In this time of uncertainty, fear, and isolation, but also courage and light, our member organization, the Dvorak American Heritage Association (DAHA), launches a new program called From DAHA With Love to offer some of the favorite musical moments online. The music will be broadcasted on weekdays at 10:00 am beginning April 8.
Read MoreI wish I could use my sketchy, overdeveloped sense of humor to combine the Covid-19 situation with April Fools' Day but will instead practice silly jokes distancing. With 129 years of BBLA history under our belt, we certainly will not get bogged down by this tiny, minuscule bug while still taking it extremely seriously.
Read MoreThe 2020 Best Mini-Drama Student Contest is open to submissions - original mini-dramas, one-act plays - inspired by Vaclav Havel’s iconic play The Memorandum. In The Memorandum, a new language, designed with the apparent goal of streamlining communication, actually makes it harder for people to understand one another. The theme of alienation brought on by technologies designed to enhance communication echoes throughout the play. Deadline May 15.
Read MoreNominations are open for the 2020 Disturbing the Peace Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk, recognizing writers of distinguished works of fiction, literary nonfiction, biography, memoire, drama, or poetry who are courageous in dissent and have suffered unjust persecution for their beliefs. Deadline March 31.
Read MoreWorking at her country studio in upstate New York, Czech-American artist Anna VA Polesny creates attention-getting “wearable art” in a revival of the art form that swept America over 50 years ago. An early work, her International Levi’s, embellished with embroidered iconography from her travels, won a prize in the Levi’s Denim Art Contest in 1974. Now they are one of the highlights of an upcoming survey exhibition presented by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Off the Wall: American Art to Wear.
Read MoreBen Kallos, NYC Council Member of the 5th District, honored the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in the Velvet Revolution. He delivered the Proclamation at the 30 Years of Freedom Gala, our second annual gala benefiting the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, at the Bohemian National Hall on September 26, 2019.
Read MoreCelebrity actor Jan Potmesil and director Jakub Spalek, presenting the Vaclav Havel’s Audience at the 2019 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival, met in an acting school. The 1989 Velvet Revolution brought their dreams closer to reality, and then, a horrific accident left Jan wheelchair-bound. Acting did not seem like an option.
Read MoreI would like to take this opportunity to wave a fond farewell to May and to welcome the glorious month of June. I want to congratulate us all on a successful spring season full of delightful and informative events.
Read MoreIn a heady, multi-million-dollar New York City real estate transaction, the historic Jan Hus Presbyterian Church will be leaving its 131-year-old edifice at 351 East 74st Street, and moving to a new location at East 90st Street and First Avenue. The Jan Hus Church building has been purchased and will be renovated by the Church of the Epiphany, which in turn will see its 1930s church at York Avenue and 74th Street demolished and replaced by a Weill-Cornell Medical Center building.
Read MoreThe narrow field of specialisation that we see all around us, including in art and the commercial strategies of galleries, is a contemporary characteristic. However, artistic creativity behaves in exactly the opposite manner—it is a universal ability. If a person is a true artist, then he is able to and in fact prioritizes work in a variety of materials, i.e. in various artistic disciplines. That is the case of the world-renowned Czech glass-maker Zdenek Lhotsky (b. 1956) whose exhibition of works on paper we can see at BBLA Gallery.
Read MoreAs a center of Czech culture and government, the historic Bohemian National Hall was recently the proud venue of a historic exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic. To mark this occasion, the original manuscript the "New World" Symphony, composed by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak in New York City in 1893, was placed on public view
Read MoreThe Dvorak American Heritage Association (DAHA) unveiled its exhibition of the contract that brought Antonin Dvorak to America, featuring the original 1892 document signed by Dvorak and recently acquired by DAHA.
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