Dancers' Day

Lunch on the Upper West Side with the lovely Dottie Stanley, an old pal of Mum's from when they appeared together in "42nd STREET" with Ruta Lee.

Dottie has become a good mate and she is briefly visiting from her farm in Vermont. She is soon to appear at the local theatre there in a production of the play GOOD PEOPLE then will play Madame Armfeldt in NIGHT MUSIC.

Then I walked briskly 40 blocks downtown through the snow and slush to Lincoln Centre for the first screening of the documentary AFTERNOON OF A FAUN, about Tanaquil Leclercq, wife to George Balanchine and muse to Jerome Robbins who was tragically crippled with polio at the height of her career.

Grabbed a coffee at the cinema café and ran into Zina Goldrich, composer of my-hopefully-next-Broadway-Show EVER AFTER. She looks wonderfully well and has exciting plans for another new musical which sounds like a hit!

Then tea at a Japanese restaurant on 72nd with Donna McKechnie. For over a year I have wanted to give Donna a copy of Irina Baranova's marvelous autobiography "Dance, Life and Love" and after tracking down a second hand copy on Amazon I was finally able to deliver it. She has a series of orchestral concerts coming up as part of "4 GIRLS 4" with Andrea McArdle, Maureen McGovern and Leslie Uggams. Otherwise we bemoaned the state of Broadway and planned ways to get back on it!

Then dinner with my final dancer of the day, Sondra Lee, who wanted me to meet a new friend, August Ventura, a brilliant, elegant and witty gentleman currently making a documentary about the annual Verdi festival in Parma, Italy. He also designed Charles Busch's glorious Greenwich Village apartment and his partner is the handsome operatic baritone Robert Osborne so he is...how you say...living the dream.

Sondra was keen to introduce us to a Cuban-Chinese restaurant she adores. A triumph all around.