PBS show: A Place to Dance

[SandyD]

A Place to Dance

I haven't had the opportunity to watch this all the way thru, but thought some of you might like to catch this show. It's playing on PBS stations "nationwide." I pasted the director's statement below.

It's the story of people my parents generation and older. My parents are actually in it. Just dancing. With their friends. Their in their mid 70s, and are the youngsters of their crowd.

Director’s Statement

Every Sunday people of a certain age swing to the music of the Pat Barberot Orchestra. Pat’s played their proms, the USO dances during World War II, and all the hip New Orleans ballrooms that have come and gone in the years since.

One night, as we interviewed a woman who had spent most of the evening on the dance floor, she suddenly paused and said “You know tomorrow I’ve got to be at the hospital at 7 o’clock and I haven’t thought about that once until just now.” It affirms what it means to live in the moment. We constantly float into the future — dreaming about what we want and worrying about what we fear. Through their actions, these folks affirm the value of the here and now. As one man told us “I may be dead tomorrow, but tonight I’m going to dance.”
In their story lies the story of a city, made all the more poignant by the loss many of them experienced during Hurricane Katrina.

— Alan Berg