This was the big day. I started the day by getting up early, and making a quick emergency trip to a laundromat (in the rain). Guillermo and I went out for breakfast, while Terry stayed in bed a little longer, and then we all walked up the street to the Skirball Center to report for duty. ACC rehearsed our numbers in the morning, after which we broke for lunch. Terry and Guillermo and I found a little Indonesian restaurant and coffee house across the street from the theater.
In the afternoon, we got to watch the Gay Men's Chorus rehearse their portion of the show. They ran through the entire show, in order, which was a good thing for us, because this was really our only chance to watch them. During the concert itself, of course, we weren't in the audience, but downstairs in the green room. They did broadcast the performance to a monitor screen downstairs, but the picture and sound quality wasn't very good.
The rehearsal (and, I assume, the performance) was awesome. The title of the concert was "Queer Genius: David Bowie and Beyond." I guess ACC was the "Beyond" part, because their part of the show (the entire first act) consisted of nine songs by Bowie, and one by Bobby McFerrin. Here's the set list:
Here's a picture of the GMC in rehearsal:
The show included choreography as well as singing. There was a troupe of a dozen or so dancers, and every song was accompanied by dancing. One of the songs - I think it was Fame - featured dancers portraying Bowie at various stages of his career. Two other dance routines stand out in my mind, and are worth some more detailed explanation.
During the song Life On Mars, there were four dancers, three men and one woman. Each wore a mask covering the lower half of their face, with a huge, toothy - and somewhat creepy - grin. Then when I'm Afraid Of Americans started, four more dancers came onstage, dressed as policemen and carrying baseball bats. During the course of the song, they began harassing the other four dancers. Toward the end of the song, each policeman had one of the dancers kneeling on the floor in front of him. One by one, each policeman ripped off the dancer's mask, hauled them to their feet, and hustled them offstage. A suitably unsettling dance routine to accompany a somewhat unsettling song.
At the beginning of Ashes To Ashes, a man comes in dressed in a conservative business suit and carrying a briefcase. During the course of the song, he gradually deteriorates. In one scene, he has an argument with a younger man, presumably a lover. The youger man slaps him, and he retaliates by choking the younger man. Next, he has an argument with another man, but this one just shakes his head and walks away. By this time, the man has taken off his jacket, tie and dress shirt. He then encounters two men, one of whom offers a packet of white powder, and the other shoots him up. Finally, he encounters a man in a hoodie, who stabs him in the stomach, and he collapses on the floor as the song ends.
At the beginning of Lazarus, he revives, only to be confronted by three figures in red body suits, presumably demons, who torment him. Then, during The 23rd Psalm, he meets a figure in a white robe, who comforts him and gently leads him offstage.
It was all very impressive, and the singing and the arrangements were excellent.
After rehearsal, we took a dinner break. Terry and Guillermo and I, as well as several other choir members, found a restaurant up the street called Bareburger, a sort of hip avant garde burger joint. On the way, we passed a statue of Fiorella La Guardia (w), a very popular former mayor of New York City. He was mayor when my mother was a young girl, and she admired him greatly. When I was growing up, my mother had an original cast recording of Fiorello! (w), the Broadway musical based on his life and career (written by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the same guys who wrote Fiddler On The Roof). So when I saw the statue, I had to take a picture:
When we got back to the theater, we found that the men had dressed rather... flamboyantly for the show:
I mentioned earlier that in one of the dance routines, the dancers portrayed Bowie at various stages of his career. For example, this gentleman was dressed as Bowie from the movie Labyrinth:
And here we all are, both choirs together, warming up for the show:
ACC started off the second act with four of our own songs. Three were from our upcoming June concert, and the fourth was a song called That's Los Angeles, a satirical song comparing L.A. with New York (you can read the lyrics here). Then the Gay Men's Chorus joined us on stage. Together, we did a reprise of McFerrin's 23rd Psalm, and then Bowie's song Where Are We Now, from The Next Day. We then finished the show with a rousing rendition of Dancing In The Street by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas (although I later learned that it was also recorded by Bowie as a duet with Mick Jagger), followed by an encore of Bowie's song Heroes.
We considered going out for a drink after the show, but decided we were too tired. So we went back to the apartment and went to bed. The people in the apartment upstairs were still partying.