Luckily, my kids aren’t
quite ready to fly away. My teen, E, is just
finishing up seventh grade while my tween, S, is three weeks away from leaving elementary school,
but let me tell you, the older they get, the more pressure the merry month of May
brings. Final exams. Last minute projects. Sports tournaments. And recitals.
Yes, May is recital season. My children are not exactly the sports
tourney type, what with their pervasive fear of catching, throwing, and
kicking, but recitals they can do. In fact, we had the pleasure of attending
two on the same day last weekend, piano in the morning and ballet at night.
Both my daughters performed in the morning at the local unaccredited Christian college,
which makes up for its lack of scientific education by having a pretty stellar
music one. They have an acoustically amazing auditorium and a rare grand piano,
and even though driving on the campus gives me cold sweats, I can appreciate
the quality of the venue.
Piano recitals are definitely not my favorite part of May.
After listening to my children play the same two songs daily for about six
weeks, I’m more ready than they are to hear a new piece of music. Add to that
the other twenty five kids who are also sick of playing the same one song over
and over, and you have a recipe for a seriously long hour. Surviving is just a
matter of counting the songs until it’s your child’s turn, and then counting
the songs that are left. I understand the purpose of recitals, but I don’t want
to hear your kid mess up Bach any more than you want to hear my child butcher
Beethoven.
The evening dance recital, on the other hand, was so much
more than I even expected. You may recall a number of years ago, my daughter S
used to take lessons from a dance school that had a very different focus from
her current one. I could say that her current ballet school emphasizes
classical technique while her old school concentrates on more contemporary and
mainstream dance styles, but that is much nicer than the way I see it. Her new
school is artistic, and her old school teaches preschoolers how to grind. Both teach
dance in the same way that Sunny Delight is orange juice.
I obviously wanted to see my daughter perform in her dance
recital, but I had to give up something I really wanted to do that night. My
temple hosted their centennial gala at the same time and missing it was a big
disappointment. If I’ve been there for so many of the less fun aspects of
temple membership, I wanted to be able to enjoy, finally, something that had
the potential to be a blast. But a mother’s work is never done, so I put on a
smile and went downtown to support my daughter.
The recital was simply amazing. I mean it; I am being
totally sincere, for a change. The costumes were tasteful, the choreography was
challenging in an age-appropriate way, and the children demonstrated what they
had learned for all those hundreds of dollars spent on dance instruction. The
younger kids were fun to watch because they are so damn cute, but the high
school students? Damn. They dance with so much skill and talent that you forget
it’s a recital and not a professional ballet. And the best part is no one
humped the floor or took off part of their costume.
One of the first performances was by three dancers, two
girls and a boy, all young teenagers. The boy wore tights and a kilt. He is so gifted
in dance that in addition to being able to leap and spin gracefully, he also can
lift the girls, which is no small feat since both of them were taller than he
was.
My older daughter, who hasn't danced in six years, turned to me and said, “As if dancing in
tights wasn’t bad enough, he has to wear a skirt too?”
“It’s called a kilt,” I said.
Plus, he was dancing with two girls. He had his hands on two
girls’ waists, and their boobs were in his face for a large part of the number.
That kid is seeing more action that most boys his age. I especially liked that
the piece was a love triangle. In a way, it was his first threesome. Way to go,
dancing boy! Take that, jocks!
My daughter S, to be honest, is not the strongest dancer in
the class. She started pointe this year, and it’s been a struggle the whole
time for her. She has loved dance since she was three, and looked forward to
the year when she would finally get those satin slippers with the ribbons, to
finally look like a real ballerina. What you don’t see about real ballerinas is
how their feet end up like a witch’s, all gnarled and corned and callused and
sad. And until your feet adjust to that level of abuse, well, it hurts. A lot.
I knew pointe class
could be the breaking point for her love of dance, and to some extent, it has
been. This is the first year that she hasn’t said she wants to be a dancer when
she grows up. The minute she stood on her toes for the first time, she finally
understood that not everyone can be good at everything, and that’s not an easy
lesson to learn.
When S came out on the stage in the back row of dancers, she
wobbled. She faltered. She struggled. In a class of graceful gazelles, she stood
out for all the wrong reasons. But I couldn’t be more proud of her, because she
didn’t quit. She knew it wasn’t going to be pretty, but she kept her end of the
bargain. She went in front of that audience and tried and held her head up high
and did what she could, the best she could, with a smile on her face.
In my eyes, she was the most beautiful girl on that stage. I
knew how hard she worked, how what the rest of the class did easily reduced her
to tears every week. And yet, she stuck with it, even knowing she could not do
it. She didn’t give up, not because I forced her to dance, but because it was
important to her. Even as my heart ached for her, I loved every minute of it.
I heard the gala at the temple was a brilliant success, but
I was so happy being where I was, watching my child succeed in a way she doesn’t
even know. She even wants to give pointe another year, to see if she can
improve and find her way on those wooden toe boxes. If she does decide to stop
dancing in a year or two or less, she hasn’t failed. She could teach a lot of
adults, including me, a thing or two about perseverance and character. Now if
only I could figure out what to do with that collection of recital costumes.
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