Coming Right up

My younger daughter, S, told me yesterday that she has never seen a performance of The Nutcracker. I have to admit, I was floored at her announcement because I’ve seen it at least seven times now, as have my husband and my older daughter, E.  It has become a holiday tradition of sorts for the three of us to have a lovely dinner downtown and see the show.

S has never sat in the audience; instead, she has been up on the stage. For seven of the past eight years, S danced in a variety of roles. She has been a little mouse, a party girl, a toy soldier, a toy soldier on horseback, an angel, and a big mouse. Well, twice on the big mouse, and believe me, she is still disappointed about it. She has been on pointe and in ballet shoes. She has had her hair curled and her face covered with a mouse head. The one year she missed was due to an injury, and she volunteered to help with the production even when she could not perform.

The Nutcracker is a huge commitment for everyone involved. Auditions are generally held at the end of summer, and practices take place every weekend for months until that one weekend in December. There are many families way more involved and committed to the experience than mine, but we each contribute in some way to make it work.

Honestly, I love to watch the show. I love dressing up and going out and sitting in that slightly uncomfortable concert hall seat. I love when the lights dim and the musicians play. I love the grandeur, and the tradition, and I love when I see my child take the stage for roughly five minutes, knowing that she will have this special experience of realizing the reward of her hard work and dedication as well as the thrill of taking the stage with professionals from around the world for an audience of over 3,000 people.

This year, my sister, LK, joined us to watch the show. After our delicious dinner, we went to the concert hall and took our seats. We had good seats too, almost in the middle of the row, closer to the front, a great spot to see all the action. The first act went off without a hitch, and I was impressed as always by the quality of the performance.

After a twenty-minute intermission, the second act began. I love the second act because that’s when all the trippy stuff happens in the Land of Sweets. Spanish, Arabian, Chinese, and Russian dancers all perform, and the music and choreography and costumes are mesmerizing. Indeed, we were all engrossed when it happened.

Sometime during the Arabian or Chinese dances, we heard this horrible sound. It came from two rows behind us, and it was like a splash, only human. A human splash. It wasn’t a sneeze or a cough; in fact, it was so unusual a sound to hear in public that at first we didn’t know what to make of it.

About thirty seconds later, it became aromatically clear that the sound we heard was, in fact, the spew of vomit. My sister is notoriously phobic about vomit, and E is almost as bad, so the fact that the two of them were in such close proximity to someone else’s puke and powerless to flee made all three of us anxious. We had to turn around repeatedly to see if it was directly behind us. The large man seated in that row may have been targeted. He had an awkward look on his face and moved around, unsure if he should stay seated or get up and leave. We took comfort in knowing it was at least a row away.

We covered our noses with our fingers, but seriously, the smell. E, who was not in the greatest of moods, courtesy of being seventeen, decided there was no way she could sit through the rest of the show. She did that thing where she would start to stand and then sit and then sort of squat because she didn’t want to be rude, but really, it was too late for that, all the while with that look on her face that showed her contempt for other people and crowds and bodily functions. I told her to go, and so she did.

At that point, my sister took E’s seat. Apparently, the woman next to her made the mistake of putting her purse on the floor, as well as the bottoms of her shoes. LK leaned into me and we covered our faces with our collars because our fingers alone were not enough of a filter. On my other side, my husband sat and watched the show, oblivious to the panic and disgust we were experiencing. He later said he could smell it but chose to ignore it. I insist that smelling vomit is not a choice.

With E gone and LK next to me, we turned back to the show, and damn if we didn’t miss almost all of the Chinese and Russian dancing. After a bit, the smell dissipated, or we adjusted like my husband, but we were able to make it through all of act two and curtain bows.

We met up with E in the lobby. She told us that after cleaning the soles of her shoes in the restroom, she sat on a bench by herself. Soon after, an older woman sat next to her, even though all the other benches were empty. She held in her hand a large trash bag, inside of which was her vomit-covered coat. She gave E a sheepish look, and E got up and moved to another bench.

I debated asking for a refund for E’s ticket. The seats were over 55 a head, and she was too grossed out to see the entire show. I also thought for about a minute or two that they should have turned on the lights and thrown some cat litter or baking soda all over that puke, but the show, as they say, must go on. There was nothing to do but sit and watch.

After congratulating S on another successful show, we spent the drive home discussing what would cause a grown woman not to get up and leave if she felt that she was going to be sick. She certainly wasn’t a child who may not understand that nauseated feeling, but an adult? And in a formal theatre? Again, it wasn’t a heavy metal show or a football game; it was the motherfucking ballet. Have some class, people.

I wanted to have some sympathy for the woman. She didn’t set out to ruin everyone’s evening. She didn’t feel well, and for whatever reason, she wasn’t able to leave before she got sick. But then I thought about the audition and all those Saturdays of practice and the hundreds of dollars spent for everyone to watch the show, and I decided no.

You ruined more than your own night; you ruined the performance for at least two rows of people. You made me miss the Chinese dance. Perhaps you should stay home and watch it on DVD, or, at the very least, bring a discreet bag with you. Pick an aisle seat maybe. Wait and eat after the show. Go to a different show, maybe Disney on Ice. I’m sure you won’t be the only one puking there.

Dancing Queen

You think the winter holiday season is busy? Try May. Nothing compares to the nonstop clusterfuck that is the end of the school year. It’s one thing when your kids are little and you have to go to school to watch them “graduate” from kindergarten. Just wait until they get a little older, like my kids, or even worse, high school, with proms and graduation and going away to college and  sweet Jesus, slow it down.

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.