The pleasant surprise of my recent New York trip was a visit to the New York Transit Museum. The museum is housed in the (brightly lit) Court Street IND station of the defunct HH shuttle, which was at one time designed to be extended into the (mythical?) Second Avenue line in Manhattan.

The station and its equipment are in full working order. Visitors sometimes need to be told twice that the green and yellow lights on the station's model board represent actual trains running in real time. The interlock box controls a set of track switches that lie between the museum and the next station up the line, Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets on the A, C, and G.

The museum is perhaps the only place you'll see IRT and IND/BMT equipment across the platform from one another.

Upstairs on the mezzanine level is an enlightening display of a century's worth of turnstile technology, which is driven by maximizing the number of passengers that can pass a given point and minimizing cheating.

posted: 9:16:01 PM  

The evening opens with a confident reading of Balanchine's Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Sara Ivan, replacing Michele Jimenez, makes the "Aria II" section heart-wrenching, and everyone has fun in the closing "Capriccio" section (or as Artistic Director Septime Webre might have it, "hoedown in Tblisi").

Jonathan Jordan elicits some gasps when he executes a dead lift lying on the deck in There Where She Loved, by Christopher Wheeldon. Danced to live accompaniment, the piece consists of equal parts lyrical joy and bitter resentment, the music being supplied by Frederic Chopin and Kurt Weill. The trio of ladies for "Surabaya-Johnny" impresses (at least when the light cues were cooperating), and mezzo Shelly Waite brings a lot to her pieces.

The evening closes with a less-than-successful premiere by Trey McIntyre, a setting of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. McIntyre has imagined a story about a pill-popping socialite (The Hostess) and her domineering mother, who is still in romantic competition with her daughter. The overbearing dancing owes something to Pilobolus and more than a little to Paul Taylor's Cloven Kingdom, as in "we're all naked animals under our clothes." But then, how can a dance be anything but overbearing when set on Stravinsky's pre-biblical thundering?

There is a sweet passage for the Hostess (Laura Urgellés) and her assistant (Brianne Bland) (but what is that set piece?). The sumptuous costumes for the women feature a rustle-y bustle, but somehow manage to make the dancers' legs look big. The climactic showdown between the Hostess and the Mother is an Alexis-and-Krystle catfight.

posted: 8:57:37 PM  

Photo-illustated maps of walks to take around Reston and elsewhere in the area, historical maps, and more—a nice overlay of the Wiehle Avenue Metro station plans against a present aerial photograph. The site is a bit homespun, but useful.

(Thanks to DCist.)

posted: 9:41:58 AM