Author: Elina Shtridler

Barge Music, located just under the Brooklyn Bridge, brings great music to the public for a not so great price. Although I myself had not had to pay for my ticket, I have looked through the listing of different concerts performed at barge music and their admission prices. Going to barge music was an incredible experience.  It is conveniently located right off the Brooklyn Promenade, which gives you a really beautiful view of the city, and is also right next to the ice cream factory, which has very delicious ice cream (especially the strawberry one because they make it with real strawberries).  Stepping onto the barge, I had found out that the barge actually does move along with the waves.  I was given a program for the night’s performance. Michael Bulychev-Okser, a Russian pianist, was performing three of  Beethoven’s Sonatas. The inside of the barge is comprised of one room with a stage and chairs facing the stage, for the audience. It was a pretty small room, it could fit maybe 100 people, but it was a lot larger than what it seemed like from the outside. Behind the stage was a window, which provided a view of Manhattan. If you looked through that window, the movement of the boat became very apparent, otherwise it was barely noticeable.

Michael Bulychev-Okser started out by playing Piano Sonata No.29 in B-Flat Major, Op.106, “Hammerklavier”. I did not so much like this choice of melody because at times it seemed like there were too many things going on at the same time. What I mean by that is each hand was playing a tune that was both powerful and completely distinct from the other, and when both are put together it is very hard to follow the music. This however, was not the performer’s fault, after all he isn’t the one that composed the melody. This piece did do one thing though. It allowed us to see just how talented the performer is, that he was able to play two completely different melodies with his hands at the same time.  Following this performance was an intermission, during which I went upstairs to admire the view of the city. Surprisingly, you could not feel the boat’s movement at all from the top. After a brief intermission, Michael Bulychev-Okser came back and performed two more pieces for us: Piano Sonata No.8 in c minor, Op.13, “Pathetique” and Piano Sonata No. 16 in G Major, Op. 31, No.1. These last two performances were very enjoyable since there wasn’t any dissonance between the melody played by the right hand and the melody played by the left hand. The movement of the barge had at times seemed timed to the music and had only emphasized the music more. This made the performance even better.

Sadly there was only a handful of us that went to see the performance. Those of you that did not go, you missed out on a great experience and I would recommend that you at some point go to a concert at barge music.

This was perhaps one of the most informative classes we’ve had. At first I thought it was a rather weird assignment to write down places where punk rock artists performed, or were born. I didn’t think that any of those places still existed. This assignment proved to be very interesting and informative. We had to go around the room and really pay attention to the newspaper clippings, photographs, and audio files in order to find the places. After we wrote down the places, we went down to the education center and researched where all the places were. We created a key for the colored pins, where one color represented where the artists performed, another color represented the artist’s birthplace. It became slightly challenging when we ran out of certain color pins. Through researching where the places were, we learned more about those places and the artists. We discovered the pattern of where punk rock was performed. I actually really enjoyed this visit to the museum and learned a lot from it, especially since I knew nothing about punk rock before this

The Del Barrio Lecture was pretty interesting. It was awesome that we got to go into a studio and actually dance (somewhat) for a little bit. Before I came to the dance studio I was expecting that we would spend if not all, then at least a majority of our class time, dancing. The actual dancing part was really fun. I wish we could’ve done more of that. I was a little disappointed when Ramon Del Barrio spent most of the time telling us about his life. I wished he would’ve taught us some dance moves or got us to dance a little more. His lifestyle and accomplishments are very admirable, however. Even though he has not finished college, he is still successful and enjoys what he does. He seemed very comfortable with himself, and comfortable talking to us. He got us to dance, even though most of us were clearly out of our comforr zone. I found it very interesting that he has worked with Michael Jackson and other celebrities. Listening to him was pretty intersting. He has a very clear understanding of who he is and what makes him happy. To me it seemed that he viewed everything through dance. Even though I understand his view on life, I myself will not start to see everything from a dance perspective. Through this meeting I gained a slightly different perspective on life. I started seeing that every day things, such as walking, can be interpreted as dance too.

I really didn’t like the first part of the festival. The very first performance, Le Spectre de la rose, was very unclear, at least for me, as to what it was representing. Even after reading the description of what it was supposed to be about, I still could not understand how exactly that idea was represented through the dance. The next performance, Snow, wasn’t much better. It started off pretty interesting, I liked the turns and spins at first, but it was all the same throughout the performance.  The other thing I didn’t like about this performance was that I could see that the snow was of some significance to the dancer, but it was unclear as to why the snow was important, or really what feeling it evoked.  I loved the next two performances. The Dying Swan appealed to me at first because a Russian ballerina was performing. She had beautiful technique and accurately represented a dying swan. As I was watching her, I could invision an actual swan dying. This made the performance really enjoyable.  I liked the Alvin Ailey, Revelations,  performance too. It was upbeat and I really liked how they performed all their moves in unison. They also made complex dance moves look really easy. I would definitely go to another Alvin Ailey performance, or a performance by Diana Vishneva (Russian Ballerina from The Dying Swan). I would be reluctant to watch the Austrian Ballet (Le Spectre de la rose)  and I will definitely not go to another performance by Sang Jijia (Snow)

This was my first Opera and I was really impressed.  As the overture started I began wondering how the orchestra can play through the whole show. The opera singers at least get to take a break from singing when they are either changing or their character is not supposed to be on stage, but the orchestra plays more or less constantly. Then as the curtains parted I saw the tilted stage and the people on it and I thought that it was amazing that the opera singers could not only sing and act, but they can do it on a tilted stage and make it look effortless.The lighting was also incredible. I never imagined it was possible to show on stage the day going by, by varying the amount of light coming in through the windows. I thought that could be done only in movies.

Reading over the plot of the opera helped me a lot. I knew what to expect and I could follow along with what was happening, since the opera was not in English. The translation of the words on the back of the seat in front of mine helped a lot, but it was a little bit annoying looking down all the time and I felt that I might miss something in the time it took me to read the translation.

I didn’t enjoy the actual plot of the story a lot though. I thought that it was a little too fake. For example, in the beginning Susanna and Marcellina don’t really like each other, but then as soon as they find out that Figaro is Marcellina’s son, they all of a sudden get along. That was not very realistic and in real life, they would probably start to hate each other even more because they will be a part of the same family. Another thing I didn’t really like about the plot was all the “pretending to be somebody else” at the end, because it was very confusing.