A diary of recent events in Teachoutworld:
FRIDAY: Spoke about All in the Dances at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and was given a private view of “Ballets Russes to Balanchine: Dance at the Wadsworth Atheneum,” a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of original costumes and set designs for such legendary ballets as Les Noces, Prodigal Son, and Nijinsky’s Sacre du Printemps (including a costume hand-painted by Matisse). More next week, but for the moment I’ll just say that anybody with more than a casual interest in twentieth-century ballet will find this show, which runs through Jan. 2, jaw-droppingly good.
SATURDAY: A triple-decker day. Went to Knoedler & Company and looked at Onrushing Waves, the Milton Avery exhibition. Then to the nearest movie theater to see Sideways, about which Our Girl was soooo right: it couldn’t have been better. Then to Broadway for a preview of Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance, followed by dinner and a fast cab home, where I watched two stockpiled episodes of What’s My Line?
on the DVR (Steve Allen just joined the panel) and went to bed way too late.
SUNDAY: Maccers, my blogstalker, came to my Barnes & Noble signing last Tuesday (incognito, but I found her out), so I e-mailed her an invitation to a Broadway preview. She turned up her fine nose at a glitzy musical, forcing me to up the highbrow ante several thousand notches with Sheridan’s The Rivals, to which she said yes. Updated the Top Five with four fresh items, including a heartfelt paragraph about the Avery show. (See the right-hand column for details.) Lunched quickly and dirtily on the fly, called my mother in Smalltown, U.S.A., from the street, then saw two back-to-back off-Broadway shows, John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt
and Woody Allen’s A Second Hand Memory. Called Our Girl the second I got home to discuss Sideways. Knocked out a quick posting for Monday (you’re reading it). The loft beckons.
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? Well, I have three pieces to write (two shorts and a long) before I head for LaGuardia on Wednesday morning to fly home to my family for Thanksgiving. Between meals, I plan to sleep. No blogging, though–you’ll be on your own from Wednesday through next Tuesday.
How about you?