Tag: Lincoln

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At Lincoln Heart, Hooked on Swing and Again on the Dance Flooring

At Lincoln Center, Addicted to Swing and Back on the Dance Floor

Three summers ago, on a mid-July evening, Margaret Batiuchok was teaching the basics of Lindy Hop on an outdoor stage at Lincoln Center when her microphone went dead.

It was the final night of Midsummer Night Swing, a tradition spanning more than 30 years that saw New Yorkers obsessed or just curious about partner dancing flock to a massive dance floor on the Upper West Side.

Batiuchok switched to a megaphone, but it quickly became clear that the problem went beyond technical difficulties: part of Manhattan’s West Side had lost power and would not regain it for several hours.

The dancers were asked to disperse before sunset that night, and some are now joking that the 2019 blackout was a bad omen.

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic hit the city, forcing Lincoln Center to cancel Midsummer Night Swing for the first time since it began in 1989. It was canceled again in 2021.

Lana Turner, 72, a Harlem resident who has been dubbed the doyenne of Lincoln Center’s swing dance community, recalled the days when she and her fellow dancers didn’t have their usual summer spot.

“There was a lot of pent-up energy,” Turner said.

In June, that energy was released again: the dance floor returned to Lincoln Center and regulars reunited with friends and familiar faces. They didn’t necessarily know each other’s last names, but they were long-standing fixtures in each other’s lives.

“You realize you care about them even though they’re semi-strangers,” said Mai Yee, who has danced with Midsummer Night Swing for more than 20 years. “It was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re here — we survived that!'”

One of the people Yee usually only sees dancing is Turner, who started attending Midsummer Night Swing around the same time. Yee remembers Turner hitting the ground running year after year, always wearing something exquisite. (Turner’s flashy fashions once caught the attention of New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham.)

On a tango night this summer, Yee and Turner, wearing a floor-length yellow peacock-print dress, chatted with other longtime participants and discussed how far they would go to partner dancing during the pandemic. Some held one end of a ribbon or rope while their partner held the other so they could connect without touching. Some attended classes virtually, and once they were able to dance in person with others, they wore gloves and masks for protection.

“It’s not an addiction; I can stop anytime!” said Anahý Antara as couples hugged and danced the tango around her.

Back when she was dancing five nights a week during Midsummer Night Swing, which typically lasted three weeks, Antara said she had a voicemail message that simply said, “You know where I am.”

The event to which the dancers returned was different from previous times. For years, the Midsummer Night Swing took place in Damrosch Park; This year, the dancing was back in the square where it began 33 years ago when a big band anniversary party at Lincoln Center became an annual tradition. (It moved to Damrosch Park in 2008 due to construction work on the square.)

For the program’s grand return, Lincoln Center hired Clint Ramos, a Broadway costume and set designer, to create a performance in the plaza between the grand buildings that house the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic to create eye-catching outdoor dance hall. Dubbed the Oasis, it featured a 10-foot diameter disco ball, a mirrored stage, and an electric blue dance floor that drew passers-by, many of whom preferred to sit on the sidelines sipping wine and watching the spectacle.

“It’s more like a party, like a celebration,” said Batiuchok, the ultimate Midsummer Night Swing veteran, after performing at the first two events with swing dance champion Frankie Manning.

Another important change this year: Admission was free. Originally, visitors who wanted to dance on the ground floor paid an entrance fee, while others could dance salsa and rumba on the sidelines while the band blasted music into the park.

The free dance events, which ended Aug. 6, drew more people than in previous years, not all of them serious dancers, leading to some grumbling among regulars that it was harder to find qualified partners. Lincoln Center estimated this year’s attendance at 54,000. In 2019, Midsummer Night Swing drew around 15,000 ticket holders to the dance floor, with an additional 23,000 people on the periphery, the organization said.

And perhaps the biggest change: the name Midsummer Night Swing has disappeared, at least for the time being. This year, ballroom dancing was part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City Festival, which also included workshops for children, orchestral concerts and poetry readings.

The dance styles were still diverse. Among this season’s offerings: Lindy Hop, Afrobeat, House, Salsa, Zydeco, Disco, Merengue, Tango, Flamenco, Freestyle and Ballroom.

The dancers came with all sorts of backstories: a 67-year-old woman who convinced her husband to move away from Paris so she could dance with the salsa greats of New York City; a 24-year-old doorman who began attending events with his church friends; a 53-year-old mother with stage 4 cancer who dances to find joy and calls it a “life force”.

They danced to connect with their cultural history.

“Having a dance created by our community, created by our ancestors, is a form of resilience,” said Taneeka Wilder, 41, a Bronx resident who started dancing lindy hop, a form, about six years ago , who was born in Harlem in the late 1920s .

They danced for their health.

“At 72, my blood pressure is excellent,” said Joanne Swain, who has been dancing since she was 14, as she sneaked into the Palladium nightclub on East 14th Street. “My doctor said to me, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.'”

And they danced for human connection, something many felt deprived of during the height of the pandemic. It’s normal here to take a stranger’s hand and let yourself be carried away for a song or two. (Even these reporters were lured onto the dance floor.)

“During Covid, I realized that apart from the human touch, what I missed the most was dancing,” said Veronica Cabezas, 42, who was beaming with excitement at a salsa night last month. “It puts you in a state of readiness to meet a new person.”

Few attendees wore masks at the events, and everyone agreed: Zoom couldn’t compare himself to dancing under the stars, nor could he dance at home with a broomstick as a partner, which Swain recalled doing at their house in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

On one of the final nights of the season, just days before the Oasis was demolished, swing dancers gathered for the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra, the same group that was performing in 2019 when the power went out.

WR Tucker, 88, whose dance name is Tommy Tucker, courted partners in a cream linen suit and matching fedora.

After moving to New York from Florida in 1954, he was a regular at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Tucker, who has attended Lincoln Center’s social dance events for about a decade, credits the dancing with keeping him “out of trouble.” He hasn’t stopped during the pandemic, even if he had to do it alone at home.

“New York was dying, but I was dancing in the house,” Tucker said. “Being here now feels like a new life.”

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Entertainment

Assessment: In ‘You Are Right here,’ Dancing and Splashing at Lincoln Middle

Review: In ‘You Are Here,’ Dancing and Splashing at Lincoln Center

As dance regains its foothold in the performing arts this summer – little by little, with determination and the best of intentions – putting on a show has a different weight to it. How exactly does the show have to go on? Who is responsible and who gets the credit? If the last year and a half has taught us anything, it’s to pay attention to those on the edge, to recalibrate who and what is important. Art and artists, for sure. But it takes more than an artist to make art a reality.

You Are Here, a sculpture and sound installation commissioned by Lincoln Center at Hearst Plaza, contains audio portraits of the composer and sound artist Justin Hicks. The piece reveals the pandemic experiences of artists as well as people who work behind the scenes, including Lila Lomax, who works at Lincoln Center Security – and sings while at work – Cassie Mey, who works in the dance department of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Valarie Wong, a nurse at the New York Presbyterian Hospital. The backdrop is also adorned with fabric sculptures by the stage designer Mimi Lien, whose headless shapes, a structural mix of fabric and dried and fresh flowers, sprout across the square like avant-garde scarecrows.

On Saturday night, it turns into a live performance where some of these New Yorkers become part of the piece and express personal ruminations about their pandemic experience, along with dancers from Gallim, a company led by Andrea Miller. She directs “You Are Here” with Lynsey Peisinger, which also contains choreography and a concept by Miller.

Layered and lengthy, it’s an attempt to look into the past while celebrating the possibility of the future. Water is important. Much of it takes place in the Paul Milstein Pool, which stretches across the square.

The pool is a tempting place for choreographers. Who doesn’t want to splash around in the water? But the problem for the viewer is that it is much more exciting to be in the water than to watch others in it. Throughout the performance, the choreography places dancers – who wear Oana Botez’s snug, shimmering sequin shorts and tops, a clever allusion to fish scales – into their depths. But whether they penetrate one another, fall backwards or of course hit its surface, a certain monotony arises.

Sometimes this overloaded staging seems more like a podcast with interwoven dances than a poetic exploration of the here and now. Moments were more memorable than the whole when Jermaine Greaves, founder of Black Disabled Lives Matter who works for accessibility at Lincoln Center, spoke lovingly about his mother teaching him resilience and spinning in his wheelchair in a dance of joy.

Susan Thomasson, a dancer who works with Lincoln Center Education, spoke live and in a voice-over about “soft but prickly grass, slick metal, still with the afternoon heat and a light breeze on my cheek”, noting as she approached the edge of a grassy hill, touched a railing and opened her arms like wings. Then, when she talked about the migration of wild geese, she turned into herself with undeniable ardor, took high steps and repeated her loud honking before sliding herself into the water. (She had Moira Rose’s trust.)

In between the dancers slipped into the water again and again – they stretched out their arms and turned their upper bodies while they immersed themselves in expressive choreographies; occasionally one swept the square, both the sidewalk and the water, holding a white cloth like a cloak in one hand, as if to clear the square. The work ended on a high note, with a scene with ballroom icon Egyptt LaBeija and a loud dance – really a pool party – to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna to Dance With Somebody”.

The most impressive achievement, however, came from Valarie Wong, a nurse in an intensive care unit at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, who spoke of being consumed by fear and anxiety.

As she told her story – it also included how she would prepare patients to die while “trying to send them away with dignity” – she walked around three sides of the square and cut into the water for the fourth. “I’m more present now than ever,” she said. “I used to always look to the future. But the gift is the gift. “

In “You Are Here”, Wong, who specializes in the heart – both medically and, as it turned out, in other areas – led us into a room that was as contemplative as it was exploratory. In a way, this was the truest ending that got you thinking.

“You Are Here” continues until July 30th at Hearst Plaza.

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Entertainment

Martin Bookspan, Cultured Voice of Lincoln Heart Telecasts, Dies at 94

Martin Bookspan, Cultured Voice of Lincoln Center Telecasts, Dies at 94

Martin Bookspan, who turned a classical music childhood into a career as an announcer for the television shows “Live From Lincoln Center” and radio shows for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, died on April 29 at his Aventura home. Fla. He was 94 years old.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter Rachel Sobel.

Mr Bookspan started violin lessons at the age of 6, but when he entered college he realized that he would never be the next Fritz Kreisler or Jascha Heifetz. After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a steadfast contributor to Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS show that became America’s premier source of classical music on radio television. He joined the program when it aired in 1976.

“Live From Lincoln Center” was not much different to him than radio – it was heard but not seen. He opened the show and then handed it over to presenters such as Beverly Sills, Dick Cavett or Hugh Downs.

“The camera was never on Marty,” said John Goberman, the program’s longtime executive producer. But, he added, Mr. Bookspan “was more than just the announcer. The convenient and familiar part of every show was Marty Bookspan. “

Mr. Bookspan’s voice “didn’t sound like a lion,” said Mr. Goberman. “He spoke in a very uncomplicated, friendly and talkative manner.” The Palm Beach Post, describing Mr. Bookspan’s voice after an interview in 1994, said, “Even on the phone, it’s a voice that resonates with the undiluted atmosphere of high culture, the kind of voice you get on a public Hear TV promises could drive. But it’s not so stuffy that you can’t imagine delivering your favorite team’s game after game. “

Mr Bookspan himself said: “If I have a technique, it is the sportcaster technique.”

“With sports promoters bringing the game to life, I hope I’ve brought concerts to life,” he said in 2006 as he prepared to leave Live From Lincoln Center after 30 years. “I want the audience to be engaged and love what they hear.”

By then, Live From Lincoln Center audiences were used to hearing his warm-up exercises before the concert and his withdrawals after the concert. With a well-dressed crowd in the audience and well-known actors on stage, the action had an air of glamor, but not necessarily for Mr. Bookspan. He and his microphone were sometimes installed in locker rooms and closets – even in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, in a women’s bathroom. He was connected to the stage through his headphones and a video monitor.

Martin Bookspan was born on July 30, 1926 in Boston. His father Simon was a dry goods salesman who later switched to selling insurance. his mother Martha (Schwartz) Bookspan was a housewife. Simon Bookspan was passionate about Jewish liturgical music and took his son to hear prominent cantors.

At Harvard, Martin did not study music, but German literature. He graduated with honors in 1947.

He could also be heard on the campus radio station, where he conducted his first important interview in 1944. His guest was composer Aaron Copland, who revealed he was considering writing a piece for choreographer Martha Graham. It turned out to be the ballet “Appalachian Spring”.

In his future radio career, Mr. Bookspan interviewed more than 1,000 performers and composers, from the conductor Maurice Abravanel to the composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

After working as music director at WBMS, a classical music broadcaster in Boston, he joined the Boston Symphony staff in 1954 as radio, television and recording coordinator. In 1956 he moved to New York to become director of music recording at WQXR, then owned by the New York Times.

At WQXR he hired John Corigliano, then a young composer, as an assistant. He turned out to be a concerned boss.

Mr Corigliano called sick one summer morning. “I should have known better because Marty was so considerate that he called later that afternoon,” said Corigliano, who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Music, in an interview. “I went to the beach. Marty called and my roommate answered the phone. Marty said, “How is John doing?” My roommate said, “Oh, he’s great. He’s on the beach. ‘

“I came in the next day. There is Marty. I approached him slowly and said, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ “

Mr. Bookspan left WQXR in 1967 and joined the ASCAP music licensing agency as the coordinator for symphony and concert activities. He later was Vice President and Director of Artists and Repertoire at Moss Music Group, an artist management agency. He was also an Associate Professor of Music at New York University.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was an art critic for several television networks, including WABC and WPIX in New York and WNAC (now WHDH) in Boston. He hosted “The Eternal Light,” an NBC program produced with the Jewish Theological Seminary, and announced the CBS soap opera “The Guiding Light” in the 1990s and early 2000s.

He also wrote reviews of recordings for the New York Times (on open-role tapes in the 1960s and on CDs in the 1990s). He wrote several books, including “101 Masterpieces of Music and Its Composers” (1968) and, with Ross Yockey, biographies of the conductors André Previn and Zubin Mehta. He oversaw radio broadcasts for the Boston Symphony and later for the New York Philharmonic.

His wife, Janet Bookspan, died in 2008. In addition to Mrs. Sobel, a son, David, survived; another daughter, Deborah Margol; six grandchildren; and a great grandson.

Tenor Jan Peerce called Mr. Bookspan’s musical knowledge “encyclopedic,” and it served him well when he had to ad libitum.

One night in 1959 he was the announcer for a program on the Boston Symphony in which pianist Rudolf Serkin played Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. Mr. Bookspan made his usual introduction before Serkin and conductor Charles Munch took the stage. Mr. Bookspan told The Berkshire Eagle in March that after the immersion, she said, “I did what I learned that I should never do it again: I left my booth.”

He went into the green room with Serkin, who “struck off with all his might, hit the pedals for everything they were worth, got caught up in work and didn’t notice anything else” – as Mr. Bookspan recalled in another interview to chat with Aaron Copland who was on hand for the concert.

Suddenly there was silence in Brahms’s second movement.

“I ran across the stage and up the stairs, tapping the news that there was a problem with the piano,” he told The Eagle. “I went to the microphone and puffed and puffed and said, ‘There was a problem with the piano’ and that ‘as soon as I catch my breath I’ll tell you what’s going on.'”

Mr. Bookspan spoke non-stop for more than 15 minutes until the piano was repaired and Serkin and the orchestra started playing again.

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Entertainment

Lincoln Heart’s Plaza Is Going Inexperienced. Actually.

Lincoln Center’s Plaza Is Going Green. Really.

Lincoln Center, which is holding a series of outdoor performances while its theaters will remain closed due to the pandemic, announced Tuesday that it would transform the space around its fountain into a park-like setting by covering it with artificial turf.

Since the center was using its outdoor areas as stages this spring and summer, it turned to a set designer, Mimi Lien, to redesign its campus. She had a plan to transform the space into what she calls “The GREEN” – adding a pop of color to a palette dominated by white travertine and turning the space into the grassy oasis she hopes that she invites New Yorkers for performances and relaxation.

“I wanted to create a place where you could lie on a grassy slope all afternoon reading a book,” Lien, a MacArthur Genius Fellow, said in a statement. “Get a coffee and sit in the sun. Bring your babies and frolic in the grass. Have a picnic with colleagues. “

“Like an urban green,” she added, “a place to collect.”

The installation, which will open on May 10 and remain operational through September, will be the physical centerpiece of Restart Stages, an initiative Lincoln Center announced in February to use its outdoor areas for live performances. The initiative began last week with a New York Philharmonic performance for healthcare workers and has since continued with a blood donation and other pop-up arts programs.

The artificial turf will be green in another sense: officials said it would be made from “high soy-content, recycled, sourced entirely from US farmers”. There will also be a small snack bar and books will be available to borrow. Events that will be held in the room will be announced in the coming weeks, officials said.

The room is open from 9 a.m. to midnight. Face covering, social distancing, and other health and safety protocols are required. The place is cleaned regularly, officials said.

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Entertainment

Lincoln Middle Will Head Exterior Its Closed Theaters to Carry out

Lincoln Center Will Head Outside Its Closed Theaters to Perform

Lincoln Center is known for the size of its theaters and concert halls: the stately, majestic Metropolitan Opera House with 3,800 seats; David Geffen Hall, glowing as New York Philharmonic fans arrive for an evening performance; the David H. Koch Theater, home of the New York Ballet and specially designed for dance.

With these rooms closed to public performances for almost a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Lincoln Center now looks beyond the walls of its travertine-clad buildings to another part of its 16-acre campus: the outdoor area.

Lincoln Center announced Thursday that it plans to create 10 outdoor performance and rehearsal rooms. This is the latest move in an effort to move small performances outside to bolster the performing arts in New York and get artists back to work after months of shutdown.

The comprehensive initiative, known as “Restart Stages”, kicks off on April 7 with a concert for healthcare workers. There are plans for a cabaret-style stage, a dedicated area for families with artistic activities for children, public rehearsal locations, an outdoor reading room set up in partnership with the New York Library for the Performing Arts, an outdoor area for a different type of Lincoln Center Ritual: Public Graduations held every spring and summer.

The program includes not only Lincoln Center organizations looking to host film screenings, concerts, and dance workshops, but also art institutions from across the city. Lincoln Center officials said it would work with groups like the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, the African Diaspora Institute of the Caribbean Cultural Center, Harlem Week and the Harlem Arts Alliance, the New York Korean Cultural Center, and the Weeksville Heritage Center alternately the outside areas.

Some of the performances will be broadcast live online, officials said, adding that more details will be released shortly.

Henry Timms, President of the Lincoln Center, said in an interview that he and other organization leaders had spent a lot of time thinking about how to use their “unique gift of the outside space” and how they could use it to “To create something” a driveway to an indoor performance. “

“This is a real opportunity to renew our work as an institution – to redefine our work,” said Timms. “The real opportunity now is for us to try, experiment,” he added, noting that he expected some of the ideas to become a permanent fixture in the years to come.

Thursday’s announcement comes as New York has started to give a taste of the artistic and cultural events that have long filled the city with great energy and creativity, not to mention economic activity.

Last weekend, musician Jon Batiste led a band through the Javits Center in the first of a series of “NY PopsUp” concerts announced by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, which will be held in a public-private partnership between state officials and the producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal. (Lincoln Center officials noted that their plans were developed in coordination with the concert series.) Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for an Open Culture program for the city that will allow outdoor performances on designated city streets in the spring.

It will be some time before the indoor live performances return. Three of the Lincoln Center’s largest affiliates – the Met Opera, the City Ballet, and the Philharmonic – hope to resume this fall. The Philharmonic plans to repeat last year’s NY Phil Bandwagon concerts, a program that picked up musicians around town in the spring.

But the pandemic is far from over. On Monday, the United States exceeded 500,000 known coronavirus-related deaths. In New York alone, the number has risen to over 46,000 with more than 1.6 million cases. A report released Wednesday by the State Comptroller said that arts, entertainment and recreation employment in New York City fell 66 percent year over year in December 2020 – the largest decline of any sector in the city’s U.S. economy .

Aware of the city’s bigger struggles, Lincoln Center said it would partner with the New York Blood Center and the Food Bank for New York City offer services such as blood drives and food distribution in addition to the arts program; The campus will also serve as a polling station for the upcoming mayor’s area code.

And in a refrain common to any organization, Lincoln Center officials emphasized that they had drawn up their plans with the involvement of public health experts.

Mr Timms said that the pandemic had helped “put a much more targeted focus on our citizen work in addition to our cultural work”.

And he said that Lincoln Center would be nimble and adapt when the rules changed to let in more visitors.

“We are ready to expand as soon as the governor and the city say we can,” said Timms. “We’re ready when it’s 20, we’re ready when it’s 50, we’re ready when it’s 400.”

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Politics

Lincoln Venture backers take into account chopping off donations in wake of misconduct allegations

Lincoln Project backers consider cutting off donations in wake of misconduct allegations

John Weaver is shown on a campaign bus in Bow, NH, in this January 20, 2016 file photo. The Lincoln Project launched in November 2019 as a super PAC that allowed its executives to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.

Charles Krupa | AP

The Lincoln Project, a group of conservative activists that made a splash with viral ads targeting former President Trump, is at risk of losing financial support after one of its founders is accused of sexual misconduct.

Several wealthy donors are considering cutting off their support for the organization, according to people close to these financiers. They pay particular attention to the results of an outside investigation into whether other leaders were aware of the alleged harassment of several men by co-founder John Weaver, these people added.

Some of those close to the donors declined to be named because they were concerned about retaliation from the leaders of the Lincoln Project and their allies.

Despite numerous reports to the contrary, the Lincoln Project – its original members include Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign leader Steve Schmidt, the author and former advisor to the George HW Bush campaign, Rick Wilson, and conservative attorney George Conway – denied being aware of any misconduct allegations against Weaver until recently. The group condemned Weaver’s conduct on January 31st.

Weaver told the New York Times in January that he was a withdrawn gay man and that he was “really sorry for these men and everyone and for abandoning so many people.”

The Lincoln Project said Thursday that it is “retaining a top notch outside professional to review Mr. Weaver’s tenure with the organization and establish both accountability and best practices for the Lincoln Project”.

The FBI is also investigating the allegations against Weaver, according to independent journalist Yashar Ali, who cited sources who claimed they were being contacted by agents.

The Lincoln Project did not respond to subsequent CNBC requests for comment.

The group will continue to need financial assistance as it continues its stated mission of targeting pro-Trump politicians and the former president. The group has reportedly tried to start a media company. There is already a live online show called “LPTV”. A United Talent Agency representative, who reportedly held talks to increase the group’s media presence, did not respond to a request for comment.

The PAC raised over $ 87 million, much of it from several Democratic megadonors. Those in charge of the organization were so confident that some organizers told CNBC in May they wanted to reach out to billionaire and former presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg for a donation. Records show that Bloomberg didn’t help.

Much of the Lincoln Project’s spending went towards paying vendors owned by its executives. The group was founded in December 2019.

Donor Jen Pritzker, a member of the wealthy and influential Pritzker family, suggested that given the allegations against Weaver, she could stop giving money to the group. Pritzker contributed to the joint fundraising committee of President Joe Biden and other democratic groups.

“I believed in the Lincoln Project’s mission and supported its efforts to prevent Donald Trump from being re-elected,” Pritzker told CNBC in a statement. “As a donor, I trusted that my gift would be used to further support the organization’s goals. Sexual misconduct cannot be tolerated by any organization. Anyone can be a victim, and these allegations should be handled in accordance with human rights law.”

A spokeswoman for Pritzkers Tawani Enterprises stated that she had not yet made a decision as to whether she would make a contribution in the future.

Pritzker donated $ 100,000 to the Lincoln Project in October, Federal Election Commission records show. Another family member, John Pritzker, also gave the group $ 100,000. He did not return a request for comment.

When asked by CNBC whether Jeffrey Katzenberg would stop giving the Lincoln Project, an advisor to the Hollywood power player didn’t rule it out. “Not our focus,” said the consultant in an email. Katzenberg gave the PAC $ 100,000 in August. Katzenbeg was also a major Biden bundler.

Meanwhile, CNBC has learned that two previous Lincoln project vendors will no longer work with the group.

Aaron, Thomas & Associates, who describes himself as a specialist in political direct mail, received over $ 90,000 from the group in September, records show. The company’s work with the group stopped before the Weaver allegations surfaced, but the company has decided not to take any more business from the Lincoln project.

“Absolutely not,” replied founder Fred Thomas when asked by CNBC if the Lincoln project would work again. “When we cited this work, we weren’t even aware of what it was or who it was for. We broke it up with someone else anyway,” he added, noting that his company “doesn’t want negative results from Mail. “

Anedot, a campaign donation processor used in the Lincoln Project’s final election cycle, is closing its account with the group, according to a company official who refused to be named.

“Anedot was recently made aware of certain incidents that resulted in our account team notifying the account owner that the account will be closed,” the representative said.

The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics says Anedot received fees of over $ 3 million in the 2020 cycle. Anedot’s representative said he did not give any reasons for closing accounts.

In building its media business through the Lincoln Project, CNBC turned to Zeldavision, a live streaming production company that received over $ 1 million from the group. The company promotes a partnership with the PAC. According to the Zeldavision website, it also appears to be helping to produce the Lincoln Project’s live content.

The company did not answer whether it would stand by the PAC in the future.

Tara Setmayer, who distinguishes herself as a senior advisor on her Twitter page and has hosted an LPTV show, said she was “dismayed and disappointed” by the recent event surrounding the Lincoln project.

“It cannot be tolerated. More to say,” added Setmayer.