Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast…and it has the ability to trigger very sharp memories, the places where stories can be born.
Sometimes, there is more than just one memory. When I hear “Georgy Girl", it triggers two very distinct recollections of different times in my life.
My best friend and I were walking our dates home from the midnight showing of the film, Georgy Girl, at the Playboy Theatre in Chicago, the winter of 1966. We were all students at ballet school and danced along the sidewalk as we hummed the movie’s theme song and watched our breath materialize in the cold, crisp air of the night. Standing outside the Three Arts Club, the dormitory where the girls lived, we shivered as we said goodbye to them. Was it the cold that made our knees shake, or just our nerves as we both wondered, would either of us get a goodnight kiss?
After driving almost fifteen hours and 1,300 miles from Three Rivers, Quebec to Richmond Virginia, my troupe of eleven girl chorus dancers and I arrived just in time to don our costumes, pass out our music and do the opening dance number at the Virginia State Fair. I thought we were in luck when the band was one we had worked with in Pennsylvania. I stood off stage and motioned to the conductor for the tempo. He nodded in agreement, turned to the band and promptly began to play our music, “Georgy Girl”, twice as fast as it was supposed to be. It was like something out of a slapstick movie being played at high speed. We couldn’t lift our knees high enough, or get all the steps in, as we raced through the number. The audience was laughing, we were not.
Any version of any song from Fiddler on the Roof brings back images and many backstage stories from two different tours of the show that I danced in. Those memories spark others from other shows I did, all the people I knew and the places I traveled when I was in the theatre. Even just a few notes can trigger a flood of recollections that could be turned into a string of pearls for telling.
Go ahead, listen to anything on the radio. Tune in to an oldies station and see what images come up. Baby Boomers, what comes to mind when you hear, “I want to Hold Your Hand”, or “Satisfaction”? Can you see the consternation on all the teachers’ faces when, at the school dance, someone put on, “Louie Louie”?
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