Community Board 8 New Members
By Megan Finnegan
Borough President Scott Stringer announced the new appointees to Manhattan’s community boards today. Community Board 8 welcomes three new members: Hattie Quarnstrom, nominated by BP Stringer; Jeffrey Escobar, nominated by City Council Member Jessica Lappin, and Edward Hartzog, nominated by City Council Member Dan Garodnick.
The Morning After
A new musical about love doesn’t inspire valentines
By Mark Peikert
People often underestimate the importance of personality when it comes to theater. Singing and dancing and acting are all musts, but a show can sometimes sink or swim on the idiosyncrasies that an actor can bring to his or her role. And in the case of The York Theatre Company’s Tomorrow Morning, a quartet of actors who bring an extra sparkle is exactly what’s needed to make this dull new musical palatable.
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Point and Shoot
From digital to traditional, photography remains ripe for artistic exploration
By Annie Lubin
With the popularity of smartphones and cheap, easy digital cameras, everyone thinks they can be a photographer these days. There’s still quite a bit that the amateur can learn, however, and since it’s such a broad field with so many different areas of expertise, there’s much that can be taught when it comes to photography. The Division of Continuing Education at the School of Visual Arts is one convenient and trusted place to get started.
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Dance To It
Whether it’s hip-hop or ballet, there’s a dance class for you
With the popularity of television shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars, along with movies like the Step Up trilogy, Mao’s Last Dancer and last year’s Oscar-winning Black Swan, dance is in high demand in New York—for professionals and beginners alike. While fitness classes in gyms have an increased focus on dance—with pole dancing at Crunch or jazz at Lucille Roberts—studios such as Broadway Dance Center and Alvin Ailey’s Extension Program hope to prove that dance is no longer limited to the insanely thin and nimble.
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Senior Citizens 2.0: Learning Computer Skills
At the age of 74, Dell Shorter has learned how to turn on a computer, navigate with a mouse and check his email. Shorter attends weekly computer tutoring sessions at the Carter Burden Senior Center, where a volunteer tutor familiarizes him with some basic computer skills that many of us may take for granted.
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A Golden Voice in Your Golden Years?
By Patrick Wall
To enroll in Debbie Brilliant’s class, you need two things: gray hair and a golden voice.
Brilliant, 52, teaches voice-over acting to adults aged 55 and older. Once a week, students meet in her Yorkville Towers apartment to record mock television and radio commercials and listen to her feedback. With little movement and no memorization required, it’s a perfect fit for many seniors.
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Taking a Moment to Relax
Meditation for when you only have a minute to spare
Meditation expert Martin Boroson came up with the idea for his One Moment Meditation technique out of necessity. When Boroson arrived at a corporate law firm in Dublin to teach a meditation session in 2002, he found that instead of a few hours in a quiet, relaxed location as he had expected, the session was going to take place in a boardroom during lunch hour, with sandwiches lining the conference table.
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Tapping Away Stress
Nick Ortner’s online forum on the technique drew hundreds of thousands
Nick Ortner was working as a real-estate buyer about nine years ago when he discovered tapping, an alternative therapy that changed his life—and his career.
At the time, Ortner was suffering from severe lifelong allergies to corn, shrimp, eggs and many other foods. One day he decided to quit cold turkey the allergy medication he had taken every day for 20 years and try something different.
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A Primer on Alternative Health
By Staff
Alternative health medicine is used by millions of people and, according to one recent estimate, is a $34 billion industry. Yet it does not receive as much mainstream press attention. That is why we are now launching a monthly, alternative health series to help New Yorkers make sense of the many programs and services offered all across the city.
As we begin, we offer this primer on some of the most common therapies.
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Lost in the Ramble
Robert McCabe’s photo romp through Central Park
In his latest book, photographer Robert McCabe has set out to untangle the mystery of the Ramble, a maze-like woodland area in Central Park.
“I think one of the things that amazed me was how little the Ramble is known by people who live a few hundred yards from it,” the West Side resident said. “I met people who have lived around there for 30, 40 years and have never heard of the Ramble, and, if they had, had never been there.”
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