Ballet, Opera, Portuguese...

I’ve been in New York City for just over two weeks now, and it seems like the city speed has gotten to me because I’ve adjusted even more quickly than I expected!

I’m willing to bet that anyone who has gone—or is currently—on New York Term, at one point, looked at the schedule of events or the list of art forms that they’d be studying and had a bit of eek reaction—or had some reservations—because of something they saw: “Ballet? I don’t think so.” “We’re going to an opera? Aren’t they a little outdated?” Or: “Wait. The whole thing’s not gonna be in Portuguese, is it? Is it?” However, in these first two weeks, our professors and our experiences at these performances have entirely obliterated these worries from any of our minds. Ballet can be creepy as all Hell, as we saw at the Koch Theater in the production of “The Cage”—a performance of over a dozen women presenting themselves as a colony of all-female insects along with two male “intruders,” one caught in dance with the colony’s newborn member and resultantly killed. Opera is more than exaggerated expressions and extensively drawn-out sentences in the form of song; La Boheme—among the most famous operas of all time—featured extraordinarily life-like sets, contemporary humor, and exceptional acting. And something in Portuguese—assuming some sort of subtitles or other interpretable context!—can be as powerful or even more powerful than something in English; language isn’t everything as we saw in the imported, Brazilian play O Jardim.

And all the while, I’ve settled into two internships, one at Folio Literary Management and another at Soho Press. Both places of given me experiences that I hadn’t anticipated having until after graduation and the start of my real career here in New York in publishing. Already, I’ve read manuscripts, evaluated them on behalf of both a literary agent and a group of publishers, edited a soon-to-be-published novel, assisted in the marketing of Soho’s published novels, and I’m in the middle of establishing a book proposal for Discovery Channel based on their new show Alaskan Bush People. In short, I’ve reestablished my passion for the arts and for a career and life here in NYC!

What comes next? More of the arts, delving deeper into the diversity the city has to offer, including more theater productions, more museums, and more jazz clubs as well as trips to Carnegie Hall and other premiere art establishments. And more 19-cent bananas and microwavable meals! Livin’ the city life. And ready to stick around a while.