Lincoln Center, MAD, and Fela!

On Friday, I had only a few meetings, so I planned a tour of Lincoln Center.  The whole place has been renovated by Diller Scofidio+Renfro with a new fountain in the plaza and a new 'grassy knoll' on the 65th Street side.  The tour guide was an older gentleman with a very deep and dramatic bass voice.  He took us through David Kock theatre, where NYC Opera was doing a rehearsal for Intermezzo by Strauss.  There was no music, just people running around a stage with props.  In the Met Opera House, the Opera was rehearsing Carmen with full costumes and sets.  We were only allowed into the Director's box, but from there we could see and hear everything.  That place is huge!  The final venue we toured is Avery Fisher Hall, where the Philharmonic performs.  This venue was empty so we sat in there as our guide told us a little about the place.  Apparently Avery Fisher paid to have the whole thing taken down and rebuilt shortly after it opened because that was the only way to fix the sound problems.  They really don't make rich people like they used to, do they?

From Lincoln Center, I headed to MAD, the Museum of Art and Design.  I had read about the building that this museum is in in the New York Times.  The building now looks like it says 'HI' on the top. The museum was between exhibits and had only a jewelry show and a pottery show, but their open studio housed Ruth Marshall, who knits cat skins.  She has some small knitted wild cat skins on display (ocelot, etc) and is working on a tiger.  Her knitted skins are based on actual skins in the Natural History Museum collection.  The tiger is from a female from a zoo who was donated to the museum upon her death.  The knit work is beautiful (colour work, shaping, etc) and it was cool to talk to her in person about her project.

Since I was in Columbus Circle, I decided to have lunch at Bouchon Bakery in Time Warner Center.  I had their short rib sliders at the bar and a cookie with ice cream.

After lunch, I strolled down to Times Square to see what was happening at the TKTS booth.  It sure has expanded since the 90s when I visited D while he was at Columbia and we saw Metamorphosis with Baryshnikov!  The line was quite long, and the booth is now several windows wide and located under the glowing red stairs near the Father Duffy statue.  I was able to get a seat for Fela!, a musical based on the life of Fela Kuti.  He invented afrobeat music, but I had heard that the dancing, choreographed by Bill T. Jones was phenomenal.  I went back to my hotel for room service dinner of french onion soup (and the remainder of the cookie from lunch) and a bit of a rest.  I got to the theatre as they were letting the line in.  The crowd was heavily African-American and the theatre was plastered all over with hand painted signs to give it some atmosphere.  My seat was in the very first row!  The cast is all black, and the performer who plays Fela! is pretty much on stage the entire time.  He talks to the crowd as if we are all seeing one of his shows in Fela's nightclub in Nigeria.  The music is amazing of course, but the dancing was phenomenal and it was so cool to see it so close up.  I could have reached out and touched some of the dancer's feet.  The show includes a lot of audience participation and the dancers often move into the aisles as they are singing and dancing.