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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Age of Insight” by Eric Kandel

September 28, 2012

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Did you ever wonder what the new neuroscience of PET scans and functional MRIs can tell us about the physical basis of emotions, and of their relationship to art? Eric Kandel, the winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine and the author of the poignant and thoughtful memoir “In Search of Memory,” did, and this fascinating, accessible book is the result. In “The Age of Insight” Kandel explores our present “intellectually satisfying understanding . . . of how we respond perceptually, emotionally, and empathically to the facial expressions and bodily postures of others.” The result is an astonishing and clear (and beautifully illustrated) synthesis of the present state of brain science and the physical basis of our perceptions and emotions.

Kandel starts in the Vienna of 1900, describing the salon of the art critic Berta Zuckerkandl, at which artists and painters were able to meet and discuss some of the important work in medicine, art, and literature underway there. Vienna’s medical centers were one of the origins of the practice of what Kandel calls ‘scientific’ medicine (medicine based on observation and replicated experiments). He describes, meticulously and in convincing detail, the psychological insight of the painters Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, the writer Arthur Schnitzler, and Sigmund Freud. Kandel pulls no punches, criticizing Freud’s decision to take psychoanalysis into the realm of anecdote rather than data, for example.

In succeeding sections Kandel explains the cognitive psychology of visual perception and our response to art. We respond to hands and faces depicted in paintings just as we respond to the hands and faces of people we see every day. Kandel explains that the brain interprets and invents what we observe, and the interpretation is influenced by emotion. The brain process is the same when we look at a work of art. Artists often exaggerate one feature or another in order to heighten the emotion. Kandel next explores the biology of the beholder’s visual and emotional response to art.

The final section discusses our biological and cognitive understanding of creativity. He describes some work on problem-solving, and suggests that letting our unconscious turn over problems is important to creativity. This section is necessarily skimpier than the preceding ones, as the scientific work is at the outer edge of what we know. Nonetheless, Kandel makes an impassioned and persuasive case for art. He writes:

The information conveyed in a story or work of art need not be simple. It can be complex and multidimensional. Every inflection of the voice, every slight contraction of a facial muscle matters. These cues help us understand what emotions the character is experiencing and thus to predict what he or she will do next. Survival in society is dependent on learning to read such cues, which is why we developed the neural machinery for representing them, reacting to them, and most important, desiring to understand them. And that is why we generate, appreciate, and desire art: art improves our understanding of social and emotional cues, which are important for survival . . .

Kandel’s book is complex and multidimensional, and very, very interesting. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Carry the One” by Carol Anshaw

September 21, 2012

What’s done cannot be undone, and this is the lesson the three young protagonists of Carol Anshaw’s novel “Carry the One” must learn in the harshest possible way. Carmen, Alice and Nick are the three children of Horace and Loretta. We meet the siblings at Carmen’s wedding, at an artists’ cooperative in Wisconsin where Alice lives. The siblings’ parents, “hipsters and atheists, way too cool for weddings,” do not attend. Nick has driven up with his girlfriend, Olivia. Late in the evening they get in the car to return to Chicago after the wedding, along with the folksinger who has performed at the wedding. Alice and Maude, the groom’s sister, having begun an affair, decide to catch a ride back to the city with them. It’s a crowded car, and Carmen sees them off, worried when she notices that they are driving with only the fog lights. Olivia, driving, hits and kills a 10-year-old girl in the dark.

None of the siblings caused the accident, yet each of them, honorably, carries a sense of responsibility for the events that night. They are very young when these events take place in 1983, and the novel follows the course of their lives during the next 25 years. Carmen, pregnant at the time of the wedding, becomes a social worker and mother to Gabe. The marriage breaks up, but she eventually remarries, though she is never certain whether this second marriage is a mistake. Alice, a painter like their father, copes with her eventual success and the fact that this success overshadows and even threatens their overbearing father. Nick, a very young astronomy graduate student at the time of the wedding, loyally visits Olivia during her prison term. He also maintains contact with the mother of the girl who was killed. Oh, and dulls his pain with drugs, more and more of them.

Nick, Alice and Carmen don’t spend all their time working out their guilt, but the sense of complicity motivates many of their subsequent acts. Nick manages an unlikely career around the edges of academic astronomy for a while, but sinks further into addiction. Alice achieves great personal success, but is unable to develop a stable relationship. When one arises, she is surprised, feeling, perhaps, that it is not something she is entitled to enjoy. Alice and Nick continue to hope, unsuccessfully, that they will capture their mother’s attention. Carmen is less forgiving of their parents, who essentially forced them to grow up on their own, but more forgiving to her siblings than they are to themselves.

And if in the end this horrible event has shaped their lives, each has been able to find a moment of respite from it. Anshaw convincingly describes heartening growth and development over the years. Because of an accident the three siblings must look back unforgivingly at their younger selves; the creator of this unusual and moving book has given them the gift of grace even as she does not allow them forgiveness.

On her blog, Carol Anshaw has acknowledged that the novel’s ending is ambiguous. I have my own interpretation, and readers have posted their ideas in the comments to Anshaw’s blog. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Radical Survivor” by Nancy Saltzman

September 14, 2012

By the time she was in her early forties, Nancy Saltzman had a thriving career as an elementary school principal and lived in a happy family with her husband, Joel, and two sons. She had survived two bouts of breast cancer, and the surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and more surgery that went with them. She was organizing support groups for women newly diagnosed with cancer, and beginning to make a name for herself as an inspirational speaker. The boys were athletes like their father, playing tennis, hockey and several other sports. Joel owned a popular tennis shop. It was a busy, full life, until it wasn’t: on September 24, 1995 Saltzman’s husband, Joel, and two sons, Adam and Seth, ages 13 and 11, were killed when the small plane they were riding in crashed.

How do you go on living when your family is killed? The first week Saltzman was busy responding to the crisis, choosing among burial options, collecting belongings, and, unbelievably, speaking at the memorial service. She writes, “I gathered strength from the thousands of people who came to mourn and celebrate those three lives with me. I wanted desperately to hold on to the Joel, Adam, and Seth I knew, and believed I could do so by talking about them.” Whether to go on living wasn’t the question. As she writes, “I dreaded the dark passage ahead, [and] I knew the only way out was through it. Normal wasn’t remotely possible, but I needed to find whatever the new version of it was.” She returned to work a week after the crash.

Saltzman describes vividly how she drew on reserves of strength, from her family, her friends, her community, and the love she and her family had shared. [Full disclosure – Saltzman’s family and my family are friends.] It’s not as if she didn’t look back. Seth had always picked out her shoes; as she got dressed she tried to guess which pair he might have chosen. She didn’t greet parents in the parking lot when she returned to work, just went straight to her office. Saltzman is honest and unflinching as she describes the difficult, pain-filled days and long nights. But somehow they passed. She shares letters that she wrote to her family, both before and after the crash, along with memories and photographs and the boys’ diaries. Her friends helped, and her dogs. She kept showing up, and in doing so, showed everyone around her what to do.

Eventually she wrote this moving book, and explains how she went on with her life. (The book provides something of a catalogue of what people say when they don’t know what to say, including pointlessly stupid and painful things.) Saltzman mixes the mundane with the morbid, and the painful with plenty of humor. Hers was a smart family, and this book is often very, very funny. After her cancer diagnosis Saltzman writes:

[W]e discovered that someone had broken into my car and stolen my radio. That night, the boys were still talking about it. I decided it was time to let them know about my surgery.

“Hey guys. I have something to tell you. I have these bad cells in my breast and I am going to have some surgery so they can take them away. They’ll have to take my breast off.” There was a pause, and they both looked at me. Then Adam realized the full extent of the injustice.

“Mom. That is amazing. First they take your radio, then they take your breast!”

This moving book is about life, about resiliency, and about surviving. What’s Saltzman’s prescription? Well, you have to read the book, but love, kindness, and humor come in to it, along with pragmatism, and what she calls mini-vacations. Stamina and fortitude help too. And humor. Saltzman’s book is available via her website. What’s your response to this well-written book? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Voodoo Wave: Inside a Season of Triumph and Tumult at Maverick’s” by Mark Kreidler

September 7, 2012

Maverick’s is a big wave formation off the Santa Cruz, California Coast, and there’s a surfing contest there every year. (If you already know this information, please forgive me.) The contest was originally organized by a local surfer, Jeff Clark. Clark was the first and, for a long time, the only surfer to ride the wave. Since the site is located half a mile offshore, in its early years the contest was organized casually, by and for the surfers, with little but glory for the winner. In the way of these things, Keir Beadling, a local entrepreneur, saw an opportunity to capitalize on the event, bringing in sponsors, and selling t-shirts and other gear to raise money for appearance fees and prizes. That kind of organization requires lots of work, and compromises with corporations. Clark went along with it, for a while. And then things fell out. “The Voodoo Wave” tells the story of what happened during the 2009-2010 contest, when Clark was ousted from the organization, but Beadling didn’t have anyone to replace him.

A bit of background. Mavericks is a coldwater “big wave.” It’s dangerous: there are rocks underwater, rocks at the coastline, and the waves come in fast, meaning that if one knocks you down, another may be coming along before you can get your head out of the water long enough to take a breath. In Kreidler’s description:

Worse, though, are the hold-downs, when a fresh wave crashes on a surfer’s head just as he is attempting to surface from his initial wipeout. Maverick’s is infamous for the length, depth, and ferocity of its hold-downs, with the cold water testing the surfer’s ability to hold his breath and the violence of the spin cycle leaving him disoriented and, occasionally, with punctured eardrums. At Mavs as elsewhere, the length of the trouble depends mostly on the period, or the number of seconds in between the waves. A two-wave hold-down is common; a three-wave hold, though terrifying, is by no means unique.

Water, wind, and wave conditions have to align before any waves at Mavericks are rideable, and then someone with an understanding of the surfers’ needs has to decide whether to hold a contest. Contestants, sponsors, and spectators need enough notice to get to the site. Before the 2009-10 contest could be held, there was a fight over who made that decision. Ultimately, the 24 surfers voted to go ahead. There were money problems–Beadling had failed to pay appearance fees in the past. (The surfers showed up all the same.) And then there was the casual approach of the surfers, who need travel time, boards and wetsuits, versus the time needed to set up broadcast booths, vendor booths, and to line up the boats that take people out to where they could actually see the waves. In February 2010, when the contest was held, the waves were big, and several of them swept through an area that spectators and vendors thought would remain dry.

As a business book, well, this one is a little disorganized. There are a lot of interesting stories here, and Kreidler sought out a wide range of perspectives, but they are not fully integrated. There are almost too many good centers for the story: Jeff Clark, for example, is an extremely complex person, calm and centered out on the water but mercurial on land. Keir Beadling is cast as the villain, but he also sounds like someone trying to bring depth of organization to what had been a spontaneous event. The other surfers seem one-dimensional, with similar easygoing personalities. The book is also marred by the occasional awkward sentence.

On the other hand, Kreidler does a great job of conveying the casual camaraderie of the big wave surfing community, and the sheer thrill of surfing huge and dangerous waves. Click here for a good explanation of why the Mavericks waves rise the way they do, and here for a list of the heats in the 2010 contest (spoiler alert: you will be able to tell who made the final round). And here is a link to some video of the contest. I list all this because I needed all of it to understand what was happening in the book. But then, I’ve only been surfing once. It was a blast–one of the most exhilarating things I’ve done in sports, even as a beginner on small East Coast waves.

Are you a surfer? Do you think the descriptions are adequate for the more expert? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Events, Kids

Transit Museum After School Program for Children on Autism Spectrum Enters Third Year

September 5, 2012

The Transit Museum is embarking on a new year of Subway Sleuths, a special after school program for children on the Autism Spectrum. The program teaches social and problem-solving skills in a unique environment – a decommissioned subway station – and uses transit-themed content to engage spectrum youth. This year the Centers for Disease Control issued a new report estimating that 1 out of 88 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in the United States. Subway Sleuths uses a fascination for trains to help students navigate shared social experiences with their peers.

In a very short period of time Subway Sleuths has captured the attention of ASD experts, transit enthusiasts and Museum professionals alike. Organizations as diverse as the Portland International Airport and the Museum Access Consortium have turned to the Museum for consultation on implementing similar programs. Each session is facilitated by a special educator, a speech language pathologist trained in ASD support, and a Transit Museum educator. In 2011, Subway Sleuths’ innovative approach was featured on the front page article in The New York Times. The Museum will be part of a presentation at the American Public Transportation Association’s Annual Convention. The Museum has also been invited to participate in a proposed panel at the next convention for the American Alliance of Museums.

This fall, 7-9 year olds will meet on Tuesday afternoons at 4pm, and 10-12 year olds will meet on Wednesday afternoons at 4pm. The classes will start on October 2nd and 3rd, respectively. We will be holding thirty minute Observation Sessions on September 11th and 12th at the Transit Museum to form this fall’s cohorts. The observation sessions are a fun, informal way for staff to assess each child’s needs and tendencies, helping them assemble compatible participant groups and craft lesson plans. The program is offered on a sliding scale: for those in need the entire ten-week series costs only $25, thanks in part to a generous grant from Autism Speaks. Additional funding is provided by the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Tiger Baron Foundation, Warren Lewis Realty and individual donations.

To make a reservation, send your child’s name, age, grade level, school and parent/guardian contact information to Julie: Subwaysleuths@gmail.com or 718-694-3385

Flyer for Parents: http://mta.info/mta/museum/pdf/NYTM_autism.pdf

The New York Transit Museum is located at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn Heights.

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Arts and Entertainment, Events

8 Artists Making Sculpture to open at BRIC Gallery on September 12

August 20, 2012

BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn is proud to announce the first show of its 2012-13 contemporary art exhibition season, which focuses on artists chosen from BRIC’s online Contemporary Artist Registry, whose three-dimensional works transform and activate the physical space around them. The exhibition is guest curated by Jamie Sterns, and includes site-specific works by two of the exhibiting artists. More information on the exhibition is available at bricartsmedia.org. Artists include Arielle Falk, Jamie Felton, MaryKate Maher, Abraham McNally, Jong Oh, Carolyn Salas, Ian Umlauf, and Matthew C. Wilson.

Opening reception: September 12, 2012, 7-9 pm
Exhibition on view September 13 – October 27, 2012
Please note that the gallery will be closed Tuesday, October 23, 2012 for our annual fundraising Gala.

The BRIC Rotunda Gallery is located at 33 Clinton St., Brooklyn, NY 11210. Hours are Tues – Sat, Noon – 6 pm. Admission is free.

 

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Rez Life” by David Treuer

July 27, 2012

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David Treuer begins his engrossing memoir “Rez Life” by describing his grandfather’s suicide and the way the family comes together to mourn, to cope, and to clean up. He, along with his uncles, his brothers, and his cousins dig the grave and clean up the old man’s house. It’s a fitting beginning for this complex look at reservation life. Each chapter starts out with a real person, then takes off from that person’s story to examine another facet of reservation life, and the complex series of negotiations, treaties, policies and laws that created each particular result.

One chapter starts with a conservation officer and a conflict over hunting and fishing rights – can the tribe fine a non-tribal, non-resident for fishing in its (lake) waters? And why do Indians have all these special privileges anyway? It’s a jumping off point for a careful discussion of treaties and the origins of the reservations. Another chapter begins with a vignette of a tribal judge, who also happens to be the author’s mother, sitting in tribal court, meting out punishment for the assorted Indian vandals, juvenile delinquents, and drug abusers appearing before her. This chapter discusses families, tribal law enforcement, gathering of wild rice, and state and federal jurisdiction – and the treaties and policies that got the tribe to this day.

Yet another chapter starts with a discussion of a small tax bill, an Indian couple, and the lawsuit that resulted in a Supreme Court decision that laid the basis for casino gambling. Along the way, that chapter touches on sovereignty, assimilation policies, the Trail of Tears. The final chapter discusses, painfully, the Jones twins, who were separated from their parents at the age of five and sent to an Indian boarding school where they were forced to speak English and learn non-traditional ways of life. It’s a starting point for an examination of the role of language in retaining identity and preserving culture. It also allows Treuer to paint a hopeful picture of some immersion Ojibwe language schools that will ensure the language continues, though of course many other Native American languages have disappeared.

Along the way, Treuer takes on the American Indian Movement of the 1970s, as well as other stereotypes – the drunken Indian living impoverished on the rez, the Native American who touched the earth only lightly. The result is a carefully orchestrated trip through a vortex. The effect is a spiral, with different topics touched on repeatedly, each new context adding to the depth and precision of the discussion. What could be a recipe for a disorganized mess is instead a tour de force of argument, layered and meaningful.

Do you have a similar response to this approach to the story? A different one? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Manservant and Maidservant” by Ivy Compton-Burnett

July 20, 2012

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Victorian gentleman Horace Lamb lives with his wife, Charlotte, and their five children in a small English village. His household maintains not one but two poor relations, Horace’s cousin, Mortimer, and their aunt, Emilia, who was born and has spent her entire life in the house they share. They also have a full complement of servants: a butler, Bullivant, a cook, a footman, George, and a kitchen maid Miriam. (The housemaids have no speaking parts in this drama.) A tutor, Gideon Doubleday, comes in daily to educate the children, who spend much of their day with Nurse. Doubleday lives with his mother, Gertrude, and sister, Magdalen. And, on occasion, everyone stops in to Miss Buchanan’s shop, either to pick up some small sundry or to collect the letters that Ms. Buchanan holds for them.

Life might be idyllic, but Horace struggles with the fact that the money to maintain this household comes from his wife’s family, and he is determined to hold on to it so it will last as long as possible. Unfortunately for his relatives, this means that he cannot bear to part with any money. Everyone is cold in winter, and the children wear threadbare clothes that are much too small for them. They know that their clothes and lives are the subject of comment among the townspeople, but do not know what to do about it. The word an earlier generation would have used to describe Horace is ‘mean,’ in the sense of cheap, but Compton-Burnett quickly makes clear that Horace’s behavior can easily be described by current usage as well.

Despite the distance in social status, the Doubleday family and the Lambs become friends. And Miss Buchanan becomes a regular visitor to the Lamb servants’ table, trading observations, mostly about George and Miriam and their behavior, with Cook and Bullivant. While Charlotte is away on a lengthy visit to her family, everyone notices that Horace’s attitude changes: there is more coal for the fires, the children have new clothes. Most importantly, Horace unbends enough to begin to develop a real relationship with his children, though not so much that they fully trust in his benevolence.

What has brought on this change and will it last? That’s the crux of the novel, which turns on a letter gone astray, several romances, and a bit of wishful thinking among the children. This is a very interesting yet spare novel, told almost entirely in dialogue; with no stage directions, the reader must be attentive to scene shifts and exits. I found it interesting but I think that one of Ms. Compton-Burnett’s novels is enough for me; as Diane Johnson puts it in her introduction, “some people have found that her twenty novels are much like one another . . .” Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books, Food

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Taste of Place” by Amy B. Trubek

July 13, 2012

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In “The Taste of Place,” Amy B. Trubek, an anthropologist who has studied the production of food and wine, and has also served as executive director of the Vermont Fresh Network, explores the different cultural backgrounds that express themselves in the concept of terroir. Terroir, a French word derived from terre (land), is a complex concept that means different things in different places. Trubek has translated it as “the taste of [a] place.” Her book explores the different backgrounds chefs, sommeliers, purveyors of food and drink, and consumers have given the term in France and in different areas of the U.S.

At its narrowest meaning, “terroir,” which grew out of the efforts of the various French authorities to protect the names and makes of its wines, means grown in the same spot. As the French Wine Guide website puts it:

A “terroir ” is a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation, and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions, grapes and wine making savoir-faire, which contribute to give its specific personality to the wine.

Terroir is the basis for the Appellation d’Origine Controlee (AOC) label you see on some French wines. (Trubek describes the system’s history; a wonderful companion book is “The Discovery of France” by Graham Robb.) But, as Trubek explains, the concept of terroir has had many more meanings layered on: it has been extended to cheese, to olive oil, to Italy. It now even describes an entire cuisine, cuisine du terroir, which some people argue is a manifestation more of nostalgia. And it means different things in the US, where we have become accustomed to doing our shopping in large supermarkets and consuming fruits and vegetables that have been bred to travel long distances successfully, rather than for flavor.

In the US, chefs and restaurateurs have adapted and extended the concept, embracing a local or regional cuisine under the label. Alice Waters and Chez Panisse may be the most famous example, but Trubek explores restaurants and food and wine production in Wisconsin and Vermont, in a fascinating discussion of the role of culture in food production, preparation, and consumption. In the course of it, Trubek comes to a new and deeper definition of what the “taste of place” can mean:

The regional foods that make up a cuisine du terroir taste of the land from which they come. Certain plants and animals are adapted to a particular spot–its soil, rocks, and climate–and draw out a distinct flavor. Among foods from a single locality, strong harmonies can occur. Historically, such foods developed slowly, and generations living in one place tended to favor what worked well and tasted best, other things being equal.

Trubek’s examples include hickory nuts in Wisconsin and maple syrup in Vermont. And while she argues that chefs might be leading the way, there are increasingly arrangements in the US to get produce more directly from farms to the table. Community Supported Agriculture, local farmers’ markets, and regional food suppliers like Friends and Farms all contribute.

The book is itself a blend, of lively personal stories and somewhat stodgier academic texts. I can’t tell which preceded the other, but the blend is not always successful and parts of the book are a slog. But overall it’s a fascinating, educational journey, that rewards the perservering reader with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of local food growing and preparation. Do you agree? Are you changing the way you buy and prepare food? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Arts and Entertainment, Events

Ballet Up? Brooklyn Ballet Teams with the Brooklyn Cyclones Monday, July 23

July 11, 2012

The Brooklyn Ballet will perform “A History of Ballet in 9 Innings” on Monday, July 23rd at 7 pm, as the Brooklyn Cyclones play the Aberdeen IronBirds at MCU Park in Coney Island. Tickets are available here. Between innings the ballet will dance the highlights of ballet history on the infield and on top of the dugouts while the Cyclones broadcast the history of ballet and baseball.

Spectators will be close to the all the action – ball and ballet — with beautiful views of the Atlantic Ocean and Luna Park just beyond left field. See 20 Brooklyn Ballet students and 9 professionals dance a mixture of ballet, hip hop and mixed movement. The event is also a fundraiser for the Brooklyn Ballet.

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