Tag: Court Street

The Red Shoes Fairy Tale is True

While I was running errands yesterday I went into the Barnes & Noble on Court Street and came across an interesting book.  It’s called The Dancing Plague, The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness, by John Waller.  Full of footnotes, the book must have begun as an academic paper.  It describes a woman in Germany in the 1500’s who one day began dancing in the street and couldn’t stop.  She danced until her feet bled, just like in the fairy tale The Red Shoes.  It was the start of an epidemic and hundreds of people danced beyond exhaustion and some did dance until they died.  That fairy tale developed from a true story.  Freaky.

We have a “red shoes” piece in Clown Axioms.

Just another manic Monday

After The Husband and My Kid left for work and school I drank coffee and thought about laundry, but I dressed for the gym and unlike other days when I put on sweats I actually made it to the Y. I didn’t get there in time for the class I had intended to take but I swam laps and took two other classes in addition so I’m feeling a little bit proud of myself. It counts as clown work because I’m not really in shape or have the stamina (to perform a full-length solo stage show) that I would like to have. On the way to pick up My Kid after school I stopped at a grocery store to buy some things for dinner, which I them proceeded to carry from Manhattan to her school in Brooklyn and then to the Barnes and Noble on Court Street and then to the Modells on Atlantic and through Atlantic Mall and the rest of the way home. Next time I’m going to the expensive corner store near our apartment. After supper I took the subway back into Manhattan to catch the last hour of Clown Lab because it was the first one in several months. Jef is back in town for the Broadway run of “Slava’s Snowshow” and I wanted to touch base with him and the regulars. “Snowshow” was reviewed by Charles Isherwood in the New York Times today. I found his description of the show as a “delightful kiddie curio” offensive even though it was a positive review.

Slava's Snowshow
Slava's Snowshow