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When I was in college, I bought a student-priced season pass for music and dance performances hosted at the university.
I remember sitting in the audience watching a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. The troop embodies everything I love about dance: freedom, bold swipes at sweeping themes, costumes and set designs of clean line that add to, rather than distract from stories and moods expressed by the dancers.
I’d heard so much about the principal dancer, Judith Jamison (pictured in the photo) that I searched each female face while wondering if I’d know her from any of the other dancers.
Then a woman stepped onstage with the presence of a Goliath, and wow, wow, wow! I was thunderstruck by the energy that poured from her every move.
Every once in awhile we’re graced with the adrenaline rush of seeing a performer so outside-the-box they seem to transport you to another universe. That’s what happened to me that evening. And upon seeing the soon-to-defect Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov for the first time.
Have you ever seen an artist of that ilk?
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BLISS ROAD, a memoir, June 2023
THE FALCON, THE WOLF AND THE HUMMINGBIRD, a historical novel, Sept. 19, 2023