OmegaMom

The recital rehearsals have been interesting.

For one thing, they reconfirmed a particular dance passion of mine.

I love modern dance.  I love jazz dance.  I even love hip-hop dance!  (This last one is news to me, but the recitals by the official dance troupe [which has apparently garnered awards] have shown me the light.)

I don’t like most ballet.  I think it’s often boring.  There’s no passion in it.  Too disciplined.  Bah.

But.  But.  It is an excellent grounding for any type of dance.  Because, even though the kinds of dance I like can be wild and passionate, they are based on the same basic moves.  (Even the hip-hop dance.)

After dance classes, the dotter and I have watched from the doorway or the one-sided glass windows while the older kids practiced in their classes.  The recital rehearsals have been a revelation:  dances that looked…um…chaotic and incoherent from the side have suddenly become very intricate and interesting when viewed from the front.

And one of the things that it recalls to me is that you can take many different individual movements, made by different individual dancers, and turn it into a unified creation.

E pluribus unum.

Dancers moving in tandem, flowing this way and that, some turning one way, some turning another, some leaping and some lying down–all turn into a coherent whole.

Being part of that “whole” is an exhilarating feeling.

About 15 years ago, while I was living in the Bay Area, I joined the Berkeley Community Chorus.  One of the great things about the chorus was that the director didn’t require auditions; her philosophy was that everyone has music inside, and just needs to have it nurtured.  So anyone was welcome to join, as long as they paid the dues and did all the rehearsals.

I was able to join without having to prove I could sing, or prove I could read any music.  Har.

Luckily, I am able to sing, and I can read music (sort of). (Of course, being an alto is easy; you usually get to sing the same few notes over and over again, being a human drone string, as it were.)

There were nights that I was just dog-tired from work and not wanting to go to chorus rehearsal.  It was just too much.  Wah.  But if I made myself go, it was as relaxing to me as yoga has been–and one of the joys was the feeling of being part of a greater whole, a beautiful whole, and realizing that you are contributing to that beauty.

When we did performances, that joy was multiplied tenfold, because the audience, while not being part, was a part of that whole.

Now, the whole “being a small part of a great whole” is not my usual stance.  Usually, I’m all for individuality, each person freaking freely in his or her own fashion.  Perhaps that is why the act of being part of a chorus (or part of a dance company) is so exhilarating. 

The dotter is young yet, and still uncoordinated.  The littlies all go off in different directions, with some hitting the right movements at the right time, and others just standing there, and one or two dashing to the front of the stage to wave to their moms.  (I do hope the kiddlies aren’t hurt by the laughter when this happens–it is hard to explain to little ones that the laughter is tender laughter.)  And there are oodles of K and pre-K classes at this dance studio, so there are lots of opportunities for the audience to laugh and exclaim how cute the little girls are.

But I hope that the dotter finds a way to experience that fluidic whole that comes from such performance–whether it is in dance, or singing, or theater, or something else.  Because it is such a joyous part of humanity to me.

Technorati: Dance, chorus, unity

The ways of the universe being mysterious and perverse, right after I sent out my plea, I haven’t had a chance to write a real post.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Last night was dress rehearsal.  The ways of the universe being perverse and full of contrary magic, I got six pics of the girls in dotter’s class all sitting in the auditorium seats prior to the show.

Then my camera gasped and died.

Well, it didn’t die, but it was in hibernation until I could find new batteries.  Which, of course, I hadn’t brought with me.  I thought it was damn fine that I managed to get home to get the camera before picking up the dotter before going to the dress rehearsal.

Luckily, I was sitting with one of the other moms for that class, and she was able to get some pics of the girls up on stage, doing their thang.

After Saturday, we won’t have any evening classes to send the dotter off to until September.  The thought boggles my mind.  I’ve gotten used to dashing here and there after work during the week.  But summer is the time of lazy days and evenings, apparently…it’s a routine that we will have to accept from now on.

More later–probably after Saturday, dunno quite when, sorry!