This Is What We Do…When We Dance

Last weekend marked the three-week mark for the Annual School Performance for the School of Oregon Ballet Theater. M has been attending rehearsals ever since January, in addition to normal class time. On last Saturday, the staff asked to see C for a ‘meeting.’

It was the staff’s assessment that M was just not ready for the stage yet. She “didn’t know her steps” well enough. Inside, I suspect that C was quaking. I also suspect that she put on enough of a calm face to ask the following questions:

• Was M the only student struggling with her steps? 

  NO. THERE ARE OTHERS. SOME OF THE OTHER GIRLS ARE NOW ENTERING THEIR THIRD PERFORMANCE OF THIS PIECE. M IS NOT UNUSUAL.

• Would this impact M’s ability to attend school at SOBT next year?   

  NO. NOT ONE BIT. THIS IS RELATIVELY NORMAL.

• Would we have to miss the performance?

  NO. M WILL LIKELY UNDERSTUDY.

• Can we help her with additional practice or rehearsal?

  SOBT WILL HAVE EXTRA TEACHER HELP AVAILABLE BEFORE HER CLASSES, IF SHE WANTS TO MAKE USE OF THE OPPORTUNITY.

• What music is she dancing to? Perhaps we can get it at home and let her practice at home?

  UMM, I DON’T KNOW THE NAME OF THE PIECE, BUT IT’S BY STRAVINSKY. SORRY I CAN’T BE OF MORE HELP THERE…

C then responded, I’m told with a great deal of acceptance and understanding, saying something like: “Well, I’d rather have M be an understudy now, than push her onstage if she’s at risk of a bad performance. This news may be disappointing, but messing up on stage could be a big blow to a fragile ego. We’ll do what we need to do – I’m paying attention to the long-range view here. If pushing her too hard now spoils her love of dance, then that’s just not the right choice.

Apparently, one of the staff members then turned to the Director and asked, referring to C, “can she be one of our backstage mothers, please?”

Well, two saddened and disappointed girls came back from rehearsal that afternoon. Sad and disappointed, maybe, but not defeated. I was given the challenge of finding a piece of Stravinsky music that might match with a ballet called “Circus Polka Pink” C and M started dissecting the “count sheet” – the closest thing we had to a choreography sheet.

I had no idea what to do for the music. The task seemed impossible. Even if I could find such a thing, the only person who could tell me if it was the right piece was M. Same thing for C’s task, however. Even if we did find the music, all C could do was take M’s word for what the movements where, and when to start counting. There’s no available video of the specific SOBT choreography,and parents are not allowed to watch rehearsals.

Well, not to blow the suspense, but achieving the impossible didn’t take very long. Stravinsky happened to title the music “Circus Polka for Elephants” so a search for “circus polka elephant” on amazonmp3 (I was using my Droid) scored me a direct hit. I downloaded the song for $0.99, and a minute later, M was acknowledging that this was indeed the right music for her performance.

Just as I got the MP3 transferred to both M’s netbook and cellphone/MP3 Player, she and her Mom had worked out the movements on the count sheet!

Typhoon clobbers impossible situation twice in less than two minutes!

But we didn’t rest on our laurels for too long. We now had the music and the choreography, so now commenced the at-home drills.

When I left on my business trip the next day (Easter), C and M had rehearsed the Circus Polka a dozen times. Ultimately, by class the next Tuesday, C and M had rehearsed 40 or 50 times. C was convinced that M knew the moves, steps, and timing quite well. The extra rehearsals uncovered no ambiguity in M’s understanding of the routine.  C called SOBT and pre-arranged an early teaching session for M. The two of them got to ballet class 30 minutes early, and a teacher was waiting for them.

M worked for a half hour with the teacher. Then, when regular class started, the class instructor asked M to perform the dance alone, in front of the whole class. Nervous as all get-out, that’s what she did.

And at the end, the teacher pronounced her rendition “perfect”

We still don’t know if M will be in the show or remain an understudy. But, M has learned a number of lessons this week:

• M now knows that rehearsals require the same level of precision that a performance does. In real ballet, you don’t hold back in rehearsals.
• She can do the steps ‘perfectly’, and that her classmates, teachers and parents have acknowledged that to her directly.
• That she will understudy parts all throughout her ballet career; it’s a normal part of ballet training.
• That understudies sometimes have to fill in at a moment’s notice – it’s important for the understudies to be just as capable and prepared as the cast dancers.
• Her parents are proud of her mostly for giving her all, regardless of whether she’s in the performance or not.
• Her parents are more concerned with her lifelong development than this one specific performance.

I spoke with her last night. Once again, I told her how proud I am of her. Performance or not, she’s accomplished huge amounts this year.

Oh, that reminds me. M’s Summer Intensive sessions start June 28 and run through the end of July. Three days a week.

This is what we do. When we dance.

We Dance.

This is NOT a Joke

On April 1, 2005, my lovely wife was diagnosed with stage 2 Breast Cancer. The rest of the year was devoted to two surgeries, six months of chemotherapy and eight weeks of radiation treatments.

Today represents the five year anniversary of that eventful diagnosis.

It also represents the five year anniversary that makes for an official Cancer Survivor.

I kid you not.

My Mom Responds…

Mom wrote me an email fixing my factual errors. I post that letter here, unchanged. Unchanged because, well, it’s sweet and dear and perfect. 

 

Son;

You did remarkably well with only a few errors which were just out of order chronologically  (big word for me to spell with out a dictionary)  I was born in hospital in Nyssa, Oregon but went home to a tent house and traveled to Newberg when about 6 months old, and lived in a 1 room cabin across  the driveway from my Grandparents Searles ( my father's parents) .  Aunt Dee was born 1 year after me and we all 4 lived in that 1 room shack.  When my Dad came back from the Navy on a medical discharge, he tried farming, worked for the city of Newberg, and sold insurance for State Farm Mutual, and then went to work for the Post Office.  Your father and I were married an he left for Japan one month later and came back 18 months later, then we went to Quantico Marine Base in Virginia for 15 months.

The young man in the butcher shop at Naps and I had a crush on each other, however we were both recovering from bad marriages and we never fully reached out to each other.

You were 5 years old when Dad and I married....and Paula was born 1 year and 1 month later.

You did a good job with the information you had....I got a chuckle from it.   I LOVE you.  Mom

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

It’s an old cliche from technical writing:  that page left as whitespace in a manual, except for this text in the upper third, centered:

[this page intentionally left blank]

The last two weeks in the blog have been similar. Blank. Not so much by intent, as much by schedule. A lot has happened. And a lot that is good news. But I’ve not been in a position to slow down and write about it.

We’re not going dark. We’re just really, really busy right now! And we’ll write about it some … as time allows.

Mom Turns 70 Today

I don’t know if she’ll like this post or not, but 70 years old is a darned mighty milestone, and worth celebrating. Especially when you’re going strong like she is.

So, here’s the story as I know it. She’ll help me correct this, undoubtedly! I’ll make sure to republish with corrections as she sees fit.

My Mom was born on the Ides of March, 1940. It was a turbulent time. The US was clawing its way out of the Great Depression. That same month, Mussolini joined Hitler in Germany’s war against France and Britain. Finland surrendered to Russia. Himmler ordered the construction of the infamous Auwschitz concentration camp in the same year my mother was born. 

In Oklahoma, Chuck Norris was a five day old baby boy on the day my mother was born. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Barney Frank were both born later that same month.

As if representative of the time, my mom was born in a tent, in Nyssa, Oregon, as my displaced elders waited out the end of winter to start working in the fields come spring. They’d lost the farms in the area around Lincoln, Nebraska, and were working their way west to northern Oregon. Some of my family members had already settled in Newberg; everyone else was working their way west.

By the time my mom was two or so, the family had settled in Newberg and gotten to work. It was The Wartime, afterall. America was in an all-hands battle to stave of near certain annihilation. Many of the men in the family went off to fight. My mom’s father, included.  And when he returned, he took a job with the US Postal Service. My mom was the eldest of four: three girls and one boy. On the event of my Mom’s 70th, only her brother, Austin Jr, has passed away. The three sisters are all still healthy and vibrant.

My mom grew up in Newberg. The family lived in a number of houses around town. She was a girl scout. In 1945, she witnessed the wide-reaching devastation of the third Tillamook Burn (and arguably the best known of the series of blazes that comprise the Tillamook Burn complex). She sometimes tells stories of the red skies, and black soot raining down over Newberg, miles away from the fire site.

In those days, Newberg was an agricultural community. There was a paper mill, and the logging in the Coastal range brought log trucks in for a daily parade, through town, to the mill.

For me, in 1966 or so, when mom was 26 years old, I can still remember the log trucks rolling through Newberg – carrying logs so large that only two or three fit on the truck.

Mom met a boy in high school. His name was Grant, and he joined the Marines. Mom married him and moved back to Virginia to be with him until his training as a nuclear weapons specialist got him assigned overseas to Japan. Grant was my biological father. He was generally a troubled soul, and didn’t live to see 60.  My mom and my father separated  just after my birth. My mom was a working single mother during the 1960’s, in a small agricultural town. This must not have been a good time.

But I remember it just fine. We’d go shopping at the local grocery store, called Nap’s. It’s still there, by the way, some 50 years later. I have clear memories of the youngish butcher regularly giving me a treat of  a raw pork weiner  at Nap’s every time we went into the store. I’d sit in the cart and gnaw on that uncooked hot dog sausage all throughout the shopping trip.  Imagine doing that today~ major health safety issues, that. I’ve never asked her, but I think that butcher thought my mom was cute…

It was about this time that my mom contracted Scarlet Fever, a severe form of strep throat. Severe enough to hospitalize her, and to leave her with scar tissue on her heart valves. For as long as I can remember, she’s taken a daily penicillin to prevent any re-infections. The scar tissue, however, has been an issue in later life. Mom takes a series of heart-related medications and attends exercise classes to maintain as much heart health as possible.

In about 1966 or so, Mom met another guy. She married him just as I was turning 5 years old. His name is Jerry, and 42 or so years later, they’re still married. They had one child together, my sis, Paula. And raised us as a nuclear family, in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Mom stopped working at Tektronix when my sister was born. Mom stayed home, and took care of other children in the house for additional income while we kids were in school.

About 1980 or so, Mom and Dad bought a small place in Pacific City, Oregon. They almost moved there full-time right away. By this time, Dad was working at the Tektronix/Merix plant in Forest Grove, and could just as easily commute from the beach as anywhere. But, for the sake of the school system, they stayed put. My sister and I graduated from Hillsboro High School in 1981 and 1988, respectively.

Once my sister was out of high school, Mom went back to work. This time, she took a job in the cafeteria at Sunset High School as a baker. She kept this job until about the same time Jerry retired from Merix. True to their retirement plan since 1980, they systematically moved from Hillsboro to the house in Pacific City, where they’ve lived full time for over fifteen years.

Mom quilts. She dotes on her two grand children (my two kids). She dotes on her husband. She was born in a tent to landless farmers surviving as crophands, and today she uses the internet and a computer to communicate to the whole world.

IC Ecosystem article in EDN

article here

Ballet Date Night

Well, we went on a date to the ballet Saturday night. Oregon Ballet Theater’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, to be exact. Actually, there were two pieces in the program. I’ll start with the other piece.

First was an interpretation of the Four Humors. You know them from your Shakespeare:  Choleric, Melancholy, Phlegmatic, Sanguine.

See, I hadn’t read the program yet when the curtain came up for the first program. I just watched, completely unaware of the intent of the piece. I was most captivated by the dance and choreography in the first vignette. The other three vignettes were delightful, but I connected most deeply to the first.

During intermission, while we stretched our legs in the lobby, C asked me my thoughts on the first piece. I shared my preference for the initial vignette. That’s when C brought out her program and we looked at the notes. Only then did I realize the ‘Four Humors’ thing.

Care to guess which humor was first? Melancholy. Yep!
To know me is to love me.

Midsummer Night’s Dream was a narrative style ballet. Know how Nutcracker tells a story with dance interspersed with miming? Same here. The dancers act. The actors danced. Set changes move the story along. It takes about 40 minutes I guess for Midsummer Night’s Dream, in one single act.

The dance was wonderful. The principal dancers were amazing. About 14 or so dancers are children from SOBT. C whispered in my ear that they’re all Level 2 students. My lovely daughter? She’s Level 1. 

It was a great show. On that particular evening, I cannot say that the ballet touched my heart, but I could admire the effort and the skill involved. Whether the ballet touched my heart, I think, had more to do with my emotional condition as an audience member than it did with the magic of the dance or the efforts of the dancers. They did amazing work; I got out of it only as much as I was able to receive that evening. And that’s okay.

C and I had a date, though. That was a victory right there. I have to admit that our family life is wound so tightly that time alone is hard to come by. We almost didn’t know how to treat each other, out together, alone, without an entourage to herd. It was a working session for us. We had a date, but we also constructively and respectfully discussed some relationship dynamics throughout the family that have blocked our own relationship. It was a hard talk to have, but we did it. It wasn’t a fight, or an argument; more like a very serious Bahai consultation ongoing between events of the evening.  And, in the process, by the end of the evening, we  relocated our common ground.