Latest news with #92NY
USA Today
5 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Do you often complain about the state of our country? Here's how to change it.
Do you often complain about the state of our country? Here's how to change it. | Opinion If you've been complaining about the state of our country, we dare you to make your commitment to others as big as your complaints. That's how change begins. Show Caption Hide Caption How far did the US fall in the world happiness rankings? The U.S. has dropped to its lowest spot yet on the World Happiness Report. The Nordic countries still dominate the top of the list. From headlines to social posts, it's easy to think our nation is coming apart at the seams. We are divided along so many lines – not just red and blue, but urban and rural, White, Black and Brown, young and old, longtime citizen and new arrival, straight, queer and trans, college-educated or not. Yet behind the noise, a quiet American revolution is taking root. Across the country, Americans are showing up for their neighbors – whether they are alike or not. In a small Appalachian town, LB Prevette was beaten and left in the woods as a teen because she was gay. She left her hometown for Nevada to find her people, only to realize her true community was still back in North Carolina. If everyone who is different leaves, she wondered, how will people learn to see beyond their differences? Today, she co-owns a popular and welcoming bar on Main Street where people of varying beliefs, identities and backgrounds gather to share drinks and stories and find community. There's a quiet revolution happening in public libraries. For Shamichael Hallman, the library was one of the first places where he met people from different walks of life – across faiths, neighborhoods and income levels. Years later, he helped lead a multimillion dollar renovation of Memphis' oldest library, transforming it into a vibrant community hub. Today, it's a place where people aren't hushed upon entry – they gather in the café, at dance performances, in podcast studios and in honest conversations guided by a diverse staff. This spirit is rising in workplaces, as well, where coworkers who feel isolated or divided are showing up for each other. Staff at the 92nd Street Y (92NY) in New York City were in need of space to reflect in the lead-up to the last election. They launched a program called "Share Our 92NY" as part of their existing "Share Our America" initiative to get to know each other in conversations that were personal rather than political. The result was a greater sense of belonging, purpose and connection at work. In today's environment, these quiet actions are revolutionary. They rebel against a culture that tells us to strive for ourselves instead of treasuring relationships and the community. They defy the social algorithms that reward attacking others and promoting ourselves. They refuse to divide the world into 'friends' who think like us and 'enemies' who don't. And they embrace local action over national outrage. Opinion: I wrote a book on finding joy. Even now, it's easier than you think. How do you break the cycle of loneliness? Start with trust. At a time when national politics are bitter, families and workplaces are divided, and former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warns of a loneliness epidemic affecting half of American adults ‒ and two-thirds of Generation Z ‒ we are finding hope. As leaders of organizations dedicated to healing our frayed social fabric, we see a shift happening in cities and towns, on the coasts and in the middle of the country. People are showing up where they live and taking simple actions to solve issues, cement bonds and build trust. We find hope in the thousands of people signing up and lighting up our nation on the Social Trust Map from the Aspen Institute's Weave: The Social Fabric Project. In those who have explored stories of people creating connection, like those of LB and Shamichael, in cities from Baltimore and Milwaukee to Chicago and Los Angeles, and in small towns like Taylor, Nebraska, and Washougal, Washington. The map shows the strength of trusting behaviors, trusting intentions and trusting spaces in every neighborhood in the United States, so people can build off those strengths to foster connection and trust with neighbors. They use resources from the Share Our America Toolkit, created by the Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact, to find simple actions they can take ‒ from hosting a block party to starting a conversation at work. Rainn Wilson, the actor and author, reminds us in his book "Soul Boom" that the many problems facing our nation and the world are not essentially political. They are cultural and spiritual. When we live competitively, striving for ourselves and demonizing those who disagree with us, we cut ourselves off from the joy we find in community and in friendships with those who are different. Opinion: No civility, no democracy? These writers say it's vital we talk to each other. Americans want to connect with people different from them In a recent survey, 56% of Americans said they want to connect with people who are different from them. Two-thirds believe they can learn something valuable from those interactions. When we pull away from each other, we miss out on the security we feel when we build a community where everyone thrives and has what they need. We lose the pride and belonging that comes with solving problems together. America has a long history of people coming together in mutual care and support. From Benjamin Franklin's creation of the first volunteer fire department in 1736 to Clara Barton's founding of the American Red Cross in 1881, our history is built on this foundation. 92NY was founded in the 1870s and is one of many institutions ‒ like social clubs, business cooperatives, service groups and modern mutual aid societies ‒ that have given America the label of 'a nation of joiners.' With Share Our America and Weave, we're working to move this quiet American revolution out of the shadows. On June 11, we're convening Share Our America: The Summit, a streaming event spotlighting the grassroots people weaving us together again and thought leaders like Rainn Wilson, New York Times columnist David Brooks and "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe. So join the revolution. Say hello to someone you see often but don't know. You'll both feel better for it. Invite a neighbor for coffee or tea. You'll find shared interests you would have never guessed. Join a group or give your time to a nonprofit building relationships and trust where you live. Simple actions can make our country strong. If you have been complaining about the state of our country, we dare you to make your commitment to others as big as your complaints. That's how change begins. Quietly. And together. Frederick J. Riley is the executive director of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at The Aspen Institute. Rebekah Shrestha is the executive director of the Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact at the 92nd Street Y New York. USA TODAY's parent company, Gannett, is the exclusive media sponsor of Share Our America: The Summit.
New York Post
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Turns out, we've been saying Alexander Skarsgård's name wrong
It was a big little lie this whole time. Alexander Skarsgård is setting the record straight on how his last name is really pronounced. After the actor's dad Stellan Skarsgård, 73, revealed on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' that their Swedish surname is often mispronounced, Alexander, 48, explained to the host, 61, how it's meant to be said. Advertisement 5 Alexander Skarsgård on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.' 'He said we're mispronouncing the name. It's 'Skarsgourd,' is that how you say it?' Stephen asked the 'Infinity pool' star on Tuesday's episode of the late-night show. 'Exactly.' Alexander replied. 'That little umlaut is an 'oua' [sound], it's not an 'a.' It's 'Skarsgourd.'' Advertisement In 2016, the men poked fun at Alexander's Swedish surname, as they put on a hilarious skit where the pair over pronounced the 'ar' sound in Skarsgård. This isn't the first time a star has come on Colbert's show to drop a bomb about their name. Daniel Craig revealed in December that the show's host has never said his name right in all six times he's appeared on the program. 5 Alexander Skarsgård attends a conversation for Apple TV+'s 'Murderbot' at 92NY on May 12, 2025 in New York City. Getty Images Advertisement 5 Alexander Skarsgård attends a conversation for Apple TV+'s 'Murderbot' at 92NY on May 12, 2025 in New York City. Getty Images 'I have a bone to pick with you,' the 'Queen' star, 57, expressed at the time. He then noted his name is pronounced with an 'ay' sound, stating: '[It's] Daniel Cr-ayg.' 'I hear the difference,' Stephen responded. 'That is subtle, and I apologize. Daniel Cregg, f–k that guy. It's Daniel Cr-ayg. I'm so sorry, please accept my apology.' 'It's fine. Whatever,' the 'James Bond' alum said back. Advertisement 5 Alexander Skarsgard attends Apple TV+'s 'Murderbot' New York Premiere at Regal Union Square on April 28, 2025 in New York City. WireImage During Alexander's latest appearance, he also touched on how his father walked around the house naked while he was growing up. 'Not so much as a child, as a teenager, a bit more,' confessed the 'Murderbot' star. 'Well, he wasn't a fan of clothes. I noticed that he was wearing clothes when he was on your show. That made me very proud. He wouldn't wear clothes at home, really.' As for their family — which includes brothers Gustaf, Sam, Bill, Valter, Ossian and Kolbjörn, and sister Eija — the origin of Skarsgård was explained in 2018. 5 Alexander Skarsgard outside 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' studios. Darla Khazei/INSTARimages Bill, 34, made a YouTube video detailing how his family took on the name Skarsgård in the mid-20th century. At the time, the Swedish government encouraged people to change their last names if they were too similar to other Swedish names. 'Not a lot of people outside of Sweden know this, but we had a problem in sort of the '40s and the '50s that there was too many Nilssons, and Anderssons, and Johanssons in the country, so it's really hard to distinguish one Nilsson to another Nilsson,' Bill stated. 'The government sort of encouraged people to come up with their own last names. So my family used to be Nilsson and then my grandfather and his brothers were encouraged to change their names, and they changed them to Skarsgård.' Advertisement Alexander got his start in the US in the 2001 comedy 'Zoolander.' 'The fact that we shot it driving this Jeep down Broadway [in Manhattan], cutting through traffic, singing the Wham! song…. it was all very surreal,' he told Entertainment Weekly in 2022. Advertisement Alexander was only 25 at the time and was in a play in Stockholm when he decided to accompany his dad on a business trip to Los Angeles. 'It was my first audition,' he reflected. 'So I couldn't quite believe that two weeks later I was in New York shooting that scene with Ben Stiller. And obviously, the infamous gasoline fight was a lot of fun.'
Newsweek
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
You's Penn Badgley: 'I've Been Playing Boys Who've Been Getting a Free Pass for 30 Years'
Penn Badgley attends Collective By 92NY Presents Podcrushed: Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin & Sophie Ansari in Conversation with Anna Martin at 92NY on April 21, 2025 in New York City. Penn Badgley attends Collective By 92NY Presents Podcrushed: Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin & Sophie Ansari in Conversation with Anna Martin at 92NY on April 21, 2025 in New York City. Dia Dipasupil/Getty "I've been playing boys who've been getting a free pass for 30 years." Is there a satisfying way to bring an end to Joe Goldberg's story on Netflix's You? To Penn Badgley, who has played the serial killer and sexual predator for the past five seasons, "We give a nod and a wink to the kind of satisfaction you want." Despite knowing his devious ways, "the viewers were purposefully withheld from seeing him actually, truly abuse and murder someone he—quote, unquote—loves until the very end.... You finally see him as a sexual predator. From day one, like 20 minutes into the pilot, he's masturbating outside of her window. What more does anybody need to see?" In this season of You, many will see similarities to Gossip Girl, the show that made Badgley famous. "My experience on Gossip Girl was a meditation on celebrity, and my experience on You has been a meditation on masculinity and love." But to some, it's Badgley's take as a bully on Will & Grace that stands out. "I've always played such generally sensitive people, but it is true that my first role was a serial abuser. I've been playing boys who've been getting a free pass for 30 years." SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARTING SHOT WITH H. ALAN SCOTT ON APPLE PODCASTS OR SPOTIFY AND WATCH ON YOUTUBE Editor's Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication. Do you feel like, without giving anything away, that you're satisfied with the story being complete? I'm very satisfied with it. And I've been sitting with it for almost a year, longer than people who are just now seeing it. What I pose to anybody who hasn't yet seen it or is thinking about it, is, could there ever be an ending to a man like Joe that is, quote, unquote satisfying? Because satisfaction, in and of itself, is what he has been pursuing. Satisfaction is like a personal selfish desire. I think what would be initially [most] satisfying is our blood lust, to see him torn apart and tortured and killed, right? That's one way to do it. There's not that many ways to do it, right? It's like he's killed, or he's tortured, or he goes to jail, or he just gets away with it, right? There's just not that many things that can happen, and none of them are in and of themselves perfectly satisfying, because what actually satisfies is the justice of his victims, whether they're alive or dead, and only time can satisfy and heal them. So I think that we've delivered as satisfying an ending as you could possibly deliver. And so, by the end, I think what we do is, on top of what I just said, we give one little nod and a wink to that. We give a nod and a wink to the kind of satisfaction you want. You. Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 503 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025 You. Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 503 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025 COURTESY OF NETFLIX There is kind of a dance with why we root for this character, because he's horrible, but there's something morbid in us that wants to see him succeed. Yeah. I mean, there's levels to it. I think the point is for people to fall in love with him, or at least to like him a lot, to be charmed by him. That is the point. We've purposefully—and by we, I do really mean the writers—but we collectively all brought it to life. The viewers were purposefully withheld from seeing him actually, truly abuse and murder someone he—quote, unquote—loves until the very end. Like we never saw exactly what he did to Beck [Guinevere Beck, played by Elizabeth Lail], he didn't successfully kill Candace [Stone, played by Ambyr Childers]. He did kill Love [Quinn, played by Victoria Pedretti], but he did it in a moment of self-defense, when she was arguably just as bad as he was. If you're trying to split hairs between, who's better, Love or Joe, I think that's polishing the brass on the Titanic. At some point they both were innocent children who were traumatized. Season four, he killed everybody, but he was dissociated all throughout, so we didn't really see it in the moment. This is the season where we finally see, even though we've known and actually seen like 99 percent of what he's done, it's that last missing piece, where we've not seen him engage with a woman in bed where it's like you don't want it to happen because she knows, we know, he's finally dismantled as a romantic figure. That's a really important moment. You finally see him as a sexual predator. You're told from day one, like 20 minutes into the pilot he's masturbating outside of her window, right? Like what more does anybody need to see? So it is this interesting exercise where we've both purposefully withheld you from seeing him at his worst, but we've told you all along and it's like, so what do you do? You need to see it to believe it. Do you need to see it for it to change your mind? So it is an interesting exercise. And I don't think anybody's culpable here. I don't think anybody should feel guilty for it. I think it's a deconstructive exercise of our lower nature, so we're all responsible in it, in a way. And this season, he's a different Joe. Is he? Yeah, insofar as now he's got all this money and is back in New York City. That is actually huge. His charm before was that he's like, I'm not just an everyman, I'm a working-class fighter, bootstraps, traumatized boy, who's made it despite all my hardships, and now he's a billionaire. You. Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 502 of You. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2025 You. Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 502 of You. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2025 Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2025 In a lot of ways, having that wealth allows him to hide even more. How does him having this wealth and returning to New York, how is he different? It isn't. I mean, the way you're putting it, I do get, in some ways that is substantive, but in some ways it's superficial. He's able to do what he does in a lot of ways because of the way he looks. It's his sex, his race, it's a lot of his appearance, the way he fits in and blends in alternately. It makes me think that finally giving him wealth is just like underscoring the privileges he already had. But the money is what allows him to sort of complete the ugly cycle of being like all right, now everybody knows a bit more of who I actually am, but I can just sort of paper that over with extreme wealth. But I actually think in some ways that is still kind of superficial. The audience was already there. The world in the universe of Joe Goldberg needed to somehow be convinced that he was a good man. So he needed money to accomplish some of that. But the audience didn't need that convincing. We're right there with him. Just give us any way to believe that you could be believed, and we'll go there with you. So we gave him billions of dollars. You. (L to R) Charlotte Ritchie as Kate Lockwood, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 505 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025 You. (L to R) Charlotte Ritchie as Kate Lockwood, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 505 of You. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025 Courtesy of Netflix And the way in which the neighborhoods Joe exists in show the different parts of his personality, the uptown Joe and the downtown Joe, don't you think? Yes, I think, we see Joe in an all-too-familiar place. And by familiar, I mean, like for all of us, it's hard to tell a compelling story of a relationship when you're in the middle years. We love to see a relationship begin. We love to see it end. We don't love because we don't yet, I think, [know] how to tell really deep and mature stories about all the time in between. Especially if there's no in between. Like, what about a relationship that doesn't end? Wow. What an idea, what a novel idea. What a commitment, what a trust, what a love, but it's not as exciting in all the same ways. It can be very exciting, but in other ways—and those ways are not as cinematic, let's say. They don't work in a pop song for three minutes. So, actually, Joe is very relatable in that sense, and he is having a very normal human common experience, which we can allow him and forgive him for. And I think in that sense, that is more what this show is about than actual murder or violence, let alone a serial killer, this show is much more about how we all can feel that way in a relationship. And then, the irony is, the one person we should go to when any of us are in that stage of relationship is our partner, because they're the only one who is in it with us, and yet we often withhold that from our partner. I think that would take a lot of bravery and vulnerability in a relationship, but that's actually what you should do and address it in whatever manner it needs to be addressed, because otherwise you then become the sole protagonist in your relationship. You're the star and they're the supporting character, and that's when a relationship is no longer a relationship. But guess what? We all do that all the time. That's why relationships become difficult past the six-month to two-year mark. You're not running off the love drugs anymore, you got to actually figure out how to be in a mature relationship. And it's just different. So, I love that. Look, this show isn't always, it's not digging super deeply into that, but it is actually about that. For a lot of Gossip Girl fans, seeing Joe in the setting of the Upper West Side does harken back to Gossip Girl moments. I don't see the connection at all. [laughs] No, of course it's there. What do you make of that full-circle moment? I think you've kind of said it all. I marvel at the fact that I'm pushing 40 here, and I took Gossip Girl when I was 20, and it's never gone away, and there's the strange added fact that I am Gossip Girl. I don't know what to make of that. I never foresaw that, and I'm certainly not mad at it, but it's been interesting to see how these two shows are in a cultural conversation together. It's been like a 20-year cycle. That's a freaking eternity in pop culture terms. So, I don't know what to make of that. I mean, where do I go from here? I really don't know. You. Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 5010 of You. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2025 You. Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in episode 5010 of You. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2025 Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2025 Well, speaking of Gossip Girl, that so clearly had a huge impact on your career. What impact do you think these five seasons of You have had at this point in your career? Trust me, I think about that, but in terms of career, I don't know, because I think that's all to be seen. We will see. For me personally, emotionally, psychologically, it's been probably a meditation on two things, and at some point, those two things become one, and I'll see if I can make this coherent. I think my experience on Gossip Girl was a meditation on celebrity, and my experience on You has been a meditation on masculinity and love. Both have been about quote, unquote, love, even though neither show is depicting true love. So that's maybe where they unite. Then I think the first 10 years, in my 20s, in Gossip Girl, the reflection on celebrity is ultimately, well, it comes back to human nature. Like, why do we treat people like this? And then masculinity is ultimately about human nature, too. Like, how do men become like this? And why do they treat women this way and themselves this way? So, it does all come back to human nature. And it does all come back to what is true love and why do we so rarely see depictions of it that are as exciting as depictions of lust and other things? So the connections between these shows, I need more time to connect them and make them concise connections. Listen, while some are out here making comparisons to Gossip Girl, I'm still talking about you being the bully on Will & Grace. And more people should talk about that. It's funny, because I've always played such generally sensitive people, but it is true that my first role was a serial abuser. I've been playing boys who've been getting a free pass for 30 years.
New York Times
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
It's All Rhythm: A New Festival Embraces Percussive Dance
Fans of the sometimes disrespected genre known as dance music have a quip: What other kind of music is there? A similar crack could be made by artists put into a category called rhythm dance. What dance isn't in some sense rhythmic? The new Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival, at 92NY and Works & Process at Guggenheim New York from April 21-27, addresses the question from the opposite direction: What do top artists in tap, flamenco, hip-hop, swing, kathak and Appalachian clogging have in common? And what connections might spark if they were programmed side by side? 'We're talking about percussive dance,' said the tap and swing dancer Caleb Teicher, a curator of the festival. 'This is dance that has a deep relationship to the floor, dance that is expressive through musical phrasing and rhythm and a lot of African American diasporic ideas of call and response and improvisation.' The need for such a festival arises in part from the needs that percussive dancers share. Most prefer live music and sprung wooden floors, which they consider instruments. Most require floor microphones, sensitive sound design and a rehearsal space where they're allowed to imperil the floor. Most still face some measure of condescension or exclusion from the rest of the dance world. 'A lot of mixed bill programming is very happy to have three contemporary dance or ballet companies,' Teicher said, 'but if there's one percussive dance or street dance company on each program, that would be a lot, and there certainly wouldn't be two.' Space in New York where such dancers can rehearse has been shrinking, and Tap City, the annual festival that the American Tap Dance Foundation put on for nearly 25 years, ceased last year. 'We still don't have a home,' said Brenda Bufalino, 87, a grande dame of tap who was a leader in making it into a concert form in the 1980s. The American Tap Dance Foundation grew out of her pioneering American Tap Dance Orchestra. In a recent interview, she remembered the difficulties of finding somewhere to rehearse and of touring to theaters set up for other kinds of dance. 'We were never made to feel that we were part of the dance world,' she said, 'and we still don't have any theaters dedicated to our art form.' Despite such obstacles, tap and other percussive dance forms are thriving artistically. Bufalino recalled that when she and her mentor, Honi Coles, started teaching tap in New York in 1978, they had three students. 'Now there are so many brilliant tap dancers and good tap work being seen all over the place,' she said, mentioning Teicher and Michelle Dorrance. 'People are really stretching out and using ideas.' One goal of Uptown Rhythm is to help address the imbalance between this artistic ferment and the space and resources available to develop it. 'We want to support as many of these artists as we can, but also shed light so that other organizations might open up more space,' said another of the festival's curators, Alison Manning, co-executive director of the Y's Harkness Dance Center. In a sense, the festival is an outgrowth of Tap the Yard, a festival that Manning organized at the Yard on Martha's Vineyard from 2012 to 2019. A tap dancer herself, she wanted to champion what she called her 'secret love,' but she and her fellow curator David Parker also included hip-hop, folk and classical Indian forms. 'That festival blew our attendance numbers wide open,' Manning said. 'It worked as an entry point, because there was something for everyone in it.' With Uptown Rhythm, Manning said, 'We're not just throwing a smorgasbord of types of dance at the wall. We have very specific ideas about who we're programming and what conversations might connect them.' The Tuesday program, for example, combines classical lineages and roots music. Rachna Nivas, an adept in kathak, a classical Indian percussive dance influenced by both Hindu and Islamic court traditions, is performing a condensed version of a traditional solo, combining storytelling and improvisational, rivalrous exchanges with musicians from India. How will these exchanges compare to those between the Appalachian flatfooter Nic Gareiss and the innovative roots musician Jake Blount on the same program? 'There's a real feeling of camaraderie and kinship,' Nivas said about the festival, noting that she had worked with tap dancers before and that they had bonded not only musically but also over a shared reverence for elders and ancestors. 'This is what real diversity looks like,' she added. Her guru, Chitresh Das, helped to found the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival in 1978: 'It was groundbreaking,' she said, 'but, like world dance, the term is still othering. This rhythm festival isn't like that. It's about finding common ground.' Billy and Bobby McClain, the identical-twin hip-hop duo known as the Wondertwins, performed several times in Tap the Yard. At 92NY on Wednesday, they join Ladies of Hip-Hop and Chrybaby Cozie, a creator of the hip-hop style Lite Feet; but also the first-class tap dancers Derick Grant and Nicholas Van Young. Putting tap and hip-hop together makes a lot of sense, Billy McClain said. 'They play off each other,' he added. 'In hip-hop, you see the feet move but don't hear them, and in tap it's the opposite. But it's all rhythm.' When McClain and his brother were starting out in the late 1970s, they were inspired by brother acts — tap duos like the Nicholas Brothers and the Hines Brothers. Performing on the same program with tap dancers now, McClain said, 'gives us fresh ideas' — ideas they can use. Not all the Uptown Rhythm programs are about juxtaposition. Some showcase the outcome of earlier mingling. The Thursday show commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Austrian-born Max Pollak crossing tap with Afro-Cuban rumba, creating RumbaTap, both a style and an on-and-off ensemble. In New York in the early 1990s, Pollak became an acolyte of masters in the jazz tap tradition like Jimmy Slyde and Lon Chaney. But he also became interested in the Latin jazz being played at jam sessions at the Nuyorican Poets Café. Studying Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz drumming, he began transferring those rhythms to tap and body percussion, then tried sitting in with musicians at the Nuyorican. 'And they were like, 'You got something there,'' Pollak said. One night, members of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, an eminent Cuban rumba group, came to the jam. After watching Pollak perform, they wanted to know who had taught him to dance like that; when he told them he had developed the style himself, they asked him to teach it to them. He was flabbergasted and then astonished again when, during a lesson, they were able to replicate what he was doing immediately. 'That's when I thought, 'I am onto something big here,'' Pollak said. Pollak soon visited Cuba, carrying tap shoes with him. Los Muñequitos put what he taught them into their act, and the group's director told Pollak: 'You have given us a gift. You are part of this family now.' For Uptown Rhythm, that family is reuniting. Coming from Cuba are Barbaro Ramos, Pollak's first Muñequitos student, and also Ramos's son and nephew, whom Pollak first taught 25 years ago, when they were little boys. This edition of the RumbaTap company includes both alumni, like Lynn Schwab and Lisa LaTouche, and curious young hotshots like Jared Alexander, Tommy Wasiuta and Liz Carroll. While that show will be a retrospective of a hybrid percussive form, the Friday program is a cornucopia of almost all the festival's facets. LaTasha Barnes, a dancer who embodies what she calls 'the jazz continuum' connecting Lindy hop with house dance, shares the evening with Soles of Duende, a trio made up of the tap dancer Amanda Castro, the flamenco dancer Arielle Rosales and the kathak dancer Brinda Guha. 'There's a natural conversational dynamic that happens with other rhythm dancers,' Rosales said, emphasizing that her group is not a fusion project but that kind of conversation. 'Not only are we in solidarity with other percussive artists, but we're also modeling what that kinship can look like,' Guha said. All the artists in the festival, she added, 'share the responsibility of preserving our forms, making sure people don't forget them, while also allowing ourselves the freedom to create and be innovative.' Someone who knows all about that balance is the festival's final artist: Bufalino. Her premiere tackles music that she said had been 'dogging her for decades': 'Meditation on Integration' by Charles Mingus, her favorite composer. She herself is dancing in it a little: 'I'm not doing 10 choruses anymore,' she said. In addition to her and Joe Fonda, a bassist she has been working with for 40 years, the cast is made of up young mentees, including her granddaughter, Alice Baum, who is also an opera singer. Bufalino has written a coloratura melody for Baum to sing alongside the Mingus. Last year, Bufalino announced, not for the first time, that she was retiring. But when Duke Dang, the executive director of Works & Process, asked her to make a new work for Uptown Rhythm, she didn't take a lot of convincing. She got excited about the Mingus music and the dancers and the musicians. She got caught up in the rhythm once more.
CNN
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Steven Spielberg remembers 6-year-old Drew Barrymore was an improv pro on set of ‘E.T.'
Even at six years old, Drew Barrymore had a lot to say. Director Steven Spielberg opened up about working with Barrymore on the 1982 classic 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial' during a conversation on Saturday at the TCM Classic Film Festival's 92NY event. The pair reminisced about their time together on the set, with Spielberg saying he was most impressed by his young star's ability to improv. 'The camera was rolling and Drew said, 'I don't like his feet.' We used it,' Spielberg recounted at the event, according to People. 'Drew made up a lot of her own dialogue because she was irrepressible.' The director added that Barrymore's improvisational skills were 'gold' and he went on to recall how the film's screenwriter Melissa Matheson, too, 'couldn't believe the stuff that Drew was coming up with.' Matheson died in 2015. Barrymore, with the passage of time, shared the same sentiment. 'I can't believe the stuff I came up with,' she said, adding that she was surprise by how many of her improved lines ended up in the final cut. The tear-jerker won four Oscars in 1982, including best visual effects and original score. It was a massive hit, drawing in more than $359 million at the US box office at the time, according to Box Office Mojo. Barrymore previously said on a 2020 episode of her morning talk show 'The Drew Barrymore Show' that even as a child, she was precocious enough to snag a keepsake from set. 'I do have the red cowboy hat I wore in E.T. It is in the girls' room somewhere and reminds me that I was 6 years old wearing that hat,' Barrymore said. 'I'm so glad I still have it.' Barrymore added, 'When we're kids, we don't think something will be important to us one day; we clean out our room and throw stuff away. It's nice if parents put something of theirs in their kids' rooms, so it's a transference of memories and energy.'
