Even while neo-romantic film composer Georges Delerue illustrated the dramas being played out on the screen, he invested his scores with layers of half-remembered emotions. So when we think we know what is going on, our subconscious memory is responding on a deeper, mysterious level.

At its best, “je me souviens. . . I remember,” Susan Tenney’s homage to Delerue, choreographed to his music, also evokes layers of hidden memory while it narrates everyday scenes. One of the dancers, Cynthia Yank, is a “real” little girl, not a small adult pretending to be a child! Somehow having a child onstage helps us recall our own childhood.

I was fascinated by the most recent excerpt, which I saw in rehearsal at the Princeton Ballet School of American Repertory Ballet in June. Tenney will present this and other excerpts on Saturday, October 29, at 7:30 p.m. at Florence Gould Hall of the French Institute Alliance Francaise, 55 West 59th Street, between Madison and Park, in Manhattan.

This opens with six dancers (Naoko Cojerian, Yoshie Driscoll, Gary Echternacht, Fanny Marmayou, Anya Kalishnikova, and Pam Pisani) circling their arms, tick tock style. Interrupted by a seventh, Alexandra Fredas, they join her in lyrical celebration.

Then, with the leisurely detail of a Fred Rogers episode, the little girl watches her grandfather’s mimed shaving ritual, followed by their carefree romp. Preparations for the dad’s birthday involve all the usual family aggravations and rivalries, but it ends up being a memorable and happy time in this family’s life.

Things get unpacked, and objects take on meaning. The mother, Cojerian, examines the contents of a box and with unhurried pleasure explains each item to the child. The grandparents (Echternacht and Driscoll) unpack a satchel and lay out the significant objects of their lives. For the man, it is a shirt and soldier’s hat. For the woman, it is a book, a stuffed frog, and a string of pearls. They cavort and court in an outpouring of love and delight.

Together they pull out a long red banner, swooping and swirling it before they walk on it, down the aisle. Suddenly the woman panics and runs away but, gathering her courage, returns and they start over, down the ribboned path, gathering the ribbon behind them like a cloak or shroud.

It is the child’s turn to leave. She too tries to run back but is urged onward and passes under the arch made by the ensemble.



Samantha Gullace, the child’s adult self, enters with a red envelope. In a lyrical emotion-filled solo, she reveals all the facets of her love-hate relationship with the envelope’s contents. She stands behind the child, who carries the satchel with the remnants of her grandparents’ lives. Carefully the child takes the necklace out, stands on the chair to see herself in the mirror, the same mirror that her grandfather used for shaving, and puts the necklace on. Behind her, her grown up self mimes the same. Then she takes the stuffed frog out of the satchel and sits down, pensive.

Susan Tenney’s dances evoke hidden layers of emotion; she is going to be the Frank Sinatra of George Delerue’s music.

Delerue said his musical goal was “to reach out to other human beings as rapidly as possible, to go straight to the heart.” This rendition of “je me souviens” truly went straight to my heart, leaving me awash in my own forgotten memories.

Photo of Samantha Gullace by Leighton Chen. Save the Date invitation photo by Elliott Gordon. Invitation design by Danny Garber, dannyrome designs.

From the sidelines, I watch the conflict over identity politics play out. Sometimes Princeton’s Cornel West or Tavis Smiley face off with one of my favorite talking heads, Melissa Harris-Perry (Melissa Harris-Lacewell) formerly on the Princeton faculty, now at Tulane.

Then I read yesterday’s New York Times with Dwight Garner’s review of “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency” by Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy (Princeton, Class of 1977). Again, my interest was piqued. Entitled “One Nation, Still Divisible by Race,” Garner’s review praises the book as seeming “to be carved from intellectual granite.”

Garner likes how Kennedy hashes “through the positions about Mr. Obama staked out by black commentators on the left and right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley. He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr. Smiley consistently ‘voiced skepticism regarding whether blacks should back Obama,’ Mr. Kennedy quotes, with seeming approval, (the headline of Harris-Lacewell’s essay on TheRoot.com which asked), ‘Who Died and Made Tavis King?’”

“Mr. Kennedy has special scorn for the (white) Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, a Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who, during the 2008 campaign, the author writes, ‘was persistently tendentious, casting in the worst light the possible motives of Obama and his backers.'”

I’m most curious to find out what Kennedy says about Harris-Perry, who often accepted invitations at events co-sponsored by Not in Our Town and the Princeton Public Library.

Kennedy’s book goes on sale on August 16, and perhaps it will be a future choice for the African American Interest Book Group that meets at Barnes & Noble. Led by Barbara Flythe, a retired public school educator and diversity consultant, it meets on fourth Mondays at the Market Fair at 7 p.m. For the fall discussion schedule, which also includes the memoir by NPR’s Michelle Norris, click here.

The August book is by Douglas A. Blackman. He was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal when he explored “the possibility of a story asking a provocative question: What would be revealed if American corporations were examined through the same sharp lens of historical confrontation as the one then being trained on German corporations that relied on Jewish slave labor during World War II and the Swiss banks that robbed victims of the Holocaust of their fortunes?”

The Pulitzer Prize- winning book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, is cited as “a groundbreaking historical expose of this shameful era in American history……which unearths the lost stories of the thousands of slaves and their descendants who were forced by political, social, racist, and economic pressures into involuntary servitude and poverty.”

(The next NIOT co-sponsored event at the Princeton Public Library, also cosponsored by the Latin American Legal Defense Fund, will be the screening of the documentary “Light in the Darkness” on Monday, September 12. The documentary, produced by the national NIOT, airs on PBS nationwide on September 21.)

Note that Not in Our Town Princeton hosts “Continuing Conversations on Race” at the Princeton Public Library on first Mondays at 7:30 p.m.

Photo: The two Barbaras (Barbara Flythe and I) were snapped at a United Front Against Riverblindness benefit.

Stamps are not my passion, but I admire those who collect them. So I drove to the Straube Center to buy a copy of Win Straube’s surprising collage, made with hundreds of stamps. (The original is $60k, the poster copies are $20.)

Straube had warned, nay, tantalized me with the admonition that “there will be a surprise for you.”

I thought there might be an additional sculpture in the outdoor garden and wasn’t prepared for the brain boggling experience of The Shed.

The Shed is an unprepossessing looking structure, a little taller than the usual garden tool shed, the work of Geneva Anastasio.

Open the door and you are confronted with wall to ceiling to floor mirrors, cut in patterns. In the center is a round column, lit from the inside, with the light coming through thousands of pinprick holes and hundreds of little Christmas tree bulbs. Close the door, somebody turns on the switch, and the column slowly turns in the darkened space, a phantasmagoric planetarium or an acid trip without the chemicals or a blissing out spa experience.

It is titled “It’s What’s Inside That Counts.” I like what Hildegard Straube dubbed it, “The Glitter Shed.”

If it were to be sold, the price would be $25,000. But for now, anyone can come to the Straube Center — during business hours — and ask Alisandera Wederich, gallery curator, to open the door.

The awe I felt from being in this room was comparable to my visit to the re-creation of a room, the Merzbau installation, built by German modernist Kurt Schwitters. I saw it almost by accident, because I attended a Princeton Regional Chamber reception in the Princeton University Art Museum and wandered into the Schwitters exhibit.

Awe! wonder!

Someone will be able to write about Anastasio’s installation in a lucid way, but not I not now. I’m just trying to tip off my friends before the formal opening.

Photograph of the Schwitters room: Mayra Beltran for the Chronicle
Photograph of the Anastasio installation: provided by the Straube Foundation

My friends Eileen Sinett and Karen Hodges Miller offer a workshop, “Find Your Voice,” on Friday, August 5. As below:

If you are a small business owner, an entrepreneur, consultant or coach you need two things to emerge above your competition – a professional, polished book and a unique seminar or workshop.

The two go hand-in-hand in marketing your expertise. That’s why experts Eileen N. Sinett and Karen Hodges Miller have teamed together to help you learn how to find your own unique voice when writing and speaking.

The seminar will focus on:

Developing Your Unique Message
Putting Your Message Into Words – both Written and Spoken
Publishing a Professional Book to Showcase Your Expertise
Crafting a Seminar to Attract the Right Prospect

Eileen N Sinett, author of Speaking that Connects, is committed to her mission: to promote confidence, clarity and connection in speakers worldwide. She works as an executive speech coach, consultant and keynote speaker.

Karen Hodges Miller, founder of Open Door Publications, is a writer, editor and publisher with over 25 years experience working for publications throughout the United States.

Date: Friday, Aug. 5

Time: 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Place: NJHA Conference Center

760 Alexander Rd.

Princeton, NJ

Cost: $79

Register online at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1797254637?
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This is a homage to two of the businesses who helped us celebrate our 50th anniversary last month in a wonderful way. In 1961 our reception was in the church social hall with tea sandwiches and punch.

Fifty years later, delicious item after delicious item (all finger food, as before) came out of the church kitchen, the work of caterer Ian Macdonald. (His email is As10en@aol.com with the number 10 — not an l or an o in the middle — and his phone is 609-532-6610.)

A partial list of the dishes: Beef tenderloin on baguette with blue cheese and caramelized onions, Smoked salmon mousse on cucumber slices, Seared Cape May Diver Scallops with mango & corn salsa, Asparagus, goat cheese & prosciutto in pastry, Jumbo shrimp with absolut pepar cocktail sauce, Candied dates wrapped in bacon with honey, Chicken skewers with peanut dipping sauce, Lobster salad in endive, Poached pears with candied walnuts and blue cheese, Stuffed mushrooms with pecans, Mini crab cakes with lemon herb dipping sauce, Baked brie with apricot preserves and pecans, Orange mango cake with Chambord cream, and Apple walnut cake with Disaronno lemon glaze. Thank you, Ian!





Another set of kudos goes to Joy Chen of JOYcards, who is so talented at listening to people and intuiting how to translate their stories into a design. She took our very large amount of data and transformed it into a visual revolving invitation wreath. The fox nametags — her idea and design — were another inspiration. Some of us ended up with more than one.

This Princeton Ballet School summer intensive program school for dancers has been going on for years, and gathering prestige as it goes. The New York Times covered it in a feature article on July 8.

Eighty-five advanced students from across the United States, plus some from France, Italy, Israel, and Switzerland will finish their summer with a one-hour studio showing at McCarter Theatre’s Berlind Theatre on Friday, July 29, at 6:30 p.m. The program will include two works choreographed for these dancers: Bagatelles by Mary Barton to the music of Beethoven, and Forty Feet by Janell Byrne to Celtic music. Maria Yousekevitch has staged the Vision Scene from Don Quixote, and Katie Glasner, a former Twyla Tharp dancer, has directed the students’ choreography project. Tickets are $20. Call 609-921-7758.

It’s a dance weekend. The following day, Saturday, July 30, is National Dance Day and one can choose from not one but two opportunities.

Photo by George Jones .

From Wilma Solomon

So you think you can dance? You can! Celebrate National Dance Day at Kelsey Theatre, Mercer County Community College, this Saturday, July 30, 5 PM. This is a “grassroots initiative to encourage the nation, young and old to move.”

Created by Nigel Lythgoe from “So You think you can Dance,” the annual Day has been supported by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton who introduced a national Dance Day resolution to promote dance education and physical fitness across the US.

This event occurs annually on the last Saturday of July.

Participants are encouraged to check out the Master Class routine, choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon, posted on the So You Think You Can Dance website.

At 5 p.m., interested dancers should gather at the Kelsey Theater, located on the campus of Mercer County Community College, to learn/review the routine as a group. Following a rehearsal period, we will take a video and submit our performance to join the hundreds of other taking place across the country. “13” choreographer John Buccanfuso, as well as selected cast members and others dancers and choreographers from the Kelsey community, will be on hand to instruct and assist. The goal is not to perfect the routine, but to enjoy the process of learning and dancing together. The cast and crew of “13” is very excited to share this celebration of dance and hopes that many of the participants will choose to stay and see that evening’s performance at 7:30 PM.



“13” is a grown-up story about growing up, featuring an all-teenage cast! The show follows 13-year-old Evan Goldman who moves from New York City to Indiana in the wake of his parents’ divorce. Evan just wants to make friends and survive the school year; easier said than done. The star quarterback is threatening to ruin his life and his only friend, Patrice, won’t talk to him. The school freak sees an opportunity for blackmail and someone is spreading the nastiest rumors. With an unforgettable rock score from Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown, “13” is a hilarious, high-energy musical for all ages about discovering that cool is where you find it, and sometimes where you least expect it.

“13” can be seen at Kelsey Theatre on Fridays and Saturdays, July 29, July 30 and August 5, 6 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sundays, July 31 and August 7 at 2 p.m.

From Marie Snyder: of Tangerine Dance Company.

Marie Snyder invites everyone to see two of her works at Dance New Jersey’s “Show Up and Dance” concert on Sunday, July 31, at 4 p.m. at the Loree Dance Theater, Rutgers University. Zero Effect, is a solo with Danielle Mondi and narration by Kelsey Burns from the text of 19 year old Zach Wahls’ eloquent speech to the Iowa House of Representatives. Encuentros is a rigorous wistful quartet with Danielle Mondi, Alonzo Hall, Carlo AntonioVillanueva and Phoebe Sandford exploring serendipitous meetings, parting, crossing paths again and moving on.

The 4 p.m. performance also features work by Big Sky Project, InSpira Performing Arts & Cultural Center, Kinetic Poetic Dance, New Brunswick High School, The Well Performance Project, Lara Michelle Friedman, Andrea Kron, Morgan Refakis, and Randy James.

An additional 6 p.m. performance will showcase Derling Dance Artsm InSpira Performing Arts & Cultural Center, Meagan Woods and Company, Performing Arts Ensemble, New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Summer Dance Program, Robert Burke, Sarah Lifson, and Andrea Mychaels.

The Lorree theater is on the Douglass Campus at 70 Lipman Drive, $7 suggested donation, children free. Call Macada Brandl at 973.222.8844 or mbrandl@dancenj.org.

On the following day, Dance New Jersey will hold its annual meeting, complete with a full day of workshops.

From Brinda Guha

I am writing on behalf of Kalamandir Dance Company to tell you about the Mosaic Dance Festival: An Exchange of Indian Culture with International Movement, coming up in Monmouth Junction on August 6, 2011 at the Funktion Dance Complex, 4260 Route 1, Suite 6. Several international dance companies are performing original pieces in their own styles of dance, but to Indian music. It’ll be a unique, exciting experience. Performances are at 2 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for students with ID.

Performing companies include

Capoeira Maranhão (Central New Jersey)

COHAN/SUZEAU Dance Company (University of Kansas)

Flamenco NYC (New York City)

The FUNKtion Dance Complex (Central New Jersey)

Janete Silva (New York City) *will only be performing for 2pm show

Kalamandir Dance Company (Central New Jersey)

Nabanita Pal (New York City)

Shibani Patnaik (Philadelphia)

Vervet Dance (Philadelphia)

Read about the details of the festival and buy tickets here.

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Re today’s New York Times article on Beyonce’s couture.

…In April we saw Beyonce’s eyebrow-lifting fashion when she appeared on her balcony at the Paris Ritz wearing a triangle-shaped black see-through skirt and black briefs.

Of course we took pictures of both the hot-pantsed singer and her excited 14-year-old admirer, above.

On the other side of the fashion spectrum are the pink frilly dresses of girlhood. A Princeton University Press book, also cited in today’s New York Times, links dresses to healthy female gender identity. In very young children, it concludes, “pink frilly dresses are especially salient and concrete feature of ‘girl-ness.’ ”

We ’40s babes already knew.

Chris Daggett, the president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, just announced $2.4 million in grants to arts groups in New Jersey. These disbursements will be followed by a November round of about $2.6 million, part of 187 grants totaling nearly $7.9 million so far this year.

Daggett speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber lunch on Thursday, August 4, at 11:30 a.m. His topic: “Current Trends in Philanthropy: Mission Related Investing.”

Who was Geraldine R. Dodge? A child of the “Golden Age” (1906 portrait by William Kaubach), she was the daughter of William Rockefeller (younger brother of John, co-founder of Standard Oil), and she married the president of Remington Arms Company, known for his work with the YMCA.

In addition to being a philanthropist, she bred dogs, co-founded the first guide dog school, wrote books about cocker spaniels and German Shepherds, and was the first woman judge at the Westminster Kennel Club.

Their only son died in an auto accident in France. At her death in 1973 she left $85 million to set up the foundation that sponsors, among other projects, the bi-annual poetry festival.

Meanwhile the arts face massive cuts from state government.
Where would New Jersey arts be without Miss Geraldine?

Dionysus, thy name is Bart Jackson — explorer, writer, and gourmand.

Having known and worked with Bart at U.S. 1 Newspaper for nigh onto 25 years, I’m delighted that he has turned his writing talents to the more permanent medium of books. His new Garden State Wineries Guide ($14.95), published by his own imprint, Bart’s Books, outlines three dozen delicious day trips to a surprising array of state wineries.

In addition to 36 winery profiles (and if you know Bart’s work, you’ll know that his descriptions are way more interesting than the usual guidebooks) it has tasting instructions for newbies by wine judge Anthony Fisher, an historical retrospective of the state’s wine industry by Rutgers historian Gary Pavlis, and a statement by Doug Fisher, NJ Secretary of Agriculture — plus detailed maps, driving directions, a monthly calendar, and more.

Your first chance to sally forth on an imbibing excursion might be to Hopewell Valley Vineyards on Sunday, July 10, where Bart will have a book signing from noon to 4. If you are the first to tap him on the shoulder, you’ll win the wine gift basket.

Keep up with Bart’s next doings at his blog, NJ Wineries and Vineyards.

He puts energy into his un-guidebook-like writing. The opening paragraph off his description of Hopewell Valley vineyards:

Succumb to the ultimate in Greco-Roman hospitality. Both Sergio Neri and Italy and wife Violetta in Macedonia came from winemaking famlies, who know how to treat guests. With your glass of richly oaked Barbera, stroll down from the tasting room into the grand ballroom where you might find talented Sergio on the concert Steinway completing the mood. come Friday eves, and witness both Violetta and Sergio tending their homemade pizza in the brick ovens…

If you have never met Bart, prepare to be surprised. Think the Spanish version of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 3 — a fellow with unbounded energy, chivalry that’s sometimes over the top, good-hearted to a fault, always entertaining, and ever ready with the just-right words.