I have been to Broadway shows and Shakespeare in the park performances, but never really to a small theatre production. Honestly, I thought it would just be a smaller version of a Broadway show (I was even expecting some dances).  As soon as I saw the small stage (and thought “Oh well no dancing”) and the seats (which were really all good) I figured this was going to be very different, and I wasn’t sure I understood what the whole point was.  Then it started and I got it.

There were few characters, no side stories, and hardly any variation of scenery, yet the acting (or most of it) was real, emotional, and raw, in a way that a popular Broadway blockbuster can never be.  The connection the actors made with the audience was very clear as they created an atmosphere in the theatre of suspense, fear, sadness, love, and humor all mixed together.  They got the audience hooked on the storyline and made them invested in the characters feelings and lives.

This experience shed some light on the artistry of good acting.  I found that since we were so close to the actors, I not only heard how they said their lines, but also saw their face expressions and body language.  This gave me the chance to notice the difference between good acting and bad.  It also made me appreciate the good acting all the more once I saw what it entailed.  The actors who seemed like they were not acting, the ones who showed their emotion and conveyed feeling effortlessly (like Tony and Joey) were the ones I felt were the best.  Others, seemed a bit stilted and stiff, their tone was off in certain scenes or their vocabulary was not natural enough, those were the actors that fell short.

What have I got out of this theatre outing? I think I figured out one of the main components of a good actor – doing the unnatural naturally. And now I know that its a lot harder than it looks.

I really enjoyed the concert.  I love classical music, so hearing it played live and non-digital was fantastic. The acoustics in that hall are amazing.  I think because of that, I was able to appreciate the wonders of instruments.  It is almost miraculous that such a plethora of different sounds and tunes could come out from a hollowed out piece of wood and some string.  The variation in volume was also incredible.  They went from super low, to very loud, all with such fluid motions.  Which brings me to the thing I liked most about going to Carnegie Hall.  The visual experience really took the music to the next level.  Watching the musicians move along with their instruments was mesmerizing.  The way their elbows bent in sync and the bobbing of their heads as they slid their bows back and forth was almost like some sort of dance.  Sometimes their moves were ferociously fast, almost like they were slicing their instruments in half, while other times they were being so gentle, it seemed like they were not even touching their instruments at all.  They made the music so much more alive.  I liked the Vivaldi piece the best out of all the ones played.  I don’t know exactly why.  Maybe because it had a theme and was easier to understand ( special thanks to Alex for helping me follow which season we were in and the Playbill, which gave really nice descriptions for each segment of each season ).

Q:  If anything could be art, then nothing is art. Where do you draw the line between art and something else? Is it even possible to define art? Is it purely subjective (based on individual opinion) or does there exist a style or work that is objectively worthy of the title of “art”?

Before saying anything about the performance itself, I would just like to comment that I very much enjoyed the evening (and the one of the Ballet) especially because it was so fun to spend time together out of the classroom and all dressed up. So thank you to everyone for that!

Before I saw Carmen, I thought all operas were like this: huge stage, spotlight on the center, a woman in a puffy, old-fashioned gown stands there, arms flared dramatically, singing for three hours straight.  While I like music and singing, that didn’t sound like my idea of a good time.  Thankfully Carmen was not like that.  Now, in my mind, the Opera is the classier mother of Broadway shows.  First-off, I loved the scenery.  Even though we were very high and far away, the detail was evident.  The circular shape helped unify the scenes and focus your eyes on the center of what was going on.  Maybe it also helped the acoustics, which were incredible.  The music was beautiful.  It was dramatic, quiet, creepy, sad, happy, exciting, and deep.  It really filled the whole space and it was cool that we could see the orchestra.  While I am sure the people closer to the stage heard the voices louder, the fact that we heard the singing so clearly without the aide of microphones is amazing.  I never appreciated the power of the human voice so much before.

The storyline of Carmen was not extremely difficult to follow as I was scared it would be since the amount of important characters was limited and the dialogue was not very fast (seeing as they repeated every word about ten times).  I found that I was mostly bored during the first two acts because they were very drawn out and didn’t really have much action.  I liked the third and fourth much better because they were more fast-paced and showed more character development.  I went from absolutely hating Carmen in the first three acts (which led to a very comedic commentary throughout, thank you Jeanette for putting up with me), to understanding her in the last act. By the middle of the fourth act, I was sitting at the edge of my seat, not just because I couldn’t see otherwise because of my height, but also for excitement.  I think Carmen redeemed herself in dying for her freedom and I liked that in the end, I could finally feel some positive emotions towards the main character.

** About Opera vs. Carmen specifically. Are all operas like Carmen? Do they all portray women in such a way? And men? Are they all so overly dramatic? Are they all so long?

While I genuinely like the art of dance, I was nervous to see if I would find Ballet exciting and beautiful. I had always assumed that the strict form and slow classical movements of it would make it slightly boring and less artistic. After seeing the Ballet, I found it to be better than what I expected, and I really enjoyed.  That is not to say that I found all parts equally exciting (the Sailors kinda stole the show for me), but I feel like I gained an appreciation for the form of Ballet; in that it lent to a certain beauty in the purity of movement that I hadn’t ever seen before.

I appreciated the variety of the ballets we saw.  I liked that they represented different styles; the first two ballets were the more conventional type (even within that category was the difference in that one was a series of solos and duets while the other was an ongoing story) and the last ballet was something I had never envisioned as something I would see at a Ballet.  I liked each type of ballet for different reasons.

The first two ballets showed off the beauty of the human body in a simple, innocent way.  The fluidity of the movements, especially when done in a duet, reflected such an agility and graceful strength that you don’t really see elsewhere.  The dancers moved like gravity didn’t effect them completely, as though they were connected by strings.  Although they followed a form and there was repetition of moves, I felt that it aided in unifying the performance and made it whole and polished.

The last ballet, Fancy Free ( the sailors on shore), was my favorite.  Now, if I hadn’t been looking out for the art in ballet, I would have also chosen this as my favorite, but probably just because it was more broadway-show-like and exciting in contrast to the ones before it.  However, while I did find it exciting, I also liked it from an artistic perspective.  I was amazed by how creative they were within the boundaries of ballet etiquette.  They made it less stiff, more real.  The music choice was more vibrant, but the movements were similar to the ones in the preceding ballets, albeit faster or more dramatized.  My favorite part was when the soldiers threw their heads back, downed their shots, and slammed the glasses on the table in sync.  I found it quite artistically pleasing 🙂

I think that the difference between the 911 memorial and the Vietnam memorial reflected more than just a varying artistic approach, rather, I think it matched the differing feelings the architects intended to provoke in connection to each event being memorialized.

The 911 memorial was a very low structure –  or more specifically – below.  It was very deep hole, made of dark stone, with water pouring continuously but never filling up. From a height perspective, it stands out in contrast with the tall buildings in the skyline around it. In relation to color, it also looks different, while the glass and brushed metal of the buildings around it reflect the sun, this seemingly bottomless pit is just full of darkness.  I think the purpose of the memorial is to create an opening for people to pour their sorrows out.  It is called a reflecting pool, but it isn’t a still body of water that reflects.  I think the real reflection is what is going on inside of every individual who visits the site.  All that we have left of the terrible tragedy of 911 is a feeling of lack and sadness for all the innocent lives that were lost.  Standing at the edge of the reflecting pool, hearing nothing but the rushing water, I really felt that emptiness.  No exciting city noises and sounds to fill the void, just the rushing water and deep, dark, pool to give you a moment in time to look down, literally and figuratively, ponder and mourn.

In comparison, the Vietnam memorial was different architecturally and led to emotions that differed in a way from the 911 memorial. It was not tall, but definitely high, as it rose up. It was a wall made of glass cubes, and had writing on it that wasn’t visible if you saw it from afar.  While the 911 memorial focused more on personal remembrances, this one is more to combat the ignorance of many people to what was lost in this war.  Many people don’t have a close connection to the Vietnam War. It was “long ago and in a far away land”, not close to home and recently enough like 911. The people who died were soldiers, who we tend to think of as a whole but not really in the individual sense.  I think the point of the memorial was to show the viewer that we didn’t just lose a “wall of soldiers”, we lost many different “cubes” – people who had individual thoughts, fears, loved ones, and whole lives. The memorial causes people to lift up their heads, also literally and figuratively.  It forces people to shed their ignorance of a hard subject to deal with and spend the time on something that takes more thought to understand and feel. At least that’s what I got out of the experience.

All in all, I found it easier to connect to the 911 memorial more so that the Vietnam one.  I guess I understood it better because I am more personally associated with it.  While I hypothesized about many things in the Vietnam memorial, There are many things I am still curious about that I cannot answer on my own.  Why were there doorways through the Vietnam memorial?  Why make the letters so hard to read? How were the specific texts on the memorial chosen? If you have any ideas, please let me know!

I really enjoyed looking through the Gary Winogrand show. While the subjects in his pictures did not move like the ones in Harry Potter, they were still full of life.  Each shot captured a scene and froze it at the perfect or precisely imperfect moment, which made it so much more real.  I also liked that each of the pictures were labeled with a place and time.  I felt like he was giving you a sort of photographical latitude and longitude to bring you to the moment of the shot, showing that photography, when done correctly, really does take you places.  There were no descriptions or made up titles because the scene says it all; it is so real you can’t possibly assign a name to it and risk ruining the effect of the picture.

As I was perusing through the gallery I found myself drawn to some shots mores than others.  These were the perfect shots, the ones that looked obviously beautiful in my opinion.  The boy picking up the girl in the waves, the water spraying around.  The symmetry of the alignment of people dispersed on a ferry.  The football game caught in the middle of a play. Other photographs were harder to see the beauty in, and I needed to spend a bit more time thinking about them. The mother holding a frowning toddler’s hand in the water.  A rainy hazy street with a blurred figure of a man on the side.  A woman caught mid-laugh dancing with a man. Theses pictures were more common and I think reflect Gary Winogrand’s main style. Sometimes the whole beauty of a moment is not in what it looks like, but just as it is. I am sure it is a beautiful moment when a baby is born, but the newborn is far from beautiful, excuse my crude description but he/she is a little, pruny thing, covered in blood and other matters.  But is that moment in time not beautiful? The same goes for many of Winorgrand’s photos. The moments themselves are beautiful. Maybe the true beauty of photography doesn’t lie in the scene it copies, rather, it is in the moment it portrays.

Take the picture of the woman caught mid-laugh dancing with a man.  It is a rather unattractive shot for her.  If I was the woman and someone had snapped that unflattering shot of me, I would demand a retake.  If this was some bride and groom dancing at their wedding, I can say for certain this photo didn’t make it into the wedding album. Now, if the picture that been snapped a second before or after, her smile would probably be a bit less gaping and would look more conventionally beautiful. But that moment of the peak of her laughter as he spins her around the dance floor would not be completely conveyed if her smile was more reserved. Does the woman look beautiful in Winogrand’s picture? I don’t think so.  Is the photo beautiful? I think it is. And the same goes for many of his other shots.

The Ecstasy of Gold is from the score of the movie The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is an awesome western.  It’s called Ecstasy of Gold because it is taken from a scene where one of the characters is hurriedly looking for the gold he knows is hidden in a certain grave in a huge graveyard. This version is from an album in which Yo Yo Ma plays Ennio Morricone’s music from many of his movie scores (which includes the movie this is from).

I feel that this song expresses the feeling of striving to reach any goal, starting out slow and then gaining momentum until it reaches its peak, symbolizing the final attainment of whatever the person set his/her mind to.  I think this song works with any goal, physical or theoretical. I personally enjoy jogging to it. I know, exercising to classical music sounds weird, but this song really pumps me up when it accelerates.

Is it beautiful? I think it is. It has so many parts and while it starts out low and slow with an instrument or two, as it gains in tempo and crescendo, more instruments are added until its a full fledged orchestra. It sounds stunning. If you pay close attention you can hear all the individual parts yet also the bigger picture. Also, it has a lot of string instruments which tend to add soul to music and Yo Yo Ma plays the cello amazingly which is a real bonus.

Hear it for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI6zLayBeJQ

[quicktime]http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ugoretz14/files/2014/09/Movie-on-9-2-14-at-10.58-AM.mov[/quicktime]

I happen to absolutely love art. Traditional art, that is. I love detailed works that show countless hours of effort, skill, and taste – classic paintings and sculptures. I like museums, but the one place I always avoid there is the Modern Art galleries. It is painfully frustrating for me to go from seeing gorgeous landscapes or lifelike portraits to standing before a large white canvas with a blue dot on it that the artist didn’t even deem important enough to center. It drives me crazy to think about what possessed someone to create such a work of “bla”, and what bothers me even more is thinking who in their right mind decided it was memorable or special enough to showcase so prominently in a museum.  When I am dragged/forced/guilted/tricked into visiting contemporary art exhibits, I usually find comfort (and joy) in sizing up each work and imagining the insanity of the artist and Museum curator who were responsible for bringing this dreadfully boring work of so-called art to the public attention.

Now, I am not going to tell you that after this “Night at the Museum” my views have completely been turned over, and I now love modern and traditional art with equal vigor. I’m sorry, but that bicycle hanging on the wall by the entrance the the gift shop still doesn’t look better than a Starry Night.  However, because of the task we were given, I had to give each painting, sculpture, or miniature monkey, a real chance. For that night, in my mind, all art was fair game.  And because of that night I now see art differently.  I look for meaning even when I don’t see it right away and search for ways to resolve my questions rather than dismissing the art altogether. (I have also stopped assuming all modern art dealers and curators are insane.)

What surprised me that night was that my favorite work of art from the whole three hours I spent there was pretty contradictory to my favored artistic style. It was a glass box that had inside it a straw fedora, an old-fashioned bicycle horn, some glass bottles, and a few other vintage accessories.  I don’t even remember the title or the artist but I loved it because when I saw it, I also saw a scene in my head. The setting:  The summer sun is bright. The sky is cloudless and breezy. A green meadow with tall grass that is dancing softly in the wind. A dirt road through it. The subject: A woman in a white sundress and straw hat rides her bicycle leisurely enough that she can simultaneously sip lemonade from a glass bottle. The bicycle has a horn but it sits unused because she is the only one on the road.  Peaceful. Quiet. Serene. I loved that the art spurred my imagination to spin a story and it led me further to my conclusion that art is not necessarily defined by effort, materials, or skill. Maybe it is truly defined not just by the thought process that preceded its creation, but also by the thought process that it inspires in the mind of the viewer.