Once More, Into the Breach

I must be crazy to do this again, but here I go - I'm off today to interview another woman for a profile article. I say I must be crazy because my previous efforts at carving out a niche in writing profile articles about interesting women haven't exactly worked out entirely well. I had to abandon one such article after three years of work when the woman I wrote about couldn't agree on a final draft, two other ideas never got past that stage, and I have two articles (the ones on Awilda Rivera and Claire Barratt) that, although basically finished, languish for want of a takers in the periodical world. This new article I'm starting is a project I stumbled into by accident. (It has a real clincher at the end.)

This woman performs as a living ballet statue in Manhattan, and when I first saw her, I took her business card and spoke to her as she got out of character. She turned out to be an Englishwoman, just like Claire Barratt. Well, I wasn't interested at the time in writing about another Englishwoman in New York involved in dance and busking because I'd already done that. But I did think it would be cool to get these two Britgirls to meet and possibly collaborate, based on their commonalities. That never actually happened, and I forgot that the dance world is too competitive to allow collaborations of such nature. I did, however, speak with this other woman later at length, admitting to her I was a writer but also explaining why I wouldn't want to write about her. She convinced me that just because she had similarities with another performer didn't mean that anything I wrote about her wouldn't be different than what I'd already written about Claire Barratt. And this made sense. So I called her a few days later and decided that, yes, I'd like to write about her after all.

That was several months ago - last year, in fact. It's only happening now because we finally have the time to spare for each other. I had sworn off more profile articles at the start of the first of the year, but because I made this offer to this woman before then, I'm clearly making an exception in this case. If this one goes well, I might be open to another interview article in the future, but right now I'm thinking of ending this on spec interview biz no matter what happens. Only one article from these efforts has been published so far, and that took long enough. So I might continue this gambit after this article is done. Or I might make this my last profile article. Either way, only time will tell. :-)

(Here's the clincher. I know this woman's name [you'll know it too, after today], her country of origin, her telephone number, and even her address, but I still don't know what she looks like. She wears whiteface when she's in costume, and I've never seen her out of costume. So I'll literally be seeing her for the first time when I meet her today. Since she's a trained ballet dancer, I plan to show her my autograph from Paloma Herrera. . . just to impress her. :-) )