Ladies and gents — and young ones, too — get out your dancing shoes and join the lads and lassies who’ll teach you to dance a la Grecque.
The annual autumn L. A. Greek Fest picks up next weekend on Oct. 7, 8, 9 on the campus of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in midtown at Normandie and Pico Boulevards. Friday is free, and parking is free every day. General admission is $5, and seniors are $3.
Not only will you learn to dance the timeless folk dances – the syrto, kalamatiano, hasapiko (the butcher’s hop), you will find home-cooked feasts of Greek dishes and delicacies with their tantalizing aromas. The buffets are prepared fresh by the families of the parish to raise funds for the charities of Saint Sophia’s.
The non-profit Greek Fest, installed by the Cathedral’s Very Reverend John Bakas, has raised funds for the homeless, poverty stricken elderly, runaway and orphan teens and more.
A side note about the folk dancing. During the enslavement of Greece by the Ottoman Empire, legend prevails that a lady soldier, Bouboulina and her lady warriors were trapped and being raped by the Ottomans. She gathered her fighters who escaped, and singing a popular folk song and with arms around each other they danced off a cliff to their death, rather than be raped by the enemy. True or false? Who knows?
Those indebted to the future of heart health met in the ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel to wine and dine with Dr. Harold Karpman. The distinguished cardiologist and author of 14 medical books, Dr. Karpman established the Cardiovascular Research Foundation that has protected and saved global lives with its trailblazing innovations.
Acknowledging the Good Doctor’s dedication to a medical practice that’s beyond compare, Constance Towers Gavin served as toastmistress for the gala evening. (We’ve never forgotten Connie proudly told us that she was born and raised in Whitefish, Montana, a healthy environment with its outdoors lifestyle.) Son Michael Gavin is a heart surgeon.
Speaking from the heart about tomorrow’s promising medical advances, Dr. Karpman and his longtime colleague and the Foundation’s CEO Dr. Ronald Karlsberg enumerated the impressive innovations. As did Dr. Rene Selvag Packard, who was presented with the Cardiology Fellowship Award. We all know that research doesn’t happen without financial support, and the loyalists that evening are making a difference with their philanthropic gifts.
The Foundation honored Dr. Satinider Bhasti, whose 30-year body of research is renowned as an incomparable achievement.
Peggy Frank, the Foundation’s executive director, introduced the evening. Followed by Carlos Murgula and Mauricio Abaroa performing their Choices Of The Heart, composed for – and with profits donated to – the Foundation.
The Golden Throne arrived from Italy in mid-September at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.
Designed and created by the Padua-born Maurizio Cattelan, it is a fully functional replica of a toilet cast in solid gold and on view in one of the public restrooms.
The new work, included in the artist’s America exhibition, invites viewers to make use of the fixture individually and privately, informs a Guggenheim executive.
He adds: “Its participatory experience offers viewers an unprecedented intimacy with an artwork that is extravagantly luxurious.
“As art history, America references Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), a urinal presented as a sculptural readymade …
“Cattelan’s solid gold toilet offers a wink and a nod to the excesses of the market.”
By late afternoon when New Yorkers are leaving their offices, the queues for viewing and participating become longer. With patrons standing in line for more than an hour. To pee or poop.
A New Yorker art maven named Ann conceded she was nervous about using the facility. While her husband had no qualms, shrugging that “it’s just another crapper.”
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About this week’s First Debate, where moderator Lester Holt improperly favored her, we may well be a minority of one, as we ruminate about it, and deciding it was b-o-r-i-n-g.
Same old, same old. Trade, e-mails, race, taxes, etc. Nothing really new, other than he reminding her that she didn’t spare how awful President Obama was with her decimating comments when she was his rival for the White House during the last election.
• No mention of the fiscal insanity (we are $20 trillion in debt).
• No mention of border control.
• The issue of the 100 million unemployed Americans.
• The issue of the 11 million illegal aliens.
Quo Vadis? Change or the Same, with its uncontrollable lust for higher taxes and big government.
Debates don’t win elections.