January 19th was the best afternoon of my life. A friend took me to the Joyce to see the Irene Rodriguez Company. It’s a small Cuban company: six dancers, six musicians and Irene Rodriguez the director and principal dancer and choreographer. The first dance was a teaser. The curtain was raised only to the dancers’ knees. We watched twelve very agile feet glide, twist, dance. No way of distinguishing female or male. Eight dances followed. Have you ever seen a dancer dancing in a gown with a train? Rodriguez and the other women turned their trains into part of the dance. Every dance was a delight visually and choreographically.
The next afternoon I went to a Frick concert, Trio Karénine. It was the ensemble’s New York debut. The musicians, a violinist, cellist and pianist treated us to a somber rendering of Shostakovish, Ravel and Schubert. Afterwards, we went to Via Quadronno where I had one of my favorite desserts: affocato al caffe (vanilla ice cream with espresso).
Speaking of food, a few friends came to Friday night supper. For dessert I served plumbing supplies made of chocolate. United Chocolate Works makes these eye catching treats.
A Confession: I am a Draino junkie. As friends or partners provide opiates to their loved ones, I douse my Harry Pottery toilet, it’s magical, with Draino. Since Nov. I’ve put up with weekly overflows. Plumbers have come and gone, each stating that the toilet was fixed.
Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder.
Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.
Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.
Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School? Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?