ART IN THE BIG APPLE

Author: Liz Logue

For the spring term, this former Arts Editor thought it sensible to leave the Middlebury utopia for a while and venture to the center of the universe, New York City. Rest assured that arts — particularly dance and theater and, OK, movies and television too, are in my blood, so I'll be visiting a lot of performance venues in the hopes of satiating my appetite for all that is creative.

New York is, not surprisingly, a changed city since Sept. 11. I can vouch for the fact that it's more than just the conspicuous absence of the city's Twin Towers, but the mentality of New Yorkers and the very aura of the city that have changed. Performances these days, more than ever, are showcased with a sensitivity to the fragility of New York. On Sunday afternoon, two dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet — a Russian company and one of the most prestigious in the world — performed without music on a makeshift stage at Ground Zero. The New York City Ballet shared the stage at State Theater with several companies, including the Bolshoi, on Monday evening to raise money for the families of World Trade Center victims, a far cry from the usual fundraisers held by the City Ballet to raise money for the company itself or the current Lincoln Center project.

Relations between strangers, too, have been changing: bars have been emptier, commuters a little more patient and New Yorkers a little more giving. (An extreme example of generosity includes a gentleman with a thick Southern drawl, who, a couple months ago, stood outside midtown's Manhattan Mall and handed out hundred dollar bills to passersby.) By way of promoting Broadway, the theater community began an "I Love New York Theater" campaign, which offers a menu of specials on accommodations, restaurants and other events in conjunction with theatergoing.

New York is also home to the sexiest, if not most popular, show on HBO, "Sex and the City," which has attracted devout viewers and has received Golden Globe awards for both its script and characters. In fact, all but one of the main characters on the show has been nominated for at least one Golden Globe. The show, which has been called by many as a new vehicle for female sexual liberation, is infamous for its frank discussions on dating and sex. The four female stars are each dynamically different, running the gamut from relatively conservative and family minded to sex crazed and anti-monogamistic.

The Feb. 11 issue of New York Magazine cites a conversation between the four characters: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), during which Samantha regretfully declares that she "caught" monogamy. (Samantha has, since the show's creation in 1998, been the vixen who would try anything once, unless it involved commitment or emotional vulnerability.)

This season, the girls settled down. Samantha enters a monogamous relationship; Miranda is getting ready to be a single mom; Carrie is engaged; and Charlotte is trying to work out her rocky marriage. What used to be a show about one-night stands and genital endowment had morphed into one that is more sentimental, more family-friendly.

The sentimentality is coincidence.

The six-episode season, which aired throughout the months of January and February, had been taped months earlier. What was not coincidence, however, was the titling of the season's final episode: "I Heart New York," an episode in which Carrie tells an ex-love who is moving out of the city that he owes it to her and New York to go out on the town one last time. What had been written and taped before Sept. 11 was, in essence, exactly what New York needed: a reminder to be loyal, a reminder to go out and spend some money and, above all, the message was told in the backdrop of traditional values ( marriage, family, monogamy) that had never before been seen on "Sex and the City."

A poll conducted in the same issue of New York Magazine shows that New Yorkers are, more than they ever have, embracing tradition. The aftermath of Sept. 11, according to the poll, has left 46 percent of New Yorkers seeking long-term, monogamous relationships, and 63 percent of those already in relationships at the time say that their relationship has gotten stronger.

Perhaps our own minds created the apparent departure from casual sex in this past season's "Sex and the City" as an attempt to change our favorite characters along with us. There is little doubt, however, that the show will change for real in upcoming seasons. (The show's star, Sarah Jessica Parker, and creator, Candace Bushnell, have already acknowledged the imminent change.) Unlike the performance artist that might perform for himself (not the audience, as we'd hoped) television exists for the viewers, and "Sex and the City," at least in New York, exists for New Yorkers alone: when they changed, the show changed too.

Regarding the broader scope of performance in New York, I believe it was said best by writer Sally Singer in the February issue of Vogue magazine: "Who could be better equipped to lead New York through its darkest days than stubborn, show-must-go-on, I-will-survive thespians?"

I believe it is both important and necessary to discuss the arts in New York, not just because it is the place where so many artists start, but because the city is widely regarded as the hub of the international arts scene.

It is owed to New York to acknowledge at least some of the artistic brilliance that make the city what it is, because without that type of acknowledgement, it risks losing its culture and even its identity. The truth is that New York has simply lost too much already.