Yes, I know, you might be scratching your head at my title but that is exactly what will happen when the new Perelman Performing
Arts Center opens at Ground Zero. After years of controversies and financial difficulties, the shining cube of a building
will open on Sept 19 with an inaugural program that will include performances by Laurie Anderson and Raven Chacon, a partnership
with the Tribeca Film Festival, and a REIMAGINING OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S CATS SET WITHIN HARLEM'S QUEER BALLROOM DANCE SCENE.
Everyone is raving about this latest architectural addition to NYC's art scene but I wonder how the 9/11 survivors and
relatives of those who died on that day feel about this "program". After hours of doing searches on Google so see
I could uncover any negative responses, none, yes NONE popped up! Why? Because the whole of Google's search engine algorithms
are rigged to display only what the purveyors of that atrocity (and who have lots of funds invested in it like the billionaire
Michael Bloomberg) want to have appear. (this has happened before when I've done searches on other topics in the past only
to finally uncover one negative nugget while searching on an unrelated term!)
OK, it's not that I am against a performing arts center at Ground Zero. I knew this was in the works from the beginning
when the redesign of the Ground Zero was proposed by the original architect Daniel Libeskind, but who is in charge of selecting
the programming? I have nothing against the queer ballroom dance scene of the 70s and 80s and enjoyed tremendously all the
seasons of Pose, a TV show which explored the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society in New York City's 80s
queer ballroom culture. But this is Ground Zero, for goodness sake. It is sacred ground like a cemetery space. Would you do
a Cats production in your local cemetery on top of the graves? Does anyone involved in programming for the center realize
that not only people died on that spot, right underneath this "shining symbol of post 9-11comeback" (to quote the
NY Post's opinion article written last year), but under the nearby National September 11 Memorial & Museum's building
is the repository for the unidentified remains of the dead! To me, actors dressed as cats, portraying the queer ballroom scene,
dancing in that space is well, obscene!
|