| TOP 100 EVENTS 06.22.09 11:30 AM |
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Washington's Top Benefits 2009
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 | Artrageous
Photo: Tony Brown/Imijination Photography for BizBash |
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1. Knock Out Abuse and Fight Night Gala
This two-in-one party encompasses the Knock Out Abuse Against Women gala—a lavish women-only fete for 650 at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C.—while 2,000 men simultaneously enjoy Fight Night, an evening of boxing matches at the Hilton Washington. The two parties join for a gender-neutral after-party. The dual fund-raisers for anti-domestic-violence causes and the health care nonprofit Fight for Children return November 5.
2. The Opera Ball
The Washington National Opera’s elite event brings some 500 guests—including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Congressman Dennis Kucinich in 2008—to a different ambassador’s residence each year. The German ambassador hosted this year’s June 5 ball.
3. YouthAIDS Benefit Gala
Ashley Judd, Sharon Osbourne, and Anna Kournikova were among the 550 guests at Population Services International’s 2008 benefit at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner. The rock 'n' roll theme party, which raised $1.2 million for the organization, returns this November.
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RELATED TOPICS
Washington's Top 100 Events, Knock Out Abuse Against Women, Fight for Children, Washington National Opera, YouthAIDS, Corcoran Gallery of Art, National Italian American Foundation, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Prevent Cancer Foundation, Meridian International Center, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Washington Ballet, Heart of America Foundation, Smithsonian American Art Museum, March of Dimes Foundation, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Folger Shakespeare Library, N.F.L. Players, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Phillips Collection, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Spina Bifida Association, Washington Performing Arts Society, Trust for the National Mall, Capital Area Food Bank, American Red Cross, D.C. Scores, Washington Humane Society |
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| TREND SPOTTED 11.26.08 10:00 AM |
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Disco, Rock, and '80s Pop Influence Entertainment, Menus, and Decor
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 | Dancers showed off their moves at a M.A.C. Cosmetics' Gold Fever event in Toronto.
Photo: Andreas & Co. |
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Aussie Hair Cair, Tiffany, Macy's, Cyndi Lauper, MC Hammer, Collaboraction, YouthAIDS, Diffa, Absolut, Diesel |
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| EVENT REPORT 10.07.08 4:26 PM |
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YouthAIDS Gala Trashes the Ritz-Carlton (Sort of)
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 | The YouthAIDS gala at the Ritz-Carlton
Photo: Jonah Koch for BizBash |
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The Ritz-Carlton doesn’t generally encourage trashing its rooms, but Simon Cooper, president and chief operating officer of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, made an exception for the YouthAIDS gala after-party Friday night. To go along with this year’s “The Power of Music” rock 'n' roll theme, YouthAIDS deputy director Marshall Stowell recreated a rock band’s trashed hotel suite in the Tysons Corner hotel’s Old Dominion room, tossing lingerie on the light fixtures, tilting picture frames, and artfully arranging broken lamps, pizza boxes, and empty Jim Beam bottles on tabletops.
“I have to say, hats off to Simon Cooper,” said Stowell, noting that Cooper co-chaired the gala with BET co-founder Sheila Johnson. “He was fully onboard with the theme of the after-party. He allowed us to take that liberty with the Ritz-Carlton, which is such a lovely hotel. They were terrific sports about it.”
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YouthAIDS, Ashley Judd, Sharon Osbourne, Bob Geldof, Anna Kournikova, Annie Lennox, Johnson & Johnson, Aldo, Kiehl's, American Beauty, John Mellencamp, Cartier |
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| NEWS 09.30.08 3:36 PM |
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YouthAIDS Benefit Gets Rock 'n' Roll This Year With Graffiti, Tattoos, and John Mellencamp
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 | The 2007 "Faces of India" YouthAIDS benefit
Photo: Eric Powell for BizBash |
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Children’s graffiti normally isn’t found on the walls of the Ritz Carlton Tysons Corner's grand ballroom, but for this year’s YouthAIDS benefit on Friday, guests will find exactly that. The event, dubbed “The Power of Music,” is enlisting the help of graffiti artist turned fashion designer Claw Money, who worked with local kids through a nonprofit called Words, Beats & Life to create large panels of graffiti which will be hung over black velvet draping in the ballroom.
“Graffiti has always been closely tied to music,” YouthAIDS deputy director Marshall Stowell said today. The musical theme will be hard to miss—not only will a large tour bus and a fake punk band be parked outside the hotel’s entrance, but tattoo stations, rock and roll-themed drinks, and Rock Band video game stations will be set up throughout the reception and auction areas.
Stowell, who is overseeing the event, explained that YouthAIDS has always used music to reach at-risk populations. “Many people in the 60 countries where we operate are illiterate or of low-literacy,” he explained. “We bring in DJs and street music and dance to educate them on the HIV risk and direct them to clinics.”
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RELATED TOPICS
YouthAIDS, John Mellencamp, Ashley Judd, Sharon Osbourne |
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| TOP 100 EVENTS 09.26.08 2:00 PM |
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Washington's Top Benefits 2008
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 | The Soccer Ball for D.C. Scores at the Organization for American States
Photo: Paul Morigi |
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1. Knock Out Abuse and Fight Night Gala
This November fund-raiser is actually two parties: a cigar-and-boxing-fueled Fight Night, which raised $2.4 million for nonprofit Fight for Children in 2007, and the Knock Out Abuse gala, which raised $650,000 to combat domestic violence. Actor Chris Tucker and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia were among the 2,200 guests at the Washington Hilton and Towers for Fight Night, while a crowd of 750 flocked to the Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C., for the gala. Everyone then merged for an after-party at the Ritz. Liz Warnecki of Fight for Children coordinates Fight Night, while the gala is produced by Andre Wells. Both parties return on November 6.
2. The Opera Ball
French ambassador Pierre Vimont’s Kalorama residence played host to the Washington National Opera’s largest annual fund-raising event on June 6. Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff attended the Midsummer Night’s Dream-themed garden party, which featured 4,000 glass votives, five chandeliers hanging from a tree, and 15 lighting displays. Patti Humphrey, special events director for the Washington National Opera, planned the 500-person party.
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RELATED TOPICS
Washington's Top 100 Events, Fight for Children, Knock Out Abuse, National Geographic, Population Services International, YouthAIDS, Corcoran Ball, Best Buddies, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Fight for Children's School Night Benefit, Fight for Children, Meridian International Center, W.N.O., Washington National Opera Midwinter Gala, Prevent Cancer Foundation, Prevent Cancer Foundation's Annual Spring Gala, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Gourmet Gala Benefiting St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, Washington Ballet Spring Gala, Washington Ballet, Larry King Cardiac Foundation, Heart of America Foundation, National Symphony Orchestra, Heart of America Foundation's Sweet Charity Benefit, Leon Harris, Artrageous, March of Dimes Gourmet Gala, March of Dimes, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Ambassadors Ball, Folger Shakespeare Library Gala, N.F.L. Players Gala, Phillips Collection Annual Spring Gala, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Muscular Dystrophy Association's Heartsongs Gala, Spina Bifida Association, Washington Performing Arts Society Gala, Capital Area Food Bank, American Red Cross, American Red Cross Fire and Ice Ball, Soccer Ball for D.C. Scores, D.C. Scores, Humane Society, Washington Humane Society Bark Ball, Trust for the National Mall Luncheon, Bono, Ashley Judd, Jay Leno, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, James Brown, David Gregory |
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| NEWS 09.17.08 11:50 AM |
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Emmy Parties and Suites: Who's Going Where
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 | The scene at HBO's 2007 Emmy party
Photo: Gabor Ekecs |
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FROM LOS ANGELES
A scant couple weeks after MTV's Video Music Awards brought a less-than-staggering number of big events into town, the 60th annual Emmy awards show will take to the Nokia Theatre on Sunday night with an anything-but-underwhelming slate of parties and suites on its heels.
On Saturday night, Entertainment Weekly's sixth-annual pre-awards bash, presented by Revlon, will take to the Beverly Hills Post Office. ID-PR is handling publicity.
Sunday night following the awards is when the crush of competing events takes over town. The Academy of Televsion Arts & Sciences' Governors Ball will be held in the Los Angeles Convention Center's West Hall with a "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"-inspired look, produced by Sequoia Productions. Meanwhile, TV Guide’s sixth annual party will take over the Kress, with design by Event Eleven. And HBO's party will take over the Fountain Plaza at the Pacific Design Center with over-the-top design, as is typical, by Billy Butchkavitz.
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RELATED TOPICS
Emmys, Gift Suites, Going Green, TV Guide, People Magazine, ET, HBO, Architectural Digest, Entertainment Weekly, YouthAIDS, Environmental Media Association |
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| EVENT REPORT 11.06.07 9:31 AM |
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YouthAIDS Goes Big With Bollywood Theme
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 | Greenery-wrapped candelabras functioned as towering centerpieces at the YouthAIDS gala.
Photo: Eric Powell for BizBash |
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In case guests didn’t know that Friday’s YouthAIDS Faces of India gala was going to be a big deal, the 20-foot-wide, 30-foot-tall inflatable elephant standing at the front door of the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner should have clued them in. The elephant was the first of many Indian-inspired details at the event, which was ranked number four on Washingtonian’s list of this year’s top 10 biggest social events.
“We wanted to make a big splash to set the tone,” explained New York-based event designer David Tutera, who spent eight months designing the decor and flowers for the “Hollywood meets Bollywood”-themed gala. And the night’s guest list had some big names, with Ashley Judd in attendance, as well as Queen Noor, Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi, model Frederique van der Wal, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and, of course, Bono, “the god of all activists,” as YouthAIDS director Kate Roberts called him.
Each year the gala reflects the trip that YouthAIDS takes with its global ambassador. This year, the group traveled with Judd to Mumbai, Delhi, and Jaipur to film a National Geographic documentary about the fight against AIDS in India. The evening’s presentation, therefore, spotlighted the spread of HIV in India, and the 700-guest gala was a celebration of Indian culture, featuring traditional dancers, bhangra, and Indian cuisine.
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RELATED TOPICS
YouthAIDS |
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| NEWS 10.25.07 3:12 PM |
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YouthAIDS Benefit Adds an After-Party
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YouthAIDS is adding a new facet to this year's gala, to be held next Friday—a much-needed after-party. "Last year, we found all the celebrities ended up at the hotel bar after dinner," said YouthAIDS deputy director Marshall Stowell, who is overseeing the event. This year, guests can head downstairs at the Ritz Tysons Corner to a dancing- and cocktail-filled fete hosted by hotelier Vikram Chatwal, model Frederique van der Wal, and Miss India Puja Gupta.
This year's theme, "Hollywood meets Bollywood," is directly related to YouthAIDS's monthlong excursion to India in March that the organization's global ambassador Ashley Judd headed up. A 50-minute documentary titled India's Hidden Plague portrays the visit and is being screened the night before the gala at the National Geographic Society. "The screening will be the hard-hitting 'this is what we do in the field,' and the gala is more fun and celebratory," Stowell said.
Guests can expect the Bollywood theme to be pervasive throughout the evening. A 30-foot Moulin Rouge-inspired elephant is set to take over the Ritz's porte cochere driveway, while turbans and bindis will be doled out at the private V.I.P. reception for celebrities and $50,000-plus donors. (Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi is hosting with jewelry designer Roberto Coin.) A separate V.I.P. reception for the rest of the guests will feature belly dancers.
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RELATED TOPICS
YouthAIDS |
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