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Show Bits & Pieces By Eleanor Bennett IT CERTAINLY is not my nature to grumble about things or people, and I have always been and still am, all for the arts and sciences and most things esthetic. When I was a little girl I took dancing lessons and when we lived in New Rochelle, New York, which is just next door to New York City we took advantage ad-vantage of all the wonderful opportunities that it offered. I went to hear Rachmaninoff play, and Jascha Heifetz. I saw Isadora Duncan and heard the Philharmonic play. I went quite regularly to Carnegie Hall and attended the Metropolitan Opera and Ballet. I enjoyed Helen Hayes and Katherine Cornell and other fine actors and actresses in stage plays. The museums and the planetarium were regular ports of call. You probably wonder what I'm aiming at and I'll tell you. LAST THURSDAY night on the TV news programs the opening of the fabulous new John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Perform-ing Arts was fully reported. This is an outstanding cultural cul-tural addition to Washington, D.C. and a fitting tribute to a very popular ex-president of the United States. The cost of this new structure struc-ture is estimated between 70 and 79 million dollars. I really don't give a hoot whose money paid for it-government or private interests-I say that is TOO MUCH MONEY to be spent at this particular time on that sort of an endeavor! The program opening night was the premiere performance of "Mass" written especially for this occasion by the incomparable incom-parable Leonard Bernstein. MR. BERNSTEIN had requested re-quested that the audience show its appreciation not by the customary cus-tomary applause but by "en-bracing "en-bracing your neighbor." Well, the T.V. cameras didn't show the audience's reaction but they did show a nauseating two minutes of Bernstein running up and down kissing and hugging spectators young and old , male and female black and white! It seems to me that the actors, actresses, singers and musicians might have appreciated apprec-iated tumultuous applause rather than the antics of this overly-stimulated emotional "artiste"! I wonder what some of the people who are trying to do something about the pollution problem in our country are thinking about this expenditure? And truly I hope that the people who are said to be starving in East Pakistan don't hear about this new cultural center! |