We keep this one up for 8 minutes: Janet Gaynor — I will survive

Dear friends and readers,

Imagine full routine of steps, about 30 women in rows, a young leader in front, mirrors on three sides — and we clap too:

Try it. It’s exhilarating.

Today I met a woman, Minnie, 76 whose husband died 3 weeks ago, he had an infection, then a heart attack; it took a week; he was 84. Married 50 years.  One son, age 49.  She is in a trance of grief. By the end of dancing with the group to this number she was smiling too. I learned something too: if I bend my knees to a certain angle, I can swivel my hips freely and easily.

The good news is this dance fusion class will be held as of September 2nd each Monday and Friday morning. As of late September my teaching classes are Tuesday (The Gothic, OLLI at AU) and Wednesday (Beyond Barsetshire, OLLI at GMU) afternoons.

Disco: one of the teachers for water-arobics comes armed with an hour of this kind of music on tape Dancing, walking exercising swimming in water to disco. Here the leader has to do it on the floor in front of the pool (with a fan behind her). Listening makes me want to re-watch Whit Stillman’s Last Days of Disco, which includes a free adaptation of Emma and Sense and Sensibility and an soundtrack filled with these numbers.

Sylvia

Author: ellenandjim

Ellen Moody holds a Ph.D in British Literature and taught in American senior colleges for more than 40 years. Since 2013 she has been teaching older retired people at two Oscher Institutes of Lifelong Learning, one attached to American University (Washington, DC) and other to George Mason University (in Fairfax, Va). She is also a literary scholar with specialties in 18th century literature, translation, early modern and women's studies, film, nineteenth and 20th century literature and of course Trollope. For Trollope she wrote a book on her experiences of reading Trollope on the Internet with others, some more academic style essays, two on film adaptations, the most recent on Trollope's depiction of settler colonialism: "On Inventing a New Country." Here is her website: http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/ No part of this blog may be reproduced without express permission from the author/blog owner. Linking, on the other hand, is highly encouraged!

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  1. Pingback: So we will end for the 3 next weeks on Billy Joel’s Piano Man | Under the Sign of Sylvia II

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