A Dance Weekend

November 10, 2014 – A Dance Weekend

My weekend was filled with dance, but Elliott didn’t feel much like dancing this weekend.  The problem wasn’t shingles, but back pain, a very intense pain that has been plaguing him more than it usually does.  Even his strong painkillers don’t seem to provide relief.  Elliott doesn’t complain very often, but I can see his grimaces and hear his groans.  This prolonged pain is wearing down his spirit and keeping him less active, which, in turn, makes him weaker.  However, it didn’t prevent him from working on the downstairs renovation project.  Now that the floor is finished, we're ready to paint.  So he directed the boxing up of the contents of the closets.  In the process, we came across some real treasures, such as Elliott’s old painting box, purchased from Sennelier, the art supply store in Paris, when he was living there in the 1950s.   

Elliott offered his old paint box to Marshall.

In addition, Elliott managed to measure every wall and ceiling on the lower level – twice – in order to calculate how many gallons of paint we’ll need.  And his pain didn’t keep him from making at least two paint-related trips to Home Depot in the past few days.  Now that we’ve selected the shade of white, we just need to find someone to do the actual work. 

For me, this weekend revolved around dance.  I had invited Elisa, a former dancer (9 years of ballet and 4 years on the high school precision dance team), to join me for two very special performances.  The first was a Friday evening performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company at GMU.  Of course Martha Graham’s name is well-known, but until I took Dance Appreciation this past summer, I didn’t know anything at all about her signature style – angular, emotionally intense – and I had little appreciation for how she revolutionized modern dance and influenced a whole generation of choreographers.  I was hoping to be transported, but while the performance was interesting, it didn’t affect me strongly. 

However, the second performance of the weekend exceeded all of my expectations.  This was Little Dancer, a new musical making its world premiere at the Kennedy Center.  The show was inspired by the story of the young ballet dancer who posed for Degas’ famous sculpture in the late 1800s.  The original wax cast of the statue is in the collection of the National Gallery Art.  From beginning to end, Little Dancer was a thrilling, riveting, dynamic piece of theatrical art.  It was beautifully conceived, staged (down to the very last detail) and performed.  Directed by Tony Award winner Susan Stroman, the show featured an immensely talented cast, including top Broadway singers and actors, and one of the principal dancers from the New York City Ballet in the title role.  After the final curtain went down, Elisa and I left the Kennedy Center with a feeling of elation that lasted for hours afterwards.

On the Kennedy Center terrace after the show

Mmmm, pizza rustica at Campono - it's worth all the calories

Of course, there’s more to life than dance.  On the food front, we dined out (that fabulous Rustica pizza at Campono before the Kennedy Center show) and cooked together (garlic shrimp, broccoli rabe, roasted beets with goat cheese and pistachios, pumpkin muffins).  We also planned the menu for the first of the season’s annual carb fests, i.e. Thanksgiving.  So far, the menu includes roasted turkey breast (for the carnivores), New England cod (for the pescatarians), Elliott’s favorite mashed potatoes with herbed goat cheese, Matt’s preferred sweet potato oven-fries, everyone’s favorite casserole of cornbread-veggie stuffing, Elisa’s favorite green beans with miso-mustard sauce, my favorite raw cranberry-apple-orange relish, and at least two kinds of pie – I’m sure the Pilgrims enjoyed chocolate cream pie back in 1621 in Plymouth.