March 12, 1947, I was an awkward, depressed 18 year old, destined to be an old maid. My mother sent me to Maya, a diminutive dark haired, unemployed Eurasian dancer, to teach me to ball room dance “so you’ll get a boyfriend!”

Although a psychology major at Hunter College, I hadn’t any idea of what I wanted to do with my life. In fact, I was so depressed, I wished I were dead.

Thirty-nine year old Maya, a talented, but unemployed dancer, contacted through my mother’s beautician friend Ida, had agreed to teach me. After five tortured minutes of trying to lead me in a simple box step, Maya looked me over, stared directly into my eyes (we were exactly the same height, barely five feet) and said excitedly,
“You have the body of a modern dancer. Have you ever studied it?”

“Studied it?” I replied, “What is it?”

“You must have seen it performed in the theater,” Maya persisted.

“I’ve never been to the theater,” was my answer.

“Never been to the theater …. Don’t know what modern dance is,” mused incredulous Maya, a born dancer, surrounded all her life by the glamour of theater by her musician mother and sculptor father.

 “I’ll show you. Lie down on the floor and breathe.”