| News from The Porches Inn |
January 2009 |
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Take Time to Play ! Excellent Rates for Winter Stays...
We are enjoying a record run of beautiful snowfall here in the Berkshires. Take a few days to play in it - cure your need for speed with downhill skiing or take in the sights and sounds of Mother Nature with a gentle snowshoe hike. Porches is near several ski areas and cross-country ski centers and minutes from beautiful state parks (great for winter bird-watching!). If indoor pursuits are your cup of tea, there are plenty of goings-on at our local arts venues - from art to music to theater, there's something for everyone. Please scroll down to learn about events in the next month.
We are offering very competitive rates - and don't forget that our healthful continental breakfast buffet is included in your room rate. If schussing is your game, check out our Ski-n-Stay package. If intensifying your yoga practice is at the top of your list for 2009, our Dharma Days package is for you. Take a look at all our packages on our website - we hope they inspire you to have some fun! For those who profess a touch o'luck, try our Spin the Wheel deal -- you're guaranteed a standard queen-bedded room but you might just get lucky and stay in one of our spacious 2-room suites! The odds are in your favor... |
| VALENTINE'S DAY ALL MONTH LONG
 Spend Time With Your Sweetheart... February's frisky holiday inspired us to offer a package throughout the month...
The Love-Inn  Package starts with dinner for two at a neighboring restaurant of your choice... retire to your cozy room afterward where you'll find handmade artisan chocolates, a chilled 1/2 bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne and an elegant single red rose. Love-Inn includes overnight accommodations (and our healthful breakfast buffet, as always, or our signature breakfast-in-a-lunchbox in-room delivery!) starting at $270 midweek and $320 on weekends (based on availability) - including tax & meal gratuity. Explore all the northern Berkshire region has to offer with Porches as your romantic home base... |
MASS MoCA - FUN AND CULTURE FOR THE FAMILY !
 The Harmonica Pocket
Saturday, January 24, 2009, 1:00 pm, Club B10 - $6 per person
With a hula hoop, a ukulele, some face paint, and a suitcase full of props and instruments, this duo offers swinging, brilliantly arranged acoustic story-songs and clever twists on folk classics, all set to the choreography of a tap dancing ladybug. Listen Now! Their album Ladybug One, recorded entirely with solar power,"has a relaxing, mellow vibe appropriate for any age." (New York Post)
China Town: A Video by Lucy Raven
Saturday, January, 31, 2009 at 2pm
Film, MASS MoCA, Club B10, Marshall Street, North Adams
Tickets for the films and discussion are free for members and $5 for not yet members,
413 662 2111.
Raven has traced the process of copper ore production from an open pit mine in Nevada, through Utah and the port of Vancouver in Washington state, across the Pacific to the port of Nanjing in China, and finally to a smelter in Tongling.
Underworld with a Live Original Score by Alloy Orchestra
Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 8pm
Film, MASS MoCA, Hunter Center, Marshall Street, North Adams
Tickets for Underworld are $15 in advance, $19 day of show and $10 students with ID.
413 662 2111.
Often credited as the first gangster movie, this 1927 silent film classic will be shown in conjunction with a new and original score performed by musical innovators and MASS MoCA favorites, Alloy Orchestra.
Honky Tonk Dance Party with The Defibulators
 Saturday, February 7, 2009, 8:00 pm
$15 Advance / $19 Day of show / $10 Students with ID and kids / Members 10% discount
Get Your Two Step On !! The Defibulators' "whackabilly" style mixes bluegrass, rockabilly, Dixieland, and punk and features an arsenal of guitars, banjos, fiddles, and junkyard percussion accompanying razor-sharp harmonies and surreal lyrics. Being at a Defibulators show has been likened to watching Hee-Haw on mescaline-"No yeehaws or any other hoots or yawps were held back...like a hoedown band from a Warner Brothers cartoon." (The New York Times) Get your two-step on till the cows come home..
Still Bill
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 7:30 pm Club B-10
$8 / $5 Students with ID / Members 10% discount
Member tickets are not available via the internet.
Best known for his classics Ain't No Sunshine, Lean on Me, Lovely Day, and Just the Two of Us, Bill Withers topped the charts for over a decade in the 1970s and '80s before turning his back on the music industry. Still Bill explores the legacy of a complex man who touched millions and had a profound impact on popular music, but lived a life rich in meaning beyond his fame. Filmmakers Alex Vlack and Damani Baker, who shot hundreds of hours of footage with the fiercely private acoustic soul pioneer, will introduce the film and stay for a post-screening Q&A.
This screening is part of Larger than Life, our Thursday doc series which features detailed biographical sketches of figures whose outsized work has fired the imagination.
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FREE TICKETS TO BLUES AND FUNK FESTIVAL !
MCLA Presents!
4th Annual MCLA Blues & Funk Festival featuring...Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster  Gentleman, Maya Azucena, Unfulfilled Desires and the MCLA Jazz Band.
Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7, 2009; 7:30 p.m. - MCLA's Church Street Center
 Get ready to raise the roof off the Church Street Center as MCLA celebrates the best in the Funk and Blues, both the old and the new. This ever-popular event is back featuring New Orleans funk legends Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen, and a fresh upstart singer who has been taking the R&B world by storm, Maya Azucena. The first six guests who make a reservation to stay with us both Friday, February 6, and Saturday, February 7, receive free tickets to the concert (Porches is a sponsor of the MCLA Presents! series) - call our Reservations Department at 413.664.0400 to take advantage of this deal.
All others will enjoy discounted tickets by showing your Porches room key at the show! This offer is based on availability and double occupancy. |
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PLAY WITH WORDS
WordPlay featuring Juliane Haim Inkberry & Papyri Books
February 14, 7pm, Free
Featured author Juliane Hiam will read from her recently finished novel, The Cum Laude Girls.
Hiam has worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, has had plays produced at Shakespeare and Company and the Berkshire Theater Festival, has had a weekly column in the Berkshire Eagle (which was also syndicated nationally), and currently resides in Pittsfield with her four children. Today she serves as writer-in-residence for the Kidspace program in the North Adams elementary schools.
Gail Burns of Williamstown will host the event for Inkberry. After the reading there will be a brief intermission, followed by the popular Wordplay open mic.
Refreshments will be available, and admission is free and open to the public.
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AFFORDABLE ARTS IN WILLIAMSTOWN
THIS WEEKEND AT WILLIAMS '62 CENTER
The Limon Dance Company  Rooms - January 24, 8:00 PM, MainStage, $10
The Limon Dance Company will revive Rooms (1955), Anna Sokolow's seminal masterwork about urban alienation. The reconstruction of this groundbreaking piece, including a new version of Kenyon Hopkins' jazz score performed here by the Williams Jazz Ensemble, epitomizes the spirit of the company on the 100th anniversary of Limon's birth. Founded in 1946 by the pioneering dancer and choreographer Jose Limon (1908-1972, b. Culiacan, Mexico), Limon is a company steeped in history and has had a tremendous impact on the development of modern dance in the 20th century.
Celebrating a Dance Pioneer
Stalwart Originality: New Traditions in Black performance
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Co.
February 27, 8:00 PM, MainStage, $3 
Denver-based Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company will be in residence to celebrate the 100th birthday year of the legendary Katherine Dunham. Dunham's research in Africa and Caribbean culture as a student at the University of Chicago fueled her important later work as a dancer, choreographer, scholar, educator, writer, and activist. Her legacy continues to inspire generations of artists in the United States and abroad. Residency activities will feature workshops in Dunham dance technique, film screenings, discussions, lecture demonstrations, and a concert featuring the choreography of Kathrine Dunham.
Williams College
1000 Main Street
Williamstown, MA 01267
FREE EXHIBIT: THE DOCUMENTS THAT SHAPED OUR COUNTRY
Williams College Museum of Art Presents
Manifestos: American Dreams and Their Founding Documents
Williams College Museum of Art, 15 Lawrence Hall Drive (off of Main Street)
January 19, 2008 and ongoing - FREE !
One of Williams' greatest treasures are the founding documents of the United States of America, including the Declaration of Independence, the British Reply to the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers. Usually housed in Chapin's Rare Book Library, these documents are on view at the museum while a new library is being built. They are displayed in the galleries devoted to American art, with works that will give context to how they have shaped over 200 years of national identity. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Williams College Museum of Art
15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2
Williamstown
(413) 597-2429
COMING UP AT THE CLARK
 Toulouse-Lautrec and Paris
February 1, 2009 - April 26, 2009
This winter, take a visual promenade through the spectacle of late-nineteenth-century Paris as seen through the eyes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries. Toulouse-Lautrec and Paris, highlighting the Clark's extensive collection of works by this visionary of the cafés-concerts, will revel in Montmartre's raucous streets, cabarets, theaters and circuses, venues frequented by modern artists seeking inspiration in the heightened reality of the Parisian demimonde.
The Clark Art Institute
225 South Street, Williamstown
(413) 458-2303Visit the Clark's website | |
