VISIT OUR THIRD FLOOR THEATER --TODAY, TOMORROW, ANYTIME, AND DO SOME DANCING.

Here's EUGENE ORMANY CONDUCTING ... just listen, feel how it rises and flows.


AS YOU LISTEN you con't eee leaps, and pirouettes. You'll just see dancer Emily visiting the room, relatng to each object, relating the chair with curiosity and tenderness recalling how it was used. When I'm dancing to this music, you don't see typical dance steps such as leaps, pirouettes, and intricate footwork. Instead, dancer Emily visits the room and discovers each object, relating to each with curiosity and tenderness, recalling how it was used.

The sound equipment, designed by Bela Bartok's son, Peter, is powerful professional equipment which we've used in Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters.

"We use the space for staging shows, play readings, and raising funds to produce our theater projects. Over the years, a lot of very well-known people have been here for previews.

The floor space is 40 x 25. Our lighting equipment is homemade--we scrounged large tomato cans from neighborhood restaurants, converted them, and made tinfoil frames to hold the gels for each light. Our homemade dimmer board sits in the dressing rooms that are next to our two offices. Above my office is storage space for the costumes and props I used when I performed as soloist with symphony orchestras, and toured the world with my dance company.

In the center of the floor are the chairs and barre I use every day, not just when I listen to this fantastic piece of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. He named it "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis." Just about every day I perform a four-minute section of this music. You'll hear how the music recapitulates its various themes. Of course, the ending is always the same. Standing tall on the double set of chairs, dancer Emily surveys the room. Then, swiftly, recapitulating the memories, triumphantly, I leave the room.

Dancing has been the major part of my life since I was ten-years-old. I dance like people who go to church--I just go into my studio, warm up at the barre, turn on the sound.

As you listen, again, perhaps you'll understand how the music inspires me. Listen again, and LET YOURSELF FEEL the way it it rises and flows. As you hear the music, stand tall. Raise your arm, left arm or right. Now, salute the room. Salute Ormandy himself. And you are dancing. Yes, dancing to this music. YOU CAN DANCE TO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU DO THIS, YOU ARE INSPIRED, thrilled, touched, intrigued and yes, oh my, ready willing and able to keep on dancing. dancing, dancing.

I got one word left to say.

Wow!

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MISSING THE BAD GUYS

The list of bad guys keeps getting longer.

Since April 2017, when Fox News Host, Bill O'Reilly was forced to resign, more than 250 powerful people — celebrities, politicians, CEOs, have disappesred. It took me a couple of hours of wading through the names, looking for favorite celebs -- commentators and actors mostly, whose work I no longer see.

Here's a link to a bunch of  guys who've been unemployed for a long time -- golly, good guys like Tom Brokaw -- I miss him.

Found anyone who belongs on your own personal GOOD GUY list?

WHAT NAMES DID YOU FIND THAT SURPRISED YOU?

BEST COFFEE IN THE WORLD....

The Los Angeles Times wrote about the Klatch cafe with branches in Southern California and San Francisco that's touting its $75 a cup as the world's best.

Being a coffee nut, pissed off by $75 a cup, I checked out "Ten Great Coffees" online.

I started with Hawaiian Kona Coffee, price $34/pound. The online article said "has a fantastic flavor and unique taste. Most sellers use a blend of 10% Kona coffee and 90% cheaper variety. Make sure you buy and consume 100% Kona coffee." I drank Kona coffee when my husband was shooting the film "Hawaii." We were living in the Ilikai, a luxurious hotel in Honolulu where all the actors lived for a couple of months. Since the film company was paying our bills, I figured it was 100% Kona.  But the hotel -- 8 a.m. till 7 p.m, constantly had loud bang-bang noises because it was being renovated. Living there was lousy and room service Kona coffee was lukewarm.

I drank Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, $50/pound, known for it's mild taste, when I was performing with my dance company in Japan but it made me sleepy. Saint Helena Coffee--$79/pound intrigued me since Napoleon Bonaparte was ardent fan of its caramel and citrus flavor but you'd have to visit the island where he lived in exile, to taste it.

Civet

Very expensive coffee -- civet coffee,  Kopi Luwak -- costs 160/pound. Indonesian Asian Palm civets, consume the beans, ferment them, deposit the coffee beans in their feces from where it is collected and processed.

Elephant

The tip-top most expensive $500/pound coffee that's favored by coffee afficionados, Black Ivory Coffee, like civet coffee, it is made by elephants that consume the beans. Their feces provide an especially robust flavor.

Guys, I have to say drinking a cup of civet or elephant poop is just too too icky. Next time we visit our son who lives  in North Hollywood, we'll visit our friends in southern California and won't mind paying $75 for a cup.

(VIDEO) JOHN CULLUM'S FAVORITE TOTEMS.

Got any routines, ridiculous superstitious things you do?

Em reveals hers, and gets John to talk about things he does on opening night of a big Broadway Musical.