One of the things that Tricia Olszewski dinged us on was the dancing in the show. And this surprised me, because I think the dancers' work is our strength. (Remember, I'm not doing any of the dancing.) Laurie and I chatted about it, and we concluded that the reviewer had specific ideas about what the choreography should be, and that we were doing something different. We're doing a lot of swing/Lindy hop, and very little tap. (See De-Lovely for a snatch of the canonical "Anything Goes," which is the march of the tappers.) But I'm not trying to argue with a critic; that's a mug's game.

No, this entry is about these fearless, ready-for-anything kids and their joyful, gymnastic dancing. A couple of days ago we added a section to "Let's Step Out" where Skye flips Luke into a somersault, and then the two men hit the deck in splits. Before we opened the house today, Laurie fussed with adding another bit, this time to the instrumental break in "Bon Voyage," which really needs it.

This evening, in the second act, during one of the passages where the most interesting thing for me to do is read a book (Jim Thompson at the moment), Skye and Kristen were hanging out waiting for the next scene while Naomi and Nadim were singing "Let's Misbehave" onstage, and there in the aisle between the prop table and the weird shit miscellaneous storage of the theater, the two of them did a little dance, in no more space than a coffee table takes up, for no audience, but just for the pure pleasure of it.

posted: 1:00:21 AM  

OneLook's Reverse Dictionary beta may help you to find that word you're groping for, or to generate a list of examples. "fear of thirteen" turns up "triskadekaphobia" as the first hit (and "paraskavedekatriaphobia" [fear of Friday the 13th] as the third). But don't look too far down the results list: hit #15 for the search "birds of prey" is "partridge."

(Thanks to "nsd".)

posted: 12:21:24 AM