{"id":317,"date":"2008-11-10T23:31:16","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T23:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2008\/11\/wham-maam-thank-you-bam.html"},"modified":"2008-11-10T23:31:16","modified_gmt":"2008-11-10T23:31:16","slug":"wham-maam-thank-you-bam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/11\/wham-maam-thank-you-bam.html","title":{"rendered":"Wham, ma’am, thank you, BAM."},"content":{"rendered":"

I liked playing with blocks as a kid, building grand castles out of wooden shapes painted primary colors. I was also the Tetris Queen; I held the high score on my dad\u2019s stone age computer until we got rid of that computer. Never though, when I was young, did I ever play Tangram. Saturday night I watched about a dozen performers play Tangram on stage with gigantic Tangram pieces<\/a>. http:\/\/www.bam.org\/view.aspx?pid=121<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=faHMok_H4ys<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

One of my favorite performing arts venues in New York is, without a doubt, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or BAM. Located in Fort Greene just a few steps away from Atlantic\/Pacific or Nevins station, BAM has two theatres within walking distance of each other,<\/p>\n

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The city block sized Howard Gilman Opera House exterior is clean, serene white, and you\u2019d never expect the burst of artistic, eclectic goodness you find inside, both in decoration and in programming. Go up the escalator and you find yourself in the BAMCaf\u00e9, one of my favorite chill-out spaces in New York. What they\u2019ve done with the space is breathtaking and inventive; you feel as if you are hanging out on the set of a BAM production. Bright orange rafters stretch out over clusters of tables, chairs, and couches. The ceiling is lined with metal weather grating and mesh, behind which shine lots of tiny lightbulbs. The huge arched windows dance with spiraling lights. Look above you and you see floating white sculptures of human bodies flying, arms outstretched. (A few months ago it was a gigantic chandelier made out of sea-foam-green electrical cords). And on Friday and Saturday nights <\/a>during the theatre season, you can see free music performances by new and experimental musicians. The band this Saturday night when I went described themselves as \u201cmariachi bluegrass.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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Yeah yeah, sounds cool, but I bet ticket prices are astronomical<\/em>. Not at all. General admission at the opera house is as low as $25 a ticket, $10 for student rush. When\u2019s the last time you went to an opera for $25? When\u2019s the last time you went to an opera like this?<\/em> is the real question.<\/p>\n

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BAM has distinguished itself as a large performing arts venue that gives new, experimental art forms a place to be seen. I have yet to be disappointed by a BAM production: Robert Wilson\u2019s envisioning of <\/a>Peer Gynt<\/a> <\/em>continues to be one of the main reasons I am an artist. Why not have a production of The Magic Flute<\/em> with video projections? Who wouldn\u2019t want to watch Cate Blanchett saunter around the stage as Hedda Gabler? I always leave the theatre feeling that much more in love with New York for giving a place like BAM a home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I liked playing with blocks as a kid, building grand castles out of wooden shapes painted primary colors. I was also the Tetris Queen; I held the high score on my dad\u2019s stone age computer until we got rid of that computer. Never though, when I was young, did I ever play Tangram. Saturday night…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\nWham, ma'am, thank you, BAM. - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2008\/11\/wham-maam-thank-you-bam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wham, ma'am, thank you, BAM. - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I liked playing with blocks as a kid, building grand castles out of wooden shapes painted primary colors. 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She is a freelance writer for the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s International Perspective, and her writing has been published in Sentient City, the ID Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s online literary magazine. Emily is also a playwright and winner of the Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwrighting Competition for her one-act play \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Assemblage.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Her writing is influenced by art, artists, psychology, and spirituality. She has run drama and arts workshops in schools in NYC and Long Island, and teaches children with autism. Emily is working on her M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University School of the Arts. Emily has been attending classes and workshops at the ID Project since 2005.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/eherzlin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}