Spoleto Party Blog

Sunday, May 25, Party for Shantala Shivalingappa and Boston Ballet, Leslie Turner’s home, Society St.

  “Well originally I guess we came here on a spiritual journey but that didn’t really pan out.”

– Owen Wilson as Francis Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited.

No such misguided pretensions last night, which skipped the Pray and went straight for Eat and Love. In fact, host Leslie Turner told her friend Trae Wilson of Granville’s Catering that she didn’t care about the food so long as they didn’t run out of liquor.

            “I still don’t know what the menu is,” she said at midnight.

            Getting there before the crowd, one could see the bones of the party were a study in planned debauchery. Turner and her co-hosts Lee Van Allen and Nathalie Naylor went Hindu with sparkly bindis on their brows. There were two bars at either end of a small yard, flower petals strewn about the piazza, and a California king bed hanging from a live oak, awaiting eunuchs and concubines. (Actually the kids’ tree platform, outfitted with lush covers and cushions.)

            “And then later on everything will move down into the Boom-Boom Room,” Turner said.

            Down some narrow cellar steps, techno unsched off the walls of brick and about two hundred wine bottles. Very sexy. All it needed was Steely Dan and silk pajamas.    

“I told the cops they can bust the party outside but they have to stay out of the Boom-Boom room. And you can’t take any names for your blog down here.”

…To the control-B keys!

            Asked Susan Bass why she was escorting Charles Wadsworth into Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

            “I saw him in the lobby and he looked like he could use a little help,” she said.

            Yeah, right. He’s been using that old trick to get on the arm of beautiful women for years.

            Had a Broad Street/G&M reunion with two Sarahs: Morrison and Anthony, and Susan McKellar. Spoke with David Scott about his upcoming book with John Paul Huguley on the Old City Jail.  Lisa Sexton and Doug Berger and Gretchen Barbatsis wanted to talk Burke High School poetry.

            The core group of invitees was a very laidback local crowd, folks who grew up together smoking cigarettes outside of cotillions.

            Knew we could count on the ever-evervescent Lynn Letson to get the tree bed party going with John Pope and other suitors.

            Finally got to talk paper and ink with stationer Emilie Dulles. She grew up in Switzerland where all kids had to use fountain pens. Her beau, Baron Hanson and I bonded (even though I fear he’s a ‘vard), decrying the faux-English spellings (honour, favour) in wedding invitations. Emilie didn’t join us on that, probably a good decision when you do wedding “stationery suites” running into the five figures.

But we all agreed on the scourge of E-vites, and discussed how architects think they can make anything (see quote below).

            This was Trae Wilson’s fourth party of the day, but there was no saying no to Turner, and he came through with super stations of Moroccan shrimp, pizzas, roasted eggplant. The tapas entrees — seared scallops over chilled lentil salad, grilled spring lamb over chick pea puree — were served plated, which is a nice touch.

            You can always find the dancers near the food.

“We just wrapped up our season,” said Boston Ballet’s Katelyn Prominski, “so now we can spend the summer getting fat and out of shape.” In tight short shorts revealing the evening’s best legs, she’s got a lot of work to do toward that end.

Melanie Atkins won’t have a choice — she’s four months pregnant, which meant her partner Jared Redick had to change a lift in their pas de cinq so as not to grab her by the belly.

Ira Levkoff, a local boy now living in Amsterdam, knows the dancer from the dance. He came in the bookstore this morning, still wearing his blue smoking jacket and party togs, and said he’d spent the party hanging with a member of the corps.

“Last year I met a Georgian ballerina in Marion Square, took her around town for three days, then went to visit her in Tbilisi for a week and ended up staying ten months.”

Other late Bookstore Update: The Hosts’ acupuncturist/personal trainer Stephen Clipp said the cops politely shut down the party at 2 a.m. He was urged to hit the Boom-Boom Room by someone who said “the chicks have us pinned in down there,” but found it empty.

Party Index:

Cheeses: Brie, rustico, Manchego, Thomasville (from Ga.), Jarlsberg, Boucheron.

Best entrance: Sarah Corbitt, escorted by Blan Holman

Laurie Anderson mentions: 1

Music: sitar rock

Best quote: Emilie Dulles on architects: “They’re a special blend of diva/artist/scientist.”

Consecutive years Society St. Ballet Parties have been shut down by The Man: 2