Pace 3 poems and 3 videos, Doña Quixote applauds Peter’s joie de vivre as he struts his stuff at 71
At DF Dance Studio, Peter — his black shirt and pants bedecked with a red tie — walks onto the stage with his team, Fuego (Fire). His lissom dance partner,
“the lady in red, she in the chile con carne red,
brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,
…crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music” (“Dancer,” Carl Sandburg).
The lady in red is lovely Annika Wildenradt who not only dances, but also gets “adrenaline rushes” from mountain biking, skiing, and “activities of the mind, such as writing and engaging in philosophical debates.” To get a flavor of her marvelous writing, go to LinkedIn for her article titled “From the Slopes to the Valley: Mountain Lessons Applied to Tech Life.” Her writing about anxiety in “Mapping My Way to Mental Clarity” was interesting and helpful to Doña Quixote too.
From behind Peter’s camera, which she was trained to operate an hour earlier, “Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers.” In a wobbly video she captures the women’s off-the-shoulder dresses changing from red to purple to black under the spotlights and the men in black gliding from step to step on their suede-bottomed shoes. (The quote is the title of a poem by William Butler Yeats). Peter and Annika, centered in the still below, appear in the back row in the video:
While Peter dances on, Doña Quixote/Crazy Jane stopped taking dance classes about 6 months ago when her moves started to resemble an “Overture to a Dance of Locomotives” (William Carlos Williams). She wholeheartedly urged Peter to continue at studio DF: dancing has been his stepping-stone into his zone since he was a small child. As his brother Cliff writes, their parents “had bought a new radiogram that could play records when I was about 16 and my friend Raymond Dicks and I were very keen to practice our dancing steps and listen to music like In the Mood.
Peter, 4 years old, loved to watch us gyrating in the dining room. We soon banned him because of his constant loud laughter. One day when we had again chased him out, he went crying to to my mother in the kitchen. Holding Peter firmly by the shoulder, she closed the dining-room door to keep him out. Then she set him up on a chair in on the kitchen side from where he happily watched us through the large keyhole!”
When the Doña talks to friends about Peter’s dancing while she is happily in bed by 10 pm, they often ask her if she isn’t jealous. To which she replies that if Peter had found his zone in tennis and played into septuagarian-hood with a partner—male or female or otherwise gendered —she would not dream of asking him to stop an acitivity that gives him such great joy. Why, then, should she ask him to stop dancing?
Most of all, the Doña has no qualms about Peter dancing with other people because he has long ago said YES to ME in the words of Leonard Cohen’s song Dance Me to the End of Love, whether I be Gerda, Doña Quixote, or Crazy Jane.
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh, let me
see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to
the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We’re both of us beneath our love, we’re both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to
the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
February 12, 2019 @ 3:07 pm
I have been a Leonard Cohen fan for a very long time and after he died there was a lot of publicity on his life and the meaning of his poetry. I was surprised to learn the following: “Despite being structured as a love song, this was in fact inspired by the Holocaust. Cohen recalled: ‘That came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.’
‘So, that music, ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,’ meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved’ ” source Song Facts.
February 12, 2019 @ 3:14 pm
How lovely to hear from you, Ingrid. I had heard the background of the song before. I wondered whether to mention it in the blog, but in the end decided to leave it out because I wanted the main focus to be on Peter. I think I will put the link to the info you give into the blog itself so those who want to can follow up.
February 18, 2019 @ 9:39 am
David and I are so impressed! This is a mighty fine video, good work Gerda! And we thought Peter was smooth, stylin’ and debonair! Thank you for sharing this, Gerda. We loved seeing Peter dance. Much love to you and yours, we’re missing you.
March 7, 2019 @ 4:36 pm
thanks so much for your lovely comments, Mary. Been thinking of you extra these last few days since Tom asked me to write him a recommendation letter. I keep thinking how lovely it is that you are in NYC with Tom and April (though I’m sure you see more of Boone and Belle!) We’re looking forward to coming to see you in situ. Lots of love, miss you too.