New York: Bringing it all back home

I spent the weekend of October 19-21 in New York.  Friends Margaret and Carlo were the gracious hosts of a Manhattan reception where dear friends, some who I've known for decades and others who I've met more recently, gathered for a reading.  I read from the chapter on Carla Fracci. Her words in the interviews I conducted with her just a year ago resonated with the core of artists present. Some but not not all of them are dancers.  Others are visual artists, musicians, actors and writers.  Here are two comments from two of the guests, Carl, who is an actor and writer, and Edward, who is a master teacher of ballet:

"Your book is truly a thing of beauty.  I re-read the chapter you read aloud when I got home, and it's just exquisite.  The things Carla Fracci talks about, the way she talks about them, the way you contextualize and frame her insights, your own passion bubbling beneath the surface, your sure, elegant hand and natural storytelling instincts  -- are all pure gold and illuminate the mysteries not only of dance but of all the arts...and not only of all the arts but of life.  Only a mature & brilliant artist (like yourself) could have pulled this off. I treasure this book."

and

"Just wanted to thank you again for inviting me to your reading.  I so enjoyed hearing the Fracci chapter, and how well you captured a most intimate portrait of her.  Wonderful!  I've begun reading about others (Makarova now) and I simply love it!  Many congratulations to you, and I hope the rest of your book tour has been as successful as in NYC."

After an evening of reconnecting, reading, selling and signing every book I had, I spent the following day visitng with my hostess and close friend from Performing Arts, Margaret, and then Debbie, my friend since Kindergarten.  I enjoyed a rest day at Elsa's peaceful Peekskill bungalow. On Sunday we met up with Elsa's friend Tom, hopping a train that took us North along the Hudson River. We passed the time at a table in the dining car, punctuating our rangey conversation with quick fixes on the wide river and its bridges and surprising sights. The dappled landscape and warm weather made it feel as if we were riding through a painting from the Hudson River School.  Our destination was Saratoga Springs, home of the National Museum of Dance (formerly a Roosevelt-era spa) set back on an expansive lawn.  In the photos below you can see the lobby which makes visitors feel like they've arrived at a 1930s hotel in the tropics.  But a museum it is, with installations on the work of Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan, as well as an exhibition devoted to musical comedy.  Museum director Beth Hartle and her assistant Donna had set up a table displaying my books.  After reading from the chapter on Carlos Acosta and showing the film, "Alicia," I got busy signing.  Then I said goodbye to two old friends, Tom and Barbara, both Saratoga Springs denizens, and with my friend Nanny, who had driven in from Boston, repaired to the home of my hosts for the evening, Dick and Sara. We enjoyed Dick's cooking, Sara's baking and conversation with the earnest tattoo artist, Nate, and his cousin Marshall, a competitive ice dancer and jazz musician who studies at Skidmore College.

You go out into the world and it's easy to forget your original self and the subsequent selves that have aggregated under the pressures and influence of friends, lovers, family, historical processes and your own personal archive of life experiences.  We spend entire adulthoods expecting to integrate them into one unified and hopefully satisfying, functional, creative, socially effective and presentable organism.  The weekend in New York offered me a rare chance to glimpse all the layers of my life and the people who are tucked into them.  They are pictured here and include Priscilla, Matilde, Elsa, Abby, Daria, Margaret, Debbie, Carl, Tiekka, Vinnie, Eddie, Lenore, Charles, Carlo, Leon, Jane, Tom, Pat, Barbara, Tom, Dick, Sara, and Nanny.

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