The people will take over Park Ave. for three successive Saturdays during annual Summer Streets program (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Brooklyn Bridge to the top of Central Park
Saturday, August 7, 14, 21, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
Admission: free
www.nyc.gov
Encouraging more New Yorkers to bike, jog, skate, and walk instead of using cars in the city, the third annual Summer Streets program returns for the next three Saturdays, closing several byways — primarily all of Park Ave. — to vehicular traffic between the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park. The route features rest stops in Foley Square, SoHo, Midtown, and Uptown that will be hosting live entertainment and special activities, including dance classes, Dumpster pools, the New York Rangers Road Tour, the New York Knicks Groove Truck, tours of St. Bart’s, exercise classes, free bike rentals and repairs, Fringe Festival theater workshops, yoga, mini-concerts, and much more. It’s all part of the city’s continuing greening and health initiatives, but whatever the reason, it’s really cool to see Park Ave. cleared of cars, trucks, and buses on a summer Saturday morning.
The Lincoln Center Festival ends today with the second and final performance of the Pichet Klunchun Dance Company’s gorgeous CHUI CHAI (“Transformation”). Nine dancers tell the Nang Loi story from the Ramayana, in which the demon king Thodsakarn attempts to stop the war with Rama by kidnapping his rival’s wife, Sita, and having demon maiden Benyakai turn into the famed beauty and fake her death. The first half of the show features masked dancers in glittering costumes with elaborate headdresses, moving slowly in the Khon style as an accompanying song relates the tale. At one point Thodsakarn is sitting atop his throne, the back of his outfit casting stars onto a screen behind him as if he is in control of the entire universe. (The screen is also used to project several photographs of old and new Thailand.) After a brief interlude in which, through street interviews, offstage voices discuss the legend of Sita and how it translates to modern society, a bare-chested Klunchun appears as Rama, dressed only in jeans, interacting with the costumed dancers, melding the past and the present, the traditional and the contemporary, centered by a breathtaking duet that brings everything together. At first Klunchun moves in the traditional style, eliciting a different emotion from the costumed dancers moving in the same way, but as he incorporates more contemporary movements, the transformation takes over. CHUI CHAI is a dazzling, evocative production that is representative of the breadth and scope of Lincoln Center’s outstanding summer festival.