money How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Virtual Gala Season
When the Brooklyn Academy of Music announced its free virtual gala last week, I rolled my eyes. So did an event planning neighbor, whose five benefits for various arts organizations this season had all been shelved. “I’m a social animal but the last thing I want to do is go to a big party on a screen,” she said.
On the other hand, what else did I have to do last week?
On a cold Wednesday night with appointments on my calendar except with Netflix, I take my first shower in several days, put on a frayed white shirt and pilled black sweater (my dressy black suit is in the city and I’m in Long Island for the duration) and mix the kind of perfect dirty martini in my kitchen that I could never get from a party bartender after waiting in a scrum.
Without the schlep to get from Manhattan to BAM’s opera house lobby at rush hour, I arrive at my desk on time, and don’t have to wait to check my coat or scramble to find my table passing attendees with favors to ask, bones to pick or a humiliating habit of never remembering my name. My seating is excellent because I can’t see anyone else’s. My WiFi signal is good, too.
Katy Clark, the President of BAM appears on my laptop screen. Although the format of the event is new, the tone of her welcoming remarks is familiar. “And of course, it wouldn’t be a BAM gala without an art auction,” she says inadvertently reminding me of the relief of not having to sit through a live one.
But then who hasn’t gotten all dressed up and excited about a gala that ends up plucking nerves along with checkbooks?
JOMO is the New FOMO. And Wait Til You Experience JOSOMO.
If FOMO is the fear of missing out, JOMO—the joy of missing out—seems in play too in these stay-at-home times. There’s also JOSOMO—the Joy of Seeing Others Missing Out. I mean, I’m surely not the only wannabe who was relieved not to have to read about the Costume Institute Ball earlier this month, which has grown into an event of such exclusionary power that it raises as much money as it does insecurity.
It wasn’t all that long ago that benefit season was contained to a few months in fall and spring, not the sprawling, celebrity swilling social industrial complex it is today. Even summer in the Hamptons was once owned by just a few events, one for the hospital, another for Guild Hall and a third for the Parrish Art Museum.
“We’re having a meeting next week to decide what to do this summer,” says Debbie Bancroft, who has been a co-chair in charge of the Parrish event for decades. Even she feels relieved to be off the red-carpet conveyor belt, also known as the “step and repeat,” which aptly describes the Groundhog Day-like glamster wheel of hitting gala after gala.
“I get tired of the posing, the people who show up to have their picture taken and then leave,” she tells me. “I don’t think anyone has fun at these things unless you get a really good seat.”
Having been to my share of galas first as a New York Times reporter, later as a willing friend to people who buy tables and need someone to fill a place, I know what she means about seating. Is there anything worse than being placed next to someone who doesn’t understand the basic social imperative of “turning the table” to talk to you even when they have a friend on their other side? What about pulling a conversation out of someone unable to put down their phone?
“I’m giving my Jimmy Choos a rest,” Cuomo tells me. “Right now, it’s such a relief to be home with my family and watching my daughter do cartwheels and sing songs and not have to feel bad for passing up that must-attend party.”
Lately, the only parties she’s attending are the ones in the Hamptons—where she caused a media stir by adding some bleach to Covid-bath-wellness water for herself and husband Chris—that she calls “D.I.B.” for drive-in-birthday: “You wave from your car from the driveway of your friend’s house and throw some candy out the window.”
Black-Tie-and-Chill
So much for the complicated salad followed by the grass-fed hand finished main course and a passed artisanal cookie tower. With my inorganic rotisserie chicken warming in the toaster oven and second perfectly mixed martini, I barely miss gala cuisine as the virtual BAM event continues at a pleasantly brisk pace.
Sure, it would be nice to see honorees Cate Blanchett (in casual pale sweater) and Zadie Smith (in red turban and sweatpants) all decked out live, even from a football field sized distance. But it’s equally amusing to try to guess if that’s a child or pet making noise offscreen as Smith talks about an all-black Julius Caesar at BAM.
And who wouldn’t enjoy scanning the bookshelves behind Cate Blanchett? “The audience BAM has built up is one of the most cherished,” she says. “And there is nothing like the live experience.”
I suppose that’s true. On the other hand, something about the remote performances at the gala are making me feel upbeat about lockdown life. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus sings a lilting Philip Glass piece about love that seems as innocent as it is sophisticated. A Pina Bausch dancer offers a solo from Germany that I improve by turning on my phone and laptop to make her into a trio as I do for the Alvin Ailey dancer doing her solo in Harlem.
When pop star St. Vincent sings “New York isn’t New York/Without you, love,” it strikes me as the perfect lyric given all who are now in exile. And even with more speeches, including one from David Binder, the organization’s artistic director (what a kitchen!), it all clocks in at a blessed 45 minutes.
Typically, I don’t get up to dance at the end of galas, afraid to break a sweat in formal attire.
This virtual dance party feels different. It starts with DJ Eli Escobar at home in the Rockaways but grows into a crowd of several hundred on Zoom and a thousand more watching. One at a time, revelers appear on my screen: Families, sexy couples and singles, old, young and gorgeously diverse in moves and styles. Some hold pets, others babies. Comments pop up as I watch dancing in homes, some with lots of room others with hardly any at all.
“I miss people,” one reads. “This is so BAM,” reads another, and “You are all so beautiful!”
I have to agree as a feeling of pride swells for a defiant and dedicated city full of philanthropists, advocates, audiences and idealists who don’t think twice about stepping out and stepping up to support not just the arts, but hospitals, libraries, schools and all manner of social services, too.
BAM will end up raising a million dollars from its free virtual gala. That’s something to make a curmudgeonly party pooper put down his martini and dance. Alone and unshaven, yes, but feeling part of something worth celebrating in a big and exuberant way, especially in dark times.
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