Friday, July 6, 2012

Compare and Contrast

Tea Dance, Queen's Room, Queen Mary 2, June 2012

Tea Dance, The Boatslip, Provincetown, July 2012
Who says travel doesn't broaden the mind?  Here we have two very different incarnations of a venerable institution.  One features the Queen's Room Orchestra playing delicately pizzicato arrangements of "Blame it on the Bossa Nova" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"; the other has DJ MaryAlice (a venerable institution herself, really) pumping out "Turn the Beat Around" and "I'm Every Woman" (I'm waiting for the house arrangement of "Call Me Maybe" - it feels inevitable). 

The clientele may be rather different (and the scones are better on the boat - actually, scones could really raise the tone at the Boatslip), but the intent, really, is more or less the same - to enjoy a fine afternoon with a touch of people watching, a turn or two on the dance floor, and perhaps a sympathique moment or two with an unexpected partner.  On the Queen Mary, of course, that partner is liable to be one of the paid Dance Hosts (and for the very patient older gentleman, that's a gig to explore), while on the deck in Ptown, it's probably a window dresser from Brooklyn, but the similarities are undeniable...

4 comments:

  1. And that sympathique moment can happen below deck or dock. Probably less sand and splinters on the QM.

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  2. I once had a very Anita Ekberg moment at the boatslip---met a nice man who invited me to dinner, and then walked me off the deck and nip-deep into the bay at low tide to his sailboat.

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    Replies
    1. That sounds potentially disastrous, frock-wise, but otherwise simply potentially hot...

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  3. Thom: If you call out three times, it will summon them.

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