Sleepy Hollow Country's Halloween Experiences Expand to 53 Performances
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This year, see more than 4,000 hand-carved jack o' lanterns at Blaze; more than 40 ghoulish actors at Horseman's Hollow and one master storyteller at Irving's Legend. By popular demand, Historic Hudson Valley is expanding its Halloween themed portfolio of special events, which drew more than 100,000 visitors last year.
Kicking off Oct. 1 and continuing on 21 selected evenings through Nov. 6, The Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze is the tri-state area’s biggest all-ages Halloween extravaganza. An ancient Greek scene with mythological creatures, a pasture with ‘roaming’ skeletal sheep, and King Kong perched high on a building are some of the new jack o’lantern installations included in this massive display of Halloween-inspired creativity. A small team of artists come together to carve more than 4,000 jacks, many fused together in enormous and elaborate constructions, all lit up throughout the wooded walkways, orchards, and gardens of historic Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Washington Irving’s macabre tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow inspires Horseman’s Hollow, an interactive haunted attraction
Legend Celebration at Washington Irving’s Sunnyside is a daytime prelude to these evening events. Storytellers and magicians are just some of the colorful characters that perform for all ages, and visitors are encouraged to come in costume.
All events are held rain or shine. Buy tickets online at www.hudsonvalley.org or by calling 914-631-8200 ($2 per ticket surcharge for phone orders).
New Scarsdale Orchestra to Host First Concert this Weekend
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The Ars Viva Chamber Orchestra (AVCO) with Musical Director Jesse Henkensiefken will be hosting their first benefit concert this Saturday, August 20th 2011 at 6:00pm in Scarsdale. The event is titled “Tour de France” and will include an array of French wines and champagnes paired with French composers. There will be an international line-up of AVCO personnel performing works by Ravel, Debussy, Saint Saens, Barriere, Satie and Delibes. Artists to perform include Russian pianist Tatiana Tessman, London soprano Alison Buchanan, and Director Jesse Henkensiefken and Julliard cellist Serafim Smigelskiy. Tickets can be bought through Paypal by clicking here. Tickets and event location will be sent electrically upon purchase. All ticket sales and donations will help fund the upcoming 2011-2012 season.
A native of Kansas, Musical Director Henkensiefken moved to New York with his wife Tatania when she was accepted at the Manhattan School of Music were she currently is working on her DMA in Piano Performance. The two began to teach cello and piano to Scarsdale students and got to know a few families in the area. Henkensiefken garnered support to move his Midwest Ars Viva Chamber Orchestra to New York and held meetings with some local organizations about creating a concert series. This Saturday will be their first Benefit Concert for the 2011-2012 season. The Ars Viva Chamber Orchestra (AVCO) is already planning to collaborate with the Scarsdale Ballet Studio and the Scarsdale New Choral Society for the first season. The orchestra will include musicians from Scarsdale and Westchester as well as some players from the city who were originally in the Midwest ensemble.
2011-2012 Season highlights include:
- All American Composers Kids Concert – Copland Appalachian Spring, Barber Summer of Knoxville with Soprano Alison Buchanan and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring Tatiana Tessman. Event also includes student raffle to conduct the orchestra and instrument petting zoo.
- String Extravagaza – Senior Citizen Concert with performer meet and greet reception – Tchaikovsky and Suk String Serenades.
- Baroque by Candlelight – Works by Handel, Bach and Vivaldi and collaboration with Scarsdale Ballet Studio.
- Season Finale – Russian Explosions – Stravinsky Dumbarton Oaks, Prokofiev Lt Kiji Suite and Rachmaninoff Piano Concert No. 3 with Tatiana Tessman.
To donate or learn more about Ars Viva visit www.arsvivamusic.com .
Free Outdoor Concert at Chase Park
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After spending the afternoon bargain hunting at LF at the Scarsdale Village Sidewalk Sale and enjoying an al fresco dinner at Chat,it was time for the free concert in Chase Park. The Westchester Band Orchestra, conducted by Alan Hollander put on a great show.
The normally quiet Scarsdale Village in the evening, was alive with music, friends and families, young and old. From show tunes to pop songs, people were singing along and tapping their toes. Everyone had a great time. The free concerts will continue on Thursday nights until August 11th. Make sure you get a chance to experience music in the park and make sure you bring a lawn chair.
The Help: The Movie
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We got a sneak preview of the soon-to-be-released movie The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel. Shot in Greenwood, Mississippi, the movie takes you back to the 1960’s, a time of soda shops, shellacked hair-dos and shocking racism. Despite the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that mandated school integration in 1954, little has changed in 1960’s Jackson, where maids in starched uniforms commute from the wrong side of the tracks to cook, clean, shop and raise the children of the white folks across town. The two-hour film centers on the lives of three strong willed women in Mississippi in 1962.
Emma Stone plays the role of 22 year-old Skeeter, who has just graduated from “Ole Miss” and is trying to start her career in journalism, which was a man's world in the South and everywhere else. She is given the job of answering questions about household tips for the local newspaper and seeks help from her friend's black maid, Aibileen. Aibileen, played by Viola Davis, is a strong caring woman who has raised 17 white children but has lost her own son in an accident. She provides housekeeping advice for the column and the two women develop a friendship. Skeeter sees the injustice in the treatment of black maids by their white employers and recognizes that in the era of the Civil Rights movement, the help has a story that needs to be told. She pitches the idea to a publisher up North and after much persuasion a reluctant Aibileen agrees to be interviewed. She is later joined by another black maid named Minnie, played by the sassy and defiant Octavia Spencer.
As the film develops, the audience learns about the lives of these three woman as well as Skeeter's mother Charlotte, (Allison Janney of the West Wing), and Skeeter's evil "friend" Hilly, played by Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minnie embark on their top-secret project to write a tell-all book on the lives of black maids in Jackson. Skeeter must keep her work under cover for fear of incurring the wrath of friends and family, and Aibileen and Minnie must hide their involvement to protect their families, jobs, and their own lives. It’s a time when police feel free to beat blacks who challenge social norms and the specter of the Klu Klux Klan looms large. Despite fear of reprisals, they move forward and the finished project changes all their lives in ways that they never expected.
Minnie provides one of the film's funniest moments when she shows up at the home of Hilly, the queen of the Junior League, who has drafted “The Home Help Sanitation Initiative” to require white employers to build outdoor facilities for their black help. She recently fired Minnie, who has worked for the family for generations, punishing her for using the indoor bathroom instead of the maids’ privy. Minnie’s revenge provides a lesson that neither Hilly nor the audience will ever forget.
The film will make you angry about the injustices that existed in the 1960’s and incredulous that just a few decades ago, during our lifetimes, African Americans were treated as property by generations of whites in the South. One of the black maids in the movie revealed that she had been “given” to the white family where her mother worked, when her mother passed away. Particularly moving were the close bonds between the maids and the white children they loved – the maids stood in for detached mothers -- teaching their charges to speak, use the potty and to believe in themselves.
Most touching is the relationship that forms between Skeeter and the courageous maids who are the subjects of her book. When the story is published, it turns their world around, humiliating the oppressors, liberating the oppressed and sending Skeeter off to a new literary life, a world away in New York.
The three women exhibit grace, courage and wisdom during this difficult period of change in the South and Director Tate Taylor has provided a captivating visual interpretation of life in Mississippi at the dawn of a new era.
SHS Grad Jess Chayes Directs home/sick in Williamsburg
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Jess Chayes, a 2003 graduate of Scarsdale High School is currently directing home/sick , an ensemble-devised piece of political theater that explores the history of the 1960s radical group, The Weather Underground. The play is a presentation of the Assembly Theatre Project and can be seen at the Collapsable Hole Theatre in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Disgusted by the Vietnam War and the government's repression of those seeking equality domestically, a handful of leaders from the 1960s student movement seized control of Students for a Democratic Society and reshaped it in the name of overthrowing the United States government. Believing violence to be the only means to a true and lasting peace, these passionate idealists accelerated a movement to its fervor, but left a country behind.
According to Timeout New York, home/sick is “impressively researched and clear-eyed and shows us the Underground’s internal contradictions … we see Bolshevik passion lapsing into self-delusion and then flaring up again, until we are unsure what to admire and what to deplore." And offoffonline says, “Jess Chayes's direction is daring and engrossing. The lines between actor and audience, play and reality, right and wrong, become so blurred it is hard not to get caught up in the fervor and passion of these romantics- even if you whole-heartedly disagree with their actions. Chayes intricately blends movement, dance, lighting and sound to capture not only the counterculture of the 70's but also the complex struggles and political questions these very real people were grappling with.”
Jess’ (SHS ’03) love of theater and the arts took root and flourished in Scarsdale High School where she student-directed You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, led the Drama Club, wrote poetry and founded the a cappella group, For Good Measure. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Theater and English with Honors, and was awarded the Rachel Henderson Theater Prize as well as an Olin Fellowship for her work on Hartford.
Chayes is a co-founder and resident director of The Assembly Theater Project and a freelance director. With The Assembly, she has co-created and directed We Can’t Reach You, Hartford (Edinburgh Fringe First Nominee, The Scotsman), Daguerreotype (The Abingdon Theater), What I Took in My Hand (The Ontological Theater, the Brick Theater), Clementine and the Cyber Ducks (The Ontological Theater, reading at P73), The Dark Heart of Meteorology (UNDER St. Marks), The Three Sisters (The Red Room, The Cherry Pit), and home/sick.
The play will be performed from July 20 -23 and July 27 – 30 at 8 pm. Purchase tickets at brownpapertickets.com and visit theassemblytheater.com to learn more.
