satin

Letters from America

In the early days of my glamorous aunt I thought I should do a search to see whether anyone else had used that phrase before.

There really wasn’t much in the search results:  one or two desultory 1950s photos of a well turned out woman meeting the queen.  Right.

There was not much else –  except this old photo, which an American woman had posted on the death of her aunt at age 82.  Her post described the young woman in this photo as “my glamorous aunt”.  You can decide for yourselves.

 

For me it seemed this woman was totally my glamorous aunt.
She may only have been 19 or 20 but she had the drill.
She smoked that Cuban cigar with style, hamming it up to the delight of her 8 year old nephews (?)
She was wearing a satin outfit in the middle of the day and it worked perfectly well.
Or was it a swim suit?  Was she just doing her thing with the cigar and the children in the hot weather for the sake of it  – and the water and the swimming were entirely optional?

The scene in the photo feels to me like a  joyful slice of West Side story.

There is a Latin expressiveness about this image – the  lips, the weight on one hip, the theatricality of shoulders, and  the boys lean along a diagonal line just like a Hollywood male chorus from an another era.  It’s feels like a moment in a dance musical.  It feels like it could be Miami or Cuba or New York – it just feels alive.  I really like it.

Which reminds me that I like the Symphonic Dances of West Side Story.
If you are interested, in this clip the great man himself conducts – it’s probably too theatrical conducting for some tastes (but I say so what?  if you are the genius who composed it you can do as you choose):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srb2EyvTSGw&list=RDsrb2EyvTSGw#t=303

It may just be the Romeo and Juliet connection (West side Story _is_ Romeo and Juliet), but it’s the dance theme too.  So I can’t help connecting Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights (the Montagues and Capulets).  It is popular dance music I really adore.
Here is a link: