Tonight! Chocolate Cake! And Belly-Dancers!

Dancing for the seniors last night was a hoot. I think old people are one of the best audiences to dance for from a dancer's point of view.

If they like you, they have such lovely appreciative smiles....

"You just look so beautiful, my dear", said one sweetie, taking my hand between musical numbers.

If they don't like you, and have a zoned expression, or have started snoozing while you pirouette, one can simply blame it on their medication.

Our audience was composed entirely of folks over eighty years old. Several were in their advanced nineties, and three were one hundred years old or older! Some of our audience seemed surprisingly spry, considering their advanced age. We even got some toe-tapping!

The room we danced in was huge ! It had a nice soft carpet to dance on in our bare feet(I've danced on some nasty floors before), but the audience was scattered in easy chairs in a loose circle around the perimeter, not an ideal set-up.

I prefer it when the audience is cozier. They can see the subtleties (it's hard to see a belly flutter at twenty paces), and the dancer can make flirty eye-contact with the individual people in the crowd.

As it was, I overheard these two sweet old fellows watching from the far left, leaning forward and obviously enjoying watching my friend Linda dance a drum solo:

First fellow:"Fantastic, oh fantastic! Imagine dancing with a sword on your head like that!"

Second fellow: Eh, what? She's got a what on her head? Where?!

I was glad that we had two free-style pieces where the whole group of us danced at once. Then one or two of us could go and shimmy solely for the people at the far edges of the room.

The heat was set at 75 degrees in the room and they had an electric fireplace going. By the end of our half-hour show I was ready to stick my head in a cold bucket of water. Despite that, we all danced with wonderful energy, our evenings at Linda's house practicing paying off.

I even felt curiously relaxed during the brand-new gypsy choreography with Kelly. I was sure I'd forget something in that dance. But we danced really well together, especially considering we've only been able to practice that dance maybe three times in the same room together. Heh, we are just super-cute dancing gypsies on the inside, I guess.

On our way back to the "dressing room" after our performance, we noticed we were advertised on the menu: Tonight! Chocolate cake! And Belly-Dancers!

Who wouldn't want to come down to dinner with an advertisement like that?