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Today I'll give what I'm pretty sure will be my final talk emanating from
LOVE: A Philadelphia Affair. I'll join Liz Dow, the extraordinary woman behind Leadership Philadelphia, and her leaderly contingent. We'll talk about this city we believe in.
The rest of the day will be a father-daughter day. Museums in the afternoon. Dinner. Then my father's early birthday present—tickets to "Once," which won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in 2012.
I. Love. This. Story.
I. Sing. Those. Songs.
And while I gave my father many choices when we were planning out this day, I was secretly very glad when he said that "Once" was his first choice.
So off we will go.
Away, for a day, from here.
I snapped this photograph long before the Alvin Ailey dancers took the stage at the Academy of Music yesterday. I was thinking of my twins, in my Centennial novel
Dangerous Neighbors—a scene of them together in this music hall, awaiting the arrival of Adelina Patti. From the book, then:
It is another world inside. It is stone sheen, gold, and gaslight. “Oh, Anna,” Katherine says, and Anna presses her hand to her heart. Even then, even before she knows what will be stolen from her, even before she is aware of the possibility, Katherine wants every inch of this one birthday evening for keeps. She wants to lodge it deep, for all of time. She leads the way up the stairs and through the crowds and toward an arch and through a door and down the aisle toward their cushioned seats, holding Anna’s hand. High above is the crystal chandelier, and Anna won’t take her eyes off it; in Anna’s eyes it shines. It’s like the icicles that form on the edge of a roof when the sun gets trapped inside—a cascade of ice and sun.
“Like sitting inside a jewelry box,” Anna whispers, and Katherine nods.
You can't take pictures during a theatrical performance, and obviously I never would. So that this, before you, is the high cake stack of Philadelphia's City Hall, as seen from below, a half hour before the curtains rose on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater production staged at Philadelphia's own Academy of Music. Three suites were performed—Dancing Spirit, Forgotten Time, Revelations. We, the nearly sold-out audience, were on our feet by the end, when the dancers—the women done up in bright yellow church dresses and flopping hats, the men wearing proper black and whites, the props nothing more than golden fans and plunked down stools—were rocking our souls in the bosom of Abraham. We were in love with the slender reach of the their arms, the bewilderingly beautiful musculature of their backs, the roll and whip of their necks. Mostly, let's be honest, we were in love with their joy; we took some for ourselves when they weren't looking.
All praise on a sunny Sunday. All rise to the dance.
Beautiful.
Wow.
Oh, wow. So lovely.