven’. In Moonstruck however, (no matter how overblown I felt it was) the two characters managed to find each other, fall in love, and get married. That happens in the city all the time which in my opinion means there must be good things here if that can happen.

For me these films all had some aspect of the city incorporated into their stories but only one certain aspect of it, never all of them. (Not that I blame filmmakers, I imagine it would be really confusing trying to fit so many conflicting realities together) Looking back on everything we saw I feel they had some truth to them, but to go ahead and judge NYC on only one of these works would be kind of dumb. I mean, when looking at the reviews for something online, you don’t just look at one and stop. No, you look at a few and try to get an overall feel of what you’re looking at. That is what I feel should be done when talking about the city in the context of these arts. Don’t just look at one film, for instance, Wall Street, don’t look at that and say ugh, this is so true, NYC is full of such greedy people, it’s a bad place. Sure, NYC can be truly awful sometimes, but it can also be really great. I say we should just accept that NYC is a city that is truly ambiguous. Some people may love it and some people may hate it but that’s just how it is and always will be.

And This is What Happens When You Don’t Read Ahead in the Syllabus…

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So when I was writing my blog about which movie affected me the most, I had not looked ahead in the syllabus to see what the next couple of blogs would be about; so naturally, I already answered the part of the question that addresses which portrayal of New York City was my favorite and which I found to be the most truthful.

I enjoyed The Muppets Take Manhattan the most, simply because it was, in my opinion, the most truthful. This film depicted that New York City is not always what everyone thinks it will be; the streets are not paved with gold, people are not throwing money at you, and success does not always come right away, if it comes at all. You can get mugged and sometimes not get any help from anyone. You might have to work in a grimy diner just to stay in the city, making no progress. There is a chance that you can succeed, if you meet the right people, that is.

The Muppets Take Manhattan tore down the common misconceptions about New York City, but did so in a comical way. For that reason, the film might get overlooked, however, just because a film has a whimsical tone and makes use of a couple of puppets here and there, it does not mean that it should not hold as much merit at a film like Wall Street.

Now speaking of Wall Street, I have decided that, since I accidentally already wrote about my favorite portrayal of New York City, I will share my least favorite portrayal: Wall Street.

Don’t get me wrong; it was a great movie. Did I get a special kind of happiness watching young Charlie Sheen? Of course. But was this portrayal of New York City the most truthful? Probably not. Some people who have never visited New York City but have watched this film might believe that every aspect of Wall Street was true and form opinions based on this one depiction of the city.

The film plants the idea that the rich stockbrokers of Wall Street made their fortunes through cheating a lying. Gordon Gekko is the embodiment of this. Gekko even teaches Bud Fox to do this. This is specifically juxtaposed against the good, hard-working blue collar workers, like Bud’s father, Carl. Carl is portrayed to be a very honest hard-working man who finds himself on the short end of the stick as a result of the rich stockbrokers’ actions.

Of course, the “the rich people are liars and cheats and don’t deserve their wealth” and the “the middle class guy actually works hard for a living and deserves the wealth” ideologies are easy to believe when one is in the position of the Carl-type people, but they are not always true. People can believe whatever they want, but not all wealthy people get rich by screwing over the little guys and not all middle class workers are as honest as we might want to believe. There are rich people out there that go out of their way to help those less fortunate and there are middle class people who make it a point to find ways to take the easy way out.

Moreover, New York City is not just a bunch of stockbrokers and airplane company workers. There are populations of people who are just not represented in Wall Street. As comical as it is, at least The Muppets Take Manhattan represented a wide range of people, from waitresses, to construction workers, to producers, to college students, to department store workers. A movie like Wall Street could really discourage people from coming to New York City in search of success.

Through all the movies I watched this semester, I was able to collect different glimpses of life in New York City. None are perfect, but they are like the different windows of a house: each provides a different view.

Unfortunately, the Truth is Painful

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As a New Yorker I sometimes forget to be impressed by the grandeur of my home. Having lived here my whole life, I feel like there’s so much more to the city then what I’ve seen. Knowing people who live outside of New York and are constantly trying to absorb as much of this city as they can motivates me to do the same. This semester I was able to do this through film, opera, interpretive dance, and plays. Many of these works allowed different views of New York and some of them overlapped. Often times media portrays New York as a magical place—not that it’s not—but they seem to forget the problems that New York faces. The Muppets take Manhattan is permitted the romanticizing of New York, as it as a children’s film and underage prostitution is perhaps not an appropriate platform for their thoughts. Moonstruck, being a romantic comedy, has a similar portrayal of New York; I don’t think it’s as justified, although I recognize that the setting didn’t play as big a role as it did in other movies. Breakfast at Tiffany’s utilized this same idea but slightly differently—the film had us wondering how a woman lived the life of an elite without the budget of one. Wall Street showed the dirty ways of climbing from the budget of Holly Golightly to sitting on the pile of cash like Gordon Gecko. The willingness to do anything for money is also seen in The Producers which showed us that this nature exists outside of the business world and how it affects the arts. Our idea of class distinction was further propelled when we went to watch Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera; we got to experience it first hand simply by sitting in the audience. The New York City of Taxi Driver allows a man struggling with post traumatic stress disorder a violent outlet based on the horrors of those less financially fortunate he sees during his night shift as a cab driver. A Sucker Emcee used a combination of hip-hop and poetry to talk about the struggles of growing up in a poor family and being exposed to the dangers of the slightly concealed world. Do the Right Thing uses administrative violence while Yellow Face uses racial discrimination to speak out against a problem that is still very pertinent in today’s society. Recent Tragic Events and The 25th Hour both approached the topic of a very grave and sensitive topic—one was very explicit in it’s categorization of people while the other used the event as a way to bring two character together as humans. Aside from Birds with Sky Mirrors, the problems and struggles of the movies we’ve seen continue to be important in today’s society.

My favorite of the works we’ve seen this semester is also the one I feel is most truthful to the New York I know. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing portrays the tension in a community of minorities. Sal’s sons, Vito and Pino, have their disputes and the tension rises when Mookie gets involved. There’s tension when Buggin’ Out demands that Sal have a black person up on his Wall of Fame and Sal refuses. But the tension of the film climaxes when the police get involved and Radio Raheem is killed in a chokehold by one of the cops. 

I was raised in a middle class family in Queens. I’ve been taking the train for several years now and as a young white woman I have never been stopped by a cop. I am a beneficiary of the stereotype that exists. Having said that I recognize how ridiculous that sounds. Just because I look a certain way I’m assumed to be innocent until I do something to prove otherwise, which is the way it should be. Learning about the civil rights movement for the first time I remember thinking, I’m so glad racism isn’t a thing anymore, it sounds ridiculous. As my eyes were opened to racism in America I remember thinking, this could never happen in New York. But over the past couple of months I’ve learned otherwise. Some of the works I’ve been exposed to have exposed me to truths I’ve been missing as puzzle pieces that make up the city. As it turns out this puzzle is not complete yet, it’s constantly changing and I have hope that the issues we face today will be a part of history textbooks not realities of the city’s residents.

Final Blog

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Of all the art forms we saw portraying New York City, I really have to say that I particularly enjoyed the movie Moonstruck, directed by Jewison. I really found this movie to be the most accurate of New York in all the implications it leaves. First off, every single character in the movie has some sort of weird or quirky personality. No one is just “normal.” Loretta, the main character, is an Italian superstitious thirty seven year old widow. Her boyfriend is a lackluster guy by the name of Jonny whose voice can bore the room to sleep. Jonny’s brother, Ronny, has an entire personality of his own and also happens to lack a hand for having cut it off a few years ago with the meat slicer.

Now not only are all the characters in the movie odd, but all the events to have taken and do take place are also just as weird. First of all, Jonny proposes to Loretta, only to leave the very same day to see his dying mother for an unknown amount of time. Secondly, Loretta accepts his proposal, a proposal from a man she does not even love, and much less like. Then there’s the really tiny minuscule fact that Loretta meets Jonny’s angry loner brother Ronny, falls in love with him, and sleeps with him the very same day she meets him. C’mon people, where else would this happen but in New York City?

Now along with all the weirdness that goes on in this film, the directors make sure that audience does not for one second get to miss all that New York has to offer. First is the loud rambunctious Italian family from Brooklyn. Seriously, where else in the United States could they live? Only in New York City of course, the state with the largest population of Italian-Americans. Then theres the ultra fancy date Ronny insists on. Sure, he could just take Loretta out to the nearby Olive Garden. But why make you’re life so simple when you can just take the subway up to the Lincoln Center and sit down to watch La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera House?

Now as accurate as this film may have been, it was also my favorite. I really enjoyed watching every second of it, seeing the drama unfold, laughing at the ample amounts of ridiculous scenes and people. I really hope Professor Healey, that this is one movie you force your students to watch year after year.

Weird Opportunities

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What a life changing experience this class was. I promise I’m not just saying that– my life was literally changed. As I mentioned in my last blog, I did not expect to have to watch, read, and experience what I have these last few months in my first semester of college. I did not expect to have the ability to write so informally in a blog (what a long way I’ve come), and nowadays I’m constantly looking around for a good picture to snap, even though the photo journal has come to an end. Mostly through the films and the shows that I’ve attended due to this class, my view of New York City has totally changed. Through Taxi Driver, I learned of how huge of a change New York City has gone through, something I had no clue had happened before. Through Wall Street I was shown how Wall Street can change people and even how different Wall Street is from any other place in the world. Through Do the Right Thing, I saw the continuous struggle of police brutality, which is still very evident in today’s society—I guess some things just never change. But what my favorite work was Birds with Sky Mirrors. It was my favorite because I never thought I could hate something so much. How does that make sense? It’ll all make sense in a second. My life experiences made my reaction the way it was. Just like in my first blog, I wrote about how Art is an Experience, and how every person views art in a unique way because each person has unique experiences. Without the experiences that I’ve went through, I may still have hated Birds with Sky Mirrors, but I probably wouldn’t be writing about how it was my “favorite”.

So watching Birds with Sky Mirrors, I had many thoughts and emotions going through my mind. I started off annoyed at the horrible choice of music, I went through a phase of hysteria when the naked women started screaming (I had to hold Elizabeth very tightly in order for the woman giving out the programs not to yell at me for cracking up) and then I was very pensive the rest of the performance. Why was G-d putting me through this? As the seconds ticked on my watch, I was growing more and more annoyed and soon enough I believed I was going through a form of torture. My experiences made me believe that every situation I’m in, I’m in for a reason, and I sat there thinking what the reason for this situation was. Did I do something horribly wrong that I needed to atone for a sin? Maybe. That was the thought for a while, and I sat there for a few minutes thinking about all the things I’ve done wrong in my life. But then I looked at all of the performers and thought to myself: New York City would have a performance like this.

I realized that all of the people around me, myself included, were in this City and were living and breathing away the days of our lives, trying to become someone… something. I don’t really live dangerously; I go to school in hopes of being a Speech Pathologist one day. My friends on either side of me are in school to become something else. Who knows where half of us will end up? But what I did know at that moment was that those performers were up there and New York City gave them the opportunity to be there. New York City gave them the chance to make this a “work of art”. Yea, I may totally and completely not understand why anyone would even pay a dime or spend their precious time here on this Earth to watch this performance, let alone perform in it, but what I do or don’t understand really doesn’t change much, and as much as I hated this performance, it really did have an impact on me, whether I like it or not. What I watched when I saw Birds with Sky Mirrors may not have been a version of my “truth”, but the fact that it even exists and is considered a work of art screams New York City to me. New York City is the only place I know that encourages and supports such “crazy” things! But although its crazy to me, I know that its also the place that encourages and supports the things that are important to me and that’s all that I really need. Birds with Sky Mirrors made me see New York City for what it really is: the city of opportunities (no matter how weird or boring those opportunity may be!).Birds with Sky Mirrors by MAU, Edinburgh Festival

This somehow turned into a rant…

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I have always known New York City to be a place of opportunity and adventure—a place where you can go after your dreams and find inspiration in every corner. However, after watching the many portrayals of New York City through an abundance of acclaimed films, I have been forced to reassess what living in New York City really means. I still find it to be a place of opportunity and adventure, but I also realize that it is a place with a lot of social issues and racial inequality, which in turn, can have a great affect on those wishing to reach the top.

Throughout the entire semester, the movie I enjoyed the most and found to be the most truthful to New York City was Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. Being that I am from the South Bronx and live in a neighborhood full of minorities, I almost felt at home while watching Spike Lee’s film. Everything was accurate, from the ways kids play with the fire hydrant in the summer, to the ways people blast salsa or rap music from their large stereos. What also made Spike Lee’s film very realistic was how he touched upon some very serious and real issues—problems that are still very prevalent today, including racism, gentrification, and police brutality. Lee highlighted the issue of racism by showing the tension between Pino and the rest of the black community of Bed-Stuy. He also highlighted gentrification by displaying the friction between the white bicyclist and Buggin’ Out. And finally, Lee also touched upon the issue of police brutality by ending the film with the murder of Radio Raheem, after having an altercation with a police officer.

All of these troubling matters emphasized by Spike Lee’s film hit me very hard and made me question the current state of New York City in terms of racial and social equality. I realized that even though this film was released in 1989, almost 26 years later, New Yorkers are still suffering from the same problems displayed in this film. Gentrification is happening everywhere to the point where lower class citizens are being forced out of their own homes. Racial inequality is rampant in the ways the government, along with many other people, do not acknowledge the life of a black human being. And finally, police brutality still exists, as shown through the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and many other minorities.

This is why I believe that out of all of the films we have seen this semester, Do The Right Thing is the most truthful and probably the most important of our time. This movie, which was shot almost 3 decades ago, still underlines what many minorities have to suffer through because of their social class and race. It is a film, which makes people like me want to fight for justice and change, so that everyone in New York City and America can have equal opportunity, acknowledgement, respect, and more. Racism, police brutality, and gentrification are all prospects that should be obsolete by now and it makes me angry that these issues still exist. It is up to our generation to make a change.

NYC : Behind the Scenes

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I strongly detest the “which is your favorite” question.  If the choices were between  blue and red i would choose purple. It’s hard to pick one out of a group when they all could be valid choices. That is how i feel about the works of art we have seen and read in this class. There were some pieces that i preferred over the others, however i feel there was truth and accuracy to everything we were introduced to, even Birds with Sky Mirrors. I might as well share my opinion on this work. I believe anything can be art or a work of creativity and although Birds with Sky Mirrors was not on my top 10 list, i loved that the dance was meant to bring awareness to environmental problems. I appreciate the creators vision and i commend him on his confidence to make this dance public. Although i didn’t really understand  what this play had to say about NYC, i soon realized that this is what living in the Big Apple was all about. Diversity and exceptionality. Although most parts of NYC have been gentrified, there is still so much diversity within it. There are also a variety of opinions and ideas about it that have been brought into the light by the artists. That is why its almost impossible to pick just one work.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Muppets Take Manhattan developed the idea that NYC is the place where all dreams come true. Miss Holly Golighlty ran away from her home town to live a better life in NYC. She wished to have a life that was similar to the vision she had of the store Tiffany. The Muppets believed that if they were to present their play to one of the producers in NYC they would automatically get hired and make it to broadway. Obviously to Kermit, NYC was the place to be and the place where anything could happen.Both of the films showed us that NYC is a place that is dreamed of. It is supposed to be a place where you can find work, live a good life and be wealthy without any problems, however the characters eventually realize that the fantasy world they create in their minds is nothing more than a dream. But it is a dream that many people have.

On the other hand the idea of survival of the fittest and that “Cash is King” is how you’ll make it in NYC. In Wall Street, Bud Fox is pressured by the idea that in order to make it big you need money, you need to be in a high class and you need to be greedy. Money runs the world and we live for it. Its true we must be greedy in some occasions however Gorden Gecco drilled this idea so far into Fox’s head that he lost sight of what truly was important to him. Sadly money does run the world, and this movie held truth to its statements. Their are both corrupt people and honest people, but people with money have an advantage and they take take it.

There is good to every bad and bad to every good.

 

NYC :)

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NYC is a place brimming with different ideas and opinions, fueled with excitement and unpredictability, and characterized for it’s uniqueness and creativity. All of which, my hometown of Valley Stream, certainly lacked. Going to the city, is always a breath of fresh air for me, because I never know what types of people I’m going to see or what I might encounter! It’s with this sense of excitement and anticipation that I traveled to Brooklyn to see Birds With Skymirrors.

Unlike most of my classmates, I absolutely adored the piece. One could argue that I might’ve loved it because I’m blind as bat or that my leaving during a particular scene in which a nearly clad man walked on stage enabled me to enjoy the performance. But I loved the whole atmosphere. I thought the music was hypnotic, the darkness entrancing, the choreography mysterious (again, might be since I can’t see that it was a mystery what they were doing), and the whole concept just captivating.

Birds with Skymirrors didn’t have to do with class, money, wealth or greed or any of the usual topics we discussed in class or saw in the other works; but I think it was the most truthful to New York City than the other works. It was crazy, loud, and unpredictable – everything I think of when I picture the city. Even though Leni Ponifasio isn’t a NYC native, he produced a work of art that I think embraces New York City is the realest light.

All that Birds With Skymirrors was, is essentially what I think NYC is made of. Here, you never know what’s going to happen, you could get mugged or you could see Jake Gyllenhaal! There might be a barefoot man walking on the sidewalk, or a robbery happening down the street. NYC is filled with creativity and uniqueness from its street musicians to its nightlife. And just like the performance, NYC is definitely loud!

The excitement, creativity and uniqueness that I always associate with NYC, took on a whole other level in Birds With Skymirrors. Whether you liked it or not, you can’t negate the fact that the dance piece unique and creative. All I could think of when leaving that performance was, “wow, that certainly was the weird part of NYC my mother warned me about.”