How My Ravenous Thirst For Fairies And Flowers Got Slaked Today

Today was my daughter's dance recital, a consortium of dancing children from around the city.

The first half of the recital was so packed that we have had to share a program, which we variously call The Sentence Passed Upon Us, The Book of the Dead, and The Apocalypse.  It's a long work.

Children's recitals are curious things.  There really is no name in English for the mixture of emotions they raise in the parental bosom: mildly apologetic, bored, proud, a bit fearful of the politics of preference that plague any art or sport.

But we've sat through these things for our kids, and friends' kids. We're old hands.

This year, Becca is dancing in a short thing of Stravinsky's, and in a bowdlerized but highly energetic Cancan.  I noted that the music is somehow incorrectly attributed to Strauss in the program. 

No, no. 

It's the galop from Offenbach's Orpheus In The Underworld, a strangely fitting idea for the first half of any children's recital.  If Orpheus were amongst us, he might well think himself in hell, the old musical Pharisee.

About that first half. 

There was the usual assemblage of small children in pink tutus: all tutus must be pink, at that age.  They very nearly slaked even my consuming thirst for flowers and fairies.  Alas.  I'll have to wait until next year for more of that.

I didn't have the program, but I know all these dances almost by heart: there was The Chaos of the Spanish Fans, a very good rendition of the classical Attempt To Go Clockwise At The Same Time, Debussy's Fit of Unscripted Polyrhythms, a really fine Collision of The Sylphs, and of course The Popping of the Pink Kernels.

Then comes a lengthy intermission during which the parents of the younger kids clear out, unfairly leaving those of us who sat through that artistic spasm to go it alone.

Not that I mind.  These things are generally hot and crowded.  And small girls in pink tutus lingering generally come with small brothers in baby-carriers who wake cross.

So off they all go, and those of us who have done our time at that level brace ourselves for round two.

The lights dim, the rich red velvet curtain ascends, the determined audience hunkers down, and we begin.

There's a hip-hop flavored tap tribute to that angry revolutionary hymn, "I'm Walking On Sunshine."

There's another round of frilliness that I think of as A Hanging At Christmas.

Then comes an outstandingly tasteful flamenco class that opts to do everything perfectly rather than to dazzle us with unmastered technique, and the effect is quite impressive.  A tall elegant instructor stands in the middle of a circle of calm, confident, and pleased-looking girls doing nothing terribly difficult but a great deal of dance that is pleasing to watch.

I note that this is the point in a recital where we turn the corner and actually start to experience aesthetic as well as parental pleasure.

Another round of ballet is next on the agenda.

In this one, something goes a little wrong.

It takes me a while to figure it out this time.

It's a moderately disciplined class.  Their recital involves some girls playing with colorful jelly-balls in what the Book of the Dead invites us to imagine is a country garden but is really a bare, empty stage.

One of the girls is noticeably behind the tempo, a few steps out of line, looking around for her place.

The other girls resolutely do not look at her.

I can't look away: she's dropped her ball, and chases it a few steps across the stage.  There is a sort of vacant look as she glances at the audience, as though she is in some private place.

She is back in line, misses her cue, bangs into her neighbor, who dances around her with set teeth.

Mercifully, it's short, and I'm not entirely sure anybody else saw what I saw: it happened quickly.

If I wasn't seeing things, if she was as noticeably out of step as I thought, then I doubt seriously there is one parent in the auditorium that isn't prepared to fight for that girl as the troupe scurry off stage to no less and no more than the usual applause.  Not one is unready to say, "You go, girl.  You dance.  You want to dance, then dance."

Such is the guild of parenting.

The quality of the dancing goes up quickly.

The leaping and galumping are by now elegant grand jetés, sautés, and well practiced pas.

The Cancan, as it did in Paris in the 1830's even before Pierre Sandrini anglicized it for tourists at the Moulin Rouge, brings the house down.  The choreographer resolutely keeps the sexuality down and the joy high.  (I am so proud, I whisper to my sister: I have raised a burlesque star.)

Becca dances in a short dramatic ballet set to Stravinsky, has a good role in it.  A strong male lifts her, she forms her body to the direction of the lift, and is aloft for an eternity before coming back to the stage.

I can remember when she galloped and tripped among the flowers and fairies.

Though she never so lost her way as the girl with the ball, if she had, she might still be there dancing to the maddening rhythms of Stravinsky, as graceful as a bird, forgetful of the things she used to be, while I watch, saturated in memories of a girl in pink who often made me smile, but never made me feel quite like this.

Comments

[kadie]

the girl with the ball had special needs, I think she is on the spectrum from what I saw but not sure. I was proud of her for getting through the TWO dances.

Next year let's come in at intermission....