3rd
The original Hall class: Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson.
My dad and I had a discussion about the five players we would choose if we were to tear down the Hall and start all over. My five were Ruth, Cy Young, Ted Williams, Willie Mays and Barry Bonds.
I’m off on vacation with my dad this week after 3 long, hard, fun weeks of The Neo-Futurists. We’re headed on a pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. I had wanted to spend the month leading up to the trip posting items about the Hall, but, well, see above.
Posts from the trip to come…
Saturday I attended the most provocative ballet I’ve ever seen. The Royal Ballet of Flanders performed William Forsythe’s ground-breaking ballet Impressing the Czar at the Lincoln Center Festival. Flanders is the first company to be granted permission to perform the full ballet since Forsythe’s own Franfurt Ballet originally performed it in the ’80s.
Act I, Potemkin’s Unterschrift, was my favorite, and blew me away with it’s spectacle and blurring of styles from traditional to hip-hop, sometimes at the same time. Act II, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, is the pure dance piece that put Forsythe on the map. While not as visually engaging as the first Act, it is technically stunning.
The info-mercial that is Act III, La Maison De Mezzo-Prezzo, is a bit off-putting, though humorous. The final two Acts circle back to the intrigue of the opening section as the entire Ensemble, dressed as school girls, performs a ritualistic hip-hop dance of sorts around the arrow-pierced corpse of St. Sebastian.
After seeing this, I’m all the more excited for my theater’s pre-New York run of Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights in September.