“Dance is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts..."

Some friends of ours have asked us, several years in a row now, to join them in watching their daughter dance at a local annual dance competition. North Carolina State University has hosted this event. She is just addicted to ballroom dancing, and does very well. We thoroughly enjoyed it, and I practiced sketching some of them from this event. It was great fun, because these folks really have such a love of dance, and it was mesmerizing to see them go from early in the day ‘til evening with hardly a break.
During one break, a little girl who was a spectator in the audience approached one of the young male dancers and asked him to teach her to dance, which he readily did. It was endearing to watch how sweet he was with her and how excited she was to learn.

They danced for the sheer joy of it and their passion just oozed…

“The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.” (-Mata Hari)

"'Tis pity wine should be so deleterious..."

I’m a huge fan of loose, free watercolors where the transparent colors play on the page. Far too often, though, I’m afraid my own watercolors are stiff and lifeless, so I will sometimes push myself to experiment with exercises in efforts to try to loosen up.

I’m a strong proponent of “going right in with paint,” without sketching anything first. For some reason, if the result is a wonky painting, that doesn’t bother me. I guess I feel that the not-sketching-first gives me an excuse if it's not what I initially envisioned from my efforts. I also like playing with paints wet-in-wet on the page, because the colors merge and dance on paper, and you’re never quite sure if that dance will be a ballet, a tango, or the rumba.

Once, I decided it might relax me to drink a glass of red wine while I painted, and I thought that just might be the ticket. I was pretty engrossed in my painting when it suddenly occurred to me that the wine had an awful after-taste, and upon further examination, I realized I was dipping my paintbrush into the wine, and drinking the paint water.

So much for good intentions.

“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.”

(-Homer)

"We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance." (Japanese proverb)

I'm dancing today, because I finished my taxes.

It's always such an arduous task, and the prospect of it ranks right up there with getting a crown on a tooth or standing in line at the DMV. I was determined to end today with taxes "behind me."

This year, I'm dancing, too, because while I DO owe money, it's such a minuscule amount that I'm thrilled: I think it means that I actually calculated my withholding status so that it makes some kind of nutty sense.

And the Big Tax Rebate will be coming soon. I think along with dancing, we'll take a bit of that money and plant some beautiful knockout roses at the end of the yard. My sweet mother, at the end of her life, couldn't walk, so it was hard for her to get out and about. She loved to go shopping sometimes, just to get out of the house, and see people and things. She'd call me and say, "Do you think you and I could spend a day 'helping the economy?'"

Edwin Denby, the American poet and dance critic, said:
"There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good."
So, yeah...I'm dancin'