More than puppy love

Later, Riggi again offered Lucas birthday wishes, this time in front of a crowd of about 400, noting that the vet "takes care of all of the palazzo pups," a reference to the three dozen pooches who share Riggi's stone manse on North Broadway, which she has dubbed Palazzo Riggi.

Though the Song & Dance Gala was officially about inducting Broadway hoofer, singer and TV and movie star Ben Vereen into the Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame, the evening was Riggi's.

Taking in my black suit, striped dark shirt, electric-blue tie and (because we were still outside) not-yet-removed sunglasses, Riggi told me, "I love the look!" Later, her arm waving in the air, Riggi escorted Marylou Whitney and Whitney's husband, John Hendrickson, through the front doors to a chair, where the frail Queen of Saratoga greeted guests who literally knelt before her.

Emptying the atrium cocktail party and getting everyone seated at tables in the dance studio took 45 minutes.

The retina-searing decor, by the Saratoga firm Fine Affairs, featured 5-foot-tall centerpieces topped by Day-Glo feathers — psychedelic palm trees where Toucan Sam, the sugar-addled Froot Loops mascot, would feel at home.

The metal-framed banquet chairs ringing each table were swathed in spandex that echoed the unnatural brilliance of the feathers' blues, greens, yellows, pinks and purples.

After dinner, when the dance floor flooded to TS Ensemble's cover of the Black Eyed Peas' ubiquitous wedding-reception soundtrack "I Gotta Feelin'," attendees plucked the feathers from their centerpieces and used them as choreographic aids.

The surrealness of the evening extended to Vereen himself, who performed a spoken and sung autobiography that interspersed a life narrative with tunes from his past shows, including "Hair," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Pippin"...