Everything truly is beautiful at the ballet. I digress from my search for the perfect margarita and guacamole to talk about one of my other favorite things: dance in New York City. American Ballet Theatre opened its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center earlier this week, and it is definitely one not to be missed.

Having studied dance steadily for 18 years of my life, I take every opportunity I can to see dance in performance. When I recently found myself with a free evening (a true rarity for a girl on the go in NYC), I decided to embrace spontaneity and head over to Lincoln Center. I hoped to snag a ticket for La Bayadère, ABT’s first ballet in repertory this season. That’s one of the phenomenal things about New York City—anyone craving a live performance will have many choices within reach on any given night.
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The city has been buzzing about the new Greek and Roman Galleries that just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so when an art aficionado friend of mine came into town last weekend I considered it a “must-do” while she was here. Saturday morning we excitedly met up on the vast front staircase leading up to the Metropolitan Museum. Before we walked in, my friend informed me that the stairs leading up to museums symbolize the aspirations we all should have to the artists inside.

The hotel’s plush sitting nooks begged for socialite gossip. The lobby filled with whispers and left-right kiss salutations. The crowd was obviously heavy with anticipation for 2005 International Designer of the Year, Jamil Khansa’s, reveal. Men sporting fur coats over pressed tuxedos brandished their portfolios and dignitaries were greeted with acknowledging nods as models fitted in couture gowns scattered backstage. International Couture Fashion week brought the usual fashion dichotomy of diplomats and divas together at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in February.
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Tassels and fringes and pasties, oh my! At Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, less is more. The twice-monthly art gathering is a destination for art aficionados and amateurs alike who want to move beyond the cold, sterile art studio and into a titillating drawing room right in the heart of Williamsburg.

Founded by Molly Crabapple, a Brooklyn-based illustrator and former life drawing model, the school started as an antidote for the “weird and dehumanizing” environment of your average academic life drawing class, says Molly. The Dr. Sketchy’s prescription? One part burlesque babe, a regular drip of saucy music and a couple injections of crazy contests that inspire the “art monkeys”—as Molly calls the sketchers—to incorporate items like tangerines and woodland creatures into their sketches. The winner is inoculated with a double shot of tequila that keeps the creative juices flowing.

A performance art program by a company I had never heard of in a faraway land called Flatbush? Indeed. As New Yorkers tend to do, I trusted my instinct that this was an event I didn’t want to miss. I jumped on the downtown 3 train in a blind leap of faith.

Thankfully, the L.A.-based troupe Diavolo was on my schedule and began just as I arrived right on late at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. They performed three dances, gracefully climbing, flipping and stunting on each other atop three different six-ft high structures. The first structure, a variety of tall doors that acted as props in a musical of a couple chasing after each other and finally falling in love. Cute and whimsical, the abstract movements provoked thought among audience members. Joy quickly transitioned to defeat as the next piece began. The conditioned athletes sprinted vertically up the second structure, a spiked wall, then slinked down grimly as morose music played.
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I made my way through what I call “Tourists in America,” a.k.a. The Met on a Saturday, as I followed a gaggle of art-appeciators to the last weekend of the “Americans in Paris” exhibit. Upon stepping inside this temple I quickly muted my swagger to focus on the significance of the collections.

The exhibit meandered through several rooms, each with one painted wall outlining the thematic simliarities and periods of the work in standout white type. While know-it-alls walked by these walls without giving them a glance, I read every one, sucking up the nuances of the late 19th century.
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