Sublime Lincoln Center

Yesterday evening we went out - for the first time since we arrived in New York (unless of course one counts last weeks talk at the Jewish Institute of Columbia University that we attended). Our first vespertine outing led us to David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, where we saw a New York City Ballet performance of the Swan Lake. Needless to say that we were taken aback by the sublime beauty of what we saw, starting first and foremost with the Lincoln Center architecture.

Lincoln Center is a temple for architectural modernism, and a masterpiece of the ecclectic 1950s style that brought together the modernist elegance and purity with classical and art nouveau elements. In the early evening, when dusk has fallen over the city, Lincoln Center appears as an isle of light and calm, enclosed in itself and beautifully lit from the inside of its transparent main buildings. Accessing Lincoln Center from the north-west as we did, one arrives via its northern plaza that has been reshaped and restructured only recently. A beautiful esplanade now connects the strongly individual buildings constituting Lincoln Center by way of an inviting public space. In its midst one finds a rectangular shaped black fountain giving shelter to two monolithic Henry Moore sculptures (a piece of luck for the Henry Moore fans that we are). On both sides of the fountain newly created spaces invite the visitor to rest and to observe the bustling esplanade where elegantly dressed city dwellers head to their evening programs. While we chose the tilted lawn on the top of a café to sit and observe the plaza, we have already planned that next time we should take a seat in the elegant chairs under the canopy of trees at the fountain's opposite side.

On high spirits we then entered the David Koch theater for our evening performance and again we were startled by the elegance of its classical-modernist interieur culminating in a golden sky-like ceiling. Swan Lake was a pleasure, although two of its main parts were definitely too narrative for our post nouveau-roman mindsets. Nevertheless, Tschaikovsky's music, the abstract expressionist stage setting and the ephemeral dance of the white swan and its companions were of an enthrancing beauty.

We won't forget Tschaikovsky's Leitmotiv for a while and as if he had read our thoughts, the saxophonist at Lincoln Center subway station played it for us again when we started heading home.