A dancer weaving words with images

To dance is to be fully immersed in a string of sacred, fleeting moments...

Hello everyone. I am a private person by nature, possibly a bit of a hermit. However, I am stepping out of the familiar to tell you a little about myself.

In the second phase of my creative life, I am evolving into a writer - formerly a dancer and choreographer with a New York City Dance Company. Along the way I was a homeschooling mother, a dealer in 18th- and 19th-century French academic art-still a great passion-and a garden designer - - it’s a long story.

Awarded Honorable Mention in the Memoirs category of Writer's Digest Writing Competition, 2023 for Ancestral Memories: Three Generations Of War–a piece that is also evolving–I was recently published in Cathexis Northwest Press, March-April 2024 and The Argyle Literary Magazine, May 2024, which is out now.

Currently, I am working on my forthcoming book Inspired By Beauty: A Journey Through Time – a romp through art & style from 18th-century France to the contemporary era. Inspired by Beauty is both an art book and text book–a blend of the whimsical and academic. Created through the lens of choreography, the book features the beguiling historic dressmaker Lauren Rossi in the role of muse and sometimes nymph. Ms. Rossi saunters throughout my rooms in her exquisite, handmade 18th-century French-inspired dresses, where she often appears as living art.

Opening as an historic house tour, Inspired By Beauty pays homage to an 18th-century French sensibility and closes as a sort of treatise on aesthetics. I imagine my readers to be, like me, lovers of all things poetic, with their muse being Beauty.

As of now, this work has the interest of two museums; one would host a live event/book signing and the other will provide a contributing essay. Details will be announced at a later date.

More about this at: www.InspiredByBeautyTheBook.com

Returning to my life in dance, it is a joy to share this photo of my choreography taken by the legendary dance photographer Lois Greenfield. The dancer is June Balish, a long time member of my dance company, and the dance, “Woman on The Edge of a Chair”- a piece that made its New York City debut in 1988, and was made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

THE PHOTOSHOOT SPRINGS TO LIFE
It was the late 1980s, New York City. I recall dragging that heavy chair through the dirty city streets in search of Lois’s studio. That is a story in itself! But once there, it was bliss. I was a young choreographer, excited to have my art photographed by Lois. She, a young photographer on the cusp of fame, who surprised me with her warmth and down to earth spirit. Watching her with the camera was awe-inspiring, as she metamorphosed into parts of the choreography. I selected sections of my dance pieces that I wanted frozen in time, with the dancers doing their part, repeating over and over those fragments of choreography that Lois also wished to capture. She explored every angle and even caught glimpses of moments that I hadn’t known were there. We were on fire; there was no distinction between us and our art.

To create is to be fully alive, that is the only way for us artists. So, over and over again, we choose life.

This image is one of several photos of my work that is in the permanent collections of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. I was thrilled to learn, so many years later, that these were included in their archives. For a few brief moments, I had the illusion that I could harness time. But in truth, dance is fleeting, alive only in the moment. To dance is to be fully immersed in a string of sacred, fleeting moments - - to glisten under a moon, or even be the moon.

Today, I still choose life, only now my stories unfold on paper. Weaving narratives from my imagination–and words from memory and desires–I hope that I may catch a glimmer of that which is fleeting and sacred and then, just maybe, touch another life along the way.

Thank you for joining me on this path, if only for a few fleeting moments.

- The photo used in my logo is by Scott Irvine