Emerging on the brand-new escalator from the recently renovated Penn Station onto the street level, I catch myself gazing at the Empire State Building as if I had never seen it before: the filling yet elegant oblong silhouette with the attractive antenna crown absorbs the senses instantly yet efficiently, like an unexpected dose of meditation as I'm rushing to rehearsal. Walking down Seventh Avenue, I realize that the skyscraper-New York symbol seems as if built yesterday, in spite of its almost one hundred years, not only thanks to the irresistible, light-blue backdrop of the summer sky, but also because in the foreground something's missing: Hotel Pennsylvania, which used to occupy - also for one hundred years - the block between 33rd and 32nd Streets, has recently been demolished. A void has emerged where the gaze used to rest on the twenty-two buff and gray brick stories of the McKim, Mead & White creation, which, when it started to welcome clients to its 2,200 rooms in 1919, bragged it was the world's largest hotel.
A lot has been written about this painful, though not unexpected, architectural (and more broadly esthetic) loss incurred on the Manhattan landscape, yet two pieces of trivia are hard to resist:
-What is the historic hotel's phone number?
“Pennsylvania 6-5000,” title - and chorus - of a song by Glenn Miller who, along with his orchestra, was so hot in 1940 at the Café Rouge (the hotel's celebrated restaurant) that he dedicated an entire hit to the telephone number. Legend has it that the number is the oldest in continuous use in the history of New York.
-Which invention was introduced at a conference right here in 1947?
Polaroid instant photography.
Now the marble staircases and the water fountains and the Renaissance lounges have been shattered into powder, and the block is about to receive the erection of yet another high-rise, with the question of whether even a place like Manhattan needs more office buildings pressing. I let big-band lovers dance swing in eternity, and I allow today's crowds to sweep me away in their wave to my destination, the Opera America Center, a few blocks down. I've made it on time, one more rehearsal day.
The itinerary is almost the same every day. Like a spider, I construct a central axis from the subway station to the studio, and around that “bridge” I weave the web of my routine. The break gives you the space to unfold variations: you have enough time to make it to the impressively pedestrian-turned Broadway, where you can enjoy free public seating spots, or simply relish the luxury of walking in the middle of the avenue. After rehearsal I carry my thread to throw it however far my feet can take me. Then my cobweb expands to all directions.
All this was for as long as rehearsals lasted. On the eve of the show, my sister visited me from Athens. She hadn't been to New York in fourteen years. Now time condensed and expanded at the same time: before completing twenty-four hours, my visitor had already taken pictures of the dress rehearsal and attended the performance. We scoured the city: I dragged her to numerous neighborhoods and stores and architectural poems and little beaches and flower beds and paths. Some of those routes we had already savored in the past, some were new even for me - I was waiting to try them with her for the first time.
We crossed again the Brooklyn Bridge, we wasted our time again on Fifth Avenue, we admired again the Flatiron (under scaffolding this time, that's okay). How incredibly have the High-Line trees grown! But even the former-elevated-railroad-line-turned-into-park itself has spread so much that is has reached the (nonexistent in 2010) Hudson Yards, a whole skyscraper-village with performance spaces that slide on gigantic wheels, and with the stunning building/sculpture “Vessel” (it closed to the public very soon after its opening due to multiple suicides, now you can gaze it, getting goose bumps, only from the outside).
We climbed the woods of Inwood and dove into the Wall Street “gorges”, discovering Art Deco treasures. We sucked in the sea breeze (long live summer-in-the-city!) in the continuously multiplying and becoming ever more exciting piers and marinas on both riverbanks. We laughed with the trend in Soho to give not even two, but three-word names to bars - “Jack's Wife Freda”.
But why do I also want to show her the rehearsal itinerary (with all its accompanying details), the everyday “ritual” of the production process, since my select visitor was present at the final product, the performance? Why do I want to entangle her in my net? (This is the rehearsal-studio entrance - next to the elevator there's the classic gold-and-glass mail chute, an amazing American patent for handling the mail in high-rise buildings through a... slide; this is the “hidden” outdoor seating area of Fashion Institute of Technology, where you can eat in peace the discounted sushi you got at the nearby Fairway.)
The warning Anne Bogart (my directing professor) gave us echoes inside my head: “Beware - devote your life to your artistic work, and not vice-versa! Don't fall into the trap of turning your life into a work of art.” As I'm sharing with equal enthusiasm the work -the performance- but also the web that I've been patiently weaving, unearthing little corners and delicacies, and recording miles on my urban meter, I think I have fallen exactly in the spidery trap our teacher had cautioned us to avoid.
Those of us who serve the live arts are old friends with the ephemerality (of art, therefore of life too): our work is made of the stuff dreams are made on – now you see it and, as soon as the show is over, poof, it vanishes into thin air. You can touch the set and put on the costumes but, after coming to an end, the theatrical event lives on only as a memory in the minds and bodies of actors and spectators. Therefore I wonder if, in the same way we try to entangle in our work's net as many spectators as we can, we actually do the same thing (as I'm doing now with my guest) with the web of our ritual.
Did the demolished Hotel Pennsylvania truly vanish? Indeed, it is not occupying anymore the space it used to occupy in our generally agreed-upon four-dimensional version of reality (length, height, depth, in present time). Yet I challenge whoever listens to the refrain “Pennsylvania six five oh oh oh” to tell me whether they're not instantly transported through the grand Ionic columns of the main entrance into the high-ceilinged Café Rouge, swung away by swing, and by the tweed suit jackets, the off-the-shoulder gowns and the perfect curls of the 1940 clientele.
This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on July 27, 2024.
It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.
Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 27 Ιουλίου 2024.
Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.
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