Our legendary lady has in the show a set of songs she sings in succession without the intervention of costume changes, set moves or other production number logistics. Well except for the minor issue of the stool. For the longest time it was a crewman who performed this task, ill-equipped with a costume or any formal introduction to the audience prior to make the moment easy on Cher, who is in a set of follow-spots (lights). He would come out after “Walking in Memphis” and sort of finagle the stool into the center of the Mandala as inconspicuously as he could, but to no avail. Someone made the suggestion that a dancer do this. And somehow I was the pick. So I now make a costume change after “Take it Like a Man” and come back out to present our icon a seat for what we call the “Unplugged” section of her show. The picture above is from the second or third time this occurred. We have fun with it, and graciously, she always identifies me by name when she thanks me.
Warning: I'm careful here but if you're extremely thoughtful and know the references below, you might infer spoilers so read the following at your own risk. What I saw in the Disney's brilliant "MALEFICENT" tonight: the interests of greed over "otherness" in kingdoms anxious to exploit civilizations and pillage resources (i.e., Pizarro/the Incas, Cortez/the Aztecs, etc. etc. etc.) heart-breakingly played out; the truth that romantic love is not the only kind with umph; that violating and mutilating the trust of someone is dangerous for all parties involved, especially if the someone is female (hell hath no fury, etc.) and the emotional assailant is male; the effects of revenge can never be controlled, only measured (i.e., The Count of Monte Cristo); evil and good as anything other than absolute, with shades of gray that conspire to create rounded, multi-dimensional individuals; an own-it-on-video worthy performance by Angelina Jolie that was right up there with Charlize Theron's in "Snow White and the Huntsman," only Jolie had more help because the vehicle was better all the way around. Yep, that's what I saw. But that's just me...
Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m sitting in the outdoor area of Panera in the sleepy downtown across from an ancient theatre and a Starbucks. I have a book sitting on the table next to the computer, which is at the complete disposal of my Maya Angelou considerations. Of course I am devastated (but not surprised) by her passing, and as she has inspired me to do so much of what I have done in my life, I must put pen to paper about it.
While I cogitate, an older man walks by me with way too much pep to be called elderly. He sports a simple, long red t-shirt tank showing off an Eagle tattoo on an arm that still had some fraction of the big power it must have had back in the day. The baseball cap on his head reads "Functional Veteran."
“That looks like a good book,” he says, looking at the cover of Toss in the Ether.
I decide not to tell him it was mine, luxuriating in the affirmation. “I hope so. It’s a good read so far,” I say, indicating that I am on page 37.
“Man, I love to read, I go through lots of books. I sit over there and just read,” he said, pointing to what I thought was the Starbucks on the corner of 12th and P Street.
“Do you work over there sir?”
“I’m a panhandler,” he says. “I do Walgreens on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then I’m at the Smoke Shop on some of the other days. But I read a lot, go through a book a day, something like that. I see these college kids and they bring me stuff and we talk about it.”
“Wow,” I say, noticing the length of the ponytail and the warmth of his Santa beard.
“Yeah, I was in Vietnam. When He brought me home from Vietnam, I said I’m going to serve Your word with every person who wants to hear it, but You have to make them adhere to it. I can't do that part. So we deal with the Good Book a lot.”
“That’s good news, sir.”
“You’re not lost, but you will be found.”
“Amen.”
He introduces himself, and as I shake his hand I am too stunned sorting out the moment to actually hear his name.
Perhaps it is Maya.
Perhaps this is both my blessing and an answer to my questions.
As he walks away, I realize he has identified himself as a panhandler with the same erection in his spine that any other person would have about his/her profession; service in Vietnam may have been sufficient. Panhandler. Yet he has asked for nothing, and given me everything.
Thank you Maya Angelou.
Thank you God.
The irony of being in the original cast of a show like “Motown the Musical” is that although we helped re-create Hitsville on stage every night, I had to leave the show before I was able to visit the real one. Further irony is that the tour of another legendary musical icon put me in Detroit, home of the house where Berry Gordy made history.
Even the Uber cab ride had symmetry. The driver happened to be a black man in his 60’s who, long before realizing his gospel calling, auditioned at Hitsville for a recording contract. I didn’t have to tell him how to get there now.
Jamal flipping outside of Hitsville U.S.A.
A large party of teenagers, maybe twenty or so deep, were being ushered into the museum by their chaperones when I arrived. Figuring it would be a good idea to let them get sorted first, I waited until all admission had been paid before learning that tours happened every half hour on the hour and sold out frequently. The only one I could fit on (and still make it to the hotel in time for show call) was at capacity with the young ladies.
“No worries,” I said to the ticket window agent. “I probably don’t need the tour, I was in the show on Broadway. But it’s still worth it to come.”
I cruised the store instead, excited to see a few "Motown: the Musical" t-shirts that are still being sold in the lobby of the Lunt Fontanne Theater now. Just as I positioned my phone to take a shot of a shirt I wish cast members had access to back home, the woman from the window tapped me on the shoulder, explained the no-photo policy in the gift store too, and insisted that I join the tour.
“Since you were in the show it would be criminal not to see this.”
I stood in the back of the small theater packed with the teenagers, a few of them wondering about the tardy interloper.
The tour guide, an almond-colored woman named Peggy with skin much younger than she, gave us an extraordinary, rapidly paced but careful trek through the life of Berry Gordy, crash coursing us in his father’s print business and grocery store, the $800 loan from the family account and the corresponding paperwork framed on the wall, the Gloved One’s 1983 introduction of the Moonwalk along with the encased glove he donated. To listen to an oral version of the history I was once endowed with the responsibility of presenting on stage every night was fascinating.
I tried to remain incognito in this group so as not to disrupt the tour. I was doing fine until Peggy led us in “Rockin’ Robin” so that we could experience the value of bathroom acoustics that led to Gordy’s innovative recording studio rigging.
I had been singing full belt on stage every night with Cher, singing like nobody could hear me (because they couldn’t) during the last minute of “Believe." So Rockin’ Robin was cake.
Two of the young ladies turned around with that look, the one that happens when someone recognizes decent pitch and a smidgen of training.
I shut up instantly.
Then Peggy asked them about Diana Ross’ “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” The young ladies sang the song well and knew all the words better than I. One of the chaperones explained that this was the junior high school portion of a group of music students who would perform a full-scale Motown concert in a week.
What are the odds?
But by the time we got to the Hitsville lobby, where secretary Martha Reeves' appointment pad still sat, I worried I would need to leave early. I introduced myself to Peggy and explained that I was in the Broadway production and loved her tour, and not to take my exit as a lack of interest.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “What show are you doing now?”
“I’m here with Cher. The show is tonight, which is why I have to dash soon.”
“Well then I’ll see you tonight on stage!”
You’re kidding. What are the odds? “That’s fantastic.”
“There’s not much left of this,” she said. “If you’re still around, do you mind if I acknowledge you?”
“Not at all.”
With the same seamless flow we had enjoyed the rest of the time, Peggy segued her Studio A description into a discussion about Berry Gordy’s legacy continuing on Broadway. The students were excited to know that there was a performer from the show around, and that they…suspected all along?
“I knew you were in a show!” one of them said.
"And then I heard you make comments, and I thought he's really knows his stuff," another said.
Had my interior monologue made it out of its haven?
Then I figured out it was just a residual of this quite surreal feeling of having moved on from the musical without leaving the family or the legacy in the least.
I took several pictures with the students outside in front of the Hitsville sign before realizing that I could not leave without taking a solo shot. After all, here I was, marveling at the sturdiness of the tendon connecting where I am now with where I was a few months ago. It needed to be captured, and in a way that my extraordinary Motown dance colleagues would never forget...
But the kids had already boarded the bus, and they were the only ones born with the necessary in-brain microchip to capture with a phone the shot I had in mind. A lovely woman named Dishonda stood with her good friend and agreed to try.
I showed it to her one time.
It takes 1.8 second to do a standing back tuck.
Yes somehow, Dishonda caught me upside down, mid-flip smiling at the camera. Twice.
So the Hitsville serendipity had gone further: although she had no training in it whatsoever, her father is a noted photographer.
The entire experience, as well as this picture with the Temptations seeming to present me, was affirming. It reminds me that my purpose in Motown was spring water clear and carved specifically with me in mind, despite the fact that singing is not (as my co-dance captain Dionne put it) really my ministry at all. It cemented for me that my tenure there was and is still important, and that my foray back to Cher touring is right on time. It made the day as brilliant as the blue on the Hitsville marquee.
And, as promised, I saw Peggy after the concert.
Dennis and Sumayah were on a mission, in fact. But the shuttle for the Convention Center Marriott was busy with less important things, like getting guests to and from the airport, damn them. Didn't they understand the urgency of our dining needs?
We tried Uber. We were clever. We had figured out that unlike on previous tours, the Uber app offered us a quick, affordable alternative to cabbing around. But this was Little Rock, Arkansas, where clicking on the FIND ME A CAR button crashed our phones.
We settled for a cab and, $25 later, made it to the Waffle House. The world has never seen three people so happy for breakfast at 1 p.m.. Then it poured relentlessly, right about the time that we had cleared the plates.
Our waitress, Jusmary, who might have still been irate behind Dennis’ question early on about whether there was a “t” sound in there (even though there was clearly no “t” on the nametag), agreed to help us with cab. Thirty minutes later a cab showed up.
Since Dennis suffered the superfluous conversation during the first ride, he ushered me to Shotgun for this one. Wouldn’t you know that this yellow cab, whose backseat was clean simple leather, had shoddy upholstering in its front seat, which the driver had to clear of his personal items?
“Get comfortable,” he said, as if he could see that my collecting the collar of my Zara coat was a form of pearl clutching about gnawed seats, a junk food littered floor and an abused dashboard. "Where y'all going?"
“They’re sending us to Park Plaza Mall. Is it a good one?” Dennis asked.
“Yeah, I’ll get you there, it’s not that far.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Tim,” the driver said. “But people call me Pac-Man.”
I was so afraid to ask why. And it didn’t matter. We were off to more familiarity.
Until, after a long country drive, we got to the OUTDOOR mall.
“Why would they send us to an outdoor mall on a day of torrential rain?”
“I don’t know,” Pac-Man said. “There’s another mall the other way, between the Waffle House and the hotel. Y’all say you staying downtown, right?”
We were crestfallen, our trust of concierges instantly gone.
Then the conversation began, the one Dennis wanted to avoid.
“So are y’all choreographers?” the Pac-Man asked, as I de-tangled my backpack from the exposed wires under the glove compartment.
“Something like that.”
“You definitely not from around here.”
“What makes you say that?”
“White folks buy up shit, own shit all over the world then come stay here. Black folks come to Little Rock have to have a reason.”
“Um, sure.”
I could swear I heard snickering in the back of the cab from one of the other two, probably Dennis.
After a minute of silence, Pac-Man said, “I hear Cher is in town. Playing at the arena.”
When I relented, telling him we were with her, he nodded that knowing nod of the quiet, observant neighborhood mechanic who misses nothing. His cell rang.
“Hello…I’m driving right now…no I’m glad you called me back, it’s okay…I lost your number, dropped it down the commole…hello…hello??”
I dropped my head.
“She’ll call back, whatever,” he said.
By the time we made it to the Dillard’s Mall, so called because Mr. Dillard of Little Rock had his store split on either side of the three-floor shopping rectangle, we had ratcheted up about $70 in cab fare. The driver was kind enough to circle the parking lot so that he could deliver us curbside to the destination.
Dennis felt better immediately; there was a Target down the street.
“You paying with a credit card?” the driver said. “I hate credit cards.”
The statement vied with the tip top customer service a minute before. But I figured all would be revealed soon. I passed the credit card to Sumayah to deal with it in the machine in the back. Pac-Man then grabbed the receipt-maker by its back, as it would not function without his squeezing its parts together.
“Piece of shit,” he muttered, waiting for it to print.
"It's fine," I said. "We will be fine."
“Y’all have a nice day.”
There was a lesson somewhere in all of this. But unfortunately, nobody had the resolve to learn it without a cup of coffee, which could not be purchased in the food court or at Dunkin’ Donuts (there wasn’t one) or a Starbucks (also missing).
We found out on the way out that in the bike shop upstairs, there’s a barista sometimes working in the back….
We train our bodies for years and years to obey whatever challenging, sometimes dangerous instructions we give them. We fight to make things happen that should be reserved for other bodies, like those of cheetah or gazelles for example, or perhaps a snake/elephant hybrid, all so that we can manage simple and impossible things on stage for the delight and transformation of a person’s life/soul/spirit.
Unfortunately, props don’t invest in the same training. They do what they want, behave as they feel, mis-listen to our needs, fold their arms in defiance. Investigations of how they work do not prove lucrative—for those of us not blessed with the good karma of prop handling magic, things go wrong.
I am one of those people.
Photo Courtesy of John Wren
I’m not sure if Sumayah is hostage to my bad prop karma or sabotaged by her own, but what’s clear is that umbrellas are not her friend.
The first time it went wrong in “Burlesque” during tech rehearsal, her prop umbrella, which is rigged to not close shut all the way (since there is no time in the choreography to fiddle with the sharp button on its stem), wouldn’t open either. We both rendezvous off-stage right near the stairs, me to make an entrance, her to grab her umbrella and re-enter. During the tech, she couldn’t find her umbrella because someone we have yet to identify moved it to a position on the stairs.
As planned, I had grabbed the other umbrella to give to Ryan as I enter, since she has less time, and I watched Sumayah in horror search for her prop.
“Where is my—I set it right here before this run!”
“It’s right there,” I said, mid Fosse step fluttering my hand toward the stairs.
This helped her none, of course.
Determined to be a better friend during the actual show in front of people (18,000 of them in Phoenix, to be specific), I grabbed both umbrellas out of the holster and handed one to her when she ran to get it.
In the hasty world of quick entrances and exits and props, there is little time for "Thank you." So I accepted the general smile of her aura about this consideration.
The split second was decimated by the revelation that her umbrella stem was broken. When it got broken, how it broke, whether it tried hara kiri because it was done with us, we don’t know. Just that it was broken. And that when she pulled the handle, it detached from the rest of the stem.
Sumayah then proceeded to go out with her very abbreviated prop and work the short stem like a pro. She kicked her legs over it, pretended it could actually provide the kind of shade it was really meant for vs. the kind it was giving. She pushed it over her head as if it were “Wade in the Water” high vs. just off her ear...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7huPVXNwOEM
I had to stop looking. Because you see this is when the demon of laughter commences to take you out of your show. All I could think of is how she had a shady umbrella. Ella. Ella. Eh, eh, eh.
But then, the next night, I picked her up and swung her down around my waist, and my hat fell off, and I thought she maybe caught it in her other hand perhaps (desperation)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgtNhrVtDkw
Karma. Prop Karma.
And an oversized hat with an attitude...
At the time, I could come up with no good reason to order a large popcorn instead of the medium or the small, especially since I had whisked myself solo to watch Roman reputation be torn asunder cinematically for the second time this weekend. Who was I fooling? I had even less business seeing “Pompeii” than I did ordering popcorn to satisfy my inner FB - if you don’t know what that stands for in this case, it’s safer you not know it applies to me.
The woman behind the counter must have known. Maybe she saw my desire, my instant recollection of the downtown Phoenix AMC’s version of butter from my gluttony with it during “300: Rise of the Empire” a few days back. Now, I asking if the butter was self-serve, as if I didn't know. She said yes.
A beat.
“Would you like me to dump half of it out so that you can butter it through?” she added.
I nodded, embarrassed about my transparency, and then had the nerve to be sparing in my application—twice.
By the end of the 98-minute festive disaster flick, I took the half of the bag of popcorn that I did not (and knew I wouldn't) eat, gathered it by its neck and sauntered the five blocks back to the hotel.
Downtown Phoenix is quiet at night. It's lonely, save a light wind with no particular destination, nor hurry to get there. Lovely buildings, unblemished pavement. And absolutely nobody on the streets. This night, I saw not even a random homeless person, odd since there was no abusive weather to hide from.
Then one particular homeless man in a wheelchair made me understand the rulings of my gut.
He had a long, clear face framed by gray hair that looked less matted than simply age appropriate.
“Do you happen to have any change?” he asked.
There was a casual tone, nothing ominous, desperate, or duplicitous in it. He did not appear high, drunk or mad at the world for his circumstances. The whites of his eyes showed none of the dramatic hope I had just witnessed in “Pompeii,” but they lacked expectation.
“I don’t,” I said. “But I do have half a bag of popcorn.” I grabbed one last handful of popcorn and then extended the bag to him, knowing absolutely he would take it. “It’s good.”
“Thank you sir.”
I understood in that moment why I ordered the large popcorn, and it relieved me to have listened to the divine instruction instead of shooing it as bad judgment. Turns out, it was not mine to make. God had plans, and I was the executive vessel.
I know, it's crazy, but go with me on this one for a minute. The payoff is often invisible: the times that the car doesn’t hit you when it could have, or when the brown recluse is diverted elsewhere, or when the cancer you never had the displeasure of knowing about dies first. Surely, these are balances for our right-doings. I am thankful every day for the thousands of times my life, my career, my loved ones are spared.
But rarer is the instant gratification in understanding my compliance with God’s good will had tangible, visible effect: this time a homeless man in a vacant downtown connected with the one passer-by who had food. Yes, he asked for money, but I'm sure it's because he didn't know I had food; Lord knows there is almost nothing open in downtown Phoenix after ten that he could have used the change for.
Other than perhaps popcorn at the movie theater.
The rest of my walk was slower, more relaxed even. And now it was okay for me to admit my appetite for disaster[ous] flicks.
And [fake]buttered popcorn.
In 2006, I choreographed two short ballets on promising, Plano, Texas teenagers at Kathy Chamberlain Ballet, a company with which I was a guest artist in college and for several years thereafter. Both quartets were beautifully danced, extraordinarily well-received and heartfelt to experience at a Gala in Dallas that still stands out as one of the happiest nights of my professional life.
Turns out that one of the young ladies in the modern piece has grown into an even more stunning young lady than I imagined. She was a beautiful chocolate 12-year-old when I met her, a teenager on the cusp of self-discovery when I made "The Troubled Spaces in Between," and a highlight recruited to the Broadway production of "Hairspray" before her teens were over. Three Broadway contracts later, she is wowing everyone over at the gigantic, certifiable hit, "The Book of Mormon."
When I saw her recently at a mutual friend's birthday party (yes, frighteningly, she is now old enough to have worked in shows with some of my colleagues), she confessed that she has never seen the ballet, which utilized the fabric of my Facebook profile shot before I entangled myself in it.Watching it again and seeing the other young ladies - I hired the lithe, long-legged Kimberly Van Woesik for a Blue Man Group flash mob I choreographed last year - moved me enough to post it. In this age of digitized memories, some are criminal not to share.
People from the South know how to make you feel good even if only in the name of hospitality. There’s something in the hello, the observation of what you looked like that day, the positivity in the comment on it. It wasn’t until I moved to New York after graduation that I understood what made Mrs. Blackwell’s version of it so special.
She meant it, deeply and always.
In DeSoto it made sense. This began when I was asked by the local chapter of the NAACP to coach her daughter for the national ACT-SO competition since I'd won years before (Courtney has been my little sister ever since). To walk into Mrs. Blackwell's home was to accept a quick descent into the unfair throes of overwhelming comfort, you know, “I may not leave your house ever” comfort. At her alto “Hi, how are you?” your breathing slowed because you were cared for and asked to sit down somewhere. By “How is your Mom?” along with other qualifiers that she bothered to remember from your last visit, you were holding a beverage of the sort that directly contrasted the weather outside.
If you stayed long enough for her to ask about school/career/work, you were handling a full plate of some delicious animal whose well-seasoned, tasty remains would not seem right without the collard green or yam she put next to it.
During the afterglow of the meal, you were at her mercy. Rita Blackwell had an internal GPS for personal inner-workings of the people she liked, and she could give Katie, Diane and Barbara a run for their money when it came to interview skills.
By the second plate__“Do you want some more, there’s plenty of food?”/“No, ma’am, I’m fine really”/“Are you sure?”/“Maybe a small plate…”__you had given Rita an exclusive on your current relationship, sprinkled with bits on your last. I say Rita because by now she had segued from Mrs. Blackwell, esteemed mother of Courtney and wife of OC to therapeutic ear capable of parlaying your issues with warmth where judgment could have been. Emotional sobriety was only necessary should she catch you off guard with a Courtney question you had no business answering, in which case the scramble to present whatever truth would get you out unscathed became key. (Over the years, I’ve watched a few people go down in flames behind upsetting a Blackwell woman, or any of her kin.)
In any case, you were never an iota uncomfortable.
I understood how she accomplished this in DeSoto, at her house. So does Dana, whose parents returned the favor to Courtney during the ladies' college years in the spirit of family village support. And so do the numerous black kids from the SMU Division of Dance who couldn't make it to their homes for holidays and instead hopped in my Geo Prism to the Blackwell residence.
But Rita managed to do it over the phone too, make me feel good, host me even in my house.
This occurred on several occasions when I got ambitious in my kitchen and needed help. I knew the home number by heart and would call urgently: Does extra flour thicken a lemon and wine based gravy as well or am I reaching? What other strategic places do onions need to sit on the turkey other than between its legs? And what’s another recipe for stuffing if I don’t find the ingredients my great aunt—whom I also called for kitchen counsel—gets from Kroger, which we don’t have in New York? Does Aunt Cynth do this same thing with the slow cooked pork roast?
I learned much about my kitchen from Mrs. Blackwell.
My sister Courtney has the lion share of Rita Blackwell lessons of course, not the least of which is how to present a long leg and shapely torso in a dress (see photo). But I got a huge gem from her through example: God only put on the Earth a small number of kind people. Some of us are good, with nice moments and chipper dispositions, and others of us acquiesce to the spirit of generosity on occasion. But few of us are born with kindness that needs no warranty and costs absolutely nothing to those fortunate enough to wander in its wake.
Rita Blackwell was kind through and through. Hopefully, we all learned her lessons; God saw to it that the aneurysm she came in with remained dormant for the whole 64 years she was here. She was classy (again, see photo) and it’s a blessing her daughter was so stunning in her wedding dress because Rita and I were giving her a run for her money.
I will miss her tremendously.
And I’m sure I won’t cook a turkey dinner without her in my kitchen.
I was so happy to be there. The traffic was terrible. But a patient North Indian driver managed to get me to the ABC studio in time to burst into the sound stage and move co-worker/friend/dressing roommate Eric LaJuan Summers and his microphone out of the way. To the utter delight of Katie Couric’s amiable staff, I enjoyed a quick lip sync for my life before finishing the tech rehearsal.
Of course these kinds of antics can only be funny when the other four actors portraying the Contours with you on stage every night are friends off stage too. The joke was tinged with even more irony since these friends understood that I was much more amped to meet Katie Couric than even Berry Gordy, the music producing legend that wrote our Broadway musical. My friends knew that before I did my first pirouette or developpe or jazz slide, I was writing movie reviews and teen profiles for a newspaper in Torrance, California back in high school.
So they did not look askance or point and jeer when our trip to the green room became a Dahl-esque chocolate factory journey for me, early hour notwithstanding. I was as happy about the sundry TV journalism treasures around as I was about the plush carpet I warmed up on.
My production stage manager went as far as to notice the copy of my book, which I’d taken out of my bag to sign, and insisted that Katie get it right away. Somehow, without a full conversation, she understood that it was dreadfully important, possibly more urgent even than performing on national television in my blue suit and pompadour wig.
Katie, after all, was royalty in this world I studied in long enough to get an undergrad degree. She helped The Today Show defeat Good Morning America in the 90’s, endured an on-air colonoscopy to increase cancer awareness at the turn of this century, and—more remarkable than any of it—held her face together during that infamous, astonishing Sarah Palin interview. Katie is one of my heroes indeed.
Little did I know, she would find something else to add to that list of hero-making feats. After a vicarious crash course in the mash potato (I’d taught her production assistant earlier), Katie came backstage seconds before our segment to makes sure she had it right. Sanguine and bubbly, with the familiarity of an old theatre pro, she asked, “Now how does this dance go?”
We were at ease showing her, even as she complained that this was not her talent.
Turns out she’s an actress as well as elite journalist.
During the segment, not only did she succeed at learning the step, she decided mashing potatoes was not enough. She french fried. She twisted. She jerked. Then she grabbed Eric’s hand and partnered herself into him.
I was elated. Me, a dancer gypsy with my novel, Katie a television titan with her smooth grooves - we were more alike than I knew.
And she hadn't finished. Next, a full twirling session much longer than her outro time commenced. The smile under that well-known blonde do grew fiendish as she took over the stage, the pumps wreaking havoc on the glossy floor. Eric handled it, partnering her into several dances that made me glad she had not been his competition at the Astaire Awards; fortunately he had won already and Katie is not in any Broadway shows. That we know of, anyway…
Tune in to Katie at 3:00 p.m. EST June 7 to see the airing of this show.