The Brooklyn
Museum of Art is offering opportunities to experience Victorian
art, theater and dance in an inspired First Saturday program
of events on Jan. 4.
At 6:30 pm and 8 pm, the American Magic-Lantern Theater will
present performances of a "Victorian New Year’s Magic-Lantern
Show!" using an antique "magic lantern," a multiple-lens
forerunner of the movie projector that rapidly projects hand-colored
slides on a full-size movie screen. The slides, many of them
animated, illustrate Victorian stories, songs and comedy.
The slide show is dramatized by a costumed showman (Terry Borton,
pictured), singers and musicians – and by the audience, which
provides the sound effects and sings along.
According to Borton, turn-of-the-century showmen would light
their lanterns with limelight, "created when oxygen and
hydrogen were squirted on a piece of limestone, which turned
incandescent once the gases were lit, producing a light as powerful
as that in a modern movie projector."
While you’re at the museum, don’t miss a last chance to see "Exposed:
The Victorian Nude," an exhibition of paintings, sculpture
and photography, which closes on Jan. 5 and travels to the Kobe
City Museum in Japan.
From 9 pm to 11 pm, put your tuxedo or ball gown to good use
and dance the night away to the sounds of the Vienna Festival
Orchestra at the museum’s Winter Ball.
Can’t dance? The museum and Stepping Out Dance Studios are offering
ballroom dance lessons at 8 pm. The events, as well as museum
admission are free after 6 pm.
The museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway. For more information,
call (718) 638-5000 or visit the museum Web site at www.brooklynmusuem.org.
AULD SLIDESHOW
