CREATIVITY IN A WEEK: SENIORS SING, DANCE AND ACT (AND IN MY CASE, WRITE ABOUT IT)

     In August I spent a week at the Chautauqua Institution, a sprawling resort in western New York, to attend an senior arts boot camp, led by Jeanne Kelly of Encore Creativity. I followed seniors in each of the three arts tracks offered at the camp and wrote an article for the Washington Post's Style section. My piece has just been posted at the Washington Post website: Seniors sing (and dance and act) for their health.

Here are the seniors I followed during the week:

DANCE

     Sixty-seven-year-old Florence Crisp of Alexandria, who drove up in a carload of other former Foreign Service officers to the arts boot camp, didn't let her two artificial knees stop her from joining the dance track.

THEATER

Sixty-one-year-old Noel Miner, who joined the theater track, made an appropriately grand entrance onto the Chautauqua grounds in western New York with her husband and biggest fan Harold on their 2010 Harley Tri-Glide from their home just outside Orlando. 

CHORUS

When George Lane, 81 (at right) of Gaithersburg, Md., told Encore Creativity he needed a ride to Chautauqua, Jeanne Kelly put him in touch with Vin Kelly (left) of Chevy Chase.  Coincidentally, the two had been neighbors 30 years ago in Silver Springs. They are also both tenors.