SARATOGA SPRINGS – Fred Astaire trips the light fantastic with Ginger Rogers on a dayglo brilliance that emanates across the frame. A pensive Snow White, encircled by a half-dozen dwarfs, hovers atop a Russian banner as the Evil Queen ominously glares from the shadows. Here is Lucille Ball exuding a technicolor presence in announcing MGM’s Ziegfield Follies in 1945. There, is “The Sound of Music” from Germany, “Dirty Dancing” from Poland, and Clark Gable in “Dancing Lady,” a promotion that comes from Belgium.

“I’ve always been fascinated by posters from this period,” says Mike Kaplan, who has collected vintage movie posters for several decades.    

“The key to collecting the vintage ones began in the late ‘70s when I went to a store called Chic-A-Boom, a memorabilia shop on Melrose,” Kaplan recalls. “There was a stack of movie posters against the wall. The first one was “Irish Eyes Are Smiling," a musical from the ‘40s and it had a full-length still photography image of June Haver, who I had a crush on as a teenager. So, I bought that one and in a way that began the second phase of the collection.”

Kaplan estimates he has 3,000 to 4,000 posters in his collection. More than 100 will be displayed in Saratoga at The National Museum of Dance at the exhibition “Art of the Dance: Posters from Hollywood’s Golden Age from The Mike Kaplan Collection.”  The exhibit will open May 10, a date that also marks what would have been Fred Astaire's 120th birthday.

“The great thing about the posters is people will be exposed to artwork from so many different countries interpreting American movies in different ways - so you get completely different interpretations of a movie from France or Italy, Germany or Japan,” says Kaplan, who grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. “There is also the size of the posters. They vary from country-to-country. People walk in and for the most part their jaws drop seeing the imagery, the size and the amount of care that went into the artwork.”   

More than 100 dance movie posters will be mounted in three of the Museum's galleries. The posters range in date from 1918 to the 1980s with the majority representing the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. 

Kaplan was 9 or 10 years old when his family vacationed in the Saratoga region. Today, he makes his home in Idaho. He has penned a pair of books -– “Gotta Dance,” and “Gotta Dance Too!” -  depicting the posters and their history. During the 1960s, he worked as marketing strategist on two iconic Stanley Kubrick films.

“With 2001 (A Space Odyssey), I was working at MGM as a publicist. I don’t think people remember this, but the film was not well-received initially. It wasn’t positioned properly. People were expecting some kind of traditional science fiction movie; instead it was this contemplative, metaphysical journey into time. The audience and the critics weren’t prepared for it. It threw people, but I just loved the movie. I thought it was one of the best films ever made and I still feel that way,” Kaplan says.

“With ‘Clockwork Orange,’ I wanted everything to be perfect so there wasn’t any misinterpretation of the movie and having everything choreographed out to the nth degree – which Stanley appreciated and loved doing because he was such a perfectionist. So, we got on very well. Kubrick was just a great artist and whatever he touched was of importance. There was just a phenomenal response to it,” Kaplan said.  

Selections of the posters have been on view in major venues such as Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Art of the Dance at the National Museum of Dance will be the largest and longest installation of this collection to date, on view until spring 2020.

In addition to Astaire, several major dance and musical stars from the 20th century are highlighted such as Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple, and The Nicholas Brothers. 

 The opening reception for Art of the Dance: Posters from Hollywood’s Golden Age will take place on Friday, May 10 at 7:00 pm. The cost is $10 per person and free for members. The National Museum of Dance is located at 99 South Broadway. For more information, 518-584-2225, or go to:  www.dancemuseum.org.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Touching upon themes of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, her love of dogs, her disdain for pop culture and a human planetary existence altered in dramatic ways due to a changing climate, artist/composer/musician and film director addressed a large crowd gathered inside the Tang Museum’s Payne Room where she told them, apocalyptic visions aside, her focus is: How Best To Tell The Story.

“The world is made of stories. Our own stories. Other people’s stories, (so) how do you tell a story like that, where, you know, this is going end?” Anderson said. “We’re the first people in the history of the human race who can see our own extinction coming. The first ones. Stories are things that are told to others but in this case, this is a story that’s told to no one. The first story that is:  Told. To. No one.”

Anderson’s appearance April 17 was the night two feature of the Tang Museum’s three-day Bardo Now series. George Saunders, author of the 2017 novel “Lincoln in the Bardo,” appeared via video chat on night one, in conversation with Donald S. Lopez, Jr., professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan and author of “The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography.”

The series’ closing night featured a concert by guitarist Tashi Dorji and percussionist Susie Ibarra, performing an experimental duet conceived for the event as a musical bardo exploration.

The 90-minute presentation showcasing Anderson, a practicing Buddhist, was staged as an “in conversation” event with Benjamin Bogin, the director of the Asian Studies Program at Skidmore College.

“It’s the living bardo that’s thrilling to me,” said Anderson, when asked to connect Tibetan Buddhist themes with her creativity. “As a musician, I think the way I can most experience what you would call a bardo is in just this moment - because you don’t know what you’re going to play next,” said Anderson, noting that she doesn’t subscribe to the standard narrative form of beginning, middle and end. “That seems artificial to me. The fractured story is what I do. I respond to work where we don’t really quite know what we’re doing and what will happen next. That’s also why I’m also drawn to virtual reality. You’re making it up as you go along.

“When I first began to (improvise), I felt this incredible sense of freedom in not knowing what was going to come next, in responding to another person in a way that was absolutely in that moment - not in some other moment that you thought might be interesting - but right now. That was a big, big thrill to me as a musician.”  

Anderson screened an 11-minute segment from “Heart of a Dog,” her 2015 documentary which centers on Anderson's remembrances of her late beloved dog Lolabelle, and concludes with an image of husband Lou Reed, who died in 2013.  

“It was a film where my dog died – that was the core of it – but it was really dedicated to my teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche. One of the things I treasure about his teachings is his clarity, things like: it’s really important to practice how to feel sad, without being sad - and that distinction is a very important one because there are many, many sad things in the world and if you try to push them away, or pretend they’re not there, you’re an idiot! They will find you and they will get you,” she explained. “So, (Rinpoche’s) idea is: do not become that yourself.”   

Professor Bogin said he was struck by the film’s exploration “visually, sonically and poetically,” of bardo ideas, as Anderson narrated a series of paintings used in the film depicting Lolabelle’s journey through the 49 days of the bardo, “how memory starts flooding through the mind and you’re suddenly every single being that you’ve ever been in your life; the many beings that you are, simultaneously. 

“I think for most people who experience death, what an incredible privilege it is that that door opens…you get this chance to really look at it and feel it,” Anderson said. “I think sometimes experiencing time and death and love is sometimes easier when you look at what happens with animals and what the effects have on those creatures. You get that in a more immediate way.”

Anderson became a reluctant musical hit-maker in the early 1980s when her song “O Superman” climbed to no. 2 in the UK Pop charts alongside the likes of Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, and The Police. It was a record she made on a $500 NEA grant in 1980.

“Anytime somebody said, ‘I want a copy of your record,’ I would walk it over to the post office. One day someone called, they spoke with a British accent, and they said: we need some copies of your record. I said, ‘OK, how many?’ They said: 40,000. by Monday.  And another 40,000 by Wednesday. I’ll. Get. Right. Back to you,” Anderson recalled. 

“So, I called up Warner Bros. Records – they’d been coming to my shows and saying: don’t you want to make a record?  I said, no, not really. But, I called them up and said: you know that record you wanted?  Can you make a bunch of them really soon? And they said: well, that’s not the way we do things at Warner Bros Records and Tapes. We’ll sign an eight-record deal. What?

“I got a lot of criticism from artists, for ‘selling out.’ A couple of months later, it was called ‘Crossing Over.’ And everyone wanted to do it.”

The song, based on a prayer by French composer Jules Massenet is about the power of technology, and of loss, Anderson said. “Technology doesn’t save you. If you think technology is going to solve your problems, you don’t understand technology - and you don’t understand your problems,” she said.

“It was really about the moment when we were going to go in and rescue the hostages. And America was going to go in and pull them out and American technology was going to shine. Then the helicopters crashed and burned in the desert,” she said, regarding the ill-fated military rescue attempt in April, 1980.

While that international success of the record made it easier for Anderson to create other things, she warns there is also a danger

“Pop Culture,” she says with disdain. “What happened? Corporate America has entered culture. It’s disturbing to me, because it’s Culture Light. It’s America’s Got Talent culture. Nothing wrong with that except when they come into your neighborhood and go: we love the community you built and now we’re going to buy it, we’re going to brand it, and sell it back to you. And we’re going to curate it while we’re at it and say what’s important and what is not.

 “We have to think about what we’re making. Now, often you see it’s just about the box office -how many people get through the doors – and it doesn’t really matter what the experience is. I do think that there’s art for everybody – but it’s a tricky thing, to make sure that it’s not just so watered down that it’s just feel-good stuff.” 

The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery is located on the campus of Skidmore College On exhibit through May 19: The Second Buddha: Master of Time presents the story of the legendary Indian Buddhist master Padmasambhava - widely credited with bringing Buddhism to the Tibetan lands. The exhibit features Tibetan scroll paintings (thangkas), textiles, and manuscripts from the 13th through 19th centuries.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – The North Broadway building that has served as a Masonic Lodge for the past 65 years is being placed up for sale.  

Rising Sun Lodge No. 103 was founded in 1809 and first held meetings at Reynolds Corners, located about four miles north of Gansevoort. The lodge moved to Wilton a decade later and in the 1820s relocated to Saratoga Springs, long before Saratoga Springs became a city. Several different venues  in and around Saratoga Springs were used for more than a century that followed, before eventually purchasing the building at 687 North Broadway in the early 1950s, where the Rising Sun lodge has been located ever since. 

“Past Masters” of the local organization have included prominent 19th century Saratogians Reuben Hyde Walworth, Carey B. Moon - of the invention of the potato chip fame , and Edgar Truman Brackett, among others.    

The lodge sits on just under one-half acre of land on a corner lot, features two floors, an attic, an unfinished basement and is listed at $1.3 million.

“It’s 8,000 square feet with an unfinished floor in the attic that could be amazing. We believe whoever buys this is going to finish that third floor,” said Joann Potrzuski Cassidy, licensed associate real estate broker at Julie & Co. Realty.

The main floor features 10-1/2-foot-tall ceilings in a Lady's Sitting Room, and a butler's pantry. There are a quartet of fireplaces throughout – although some work will be required to get them re-functioning. Its potential future uses are seemingly endless: from a single-family home with nanny quarters or a neighborhood bed-and-breakfast, to an organization’s use as a private school, religious institution, or senior housing facility. A unique split staircase to the second floor lends itself to potential as a condominium project – although that would require Special Use variance from the city’s Land Use Boards.

The single staircase splits on the first landing and leads into two, opposite direction leading staircases, each feeding into a different and separate wing upstairs. One leads to a big, unfinished attic that boasts arched windows; the other to a massive meeting room where members meet and sites an altar in the center of the room, seating for the Worshipful Master against the east wall, the Senior Warden against the west wall and symmetrical rows along the north and south areas where members are seated. The Masons use ritual in their meetings and a Volume of the Sacred Law – usually the Bible, King James translation sits atop the center-room altar, but Masonry is not a religion. 

The home was built in about 1904 for Harry S. Ludlow, of Troy, and designed by architect R. Newton Brezee – designer of dozens of Saratoga Springs buildings, including many residences still standing along Union Avenue and North Broadway.

The Masons, or Freemasons, call themselves members of the largest and oldest fraternity in the world. Specific details regarding the group’s origins are murky, although it is believed likely to have come from the guilds of the stonemasons in the Middle Ages, and possibly influenced by the Knights of Templar – described by the Masonic Information Center in Maryland as Christian warrior monks formed in 1118 to help protect pilgrims making trips to the Holy Land.  A formal organization was initiated in England in 1717 and spread to the colonies within a few short years.

Masonry has a reputation of being “secretive” – there are grips and passwords that Masons share with one another – but Amy Lynch, president of the Masonic Hall Association of Saratoga Springs, says the biggest secret is the good work they do, particularly in the medical field.

“We’re the best-kept secret and we do a lot of good in the community,” Lynch said.

Under the banner of the Masonic Family, the Rising Sun Lodge is involved with the Masonic Medical Research Laboratory in Utica; the Washington Commandry is part of the Knights Templar – whose  philanthropic projects involves the Knights Templar Eye Foundation; the Cryptic council works with Parkinson’s disease research, and the Royal Arch Masons are also part of a medical research program.

Of the women’s groups – the Order of the Eastern Star – whose members include women and men, has had a regional chapter for the past 122 years and maintains a campus in Oriskany that houses a day care facility for children and independent living accommodations. The Order of the Amaranth focuses its philanthropic energies on diabetes research.

Perhaps best know are Shriners International – the fraternity based on Masonic principles and support of Shriners Hospitals for Children, at 22 locations throughout North America.

Masonic Hall Association Board Member Harold Goodsell says Rising Sun Lodge No. 103 – which is not a tax-exempt organization - is looking to relocate close to but not in the city of Saratoga Springs, to a smaller building that would be more accommodating to members and may actually construct an entirely new building to suit its purposes. 

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SARATOGA SPRINGS – It was shortly before the Summer of Love, just before the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 and around the time Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing world championship for refusing to be inducted into the U.S. Army.

Eric Andersen, by that time, already had a couple of albums to his credit. He’d made an appearance in an Andy Warhol film alongside “Girl of the Year" Edie Sedgwick, and was being recruited by Brian Epstein to be taken under the Beatles’ manager’s wing. Epstein arrived in New York with an advance copy of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and invited Andersen to give it a preview listen.   

“He had just flown over from London and was at the Waldorf Astoria,” Andersen recalls. “We had a little record player and he just played it. We heard ‘A Day In The Life.’ We heard a bunch of tracks, there, in the dark, with only a little light coming from the bathroom that was open just a crack.”   

Three years later, Andersen journeyed alongside Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead atop the rails of their legendary trans-Canadian train tour, and a handful of years after that was on stage harmonizing with Patti Smith in a prequel to Bob Dylan's equally legendary Rolling Thunder Revue. Legendary status finds him resting easily.

“Live long enough and you’ll get to meet everybody,” he says with a laugh.

Fast-forward to the present day where on an early spring afternoon, the singer-songwriter-poet is motoring between a booking in Philadelphia – where he sang about Lou Reed in Anthony DeCurtis' music journalism class – and Montclair, New Jersey, where a 1960s themed concert is being staged. Over the past two weeks, he’s appeared in Greece to give a speech to a psychoanalytic convention – “I know, go figure,” – and celebrated Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 100th birthday on the Lower East Side alongside Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders and Laurie Anderson.

Now, he begins a springtime tour, which visits Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs on Sunday, April 7.  Andersen will be accompanied by percussionist Cheryl Prashker, producer, musician, and audio engineer extraordinaire Steve Addabbo, and violinist Scarlet Rivera - whose majestical bowing is forever sonically imprinted on the Bob Dylan tracks “Hurricane,” and “One More Cup of Coffee,” and on David Johansen’s “Lonely Tenement,” among others. 

Twenty or so years ago, Andersen co-wrote a song titled "You Can't Relive the Past" with Lou Reed. And while maybe you can’t relive the past, he seems mostly OK talking about it, albeit amid all kinds of mayhem going on around him. 

“We just missed an accident. Just got by it. Collision of two cars right on the street. Two firetrucks. Two ambulances. And a freight train going by overhead,” Andersen says. Further complicating matters is he is being navigated in a vehicle with an apparently wonky tire. “The car is vibrating,” he reports. Or, it could be the making of a song.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1943, Andersen received his early schooling in Buffalo, where he taught himself guitar and piano, watched Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers play at his high school gym and saw Elvis Presley perform in a gold suit at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

“What do you remember about Elvis in Buffalo in 1956?”  

“When that first chord hit, the chairs were kicked away within one nanosecond and everyone was standing,” he responds.

In the early 1960s, Andersen hitchhiked west and landed at job at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, where he attended a party following a Haight-Ashbury poetry reading on a memorable November night in 1963.  “I wrote a 26-minute-long tone poem called ‘Beat Avenue,’ about it,” he says.  “The day John Kennedy was killed. I was at a party with Allen Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and (Kerouac’s friend) Neal Cassady – the protagonist of ‘On The Road.’ They were all there. And Allen was walking around with no clothes on. That was funny. Like a naked Buddha.”  The double CD set, “Beat Avenue,” features 14 original compositions in all, and was released in 2003.

At the invitation of Tom Paxton, Andersen headed to New York City where a flourishing Greenwich Village songwriting circle included Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. His first New York gig was opening for John Lee Hooker. He performed at a plethora folk and jazz clubs. And when not performing, was watching others - the Velvet Underground, the Doors, and John Coltrane, among them – stage their own performances.  

“John Coltrane… on stage he could put himself in a trance and play. And eventually he’d put you in a trance,” Andersen says.  

During the 1970’s, Andersen divided his time between California and New York, the latter being where a new scene was unfolding with people like Sam Sheppard and Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. “Patti Smith: she was working at the book store, and we were all living at The Chelsea Hotel.” Manhattan, meanwhile, isn’t what it used to be. “It’s so gentrified and expensive,” he says.

The early ‘70s also delivered the release of “Blue River,” perhaps his best-known and best-selling record. “One crazy (concert) was when my album ‘Blue River’ came out. I did a show with the Jefferson Airplane in front of 400,00 people. They had a band. I had a guitar. I mean, I figured if I didn’t get a heart attack that day… I’ll live forever.”

More recently, Sony/Legacy Recordings issued “The Essential Eric Andersen” last spring. The 42-track retrospective covers 50 years of Andersen’s recorded history. A retrospective documentary, titled “The Songpoet,” is slated for release later this year. (The trailer, which looks awesome, may be viewed HEREHERE. 

On April 7, Andersen returns to Caffe Lena, where he last performed 12 months ago.

"Saratoga. If I had done better at the track, I could be living in my Range Rover on my small estate in Saratoga Springs, one of those houses with the pillars with a chandelier 100 miles up over the front door," he says with a laugh. Of Sarah Craig, Caffe Lena’s executive director, Andersen says: “she’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. She’s a repository of arcana. She knows all kinds of facts and figures about the world; a reservoir of fascinating information,” he says. “You can print that for everybody to know.”  So, there it is.

Eric Andersen, with Scarlet Rivera and Cheryl Prashker, performs 7 p.m.  Sunday, April 7 at  Caffe Lena, 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs. Tickets are $35 general admission, $32 café members, $17.50 students and kids. More information and tickets, go to: caffelena.org, or call 518-583-0022. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS – An eyesore that stood for decades on Putnam Street was demolished Monday afternoon. In its place will rise a five-story mixed-use building with plans calling for a restaurant at the street level and approximately two-dozen condominium apartments upstairs.

“Everyone I know has loathed that building for decades,” said Jason Letts, shortly after a massive excavator, boasting more than 80,000 lbs. of operating weight, extended its 20-foot boom and clawed at the architecture, laying to waste the last wall standing and leaving a debris field comprised of twisted metal and broken bricks, splintered wood and chunks of concrete.     

“Before I got involved with this, whenever I’d take my son to the library (across the street) I’d think: somebody’s got to do something about that, so I’m glad to be doing something about it,” said Letts, one of the co-owners of the proposed “Five-Three” development that will be located at 53 Putnam St., opposite the Saratoga Springs Public Library. 

The initial intent was to revamp the existing two-story building and create a performance venue with a food service component. Those plans changed after the site was revealed to be contaminated from its earlier use as a dry clean facility as well as sustaining oil contamination from an offsite source.

“When we learned about all the environmental conditions, it wasn’t feasible,” Letts said. “The building had asbestos and was completely dilapidated. It had to go. The next step is removing five feet of soil, and also some oil.”

Environmental remediation is being conducted via the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program –an alternative to greenfield development and intended to remove some of the barriers to, and provide tax incentives for, the redevelopment of urban brownfields.

Late in 2018, the group proposed the development of a six-story building featuring 40 condominium units in the $400,000 to $800,000 price range topped by a roof deck, pergola and a stair tower – which would top-off at 84 feet above ground-level.

Those plans have since been scaled back to a proposal of four floors and a partial “setback” fifth floor, Letts said. The number of condo units has also been amended to about 23 apartments in all. The price point will stay the same as initially proposed.

Earlier plans for a ground floor communal-type kitchen have also been amended and will instead likely feature a restaurant. Letts said there is strong interest from Capital Region based restaurants seeking to move into Saratoga.

The group is currently responding to some unresolved questions posed by the city’s Land Use boards, but the hope is that approvals will be secured in short order.

“We’re hoping to really get going in the fall. From that point, our construction manager is talking about an 18-month construction period,” Letts said. There are no plans for on-site parking. “That’s something we’re still working out,” he added. “We’re excited about making our city cleaner and more vibrant and we think this will be a big revitalization to some of the slightly off-Broadway areas.”