pt at large

Synchopated Creole Thunder

Short of sex, there aint nothing as powerful as a pressed-together-sweaty-zydeco dance with a woman who channels the music as if your two bodies were having a particle physics convention.

It felt like Andre Thierry, zydeco king accordion player from Lafayette brought everything with him in his band’s van except the snakes and the crawfish. The Louisiana music blasted through the dance pavilion like syncopated Creole thunder. The joyous accordion, guitar, bass, drums, and wash board frottoir set the two hundred dancers packed under the tent to vibrate like tuning forks in the densely humid August afternoon. This was hollerin’, hip shaking, who cares about anything except the eight beat here and now zydeco nirvana.
 
The air was thick with perfume soaked perspiration, smoke drifting from the grill, and music from just this side of heaven. The crowd had been dancing for nearly four hours, the band had lifted off with the refracted energy, everything felt slippery, clothing stuck to dancers, sweat ran like rain off bodies and nobody gave a damn. These were the last two dances and everyone concerned had one thing in mind. Totally incinerate every last molecule of dance energy and leave it smoldering on the dance floor.
 
Neurons and synapses locked in the eternal moment my partner and I touched. Every molecule locked and loaded. After sixteen beats the five six one twenty five pounds of her was molded against me like a second skin. Scent of her brown hair in my nostrils, her breath hot against my neck, her arms pulling me tight, corporeal fusion underway.
 
The preceding three and a half hours of dance was a launch pad for this one glorious fit yourselves together, become one eight count organism doing everything but mitosis on that dance floor, her Molly Bloom smiling eyes saying Yes, I’m loving this, Yes, keep it going, and Yes, I did, body parts emulating call and response, the thigh to thigh contact that had the charge of sex the sweat of sex the uninhibited moves of sex but no sex, this was a sex no sex dance, a yin yang dance real and fanciful, intimate and distant, we dance independently but totally in synch, defying Newton, tucked into the same space at the same time, “What’s your name?” she shouts as music ends, "You’ve got the best firepower I’ve felt all day!” She’s still feeling that dance as she sips her coffee this morning, jesus that dance was special, I wonder what would happen if we dance again.
 
And Im thinking that dance was a gift, a present the day after blowing out a few score candles on my birthday. This was going to be a good year.

From cradle to dance hall in Southwest Louisiana

 
When’s the last time you saw six-year-old kids on the dance floor? Or little girls or boys being whirled around the dance floor in their daddy or mommy’s arms?
 
If you lived in Louisiana that would have been last Friday or Saturday night at Randol’s in Lafayette or Saturday afternoon at The Coffee Break in Breaux Bridge.
 
Music and dancing is a huge way of life in southwest Louisiana. Who needs Arthur Murray when you can learn from everybody in the dance hall?
 
Friday night, a young brother and sister alternated sitting in the dining room with their parents and grandparents and skipping hand in hand to the dance hall in the next room.
 

The Cajun band Jambalaya (which played in the Lowell, MA Festival a month ago) kicked out one joyous song after another, all in Cajun French. Some kids sat on one of the wooden benches that surround the hall, visible through the glass partition between the dance hall and the dining room, and watched the adults styling to the music.

A shy blonde eight-year-old girl was busy taking digital photos of every couple that passed by - until her grandfather leaned over, took the camera out of her hands, and led her around the floor in a waltz.

On Saturday night, a pair of six and seven year olds stole the show. Got right out there and did their version of waltzing and two stepping. Adults applauded the two kids as if they were contestants on Dancing With The Stars. They beamed with the attention.
 
Earlier that day at The Coffee Break, the children who came to the Pont Breaux Jam, the weekly Saturday 11 AM to 2 PM celebration of Cajun music, were treated royally. While little brother was being danced around to the Cajun music by his dad, little sister was getting an impromptu waltz lesson by one of the men who’d come in from the Café des Amis.
 
Maybe that explains why places like Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, Angelle’s Whiskey River Dance Hall, McGee’s Landing, and Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf, all in Henderson, and many more places throughout the parishes of southwest Louisiana, are so popular.
 
If there’s a zydeco or Cajun band on the stage, you can bet there’ll be a roomful of men and women working up a lather two-stepping, waltzing, and slow dancing for hours at a time.
 
Music and dance are the glue that holds towns together all over southwest Louisiana. Some day, these little shavers will grow up to be the adults teaching their own kids to dance at Randol’s or The Pont Breaux Jam, or a facsimile thereof. 

Susan Huppe: Dancer With A New Orleans Cause

When Sue Huppe learned to speak French, it didn’t occur to her that it was the first step on a winding road that would lead her to help organize a fundraiser to rebuild New Orleans.

A Watertown resident for the past 9 years, she’s been dancing since not long after her first wobbly steps out of her playpen in Delaware. Her day job as a Certified Holistic Nutritionist and Herbalist pays the rent but dancing feeds her soul. One of her first thoughts after listening to a few bars of music is, “What kind of dance can I do to this?”

Twenty years ago, Ms. Huppe drove down to the Cajun and Bluegrass Festival (now called the Rhythm and Roots Festival) in Charlestown, RI. To her delight, much of the music was buoyant, infectiously happy, and sung in the Acadian brand of French spoken in southwestern Louisiana. She was hooked.

In time, she traveled to New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country, to absorb the culture, learn Cajun and Zydeco dance styles, and listen to music that just about everyone in southwest Louisiana knows how to dance to. When she returned, she was eager to keep on dancing. Believing that Cajun Two Step would find an audience in the snowy North, Huppe decided to make it happen by teaching it to others.

The world of dance began to unfold for her. While teaching her specialties of Cajun and Zydeco, she branched out to learn and teach ballroom, latin, and east and west coast swing at Adult Ed classes in Newton, Cambridge, and Boston and at Springstep in Medford. She taught several of these styles at Dancing Feats for 14 years.

“Each kind of dance has its own flavor and allows you to express yourself in different ways. The most important things are to have a feel for the music and feel the connection between you and your partner,” she said.

When Baton Rouge native and Needham resident Rebecca Wilson decided to create a fundraiser to help the post-Katrina rebuilding programs in New Orleans, she knew who to ask for support.

“I took my first zydeco lesson from Sue four years ago. We connected right away because of our shared appreciation of all things Louisiana,” Wilson said.

Wilson knew that Ms. Huppe was acquainted with the organizers of large events since Huppe had taught at the Williamstown Jazz Festival, Swingin’ New England, and Strawberry Park’s Blast From the Bayou. Ms. Huppe is now one of the core group planning an event to raise $10,000.

 “The great contacts she’s made as a dance teacher helped us put this event together,” Wilson said. “She knew which venues would suit our purposes. Some of the organizers she knew offered tickets to their events for our raffle and linked our web site to theirs.”

The “Help ReBuild New Orleans” fund raiser will be held at Springstep in Medford on Sunday, October 5, from 5 - 9 pm. Proceeds will be donated to Common Ground Relief, a small volunteer based non-profit organization whose office is in the heart of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

The non-profit group partnered with a licensed general contractor and is rebuilding homes destroyed in Katrina’s wake, and offers legal assistance to homeowners who do their own work to cut through red tape involved in applying for building permits and inspections.

Common Ground Relief has also begun a job training program, placing locals with professional carpenters, electricians, and plumbers who are volunteering their time. One of the members of Wilson’s planning group volunteered his plumbing and carpentry skills to the organization several times in the past two years.

The fundraiser will feature the same vibrant music that first attracted Ms Huppe. Two local bands, Slippery Sneakers and The Chili Brothers, will perform a mix of New Orleans style funk, blues, Cajun, and zydeco. The bands and vendors offered discount rates since they realize every penny will go toward building houses in the Lower 9th Ward. Tickets are $25.00 in advance and may be purchased through the Help ReBuild New Orleans web site www.rebuildneworleans.net.

“What is fun about teaching dance? Everything!” Sue Huppe said. “Remembering what it is like to be a beginner and seeing the joy it brings to people, in fact, seeing how it can change people's lives!”

The "Help ReBuild New Orleans" fundraiser is a testament to that.

Boston Dance Raises Roofs in New Orleans

Music and politics are unlikely dance partners, but Needham’s Rebecca Wilson is determined to match them up. The Baton Rouge native has been dancing to the music of Louisiana for as long as she can remember. A Mardi Gras dance at Ryles in February, with its infectiously happy music and outlandish costumes, captured the indomitable spirit of Louisiana’s “Let the good times roll” for Wilson. It also reminded her of the dark cloud of uncertainty hovering over some quarters of New Orleans.

“As a native of Louisiana, I go back fairly often, so I’m acutely aware of how New Orleans is struggling to fully recover. Many people haven’t come back yet because they have no homes to come back to. I want to harness the New Orleans spirit that I felt that night at Ryles and use it to make people aware that the recovery is ongoing,” she said. 

As a tourist, Wilson’s friend, Somerville attorney Phil Woodbury, had also been mesmerized by the music, food and vibrant street life of New Orleans before Katrina.

“Like many, I watched in horror the pictures of flooded homes and helicopter rescues, and was shocked to read of the slow and chaotic federal response,” Woodbury said. He heard about Common Ground Relief, a small volunteer based group dedicated to immediate cleanup and long-term relief. He packed his bags. His first two trips were in February and April 2006.

Since the group had several legal projects, including eviction defense and police brutality issues, he thought his legal background would be tapped. “But when the v olunteer coordinator noticed that I had put ‘plumbing’ on my list of skills, I got an immediate call, and reported to a house used by the health clinic staff for offices, overflow exam rooms, and sleeping,” he said. By the time he left, there were two functioning bathrooms and a score of grateful volunteers.

A well-timed letter from Woodbury, who happens to love dancing, sent sparks flying in the local zydeco community. His appeal for money, prior to his return to New Orleans in 2008, saying, “Common Ground’s goal continues to be to help restore the Lower 9th Ward by rebuilding homes and by helping bring back the schools, churches, and cultural events that make community possible,” arrived around the same time as February’s Mardi Gras dance. 

It’s hard to tell what synapses need to be triggered to transform a person from a spectator to an activist. Wilson knew that Fats Domino, Irma Thomas, and other musicians lost their homes in the Lower 9th. She felt that government agencies had been slow to aggressively support rebuilding there. She had witnessed New Orleans musicians play their hearts out in spite of the pain of being displaced. She vowed to make some music of her own.

  Wilson and a core of music lovers created "Help ReBuild New Orleans" to raise awareness and money for the rebuilding effort in the Crescent City. They’re soliciting donations and selling tickets to a music event slated for October 5. Two bands playing a variety of Louisiana based music - blues, New Orleans funk and zydeco - and a great dance floor are all in place. Now they need to fill the hall and raise the money.

Wilson and her cohorts have been bitten by the grass roots bug. They hand out flyers and talk it up with every dancer, band member, club owner and just about anyone else they encounter. Good promotion is the only way they'll reach their goal of raising $10,000.

After research, they decided to send the proceeds to the spunky Common Ground Relief organization whose office is situated on Deslondes Street, in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, a few hundred yards from the levee that was breached in 2005.

Seven days after Katrina devastated New Orleans, four activists launched the Common Ground Relief Collective. It was a grass roots effort and has stayed true to its mission. Short term, the goal is to rebuild. Long term, the goal is to address social and political inequities that the organizers believe have plagued the area long before Katrina put it on the national map.

The ambitious outfit is entirely staffed by volunteers. Rebuilding homes and repopulating the neighborhood with its former occupants is just one part of its mission. Its initiatives are a gumbo of socially progressive programs, including toxin removal, legal assistance, and restoration of the wetlands that have historically protected Louisiana. It’s also one of the 10 organizations in Lower Ninth Ward Community Coalition with the “Make It Right” Foundation begun by Brad Pitt.

Wilson visited Common Ground Relief’s headquarters in August. She talked with Operations Director Thom Pepper, who arrived from Miami to help with the relief operation in 2006. He’s watched the focus change from relief work to rebuilding.

Their assortment of muddy rooms filled with cardboard filing boxes, folding chairs and scrounged desks, has been supplanted by a modest two story building in the heart of the 9th ward near the Industrial Canal. The compact structure contains small rooms for meeting and planning, computers wired to the internet, space for a few office staff volunteers, a shower, and cots for the weary.

 “At the end of 2007 spring break, we were having 500 volunteers a week coming here gutting houses and we were cooking 11,000 meals every week on propane stoves in a tent,” Pepper said. Volunteers distributed food and water, set up a legal clinic, a power tool lending library, a clothing center, tested soil and did massive amounts of house gutting.

By October 2007, the house-gutting program was mostly completed and the process of pulling house permits began. Common Ground Relief turned its attention to the rebuilding process.

“We partnered with a licensed general contractor here in Louisiana to build houses. We’ve begun a job-training program, hiring local people and training them in construction skills, and they will be hired to build and do interior finish work here,” Pepper said. Volunteer professional plumbers, electricians, and carpenters help in the training program.

If Pepper can hire and train 60 to 80 local people this year, he estimates that Common Ground Relief could build a house every three months. In spite of a sense of urgency, obstacles exist. City Hall is open weekdays 9am to 4pm, not convenient for working people.  Pepper has lobbied for satellite offices with longer hours to make it easier for people to pull building permits. It hasn’t happened.

Pepper emphasized that this is a long-term project. “Eighty percent of New Orleans was in six feet or more of water. This house we use as our office was under 18 feet of water for three weeks, as was most of the Lower 9th,” Pepper said. “To put this in perspective, it took Miami 10 to 15 years to recover from Hurricane Andrew.”

   Common Ground has benefited from the help of 20,000 volunteers since 2005. At the time Wilson visited this summer, Pepper said there were 30 volunteers, a half dozen of them long term, who get room and board for their efforts.

 “We don’t accept federal, state, or United Way money. All our funding is from foundations and individuals,” Pepper said. "The money allows us to go out to the wetlands and plant trees and grass, do soil testing and bio remediation, and allows us to keep people from having their homes foreclosed. It allowed us to put an 80 year old woman back in her house a hundred yards from here."

Common Ground Relief has agreed to use money raised by Help ReBuild New Orleans exclusively for rebuilding homes. Every penny from Wilson’s Help ReBuild New Orleans fundraiser will be spent on lumber, sheetrock, roofing and the like.

Wilson’s planning group loves the potent culture of music and dance that makes New Orleans vital and irreplaceable. By the time their fundraiser is held at Spring Step in Medford on October 5, they intend that a few hundred New Englanders will become honorary Louisianians for a day.

“I want to capture the joy New Orleans generates and to remind people that this unique city is still suffering.  New Orleans needs a rebirth. Pull out your wallets and put on your dancing shoes. This is an opportunity for all of us to help with the baptism,” she says with a smile.

Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life

Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
Written by Terrence McNally, with original songs by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty
The Colonial Theater, Boston, MA
May 1 - May 6, 2007

She’s 74 years old, for god’s sake. Seventy-four. And when her name is Chita Rivera, she can fill up a theater on the recognition of her name alone. Standing at five feet four inches on great gams, she’s one of the rare legends who knows how to trade on her fame without losing her dignity. Her feet don’t move like Latin lightning any more but she has stage presence, enormous poise, a surprisingly rich alto singing voice, and a terrific storyteller’s sense of timing.

Photo: http://www.thedancerslife.com/downloads.php#

 All of which she puts together in this national tour show, “Chita Rivera: the Dancer’s Life” - the story of her life, a history that practically defines musical theater in the last half of the twentieth century. She’s had her feet bandaged by George Balanchine, been taught to sing by Leonard Bernstein, and danced with the most influential choreographers of the twentieth century - Jack Cole, Jerome Robbins, and Bob Fosse. You don’t have to be a dance junkie to have heard of musicals like West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Rivera starred in twenty-five musicals in over fifty years.

The 2002 “Kennedy Honors” award to Rivera is the springboard writer Terence McNally used to propel the show and allow Rivera to look back on her career. Her stage arc may be in eclipse but her spark, well, that’s another matter. Sitting on a chair stage center, Rivera opens the show reminiscing about being raised in Washington, D.C. as a first generation Puerto Rican American. It’s not long before she’s dancing on a table on the set behind her (her mother sent Rivera to ballet school not long after she broke the family table while dancing on it).

Rivera and her company of eight top tier dancers stunningly executed two dozen song and dance routines that reprised her roles on Broadway. Rivera has lived musical theater from the TV Ed Sullivan Show to the post AIDS world.

Photo from http://www.chitarivera.com/productions/dancerslife.htm

The secret is that Chita has learned to do more with less. A sideways glance, a lowering of the voice, a well timed swivel of the hips, an sporadic burst of fancy footwork, and an occasional high kick to the rafters, remind us she’s still on fire. What keeps the show balanced is Rivera’s willingness to complement, not compete with, the extraordinary dancers in her troupe. They clearly adore her.

“Looking back doesn’t have to be painful,” she says at the top of the show. Rivera certainly had her share of pain - shattered leg in an auto accident, denied movie roles for dance roles she created on Broadway - but she always soldiered on in a Darwinian environment in which talent, luck, and grit were her constant dance partners. 

Here, she’s content to remind us of her greatness not to prove it. She never forgot the advice given to her by her first dance instructor before her first big audition, “Conchita, stay in your lane,” dance language for ‘Don’t worry about the dancers around you, just be who you are.’ Rivera is still stoked with stamina, talent, and attitude but, simply put, she hasn’t forgotten that she’s seventy-four.

Great singers and dancers like Rivera instinctively embrace their audience. One isn’t surprised to hear her say softly near the end of her show, ”When you drag yourself to the theater on a rainy afternoon and the matinée is less than half full, you are there for that one person whose life might be changed by what you do.” When she looked into the audience, I felt she was looking right at me and I’ll bet someone thirty rows away felt the same thing.

“Passing The Torch”, the last section on the program, features Rivera and her dancers in an exuberant, full throttle rendition of “All That Jazz” (Chicago). Under the combustion, one feels Father Time tapping his feet to the music, a poignant reminder that all shows, Rivera’s and ours, have a finale.

Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero knows what she’s got left in the tank and drives accordingly. What an instructive lesson to those of us not too far behind her in the parade.

The Elders Dance Ensemble, a silver lining

The Elders Dance Ensemble, Prometheus Dance Company
The Dance Complex, 536 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA
April 16, 2006

You've got to be kidding me. A dance ensemble made up of eight women from 60 to 83 years of age? These proto baby boomers who've spent their lives telling their offspring "You can become anything you can dream" appear to have taken their own advice. They call themselves "post career" dancers.

To its credit, the dance community has become much more diverse. Dancers of all colors, shapes and sizes are the norm. But we're hip deep in youth culture. People beyond a certain age are not represented in popular entertainment media. Is there an audience for a senior dance company? What will audiences of elders think of dancers who look like them - gray haired, with the wrinkles and sags that come with age? Will they be inspired by the creativity, wisdom, and complete lack of self-consciousness of these performers or jarred into an acceptance of their own struggles with age and the spectral future. I've been old enough to qualify for an AARP card for several years. Those were the contradictory thoughts that raced through my mind as I watched these Elders.

Where did the idea of silver haired sylphs come from? The spirit of Dame Margo Fonteyn smoldered in the hearts of these women while they raised families or climbed career ladders. The embers were fanned when some began performing at senior citizen and assisted living centers and became fully ignited when many of them performed in a Prometheus Dance performance in 2002. By 2003, the artistic directors of the Prometheus Dance were sufficiently awed and inspired by the work of these grande dames that they assumed responsibility for training them in their 55+ dance class at the Dance Complex in Cambridge and created The Elders Dance Ensemble as a performing company within their own Prometheus Dance Company. The Elders Ensemble of Prometheus Dance Inc. was founded by a grant from the Cambridge Arts Council in 2005.

The evening's performance at the Dance Complex studio in Cambridge consisted of five pieces: “Interview”; “Shadow Prophesy”; “Reading of Original Stories and Poems”; “Troika”; and “There's a Dance in the Ol' Dame Yet”.

The performers dance their age. Slow graceful movements, facial expressions, bends, and rolls are the staples of their dance. One reason it's fascinating to watch them perform is that they don't embarrass themselves, or us, by attempting grande jetes and deep plies that just don't work for dancers over sixty. They've found grace by respecting gravity.

"Interview" is actually the audiotape of a WBUR FM “Here and Now” story about the Elders Dance Company. "Reading of Original Stories and Poems" offers a window into the interior personalities as three dancers read their work. "Shadow Prophesy" performed between one dancer and a quartet of others who seemed to be guides, might be interpreted as a metaphorical dance from uncertainty to a centered calm and acceptance of the future.

The two-part “Troika” was a brilliant surprise. Part One was a fast paced vigorous dance performed by three dancers in their twenties. The energy and firm bodies of the young women were a stark contrast to the more stately and mature Elders. What were they doing here? The lights dimmed momentarily, the three young women drifted off stage and three members of the Elders company, using the same edgy music, echoed the movements of their young counterparts, with equal intensity but without the athleticism. The six joined for a confident and proud finish together… a very satisfying fusion of age and energy.

The last dance, “There's a Dance in the Ol' Dame Yet”, is imaginatively conceived. As the stage lights come up, there stand all eight Elder dancers wearing retro sunglasses and exuding attitude. Using lawn chairs as props, the eight seem to portray the range of life in the gray zone: some interact energetically with each other, one or two seem in a fog (dementia, Alzheimer's?), others are contemplatively engaged. At one point, they perform a synchronized send up of a chorus line, high kicks and all, from sedentary positions on their lawn chairs. The music slows and fades. In small groups and individually, some holding hands and hugging, they exit the stage. A poignantly bittersweet finale.

Perhaps the story here is not so much what these senior women did, but that they did it at all. They may be the forefront of a movement of in which elder members of society will showcase their vitality and make performing arts a truly intergenerational experience. I'm not kidding.

The web site for the Prometheus Dance Company
www.prometheusdance.org

Here and Now WBUR story about Prometheus Dance Elder Ensemble
http://www.here-now.org/shows/2005/06/20050610_17.asp

Dancing with Mona Lisa

I danced with Mona Lisa last night. The inscrutable smile, beguiling, embracing, and distant. Eyes that followed me wherever I turned. She gazed into me and through me at the same time.

She followed my movements intuitively, without a trace of irritation at my novice’s blunders, me, a man of good intention and poor execution, a man in need of a learner’s permit to gain entrance to the dance floor. If my dancing were my driving and I hadn’t been on the safer confines of the dance hall’s golden oak floor, I’d have been the subject of the eleven o’clock news describing a massive chain reaction car collision at Wellington Circle.

I watch her dance effortlessly with men who possess glorious gifts of timing, graceful and confident technique. Yet here she is in my arms, tolerating my awkward, wet from the chrysalis attempts at leading, always one step behind myself.

I am drawn to her by the safety of that smile, not ironic or with rolled eyes, but accepting and without judgment, allowing me to fail before I succeed. Is she recalling her own ascent into ballroom stratosphere, her own tentative first steps, her only strength being her desire to succeed?

Some day I will be free of the fetters of counting and memorization and launch into the cosmos of the dance, subject only to the laws of gravity and my imagination. Under the gaze of this Mona Lisa, I will grow into the dancer I am destined to become.

Salsa redux

Salsa at Ryles in Cambridge, can also be applied to salsa at Union Station in Newton Corner...

Those six short Latin steps did it. The aesthetic ideals I apply women were laid waste last night. I fell hopelessly in love with several women at a salsa dance. Women of all shapes and sizes, women who wouldn’t have been laser beamed into my radar in the workaday world, skyrocketed like roman candles into my consciousness, dislodging my notions of sculpted playboy beauty. They were chunkier, plainer of face, unremarkable in proportion. But on the dance floor they were wet dreams in motion, Utterly transformed into graceful, commanding, sinuously moving creatures who found a fourth dimension hitherto unseen by this Yankee boy. I could not keep from staring at them from the perimeter of the dance floor.

One heavy set blonde woman, anti matter as far as cover girl proportions go, wearing a black outfit, jiggling midriff-baring top and short skirt, was transformed into a goddess with agile feet, perfect balance and a megawatt smile. She attracted the most amazing posse of men, young and old, who vied for her attention on the parquet. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Textbook salsa, upper torso remaining upright under her feet and her hips, my god, her hips swiveling in a way to make Fidel proclaim salsa as the national dance. More powerful than sexy, this was sensual. And fun. Are epiphanies accompanied by eight beats sounded out in six steps?

I have vowed to learn this dance, to commit it to muscle memory. I dream of the day I can take one of these goddess's hands in mine and lead her in this dance of love. I want to see her eyes light with anticipation when she sees me walking toward her with my extended hand.

There’s mystery afoot, too. I don’t want to seduce these women, I want to dance with them. Very well. I want to express my masculinity by leading them in ways that bring us both pleasure - sensual kinesthesia.

How many women are walking down the street who can make the Clark Kent quick change into black smooth soled pumps and suck the hearts out of unsuspecting partners within sight lines on a dance floor? And how many men? In time, at least one more of them. Maybe I’ve been transformed into a Yanqui Boy.