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Program Overview |
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| Culture + Community: An Overview of the 92nd Street Y |
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| "That cultural, spiritual and physical haven for all New Yorkers" — The New York Times |
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| Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders to promote "harmony and good fellowship" among its members and to improve their "moral, mental and social condition," the 92nd Street Young Men's & Young Women's Hebrew Association, a.k.a. the 92nd Street Y, is the only place of its kind in the world. A community of communities, the Y serves over 300,000 people annually, from newborns to centenarians. Its constituents are Jews and non-Jews; people of all races, backgrounds and economic circumstances; New Yorkers and new Americans; and guests from around the world. |
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At once a performance venue, a school, a lecture hall, a community center, a literary salon, a gym, a campground, and a residence, the 92nd Street Y is many things to many people. Through its unique fusion of community and culture, local and global, the Y reaches out to diverse communities inside and outside its walls. A model for outstanding programming in the arts, education and social services for children, young people and adults, the 92nd Street Y reflects the needs of a fast-paced city and always remains true to its mission: to enrich the lives of everyone who passes through its doors.
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| Intellectual Exploration |
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| "A venerable bastion of edification" — The New York Times |
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Intellectual inquiry is a mainstay of the 92nd Street Y. The presenter of the country's most prestigious lecture series, the Y brings the world's finest minds and most intriguing people to the its stage. The roster of names is thousands long and includes politicians like Bill Clinton, Wesley Clark and Tom Daschle; diplomats like Richard Holbrooke, Kofi Annan and Shimon Peres; artists and entertainers like Arthur Miller, Tom Stoppard, Pinchas Zukerman, Alfred Brendel, Paul McCartney, and Kevin Kline; Jewish scholars like Elie Wiesel, Susannah Heschel and Arthur Hertzberg; journalists like Jeff Greenfield, Walter Isaacson and Stephen Shepherd; and business titans like Leonard Riggio, Meg Whitman and Jack Welch. Through its satellite broadcast program, Live from New York's 92nd Street YTM, and its television, radio and Internet partnerships, the Y shares these programs with communities across North America and beyond.
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| Experiencing the Arts |
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| "At the 92nd Street Y you can experience world-class art or learn to make your own."
— Carnegie Hill News
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ARTS EDUCATION: Recognizing that art serves the human spirit, the 92nd Street Y organized its School of Music in 1917 and its Art Center in 1930. Both offer training in a multitude of styles and media, visiting-artist workshops, and master classes. The Art Center also offer an annual interview series with leading visual artists, while the School of Music has the only electronic music lab available in New York City to students outside an academic-degree program. What is now the Harkness Dance Center, organized in 1935, played a central role in the development of the American modern dance movement and was for decades a locus of activity by its leaders. Today, the Dance Center reaches out to both the larger community, through a wide range of classes for adults and children in virtually every dance form, and to dance teachers, through the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL). Finally, the Y's Unterberg Poetry Center, launched in 1939, offers an extensive writing program that gives working adults the opportunity to learn from well-known, published authors — a rarity outside MFA programs.
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"Community service is...one of the Y's...traditions." — Avenue
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ARTS OUTREACH: Part of the 92nd Street Y's mission is to share its resources with the wider community. Every year, the institution gives away nearly $1 million in financial assistance for on-site arts education and other programs. The Y also reaches beyond its walls to bring the joy of the arts to 7,000 economically disadvantaged public school children through in-school arts education, residencies by professional musicians and ensembles, and concerts designed for children and held in the 92nd Street Y's concert hall. An outreach program for high school students and a partnership with an immigrant literacy program offered by East Harlem's Union Settlement House bring these populations together with some of the country's leading writers.
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"Looking in on the annual series of recitals by up-and-coming choreographers
at the 92nd Street Y is a way of seeing dance's future." — Newsday
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DANCE PERFORMANCE: In 1935, what is now the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center provided a home for the fledgling modern dance movement. Over the following decades, every great modern dancer and choreographer created, performed or taught at the Y, building the foundation for modern dance as we know it. These talented individuals included Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Hanya Holm, Pearl Lang, Anna Sokolow, Sophie Maslow, Alvin Ailey, Pearl Primus, Lester Horton, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Erick Hawkins, Mary Anthony, Robert Joffrey, Jose Limon, Katherine Dunham, and Donald McKayle. Today, through performance opportunities like the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, an annual contemporary dance showcase, the Y continues to support emerging and established artists, like David Parsons, Zvi Gotheiner, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Ohad Naharin, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Bill T. Young, Maia Claire Garrison, and Sean Curran. At the same time, teen tap, hip-hop, swing, modern dance and ballet troupes allow young people to experience the excitement of performance.
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"One of the city's most vital and innovative musical centers” — New York Magazine
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| MUSIC PERFORMANCE: Since inaugurating its classical concert series in 1934, the 92nd Street Y has presented some of the world's most acclaimed musicians and exciting newcomers. The great cellist Gregor Piatigorsky performed at the Y. So did Isaac Stern and Andres Segovia. The grandfather of American string quartets, the Budapest String Quartet, launched its career at the Y in 1938 and continued to perform for a devoted Y audience for more than a quarter of a century. Celebrated artists like Dawn Upshaw, the Tokyo and Guarneri String Quartets, Eugenia Zuckerman, Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma appeared regularly at the Y long before they achieved international fame. |
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| The tradition continues today through the Y's Tisch Center for the Arts, which presents international musicians like Janos Starker, Emmanuel Pahud and the Zehetmair Quartet. The Center's classical music series focuses on exploring the traditional repertoire in new ways, presenting work by leading contemporary composers like Joan Tower and Ned Rorem, and offering original productions that intertwine music and literature. The Center is also home to Lyrics & Lyricists, the granddaddy of American Songbook series; Jazz in July, the summer festival directed by jazz star Bill Charlap; Jazz Piano at the Y, led by the great Dick Hyman; and major names in world music, like Israel's David Broza and Chava Alberstein. |
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Through its Makor program, the 92nd Street Y presents new and established popular musicians performing in every known genre — rock, jazz, world, folk, reggae, avant-garde, Latin, hip-hop — and in genres that defy definition. Singer Norah Jones performed regularly at Makor before her huge success at the 2002 Grammy Awards, and international artists like Cyro Baptista, Freddy Johnston, and Richie Havens are frequent guests.
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"One of America's leading literary salons" — The New York Times
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LITERARY READINGS AND PERFORMANCES: The 92nd Street Y is a place where writers are greeted with the awe and appreciation usually reserved for rock stars. Since its 1939 founding, what is now the Unterberg Poetry Center has set the standard for lively literary readings, presenting virtually every great 20th-century writer, including W.H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes and Dylan Thomas (who performed his play for voices, Under Milk Wood, for the first time on the Y's stage). Today, novelists, poets, playwrights, critics, memoirists and biographers like Arthur Miller, Margaret Atwood, Louise Gluck, Saul Bellow, Seamus Heaney, Edward Albee, Toni Morrison, Harold Bloom and Andrew Delbanco continue the tradition. One of the Center's most innovative programs, its Poets' Theatre, uses staged and semi-staged readings of verse dramas and plays to emphasize the aural experience of theater and highlight its connection to poetry. Zoe Caldwell, Kathryn Walker, David Strathairn, Blair Brown, Jim Dale, Philip Bosco and Claire Bloom are some of the leading actors who have starred in productions of works like Derek Walcott's The Odyssey, Robert Pinsky's Dante's "Inferno," Robert Lowell's Prometheus Bound, Ann Carson's translation of Sophocles' Electra, Brian Friel's Faith Healer, and Christopher Plummer's one-man show, Memories of Archie.
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| Enjoying Jewish Life and Culture |
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| "The premiere Jewish cultural outlet in the country" — The Jewish Week
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| Jewish culture has been central to the 92nd Street Y's mission from the start and Jewish values infuse everything the Y does. The institution began as a place where young Jews could socialize and study; today, it is a place where both those with an abiding interest in Judaism and those with a newfound curiosity can find a home. The Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, the organization's spiritual center, offers lectures by renowned thinkers like Elie Wiesel (now in his fifth decade of talks at the Y), Susannah Heschel, Arthur Hertzberg, Alan Dershowitz, Anne Roiphe, Harold Kushner and Anita Diamant. The Center also hosts study programs like the Everett Institutes seminars and the in-depth introduction to Judaism course Derekh Torah (The Way of Torah). There are also holiday celebrations, Israeli folk dancing, Judaica Silversmithing, and Jewish-themed concerts and dance performances. And every year, the Y sends a delegation to the Macabbi Games, the annual Olympics-style event for Jewish teenagers. |
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Through the Y's Makor program, New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s can explore Jewish culture within an environment committed to pluralism, cultural innovation and intellectual excellence. Programs range from cutting-edge music and theater performances, screenings of independent and foreign films, and art and photo exhibits to workshops, community service initiatives, and talks and classes on a variety of topics including Jewish culture and identity.
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| Serving Families, Children and the Community |
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| "One of New York's greatest community-minded treasures" — Newsday
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| The 92nd Street Y has long embraced all aspects of community. In the early days, at the end of the 19th century, a downtown branch served the Lower East Side's exploding Russian-Jewish immigrant population. Today, through Russian Sundays, a series of Russian-themed talks and performances, the Y offers today's local Russian community a place to meet, talk and share cultural experiences. |
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| This is just one of the many ways the 92nd Street Y reaches out to the communities that make up New York City. The groundbreaking Parenting Center, created in 1978 to help parents balance work and family, now serves all varieties of caregivers, including working, single and divorced parents; stay-at-home fathers; and grandparents. The 92nd Street Y Wonderplay™: Early Childhood Learning initiative, launched in 2006, gives children newborn to five myriad opportunities to develop their innate skills. The Nursery School, founded in 1938, offers preschoolers a warm, nurturing environment. Ongoing activities for older children introduce them to the excitement of science, the inspiration of the arts, and the fun of exercise. The Teen Program introduces young adults to top scientists and public figures, and to the concept and practice of community service. And the more than 12 options in the Camp Program enable children and young people to spend summer in the bucolic setting of the Y's campgrounds in Rockland County. |
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These programs and others — for young people with developmental disabilities, adults in their 20s and 30s, single men and women, baby boomers, and senior adults — reflect the Y's belief in human beings' ability to grow and learn throughout their lives.
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| Encouraging Fitness and Wellness |
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| "Not only a state-of-the-art fitness center, but a true community center as well." — American Fitness
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| The connection between exercise and health was clear to the 92nd Street Y's 1874 founders. The original Y contained a gym, and a medical director joined the staff in 1897. The Y's May Center for Health, Fitness & Sport continues this tradition today with a vast Wellness Program that serves a culturally diverse population of all ages. Through lectures, symposia and workshops, doctors and other healthcare professionals from the nation's leading hospitals address critical topics like cancer, coronary care, diabetes, menopause, and nutrition. The Cardiac Rehab Program, now in its third decade, is one of the longest running community-based Phase III cardiac rehab programs in the United States. The program is run by two New York University heart specialists and cardiology professors — Dr. Nieca Goldberg, medical director of the university's Women's Heart Program, and Dr. Richard Stein, director of university's Urban Community Heart Program. |
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| Specialties of the Fitness Program, which offers over 100 classes weekly, include "fusion" classes that mix strength-training and aerobic exercises, "ethnic" workouts like Brazilian Groove and Middle Eastern Workout, relaxing mind-body programs, aquatics and sports leagues, and international defense arts like Israel's Krav Maga. The Center's Youth Fitness Program targets childhood obesity with age-appropriate music and instructors. And mid-aged women, older adults and those new to fitness and exercise — groups often ignored by conventional health clubs — get special attention. |
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The 80,000-square-foot fitness facility includes a 5,000-square-foot cardio training area, two weight-training rooms, two gyms, an indoor track, racquetball courts, steam rooms, saunas, and a 25-yard pool — the only commercial indoor pool in New York State primarily disinfected by ozone. The facility boasts elegant locker rooms, a dedicated changing room for teenage girls, a family changing area where parents can bring young children, a pro shop, and a café.
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8/07
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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