The Palace Theatre and the Albany Parking Authority have announced free parking in the Quackenbush Square Garage, one block from the Palace at Broadway and Orange Streets.
The garage opens two hours prior to each event and closes two hours after. Present your Palace ticket for free entry.
American painter David Reed will present a lecture called “Vampire Painting: Painting in Our Time of Media” at 6 tonight (Mon 10/22/12) at EMPAC, 110 Eighth St., Troy. The lecture is free.
Reed, whose painted abstractions, installations, and video works have been on the New York and international scenes for more than 30 years, recently opened a large-scale survey in Bonn, Germany, “Heart of Glass.”
His work has long been invested in relationships between painting and cinema.
Recently, on Late Night with David Letterman, the beautiful and talented actress Lucy Liu made a comment that some people are saying is racist: that she doesn’t like to get to tan or dark because then she would look like a Filipino.
You can watch her make the comment in the first minute or so in the clip above. Letterman rightfully responded to her question, “You know what I mean?” by saying, “No, I don’t” and “There’s nothing there that I can comment on.”
As many readers know, I have a Filipino heritage, so I am especially attuned to such statements, especially since what Liu says seems to be trying to specify a single look for all the tens of millions of Filipinos who come from all sorts of different backgrounds, including Spain, Portugal, Malaysia and China.
Of course, Liu was just talking about not running outside because she would get really dark, and then it wouldn’t look right for the character she plays, Dr. Watson, on the TV show “Elementary,” which she could’ve said without mentioning Filipinos.
By mentioning Filipinos, however, she was recasting a kind of traditional attitude throughout Asia — that the whiter the skin the more beautiful the woman — and that attitude has everything to do with issues of race and class, and who gets to define beauty.
Liu’s statement seems disappointing and unfortunate, but it reflects a truth about the the broad — and ever growing — category of person in America, the Asian American; namely, that Asian America isn’t monolithic, but is filled with divisions and prejudicial attitudes.
Below are some photos of Filipinos and of Lucy Liu. What is she talking about?
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By Mary Jane Leach
TROY — The Albany Symphony and Albany Pro Music, two stalwarts of the Capital District music scene, combined forces Saturday night in a thoughtful and well executed concert to a full house of enthusiastic and appreciative concert goers.
When evaluating a musical composition, it’s always a pleasure to notice recurring motifs or ideas. It’s even nicer when these concepts can be extended to an entire concert program, which this concert fulfilled. In this case it was the musical line, or thread (chain). It’s also interesting to see how a decision on one piece can affect the rest of the program. I had been wondering how the ASO would deal with the instrumentation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Magnificat,” the last piece of the night, and was relieved to see that it had streamlined the string section, which was then reflected in the rest of the program.
(more…)
Hat tip to Don Drewecki, but here is the Doors backstage at SPAC in 1968.
Check it out. Were you at the show?
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By STEVE BARNES
As the Saratoga Performing Arts Center looks toward welcoming two new dance companies next summer and returning the New York City Ballet to a two-week season in 2014, the organization reported essentially flat attendance and modest income gains for classical programming during its 2012 season.
The City Ballet and its longtime resident sibling at SPAC, the Philadelphia Orchestra, over the summer each drew audiences about 4 percent smaller than in 2011. Their attendance was approximately 35,000 and 34,000, respectively, according to figures released by SPAC at Thursday’s meeting of the SPAC board of directors.
The ballet company’s ticket income for its two-week July residency was about $991,000, an increase of 6 percent, while the orchestra generated approximately 7 percent more ticket revenue, about $970,000 over three weeks in August, the board learned at the meeting, held at the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce office. (more…)
By Tresca Weinstein
Longtime supporters of the New York City Ballet may have gotten their feathers ruffled by SPAC Executive Director Marcia White’s recent announcement that, come summer, the company will no longer be the only ballet game in town. But no one should feel threatened — there’s room for lots more tutus in what was formerly NYCB’s territory.
The addition of other ballet companies (Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada) to SPAC’s 2013 offerings should in no way dilute or detract from City Ballet’s time-honored place in the Capital Region’s cultural firmament.
If anything, it will shed light on the company’s strengths and versatility by providing a context in which different perspectives and artistic visions can coexist. Each of these three companies brings something exciting and valuable to the stage; together, they may even expand the region’s dance audience. (more…)
