In late September, we attended a dance performance at Binghamton University by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. Christine knew Bill and Arnie (who died in 1988) when they all were at Harpur College, now Binghamton University. When the American Dance Asylum was formed and did performances by Bill, Arnie and Lois Welk in the 1970s, Christine danced with the group, and so she has continued to follow Bill’s career and keeps somewhat in touch with him.
We were thrilled to see the performance at BU in September. We also attended a brunch where Bill spoke of his time at BU and talked about his work. He talked about some new creations based on oral histories he has taken in conversations with his nephew Lance, and also his mother-in-law Dora. Hearing about those new dances, Christine was interested in seeing them performed. She learned that from Oct. 25 – Nov. 6, the company was performing these dances at the Joyce Theater in NYC. So she bought tickets and also made a reservation to stay at Harbor House, a B&B on Staten Island that we’ve stayed at several times. We ordered matinee tickets for both Saturday and Sunday. One of the oral history projects was being performed each day.
On Saturday, Nov. 5, we drove to Staten Island. The Harbor House B&B is right on the Hudson River and provides fantastic views of Brooklyn and Manhattan. While the B&B itself is a little tired, and we were only able to reserve their smallest room having a shared bathroom, the location is truly amazing.
This is what you see across the street.
While we were waiting to pick up the key at the B&B, we walked across the side street to the Alice Austen House. It’s a cute little house that was originally a farmhouse. I had never heard of Alice Austen until having stayed at the B&B and seeing the Austen House in the past. Alice Austen (1866 – 1952) was one of America’s earliest and most prolific female photographers, and over the course of her life she captured about 8,000 images (all glass plates using heavy cameras). Though she is best known for her documentary work, Austen was an artist with a strong aesthetic sensibility. Furthermore, she was a landscape designer, a master tennis player, and the first woman on Staten Island to own a car. She never married, and instead spent fifty years with Gertrude Tate. A rebel who broke away from the ties of her Victorian environment, Alice Austen created her own independent life. However, her life did not end well because she had to declare herself a pauper and ended up living in the poor house, the Staten Island Farm Colony.
Unbeknownst to Alice, a small publishing company called Picture Press was planning to do a book on the history of American women. One of the two partners, Oliver Jensen, sent out a routine letter of inquiry to various institutions concerning suitable photographs. C. Copes Brinley of the S.I. historical society responded by inviting him to look at those dusty boxes containing 3,500 of Alice Austen’s glass plate negatives. So, on a cold dark night in October 1950, Constance Foulk Robert, a young researcher, met with Brinley and McMillen to go through the negatives. Realizing that she had stumbled on the work of a great woman photographer, she brought Oliver Jensen with her on a return trip. Signing an agreement with the Historical Society, Oliver Jensen then published many of Alice’s photos in the Revolt of Women. He also placed an eight-page story (with later sequels) in Life, and six pages of Alice’s travel photos in Holiday, raising more than $4,000. Miss Austen’s third of the proceeds was enough to move her out of the Farm Colony and into a private nursing home. (This info taken from her bio on the Austen House website.)
It’s a remarkable story and we’re glad to have learned about her life and work. If you are interested in reading about Alice Austen, you can find more at http://aliceausten.org.
For Christine, the best part of staying at Harbor House is taking the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan. The ferry terminal is a 10-minute drive from the B&B. After picking up our keys and dropping off our stuff at the B&B, it was off to the ferry terminal for our trip into Manhattan. Parking is only $8 for the day, and the ferry ride is free, which is amazing. From the ferry, riders get the best view of the Statue of Liberty and a fantastic panorama from Brooklyn to Bayonne.
It was a lovely, fine day for a boat ride, although a bit chilly due to the wind. Christine had her puffy coat with hood, so we were all set to stand on deck and admire the sights.
From the Whitehall Ferry Terminal, we made our way to the South Ferry subway station. We got reduced fair round-trip subway cards and hopped on the uptown #1 subway. We rode up to 18th Street and walked a block from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue. As we were just walking up to the entrance to the Joyce Theater, there were two of Grant’s good friends with whom we have become acquainted, Dona Lee Kelly and John Denninger. We were so surprised to see them! Although, Dona Lee used to be the Development Director for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company for several years in the early 2000s, so we shouldn’t have been so surprised to see them there.
The dance performance Saturday afternoon was titled Lance: Pretty AKA the Escape Artist. The troupe of 8 dancers embody Lance’s many dimensions and life phases, from his successful audition, as a boy, for the San Francisco Ballet School, to an adulthood torn between the highs and lows of the night life he hungrily pursued. It is a collage of dance, song and dialogue. Pretty is Lance’s club dancer alter ego and the story was difficult in terms of Lance’s decline into drug addiction and the physical and mental problems encountered as a result. Bill has chosen to not give up on Lance and in his talk at BU discussed how challenging it is to be present for a weekly Sunday morning phone call with Lance. These conversations are the basis for the oral history transcript that has become the dance.
It was a very interesting, albeit difficult, dance to watch. However, the 8 dancers are magnificent – all so talented and varied. I have 2 favorites and my eyes are riveted to each when they are performing.
After the show, we walked over to 7th Avenue with Dona Lee and John and had an early dinner at Le Zie Trattoria. The weather was so nice that we sat outside café style. We had a yummy collection of tapas and enjoyed our conversation with Donna Lee and John.
After our meal we walked around a bit waiting for our next event which was a conversation moderated between Bill T. Jones and Moises Kaufman. Kaufman is a Tony and Emmy nominated director and award-winning playwright and is probably best know for the Laramie Project which is about the town’s (Laramie, WY) reaction to the Matthew Shepherd murder. This was a most awesome conversation between 2 incredibly bright men! They both talked about the importance of oral history in their work and how oral history is fashioned based on what people think you want to hear, how the listener interprets what he/she hears, and where fact may or may not come in to play. It was so fascinating. After the conversation, we chatted with Bill a bit. He is so welcoming and warm and it’s clear that he is fond of Christine and that she is a person of importance in his life’s story.
We then headed back down to the ferry, but since it was still relatively mild (mid-50s during the day) we walked down 8th Avenue to 14th Street. It’s always fun see some of the night life in New York.
We rode the subway the rest of the way downtown to South Ferry station and then went into Whitehall terminal to wait for the ferry. The ride back at night is so beautiful. Unfortunately, the vibration from the ferry makes taking nighttime photos difficult because the camera jiggles too much, but here are a couple of shots.
What we didn’t know at the time Christine was making reservations is that this was the weekend of the New York Marathon. So on Sunday morning, 50,000+ runners would be running across the Verrazano Bridge and then 26 miles through all 5 boroughs. That’s why Christine had a hard time even finding a vacant room. Several runners were staying at the Harbor House and we got a chance to chat at breakfast Sunday with 3 guys from Paris and a woman originally from Estonia who were running in the race. I can’t imagine running 26 miles, let alone walking 26 miles. But these folks were all seasoned marathoners and were looking forward to the race. They all had goals of sub-4 hour races.
With 50,000+ runners, getting around Staten Island was a challenge. Shuttle buses from the ferry station to the bridge were lined up for miles. When we got to the ferry terminal, we were packed like sardines in the hallway outside the main passenger waiting area. There were thousands of people. We didn’t initially realize that we were in the throngs of runners waiting to get on a shuttle bus to the start line. But eventually we figured out we didn’t need to be in that sardine can and we went into the main ferry waiting area.
Once in Manhattan, we took the subway to Houston St. Since it was another nice day, sunny and mid-50s, we wanted to walk around the Village a bit and enjoy the morning. We wandered around taking in the sights.
We then strolled over to Washington Square Park, always a great place for people watching. With the nice day, the park was full of activity. There was a performer who was playing a grand piano who was lovely to listen to. He was playing some of the classical piano standard repertory which we enjoyed very much.
We continued uptown and discovered the Jefferson Market Courthouse and Garden. The courthouse was built in 1877 and in 1895 architects deemed it the 5th most beautiful building in the U.S. It is a branch of the NY Public Library now.
We continued uptown and landed for lunch at Cooper’s Craft and Kitchen, right next door to the Joyce Theater. Then to the Sunday matinee, titled Dora: Tramontane. This piece is based on interviews Bill conducted with his mother-in-law Dora Amelan. At the start of WWII Dora was a 19-year-old young woman in Belgium. At the end of the war she was still alive, though much of her family was not. She spent much of the war in France helping others in internment camps and saving children. The title word Tramontane is a dry mountain wind that plagued one of the internment camps. A big part of her story is the moral dilemmas she and others faced during the war, the kind that remain insoluble through a lifetime of remembering.
The performance was very moving and very interesting in the use of flats that were moved about by the dancers symbolic of the reconstruction of memories. There was live music performed by a pianist and singer, who had a very haunting voice while singing some Schubert lieder songs, quite striking in that these German songs were present in a piece about internment camps during the war.
The pieces Lance and Dora are parts 1 and 2 of a trilogy Bill is creating. We’ll be on the lookout for part 3, which apparently Bill is working on now.
After the matinee, we stopped for some very tasty gelato and then we walked for a couple of hours up and down 8th Avenue. We had a little alarm at one point over a missing cellphone, which was left in a bathroom at a shop we stopped in. But, the cellphone was retrieved after we returned to the shop. We then had pizza at a little restaurant.
The last event was an end of show dance party that Christine purchased tickets for. It was held in one of the studios at the New York Live Arts building, the home of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. The theme of the party was Pretty Ball, and featured themes from Lance Brigg’s alter ego Pretty. So, there were many guys in drag and lots of characters floating around. One of the troupe dancers, Cain Coleman, arrived as Pretty. His costume was gorgeous and he is such a striking figure. Christine got a chance to talk with Dora Amelan, and even danced with her (Dora’s 94!).
We also saw Dona Lee and John again at the party. These kinds of events are not my cup of tea and I’m sure Christine would have wanted to cut the rug. But we both decided we were out of our element and so headed out the door after 2 hours.
We took the subway back downtown and boarded the ferry. We enjoyed being on the back deck watching the Manhattan skyline. It is really beautiful at night.
We retrieved the car from a parking garage, which was no easy task because the garage was locked. But all’s well that end’s well and we returned to Harbor House for the night.
We departed Monday morning for the drive home. It was another beautiful day and we enjoyed most of the drive, once out of traffic around the city. We stopped at the Delaware Water Gap Welcome Center, a really nice place to pick up literature. We now have lots of things to consider for short little boondoggles for day trips or weekends.
It’s fun to go to NYC for a short visit. I said to Christine that it might be interesting to live there for a couple of months just to be able to feel a neighborhood and get to know what’s in your neighborhood. But, that probably will never happen since that thought goes away pretty quickly once mentioned and discussed for a few minutes. Besides, we probably couldn’t afford to do that. We did have a good time though, saw and heard thought-provoking things, and enjoyed walking in Manhattan seeing the sights. It was a really nice trip.