Preparing for Diner en Blanc.

It is a quiet evening in Place des Vosges, Paris, when, all at once from every direction, crowds of men and women, hundreds of them, descend upon the square. The people, dressed elegantly in all white—the men in clean, crisp trousers and jackets and the women in summer dresses or light pantsuits—quickly set small tables and chairs in perfect straight lines and lay out elaborate picnics, along with excellent bottles of French wine, of course.

They take their seats and wave white napkins in the air, and begin to enjoy their lavish picnics, conversation and merriment. As day fades to dusk, the group lights sparklers and dances to live music. Then, when the clock strikes midnight, they pack up their things and leave the park as if they had never come.

This magical event marks the opening scene of Diner en Blanc: The World’s Largest Dinner Party, a recent documentary film by director and producer Jennifer Ash Rudick, an Upper East Side author and journalist. Ms. Rudick’s film showcases an event that is simultaneously perfectly public—it is out of doors, after all—and very exclusive—“Diner en Blanc,” the elegant, impromptu picnic that has graced Paris’ most beautiful outdoor spaces annually for nearly 25 years, and has now expanded into 22 cities around the world, including New York.

The film, which offers the first behind-the-scenes look into the making of the unusual yet surprisingly simple celebration, premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in Florida last month to a warm reception, and will hit the Hamptons International Film Festival this summer. Diner en Blanc, perhaps Paris’ best-kept and most refined secret, is a sort of flash mob for the sophisticated set.

What began in 1988 as a simple outdoor gathering among about 200 friends and friends of friends, who dined al fresco while wearing white, has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. Last year more than 36,000 people attended, including 19,000 in Paris and 3,000 in New York. Despite its growth, the ethic of the dinner has remained constant year after year: The event is not commercial or political in any way—it is merely an elegant gathering of friends and neighbors who commune for the sole purpose of enjoying one another’s company. The celebration is something of an enigma—prior to on-camera interviews for Ms. Rudick’s film, the event’s creator, Frenchman François Pasquier, had never spoken to the press. Mr. Pasquier and a small group of friends secretly organize the dinner in Paris each year, and those who are invited to attend are not informed of the Diner’s exact location until just before it begins.

Diner en Blanc attendees in New York.

“It really piqued my interest that the organizer had never spoken to the press,” says Ms. Rudick, who writes primarily about interior design. “[I thought] it was really cinematic. The thought occurred to me that it could be a really beautiful short documentary.”

Searching for the Diner’s Inventor

Ms. Rudick traveled to Paris to seek out Mr. Pasquier, though he was not an easy man to locate. “His friends were very, very protective of him, since the dinner is equitable and everybody’s the same,” she says. “There’s not really a leader.”

Ms. Rudick finally met with a friend of Mr. Pasquier’s, who reasoned that, since the 25th anniversary of the original Diner en Blanc in Paris was approaching, it should be documented for the sake of posterity. With a modest budget, a small team and a limited ability to communicate in French, Ms. Rudick returned to Paris eight times to conduct interviews, attend secret meetings and document the preparations for the 2012 Diner in Paris. “I had never done this before, so every time I would get to a new step, I’d have to learn,” Ms. Rudick says modestly. “It was literally putting one foot in front of the other.”

Diner En Blanc, which runs 40 minutes and is the product of hundreds of hours of footage, follows Mr. Pasquier and other organizers and attendees as they traverse the streets of Paris, scouting out the next location for the event, choosing the perfect bottle of wine, shopping for cheese and baguettes and having white clothing made just for the festivities.

Though the celebration has become increasingly popular in cities around the world—tens of thousands of people requested invitations for 3,000 coveted spots at the Lincoln Center dinner last year—Mr. Pasquier is quite modest with regard to the must-attend phenomenon he has set in motion. “I never had a particular idea in mind. I wanted to prove nothing, and I have proven nothing,” Mr. Pasquier says in the film. “Except perhaps that there are things that are not commercialized and still work very well, if everyone participates.”

The strict rules of the Diner are a key part of the event’s continued success. All participants must wear white. They must bring a beautiful picnic and a table of a specified size. They must arrive on time. Men must sit on one side of the table, women on the other. Guests must attend on the specified date, no matter the weather. Those who fail to abide by the rules are barred from future dinners. “The dinner is a magic moment, only if everybody plays the game,” Eric Leprince-Ringuet, co-founder of the Diner en Blanc, notes in the film.

Despite cultural differences in the cities around the world where the Diner now takes place, participants all tend to abide by the rules. The celebration does have a slightly different character in each city, however—participants tend to take on local interpretations of food and wine, as well as the dress code. However, the traditions and the air of civility mostly remain the same. Having attended the Diner en Blanc in Paris and last year at Lincoln Center in New York,

All-white table settings.

Ms. Rudick was struck by the similarities between the events. In New York, she says, diners made friends with one another and shared their wine, cheese and desserts. “People really dressed up, they respected the rules,” Ms. Rudick says of the event in New York. “I would say it was incredibly social, just like the one in Paris. I was surprised everybody in New York came at the same time.”

Diner in New York

The New York version of Diner en Blanc in New York features briefly in Ms. Rudick’s film. Filmmaker Albert Maysles, who created documentary films including Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1975) with his brother David Maysles, and later many projects of his own, shot footage for Diner en Blanc at Lincoln Center. Mr. Maysles was struck by the Diner’s power to bring people together.

“It’s a way of breaking divisions and finding love for thy neighbor,” Mr. Maysles said. “The more you know your neighbor, the more the possibilities of love, the more the possibilities of developing your community beyond just a diverse group of people who have no connection with one another. It’s funny how an event can be more than an event.”

Paola Mathé, a New York lifestyle blogger who is originally from Haiti, attended the Diner en Blanc in New York last year. “The event was just everything I imagined,” Ms. Mathé says. “Everyone I encountered was there for the fun. Some people had elaborate centerpieces on their tables, and the outfits were just amazing. It felt like I was in a dream. And it doesn’t hurt that I went with my boyfriend. It was like a magical date.”

Ms. Rudick’s documentary premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival on April 9 with a warm reception from about 100 audience members. Iris Apfel, New York fashion legend and the subject of Mr. Maysles’ upcoming film Iris Apfel: New York’s Rare Bird of Fashion—which Ms. Rudick is producing—was in attendance. “I thought it was charming and I thought that Paris was beautiful,” Ms. Apfel says. “I think that the whole idea of the film is very inspiring, and it would be nice if the world could run that way. I think promoting friendship and good will is certainly a wonderful thing.”

Ms. Rudick plans to take Diner en Blanc: The World’s Largest Dinner Party on the film festival circuit. The film will come to New York for the Hamptons International Film Festival and DOC NYC in the fall of 2013. “I just hope that bonds of friendship and that kindness just transcends logistics and all else comes through,” Ms. Rudick says. “That’s kind of the takeaway. But just to sit there for 40 minutes and watch Paris would have been enough for me.”

npring@observer.com

Ms. Wolkoff in her Midtown office. (Emily Anne Epstein)

In the 31st-floor offices of SWW Creative, the walls are beige, the carpet is gray and the cabinets are standard-issue wood-grain. There’s no Eames armchair, no runway stills splashed across the walls, not even a lucite coffee table with a copy of Grace Coddington’s memoir. There’s not a flower in sight.

While fashion professionals are known to obsess over the color of their pens, SWW Creative’s offices are about as splashy as an insurance agency’s. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not concerned.

Ms. Wolkoff, who orchestrated Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center expansion, isn’t in it for Smythson notebooks or a pair of Céline fur sandals. She is an executor first and a fashionist somewhere further down the line, finding more satisfaction in a spreadsheet than an Avedon. Though she’s a front-row fixture and a special-occasion catwalker, she doesn’t scour the runways for her own closet. Instead, Ms. Wolkoff, who stands a statuesque 6-foot-1, prefers the simplicity of a uniform—Ralph Lauren is her everyday.

“The outside world thinks that Fashion Week is so amazing and so glamorous and so over-the-top,” said Ms. Wolkoff, who has been overseeing the twice-annual event since 2009. “Is it important to have celebrities there? Great. Is it important to have the athletes in the front row? Super. But the truth is, this is a business.”

And yet, by acknowledging as much—and reimagining Fashion Week as populist and business-friendly—she has rankled fashion’s artistes, who feel that recent changes have given the event a noticeable odor of commerce. Under Ms. Wolkoff’s tenure, corporate sponsorships have taken center stage in a lobby concourse that more closely resembles the Javits Center than the heart of couture. Also, for the first time, there are events for the public, in the form of fashion-art collaborations with Lincoln Center’s performance groups. It’s gone from a tent to a circus.

“Lincoln Center is amazing—they have amazing facilities, they have everything you could possibly need,” said Stefan Golangco, the communications director of progressive menswear line Asher Levine. “But our brand is also about being underground and being off-schedule and being a little bit ... maybe less commercial. [Showing at Lincoln Center] doesn’t feel unique to your brand, especially if you’re a small label. You kind of get lost in the shuffle.”

While Fashion Week may be a few days longer now and may feel bigger (the tents certainly are), the number of shows in its main hub hasn’t grown materially since Ms. Wolkoff entered the mix. The total number of designers showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week itself has remained pretty much the same—the big explosion has been predominantly offsite. In 2007, when Fashion Week was still at Bryant Park, 90 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week while 165 showed offsite. Last year, 91 designers showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center and 231 showed offsite, according to data from the Fashion Calendar, a fashion event scheduler, and IMG.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Many of the designers opting to show offsite are looking for a particular sense of place; a mythology that matches their brand. “I always dreamed about being a part of Bryant Park, and when Fashion Week lost its location, I was really bummed about it. I lived for that moment,” said Nary Manivong, an emerging designer who has chosen to show his work offsite and off-schedule.

Of course, nobody can keep everyone happy, and Ms. Wolkoff is aware of that. She’s not interested in reclaiming defectors. She is interested in making sure the event goes off seamlessly.

“I stay in control of every little thing,” said the maestro of Post-it notes, corkboards and carefully stacked folders. “I want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If I could delegate a little better, I would be better off.”

She is well-known for indifference to the theatrics so often associated with fashion, calling herself an industry “Switzerland.” “There’s no drama,” Elle’s creative director, Joe Zee, told The Observer. “Whatever is happening behind the scenes, everything still feels very put together.”

Every detail is per Ms. Wolkoff’s design, said associates, one of whom likened her preparedness to that of a Boy Scout. “I don’t feel it’s appropriate to put my hands up in the air and say, ‘too bad,’ you know, or ‘It’s not my job,’” Ms. Wolkoff said. “There were times when I’d be sweeping the floor before an event if the floor was dirty. I wouldn’t wait for someone to come into the room and do it themselves.”

Ms. Wolkoff is known in the industry as “General Winston”—a name bestowed on her by Anna Wintour, a career-long mentor who tapped her to become Lincoln Center’s director of fashion when Fashion Week was pushed out of Bryant Park by an ice-skating rink. Ms. Wolkoff, who had previously headed the Vogue-hosted Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is credited with helping elevate it from an East Coast event to a star-studded couture pageant.

She is one of the many New York fashion success stories who owe their rise in large part to Ms. Wintour’s mentorship. Ms. Wolkoff was a client services manager at Sotheby’s when Ms. Wintour hired her to do PR for Vogue, despite her lack of fashion experience. Raised amid acres of farmland in the Catskill Mountains, the black-belt preferred working on her jump kick to reading magazines. “Fashion was not something that I knew about,” she said. “It just wasn’t really particularly interesting.”

But what Ms. Wolkoff did have was an intensely disciplined work ethic, which was solidified playing power forward for Fordham University’s Division 1 basketball team. The diligence of waking up for predawn practice drills developed a personal drive that became impossible to turn off. (To this day, she calibrates her schedule to the minute, opting to have a manicurist come in to do her nails at her desk so she doesn’t have to cut into family or work time.)

(Emily Anne Epstein)

And she looks the part. Described by an associate as “the first person you see when you walk into a room,” Ms. Wolkoff came equipped with Vogue-worthy family associations: her stepfather is Bruce Winston, jeweler Harry Winston’s son.

“I didn’t have quite the understanding of the difference between Vogue, Elle, Harper’s and the rest of the world,” Ms. Wolkoff said, recalling her interview at the magazine. She was hired the same day. “I knew Anna Wintour was the editor in chief of Vogue, I just didn’t understand what it meant to wait around to meet with Anna Wintour. I didn’t lie that I read Vogue every day or that I grew up loving fashion, but I did know how to roll up my sleeves and do whatever it took to learn it.”

In the cosa nostra of fashion, Ms. Wintour’s blessing is likened to being “made” by a mafia boss. The wheels are slicked, critics are silenced and success is imminent. Accordingly, Ms. Wolkoff’s ascent at Vogue was rapid; she jumped from PR manager to special events manager to the head of the Costume Institute Benefit.

“The Costume Institute Benefit became my baby. It was something that I lived, breathed, day and night,” she said. “It was all about excellence. It was all about never taking ‘no’ for an answer from anyone in order to achieve the ultimate goal.”

At Lincoln Center, Ms. Wolkoff expanded on the foundations laid by Fern Mallis, the founder of Fashion Week, whose efforts put American designers on the global fashion map.

“We wanted to compete with Paris and Milan and other world capitals. There was very limited international business coming to New York, because we weren’t organized,” Ms. Mallis told The Observer. One of the initiatives she pursued was corporate sponsorships that would help offset the costs of the runway productions.

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Ms. Wolkoff nurtured those relationships, creating events that were open to the public rather than only buyers and editors, prying open the former fashion fortress and transforming it into a sprawling campus. “My goal was to put fashion on par with all the other cultural institutions that were at Lincoln Center,” Ms. Wolkoff said. “I always wanted to somehow democratize Fashion Week in a way that hadn’t been done before. I wanted to create a place where editors, models and designers could rub elbows with the everyday person.”

Some designers have balked at the new venue and the new vision, opting to take their shows elsewhere. Marquee New York brands like Proenza Schouler, Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang have all decided to sidestep Lincoln Center. “The feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s way more commercial out there. But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about,” Ms. Mallis said. “I certainly miss Bryant Park.”

Mr. Zee says that Ms. Wolkoff’s innovations have “matured” the biannual event. A self-proclaimed “fashion dinosaur,” he has been to shows at every fashion week, since long before they ever found a home at Bryant Park.

“I kind of love Lincoln Center,” he said. “She’s really made it into a true event. It’s not about going to a fashion show and leaving—she makes it into a true experience. It’s like growing up: Bryant Park was the teenage years, and now you grow up and you migrate uptown. It’s bigger, more glamorous ... it’s more what it is.”

At the end of the day, the models need to walk, the buyers need to shop, the editors need to see the season’s best and the designers need to sell their handiwork. It’s a trade show.

“If you look at who’s involved in fashion, there’s glamour, and smoke and mirrors, but it is a true business,” Vanessa von Bismarck, co-founder of fashion PR firm BPCM, told The Observer. “[Ms. Wolkoff] is someone with a business mind and [she] knows how the business works.”

(Mario Zucca)

In June of last year, Ms. Wolkoff stepped down as Lincoln Center’s director of fashion to take charge of her own company, SWW Creative. She still oversees the event, but now IMG and Lincoln Center are her clients, along with a number of other companies, including the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Penske Media Corporation and Kapture, an iPhone photo-sharing app.

Setting up shop privately enabled Ms. Wolkoff to dictate her own terms, which include being able to pick her three kids up from school and get home for dinner with her husband, real estate developer David Wolkoff. “I didn’t have children not to be with them,” she said. And even though her daughter Alexi has made the occasional runway appearance, she’s not an aspiring Tavi. “My children do not know the difference between Tar-jay and any other designer brand,” Ms. Wolkoff said proudly.

After bedtime, she typically dives back into work. “I go to sleep once I’ve put my third child to sleep, and I will wake up around 1 o’clock in the morning and work for a couple of hours, and then go back to bed,” she said, pointing to the 1,777 emails that had accrued in the past hour.

Once left alone, Ms. Wolkoff settled back into her seat and began riffling through the stacks of paper spread across her desk. She checked her iPhone and called out to her assistant. It was clear: she may be the first person you see when you enter a room, but she’s also the last to leave.

eepstein@observer.com

With relatively brief screen time in The Paperboy, Ms. Kidman takes over the film; a lurid mélange starring Zac Efron as a young man who stumbles upon conspiracy and evil, the film tips all too often, as did Mr. Daniels’s last effort, Precious, into excess. But the Australian actress, playing a past-her-prime beauty with a deadly attraction to things that are just plain wrong, clarifies the film’s Baroque obsession with violence.

In her polymorphous perversity, Ms. Kidman’s character humanizes the film’s nastiness. She puts a face on its obsession with the depraved, and through a conscious dulling of her intellect and her stock-in-trade melancholia, makes that depravity seem almost sweet. A scene in which she takes a near-naked Mr. Efron, 21 years her junior, into her arms and waltzes with him is the communion of two broken souls; when she urinates on him to relieve a jellyfish sting, it’s is an act of pure, frenzied love. “She gets her—she understands this woman,” Mr. Daniels told The Observer. “And she understands my insanity.”

That is precisely what, at least since her reinvention as a serious actress 11 years ago, Nicole Kidman does for every serious movie in which she chooses to act. She personifies the human consequences of directors’ intellectual arguments. And of all the actresses working today, she has the riskiest attitude when it comes to her collaborators. Among her contemporaries and past co-stars, Meryl Streep has winnowed her stable down to a few subpar directors who let her to do her thing. Meanwhile, few directors seem to have any idea what to do with Julianne Moore, who’s largely moved to TV. By contrast, Ms. Kidman has worked with Mr. Daniels, John Cameron Mitchell, Noah Baumbach, Jonathan Glazer and Lars von Trier, among other iconoclasts, and in each case she hasn’t merely been a part of an exacting vision, but pushed it to new places.

Part of her uniqueness, as has been widely observed, is her appetite for a kind of chic suffering. Before 2003’s Cold Mountain came out, New York Times critic A.O. Scott, in an essay on Ms. Kidman, noted of her characters, “Their misery is a sign of her independence, her courage, her victory over unpleasant circumstances, and our applause is the measure of our compassion.” This view of the actress’s career took into account her then-recent divorce from Tom Cruise and all the subsequent tabloid attention. In the years since, Ms. Kidman’s celebrity has dimmed—her name is no longer, as Mr. Scott’s put it, “inscribed at the very top of the Hollywood A-List.” With her name coming up only in the context of a paycheck movie, like 2007’s The Golden Compass, or a magazine spread on alleged plastic surgery victims (remember last year, when she claimed her beauty was natural, then admitted having used Botox by saying she’d stopped?), her audience’s compassion has waned commensurately. “Everyone was against hiring her. How could you hire her? She’s an ice princess,” said Mr. Daniels. “But those are the roles Hollywood offers you. They put you in a box. And she refuses.”

Through it all, though, she’s kept on trucking, with the loud flops of 2007 (The Invasion was the other one) reminding her that the Hollywood route is not exactly for her. There’s something deeply unsympathetic about Nicole Kidman both on- and offscreen. She’s uninterested, in a chilly way, in the give-and-take of Hollywood. Her Oscar acceptance speech for The Hours, delivered while wearing a deeply un-belle-of-the-ball, downright funereal black gown (granted, it was the beginning of the war in Iraq) and while taking out for a spin an increasingly, ahem, immobile visage, is a case study in elegant boredom. “Art is important,” the actress intoned. We may have really liked her, but did she really like us? During her two-year window of extreme fame, Mr. Scott argued that Ms. Kidman wanted to suffer for a broad audience. But the period since the fading from collective memory of her divorce from her famous Scientologist ex has proved that the more apt formulation might be that she wants a very limited art-house audience to suffer alongside her.

Her directors are, broadly speaking, known for contorting their performers into uncomfortable or compromising positions, and yet, in every case, Ms. Kidman has taken the initiative, pushing her movies further than, it would seem, even their directors intended. (Mr. Daniels said he was initially embarrassed before she urged him to direct her forcefully, at which point he told her she’d need to sit on a washing machine and spread her legs.) No moment in Mr. Daniels’s work, which has gained two performers Oscar nominations and one a win, has ever been so deeply felt as the scene in which his Paperboy star pushes younger women out of the way so that she might pee on Zac Efron.

So too do her performances in other movies push the bounds of what their directors might have intended: people remember Birth, her 2004 psychodrama about a woman united with a child she believes is her reincarnated husband, not for its directorial flair, but for a minutes-long shot of Ms. Kidman silently emoting as she watches an opera. The actress is feeling the consequences of the action more deeply than her director, who tosses away the plot of the movie in a dumb, poorly paced finale, and far more deeply than her audience, who greeted Birth with disdain and negligible box-office returns.

And consider The Hours, the film that earned Ms. Kidman an Oscar. Out of a triple-lead miasma in which two of the actresses, though credible, projected vague, early-2000s mumbly indie-film disdain for their surroundings, Ms. Kidman, playing Virginia Woolf, wrenched the film into melodrama through her sheer dogged commitment to the emotional, despite director Stephen Daldry’s clinical detachment. Or Rabbit Hole, in which director John Cameron Mitchell’s clear hope for another indie triumph—complete with animated interstitial segments—was waylaid by Ms. Kidman’s dogged earnestness in the face of losing a child. Or Dogville, in which Ms. Kidman, nearly alone among Lars von Trier’s long line of tortured leading ladies, manages not to transform into something more or less virtuous than that which she essentially is. Mr. von Trier’s other favored actresses, including Björk and Charlotte Gainsbourg, usually fall somewhere within a dull, nihilistic Scandinavian good-bad dialectic, whereas Ms. Kidman presents the sort of reactions a real person might have to being held captive and enslaved in an isolated Western town. Mr. von Trier’s films, generally, are meditations on broad themes, but with Ms. Kidman in place, Dogville became the story of a woman under duress. Amid a stream of postmodern ideas, she was, implacably, that most conventional of devices: a character.

Mr. Scott’s appraisal of Ms. Kidman’s career, for the Times, concluded that suffering was the essential element in bringing audiences to love and idolize her. Lincoln Center tributes aside, those fans have largely moved on after an unrewarding period between 2004 and 2008. Suffering is Ms. Kidman’s alienation effect—she manages to turn every picture she is in into a woman’s picture. Hers is a very particular talent, one not seen since the heyday of Joan Crawford, and Ms. Kidman’s icy public persona—buffed, polished and impervious to both age and negative press—is its perfect complement.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Ms. Kidman has never been a whiz with accents, and viewers of The Paperboy will have to forgive her tortured attempt at a Southern one. She’s never, in any sense, disappeared into a role (leaving aside The Hours, in which makeup and special effects rendered her unrecognizable). When she plays an American, as in, for instance, Margot at the Wedding, her Australian lilt comes to the fore, but it works as an aid to her portrayal of hauteur, rather than an impediment. It’s not range in the sense of breadth of possible roles that Ms. Kidman seeks—she can play a very narrow slice of the roles offered to 40-something actresses—but in the range as depth of emotion. And she has succeeded in conveying a shocking depth of emotion to an unfeeling audience in our post-ironic age. “I now know what those old-time directors felt like while working with Bette Davis or with Greta Garbo—one of the legends,” said Mr. Daniels. A director like Michael Curtiz would know exactly what to do with Ms. Kidman. As it stands, she’s had to make her own way—a vaguely defined mission that Lincoln Center honors even as audiences remain puzzled.

Gary Oldman. (Julie Cunnah Photography)

As we quietly chanted a self-affirming (however desperate) "you can do this" to ourselves while rocking back and forth in the fetal position, The Observer's phone lit up with a surprise last minute invite to something a little off the beaten path: A two-hour reserved-seating Q&A session with screen legend Gary Oldman. The invite washed over us like an awesome wave.

First stop: Lincoln Center's Walter Reed Theater

• Being fans of The Fifth Element is an understatement. Being in awe of Gary Oldman's career is an even greater understatement.
• Mr. Oldman was whispered to be in an undisclosed location somewhere at Lincoln center having his photo taken on what photographers John Reuter and Myrna Suarez dubbed "The Largest Polaroid In The World." We caught up with them as they approached the theater.
• As we cozy our way into the packed house, the screen lights up with scenes from Oldman's career: Blood gushing from the mouth as Sid Vicious, revolver discharging wildly in The Professional, a tattered Sirius Black in Harry Potter, the menacing intergalactic arms dealer from The Fifth Element.
• The lights go on, and Mr. Oldman bounds toward the stage, beaming. We are an even bigger fan of him in person.
• Turns out this guy studied the art of mime. Whoa.
• When asked by an intrepid audience member whether he listened to music in preparation of a role, Mr. Oldman snickered, "Of course I do! Music is like pornography, it's immediate, it's a supreme art form."
• A flask is a very important thing to bring to Lincoln Center.

Our sweet tooth for Oldman sated, it was time to get back to business: Nur Khan and Nima Yamini kicked off the Electric Room's concert series.

Abbey Lee Kershaw with Chain. (Balarama Heller Photography)

• The erstwhile "supermodel" Abbey Lee Kershaw's band Our Mountain would be on tap for the evening. Nobody in the room seemed to have any idea what to expect, but there was definitely a bike chain and a trashcan in the band's setup.
• Bombay Sapphire seemed to keep the throng at bay as we waited for what looked to be a freshly bejeweled Abbey and her band to take their place in front of the, er, fireplace.
• Ok. Here we go. Things are happening.
• 17 cameras fixated on Ms. Kershaw, our ears start sending signals to our brains. The signals were mainly, "Uh, what?"
• More than our fair share of shrieking, howling, gyrating and experimental clothing later, it was time for the bike chain to come out. Boy, oh boy...
• Wouldn't you know, this track isn't so bad!
• Nur got the sense as the band slowly descended into a low BPM haze, he very well might lose the crowd. Expert ringleader he is, Mr. Khan makes a quick nod to DJ's Todd Smolar and Mike Nouveau to take evasive action. The band finishes out their set, and we're back to life.
• Keep that gin coming, baby.

Josh Bell (Photo courtesy of Chris Lee)

When Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in May of 1913, its thorny polyrhythms and pagan-inspired choreography completely unnerved the audience, whose booing and catcalls eventually erupted into a full-blown riot. Even after the police intervened, chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance as bar-room-style brawls broke out in the Parisian aisles, sending the evening into the annals of music history.

There was, however, no noted misconduct at the New York Philharmonic's Wednesday evening concert in Avery Fisher Hall last week (although we did spy several hefty rings that The Observer briefly mistook for brass knuckles). In fact, the most visible action Stravinsky's polytonalities provoked in the audience was a bit of toe-tapping from elderly feet stretched in the aisles.

Wednesday was the first of four performances conducted by the 36-year-old Daniel Harding, who, after getting his start assisting the esteemed British conductor Simon Rattle, frequently trots the globe, leading the world's premier ensembles. Mr. Harding is certainly not one of the most flamboyant of his peers, tending to forgo oversized gestures in favor of succinct, driven movements. The masterful playing of the ensemble conjured visions of the haunting ballet, from the frenetic brass cries in “Dance of the Earth” to the asymmetrically feverish “Sacrificial Dance,” the movement in which the chosen virgin dances to her death. Listening to Stravinsky's piece played by the Phil is like riding an orchestral roller coaster: it’s so visceral one's stomach drops with each forte.

The evening opened with Scottish composer Oliver Knussen's Flourish With Fireworks, a three-minute piece that lived up to its title, sparkling and popping with zeal.

Next up was Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major, which was famously critiqued after its 1881 premiere by Eduard Hanslick in Vienna's Neue freie Presse as “vulgar,” the product of “hideous notation,” particularly the first movement, in which the violin was, as he put it, “pulled, torn, drubbed.” While the solo violin part was deemed practically unplayable by leading violinists of the composer’s day (it requires tremendous endurance), the piece now stands one of the most beautifully lyrical legacies of the famous Russian composer.

Rising to the challenge was violinist Josh Bell, whose immense talent and charming blue-eyed head shots have earned him a loyal following of enamored female fans. He may be—dare we say it?—the Justin Bieber of violin soloists, at least in terms of star power. Mr. Bell's virtuosic mastery of his instrument brought to life Tchaikovsky's work, written while the composer vacationed on the shores of Lake Geneva, recuperating from a bout of depression.

The 44-year-old Mr. Bell first stepped into the spotlight at the age of 14 when he debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Ricardo Muti. Since then, the Avery Fischer Prize recipient and Musical America 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year has enjoyed immense success and a consistently full house, Wednesday night being no exception. Mr. Bell played the demanding passages in the opening Allegro of Tchaikovsky's relentless concerto with superhuman agility, maintaining an intense look of concentration that quickly vanished as he gracefully wiped his brow during the orchestral interludes.

Mr. Bell managed to weave the three movements together into a comprehensive piece, his emotive legatos in the second movement balancing the challenging dance-like cadenzas in the Allegro vivacissimo. Members of his fan club sprang to their feet abruptly after the first movement, awarding their hero a well-deserved standing ovation. Although this was only Mr. Bell's first performance of the week, we had the feeling that he would continue to play to an exuberant full house, perhaps provoking yet another historical fight, should he decide to dole out a limited amount of autographs.

Well, technically they never went anywhere. They've just "decentralized," as one organizer put it. But yesterday's march gathered thousands to the street as labor unions once again rallied in solidarity with OWS in a ""March for Jobs and Economic Fairness," organized by the Central Labor Council. Ah, it's good to hear those General Assembly names once again!

The path was an odd one: Herald Square to Union Square to Zuccotti Park, where a G.A. meeting was held at its nightly 7:00 time slot. Then back uptown to hear the 10:30 speech on the steps of Lincoln Center, where Philip Glass was the guest of honor, performing  his piece Satyagraha, in honor of Ghandi. . Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were there too! You'd usually have to pay well over $200 for a musical lineup like that, but for tonight it was free.

Even so, that's a lot of marching, but it's good to get the blood flowing and remind people that you're still around, despite Media Blackout 2.0 on New York's own OWS. Good job for everyone involved, and mind those barricades that the police had set up well in preparation for the event. This weekend, Occupy Broadway is going back to Times Square, which, if nothing else, should bring about enough arrests to get the country to start paying attention to the NYC movement again.

Andrew Durand (Press photo)

While Stephen Spielberg is busy promoting his adaptation of the Tony-Award winning War Horse (you know, the one with the life-size horse marionette...which unfortunately will be played by an actual horse in the movie), the Broadway show has gained a new--and terribly attractive--lead actor.
Andrew Durand might already be recognizable to those familiar with sexy stage stars: he replaced Skylar Astin as Georg in Spring Awakening in 2008, and more recently in off-Broadway musicals like The Burnt Part Boys and Yank!. He'll be taking over the role of Albert Narracott--the English farm boy who follows his horse into battle (usually the other way around) from Seth Numrich, who helped War Horse clean up the Tonys with 6 awards.

So these are mighty big shoes to fill. Is Mr. Durand up to the challenge of playing opposite a fake horse? Judge for yourself:

Here is the young Mr. Durand singing "Boys of Summer" from Spring Awakening:

And this is what he'll be jumping into the saddle of when he joins Warhorse on January 12th:

Will Andrew Durand make a great Albertt Narcott? It all depends...how good is he at faking a British accent? Oh that's right: he was amazing in the West End London production of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. He'll be fine.

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra (Lukas Beck)

As concertgoers funneled out of Avery Fisher Hall on Monday night, a middle-aged couple kissed passionately on the first-tier balcony, earning hoots of approval from below. Earlier in the evening, a seemingly inebriated mink-wrapped woman sitting next to The Observer spoke to her husband at full-volume before unceremoniously slumping asleep in her plush seat.

Perhaps something had been slipped into the wine served at the preceding gala dinner, or perhaps the audience was simply overstimulated from the evening's orchestral excitement. Whatever the cause, the classical crowd was in strange form, which only served to highlight the magnificence of the Lincoln Center's “Great Performers” concert that took place.

As the members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra stormed the stage, an older woman in front of us clapped in slow motion, her hands extended over her head, picking up the pace as Met maestro of the moment, Signore Fabio Luisi, made his entrance. Greeting the audience with a smile, the 52-year-old planted himself curtly on the podium, his greying hair neatly combed and his round spectacles perfectly adjusted.

Mr. Luisi, besides looking the part of distinguished conductor (and long lost twin of Roberto Benigni), gave the impression that we, the audience, were in for a flawless performance, a confidence buffeted by his newly-acquired title as principal conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. Strangely omnipresent, he is also the chief conductor of the fine-tuned Vienna Symphony, which he led through a nearly flawless performance of Beethoven's Concerto for violin, cello, and piano in C major, as well as Brahms' joyful Symphony No. 2.

Beethoven's “triple concerto,” as it's often called, places not one, but three instruments in the spotlight, and shining center stage was the Grammy Award-winning Eroica trio, three talented belles reminiscent of Charlie's Angels in their ethereally shimmering gowns. Cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio connected with the audience immediately, smiling at the crowd as the orchestra behind her played the first bars of the piece.

Wearing her heart on her sleeve, or twinkling white gown, as the case may be, Ms. Sant'Ambrosio showed her virtuosity on the cello, it's wooden frame only slightly smaller than her own. Beginning the second movement, her strokes soared over the crowd, her face expressing each tremolo as if it were the most heartfelt of sentiments.

Violinist Susie Park guided her instrument to sonorous success, particularly during the rondo alla piccola, while pianist Erika Nickrenz's quick runs demonstrated her mastery of the ivories. The trio returned after much applause to offer “a little dessert before intermission” as Ms. Sant'Ambrosio put it, before playing the Piazzola's sensuous Oblivion tango.

After a brief intermission, the orchestra and the bespectacled Mr. Luisi returned to perform Brahms' Second Symphony, rendering it so viscerally sumptuous that one wanted to bite into it–an orchestral Sacher torte.

Mr. Luisi was able to draw a depth of expression out of the orchestra that permeated the hall and hung over the audience like a gentle cloud of sound. The first movement brought to mind a bucolic setting, a sunny pasture, illuminated by a soaring motif that an audience member hummed comfortingly from the row behind us. Mr. Luisi brought the beautiful composition to life, taking the orchestra to almost unimaginable pianos before cuing the entrance of rumbling timpani, much like an approaching thunderstorm in Brahms' musical landscape.

Although we would have been content just to listen, watching Mr. Luisi on stage is a delight. He gets what he wants from the orchestra while saving his energy for the most magnanimous of fortes, leaping across the podium with a smile on his face, drawing incredible strength from the orchestra with a complex sweep of his arms. Such moments, particularly in the final movement, even caused the floorboards underneath our feet to reverberate with sound.

After launching their bows on the final energetic attack, the musician looked out at the fanatically applauding audience. They finished the night with an encore performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro Overture, a piece many audience members seemed to recognize. As we exited with the throng of music enthusiasts, we spied Eroica trio violinist Susie Park demurely standing next to the exit. “It was a great experience,” she told us beaming “playing with these musicians has been amazing, really a maelstrom.”