I can’t believe how fit I am feeling right now.  My body is in amazing shape and I do have to put hot packs on my back and ease into things, but it’s been amazing.  I’m touching a lot of wood as I say this, but I have not had any issues with my back since I’ve been dancing with Tony.  I’ve also got much more flexibility. I’ve got my big elastic band out and I keep stretching my leg.  I’ve been doing pilates and gyrotonics to really stretch my back out, stretch my whole body out and it’s just phenomenal to me to know that it’s not a question of age, it’s not a question of having disabilities that would stop me from dancing, that actually working through these I have actually managed to give myself more mobility, definitely a better figure and the most important thing is it’s given me this new lease on life. 

I’m excited by the idea that I can try and start something brand new at this time in my life.  It’s just totally exhilarating for me everyday to wake up and think, oh my goodness. I am going to try something that I’ve never done before and I’m going to do it to the best of my ability and I’m going to do alongside a twenty two year old.  I don’t think life ends at fifty, I think life begins then.  

I think this is the time to think out of the box, this is the time to experience all the things you never had time for before.  This is your opportunity to have your guilty pleasure.  For me, my guilty pleasure is to learn how to dance.  I don’t think I’m going to be giving this up, in fact I think I’m just going to be involved in the dance world now for as long as I possibly can.  I denied myself this because when I was a little kid and I had to stop when I was sixteen my heart was so broken by it I thought, well, I’ll close that chapter and go on to something brand new. 

What I’ve learned is that you can never close off a part of something that you love, something that you have a passion for.  Of course my life now is all about following my passions.  I had a passion for painting and drawing and creating art when I was little too and now what am I doing.  Everyday I get to paint, draw, sculpt, and design which I love to do.  Now I get to dance as well.  I keep thinking, isn’t it amazing that even though I’ve had forty years of not doing any of that or certainly with the dancing, but a substantial number of years between when I was a kid and these were my dreams and now really being able to flourish with all of those mediums. 

Of course I’m really looking forward to acting again.  I love acting, but I feel I’m actually acting in some ways when I’m dancing because clearly I’m not really a dancer, I’m playing a dancer.  That’s how I approach it.  I just try to put a character into every single dance that I do and it isn’t until the last second when I get the costume on and we decide what we are going to do with my hair and makeup and all of this has to happen in a very big hurry and I have to really be open to trying new things and really trying to allow that metamorphosis to happen, kind of at the last minute.  So, I really don’t know what I am going to look like before I go out there on stage.

I’m going to wear red this week. Red is one of my lucky colors.  I love to paint women in red dresses.  Red is the color that alerts all of us to the issues of women’s heart disease, which is something that’s really important to me and I think that the Rumba is all about the heart.  It’s about passion, it’s about love, it’s about sensuality, it’s about sexuality, so I think red was very appropriate for me to wear.  Also because I feel that red is a color that really says, I’m not hiding, I’m here.  I’m all me. I’m everything that you see and more and that I have passion in my heart and passion in my soul and I’m visible. I’m out there and so that’s why I’ve chosen to wear red for the Rumba.