In the winding construction that leads to the Lincoln Center Library, I passed an older man also on his way to the library.

“Have you seen that?” he said, pointing with his cane to a poster from the Jerome Robbins exhibit (that I posted about here) at the library. “You should go. You look dancerish.”

“I used to be,” I laughed.

“You look dancerish, and a little musical theatre-ish. Like you’re a vocalist,” he said.

“No. I’ve only been in one musical,” I said. He laughed.

“Well, you have to be a triple threat these days!”

We continued to walk to the library together.

“You know, musical theatre has gone downhill. That’s what I hear. In the old days, people got all of their drama audibly from the radio, they weren’t used to all this big stuff. Now, you see these musicals with helicopters and that’s all everybody cares about,” he said. I enjoyed how candid he was. ”I hear they did that with ‘Wicked’ you know? The guy who wrote it just took all the songs that were at the bottom.” He reached down to his gut, as if to dig up garbage.  “He took all those bad songs and people just loved them.”

As we approached the entrance I told him about the dance related book project I was helping with, and he wished me good luck.

On the elevator I laughed to myself. That’s the 10th time that’s someone’s asked if I was dancer since moving here.