My cousin, Irene, loved my post: A Little Music and Movement Can Make You See Things Differently (June 6, 2017). In fact, she told me she occasionally watches the video I had added at the end, which is a Museum Workout at the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art to the song “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. She loves the Bee Gees. Makes her want to get up and dance. And she has always loved to dance. She took dance lessons as a child.

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She met both her husbands at a dance. When she lived in an independent living facility run by the Sisters of Saint Dominic, one of the nuns gave dance lessons twice a week. “Sister Denice had a life before she joined the sisterhood at 30,” Irene told me. Besides dance lessons, the facility held holiday dances with a live band. 

Irene recently moved to an assisted living facility because of mobility issues. She no longer dances but continues to watch the Museum Workout video. The music makes her “dance in my head.”

When I talked with her a few days ago to wish her a belated happy 96^th birthday, she suggested that I reblog that post. Truth be told, I had already reblogged the post under a new title: Time to Take a Break, June 16, 2020. It’s one of my feel-good posts. Music always takes me on a journey away from current reality. 

So, I’m reblogging A Little Music and Movement Can Make You See Things Differently yet again for for Irene. Watch the video. Get up and dance. Or if, like my cousin Irene, you can’t get up and move to the music, dance in your head.

 

A Little Music and Movement Can Make You See Things Differently

Originally posted on June 6, 2017

Yesterday, I went to the North Carolina Art Museum at 10 a.m. to move to music.

Two women led, followed by a man in a suit holding an open laptop channeling the songs that were mostly by the Bee Gees. The women, in sequined dresses and sneakers, stomped, marched, trotted in time with the music. Thirteen women and two men, ranging in age from 20 to 70 plus, followed behind, mimicking the women’s movements. We didn’t talk.

I felt exhilarated racing through the empty museum with music bouncing off the walls surrounded by other exuberant people. The moves were not stressful. I did most of them except balancing on one leg and I stopped halfway through the jumping jacks.

The group stopped intermittently in front of a piece of art: statue, still life, portrait, and continued to move/exercise in place. Short inspirational narratives, previously taped by Maira Kalman, punctuated the music. Normally, when I visit a museum, I would gaze at the art in quiet contemplation. This time my mind and body seemed as one, absorbing the stimuli transmitted from the environment, my thoughts suspended.

When the two women dropped to the floor, I felt as if someone turned off the lights. Lying among my fellow participants with arms and legs outstretched, I realized that fifty minutes had flown by.

Now the day after, the residual glow from yesterday remains with me.

My new goal is to have more days where I step out of the ordinary.

Thanks Monica Bill Barnes & Company!

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The first performance The Museum Workout appeared at the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Check out the video of the performance. 

Madame X, meet Ladies in Sequined Dresses and Sneakers. For “The Museum Workout,” which starts a four-week run on Jan. 19, Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass, Everywoman dancers of deadpan zaniness, guide tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art before public hours, leading light stretching and group exercises as they go. Recorded commentary by the illustrator Maira Kalman, who planned the route, mixes with Motown and disco tunes. Might raised heart rates and squeaking soles heighten perception?

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