“Vintage Hollywood: A Black & White Winter Ball” was this year’s theme for the SPAC Junior Committee’s annual fundraiser that chases away the February blahs. While the weather outside was frightfully frigid, the inside of the Hall of Springs on Feb. 28 was aglow with sparkling lights, bubbly champagne and globs of glamour. The New York Players kept the crowd of 500 in motion.
Though “Vintage” was a theme, the majority of partiers were decades from retirement. Titles are fun: “Mad Men,” the first ball in 2011, was followed by “Bond: Shaken Not Stirred,” then “Dallas: Everything’s Bigger in Texas,” and last year’s “A Blizzard Ball with a Russian Twist.”
Chaired by Mollie Kavanagh and Heather Varney, the Vintage Hollywood Ball on Feb. 28 raised about $35,000 for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In the “Classic Hollywood” costume contest, Kate Jarosh, president of the Saratoga Springs History Museum, won Best Actress for her Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s style.
Sporting a top hat and cane, Arthur Palmer won Best Actor. Though he resembled a turn-of-thecentury titan, his firm, the M +W Group, built Global Foundries high-tech chip plant.
Erika Browne, an attorney who is president of the Junior Committee, was “thrilled” with “the level of enthusiasm the event generated” and “how quickly the event sold out.” People came from “all over the Capital Region and as far as Boston and New York City.”
Ranging in age from 21 to 40, the Junior Committee has about 50 members working to encourage a younger demographic to support SPAC and ensure the vitality of the performing arts. Eric Snell and Ryen Van Hall are fundraising co-chairs. Mallory Baringer, Jennifer Kercull and Sara Regan co-chair marketing; Caitlin Goetz and Kelly Grauwiler co-chair decorating.
The Vintage Hollywood Ball “generated a lot of enthusiasm for the quickly-approaching summer season and the 50th Anniversary Season, which commences in 2016,” says Browne. “Now it is on to the Ballet Gala Lawn Party!”—their next fundraiser on July 11 at SPAC.
