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City Guide - New York - Culture | ||
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Culture 'Culture just seems to be in the air like part of the weather,' author Tom Wolfe wrote. From the bright lights of Broadway to the revered stages at the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, from the high kicks of the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall to the daring manouveurs of the Big Apple Circus' trapeze artists, New York City has something for everyone. The principal entertainment districts are the Theater District in the Broadway/42nd Street/Times Square area and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side. Most Broadway theatres are located in the blocks just east or west of Broadway between 41st and 53rd Streets; Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theatres are sprinkled throughout Manhattan, with a concentration in the East and West Villages, Chelsea, and several in the 40s and 50s west of the Broadway theatre district. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, Columbus Avenue, at 64th Street (tel: (212) 721 6500, tickets only; web site: www.lincolncenter.org) is America's first and largest performing arts complex, containing many venues, and being the home of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, among others. For information see telephone numbers of relevant organisation or venue below. New York continues to grow and, as well as these established attractions, offers something new each day. Times Square is one of the prominent areas to receive attention. The Madame Tussaud's wax museum (which includes a movie complex), the New Amsterdam Theater (owned by Disney), and a number of similar renovations of historic theatres - such as the Victory, the Lyric, the Academy/Apollo - have ensured that New York remains every inch the the cultural capital. Tickets can be bought through Telecharge (tel: (212) 239 6200), which handles, Broadway, Off-Broadway and some concerts; and Ticketmaster (tel: (212) 307 7171), which also offers Broadway, Off-Broadway and tickets to Madison Square Garden and Radio City. Reduced-priced tickets for same-day entry for both Broadway and Off-Broadway shows can be bought at the TKTS half-price booths at 2 World Trade Center and at 47th Street and Broadway (open daily from 1500-2000 for evening performances and 1000-1400 for Wednesday and Saturday matinees and 1200-1830 for all Sunday peformances). Music: The Avery Fisher Hall (tel: (212) 875 5030), in the Lincoln Center, is the permanent home of the New York Philharmonic, and a temporary one to visiting orchestras and soloists. Tickets for the Philharmonic cost about US$1250 and Avery Fisher also hosts the very popular annual Mostly Mozart Festival (tel: (212) 875 5103) in August. The Alice Tully Hall (tel: (212) 875 5050), also in the Lincoln Center, is a smaller venue for chamber orchestras, string quartets and instrumentalists. The greatest names from all schools of music from Tchaikovsky and Toscanini to Gershwin and Billie Holiday have performed at Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street, at Seventh Avenue (tel: (212) 247 7800) which boasts an astonishing and eclectic repertoire at moderate prices. Other leading venues which draw the world top performers include Kaufman Concert Hall, in the 92nd St Y at 1395 Lexington Ave (tel: (212) 996 1100) and the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, Bedford Park Boulevard, the Bronx (tel: (718) 960 8232). Opera: Known as The Met, the Metropolitan Opera House (tel: (212) 362 6000), in the Lincoln Center, is New York's premiere opera venue and home to the Metropolitan Opera Company from September to late April. The New York State Theater (tel: (212) 870 5570) also in Lincoln Center, is where the New York City Opera plays. Its wide and adventurous program varies wildly in quality - sometimes startlingly innovative, occasionally mediocre - but seats go for less than half the Met's prices. Other venues include the Julliard School, 155 West 65th Street, at Broadway (tel: (212) 799 5000), where Julliard students often perform with a famous conductor, usually for low prices. Theatre: Theatre venues in the city are referred to as Broadway, Off-Broadway, or Off-Off-Broadway; groupings that represent a descending order of ticket price, production polish, elegance and comfort and an ascending order of innovation, experimentation, and theatre for the sake of art rather than cash. Off-Broadway is still the place to go to see the works of the world's most innovative playwrights; social and political drama, satire, ethnic plays and repertory: in short, anything that Broadway wouldn't consider a guaranteed money-spinner. Lower operating costs also mean that Off-Broadway often serves as a forum to try out what sometimes ends up as a big Broadway production. Off-Off-Broadway is New York's fringe. Unlike Off-Broadway, Off-Off doesn't have to use professional actors, and shows range from shoestring productions of the classics to outrageous and experimental performance art. The National Actors Theatre, 1560 Broadway, Suite 409 (tel: (212) 719 5331), presents the classics on Broadway, and Manhattan Theatre Club, 311 West 43rd Street, 8th Floor (tel: (212) 399 3000), produces some of the finest new plays in American theatre. Other contemporary theatre groups include Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, 1450 Broadway, Suite 300 (tel: (212) 827 5412), which brings the magic of Disney to life on the Broadway stage. For a more ethnic flavour Harlem's Apollo Theatre, 253 West 125th Street (tel: (212) 531 5300) has celebrated the legacy and culture of African-American music and entertainment since 1934. Dance: New York has five major ballet companies and dozens of contemporary troupes and the official dance season runs from September to January and April to June. Universally known as BAM, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Street, between Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, Brooklyn (tel: (718) 636 4100), is America's oldest performing arts academy and one of the busiest and most daring producers in New York. In the autumn, BAM's Next Wave Festival showcases the hottest international attractions in avant-garde dance and music; in winter, visiting artists appear, and each spring BAM hosts the annual DanceAfrica Festival, America's largest showcase for African and African-American dance and culture. The most eminent and celebrated troupes in modern dance perform at City Center, 131 West 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues (tel: (212) 581 1212). Big-name companies include the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, and the Dance Theater of Harlem. Merce Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune St at Washington St (tel: (212) 691 9751), the home of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, stages performances by emerging modern choreographers. Metropolitan Opera House, (tel: (212) 362 6000) in the Lincoln Center, is the home of the renowned American Ballet Theater, which performs the classics from early May into July. New York State Theater (tel: (212) 870 5570), in the Lincoln Center, is home to the revered New York City Ballet, which performs more contemporary ballet for a nine-week season each spring. Film: A movie centre second only to Tinseltown itself, New York has hundreds of modern cinema complexes and arthouse cinemas. Cinemas worth visiting include Sony Lincoln Square which is more a theme park than a multiplex, situated on Broadway at 68th Street; and The Ziegfeld, 141 West 54th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, which often holds glitzy premieres and is the grandest picture palace in town, once home to the Ziegfeld Follies. Cultural events: New York's biggest antiques event, Manhattan Antiques and Collectibles Triple Pier Expo, is held at three piers on the Hudson River in February. The annual harbinger of spring, the New York Flower Show, is held on piers 90 and 93, 51st Street and Twelfth Avenue, in March. Art Expo New York, the world's largest show of popular art, features a wide range of works from paintings and sculpture to posters and decorative arts, at the Javits Convention Centre in March. Ninth Avenue International Food Festival is a gastronomic feast of a street fair in May with live bands and hundreds of food stalls selling a wide assortment of ethnic and junk food. Summerstage, a festival of free or low-cost concerts in Central Park, features world music, pop, folk and jazz artists throughout the summer. Drag queens strut their stuff at Wigstock, this flamboyant gay festival celebrated over Labour Day on the pier at 11th Street on the Hudson River. Literary Notes The vibrant city of New York has spawned some of America's most celebrated writers and provided the backdrop and inspiration for countless bestselling novels and hit movies. Washington Square, at Fifth Avenue and Waverley Place, was home to the nineteenth-century aristocracy and provided the inspiration for the classic study of the American upper classes, Washington Square (1881), by New Yorker Henry James. Bohemian Greenwich Village has long been the favoured haunt of America's literati. In the 1920s and 1930s, 137 Bleecker Street, was the site of the old Liberal Club, a forum for anarchists and free thinkers including John Reed who wrote Ten Days That Shook the World (1919). The Chelsea Hotel, on West 23rd Street, is something of a writers' emporium. Here Arthur Miller penned After the Fall (1964) and William Burroughs worked on Naked Lunch (1959). New Yorker Arthur Miller is celebrated as America's greatest living playwright whose numerous works have delighted Broadway and international audiences for decades. His knowledge of the Brooklyn waterfront helped to form his characters in his play A View From the Bridge (1955) and powerful reflections upon his home town are revealed in The Price (1968), the story of a New York policeman. New York's most famous contemporary novelist is, of course, Paul Auster who won international acclaim for The New York Trilogy (1987) - a book comprising three novellas - City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room - all set in New York. |