While I’m tempted to embark upon a continuation of my last topic – about the cleansing of our basement as an Advent activity (because there have been exciting new developments there) – I will refrain and move on to something new.
What I’ll serve up today, firmly in the realm of contrasts, has to do with how, with the passage of time, a certain kind of thing can become an almost completely different kind of thing.
OK, that’s just bland. Sounds merely like the aging process, right?
Perhaps, but what I want to describe is how a particular kind of dance performance which has been on stage millions of times during the Christmas season can go through a metamorphosis to become an almost entirely different creature, or event.
My life as a mother of three kids has included plenty of music lessons, but just a smattering of dance. (For them, I mean; my own persistent desire to dance has been, alas, mostly unquenched). Back when she was about five, and we lived in the “Quiet Corner” of Connecticut, our daughter did participate in one community production of The Nutcracker. The video we took of the performance lives on, thank goodness, and I’ll propose we watch it again (eliciting groans) when the kids are home over Christmas. It’s the way she interacts with the other little girls, whispering and sometimes giving instructions, and how she often glances over in the direction of her dad holding the camera that’s most charming.
Here’s how the little sweethearts looked in about 1999, in their shimmering clothes. Cora is second from the right, next to the one scrunching up her face.
Fast forward about 22 years now.
We’ve moved twice since those little girl days, spending 12 years in the next town in Western Massachusetts – where our kids became teenagers– and then, eight years ago, re-locating to the Capital Region of New Hampshire. These changes came about due to the growth of a certain clergyman’s career, – a different tale.
By the second move, our kids were peeling off: two in college, one living away at high school. To some extent, I needed to re-invent myself. So, through a non-profit organization, I became a mentor to an 11 year-old girl. This was definitely a good idea, what with the empty nest syndrome and all. At the same time, I must admit that there were plenty of moments, especially early on, when I had pangs of realization that I was, under no circumstances, to behave as a mother to this person, who had her own large family. The goal was for me to more of a friend, an adult friend — someone who could provide some new experiences, cheer her on, offer a listening ear.
And as I started to attend various events where her peers’ parents would be, such as school concerts, I also realized that I wouldn’t know most of the people: I was new in town, and I’d raised my own kids elsewhere. This was a bit hard on my soul, in truth; I wanted to belong, too.
One day, when I asked her if there were any particular new activity she wanted to try, she said, with admirable directness, “I’m interested in doing either dance or gymnastics. Can you help me?” I thought I could, and thus began a multi-year relationship with Concord Dance Academy – a place that offers a smorgasbord of styles. After a year or two of Jazz, she switched to loose-limbed Hip hop (with an early evening time slot, convenient for me as transporter) and there she has stayed for the past six years, with the same wonderful teacher, who by day does a whole other job.
The place puts on two major shows a year – one in early December and another in late May. And oh, the costumes!
Getting back to The Nutcracker, this time the Hip hop crew dipped their toes into that classic, offering a number not called “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” but “Dance of the Sugar Plums.” Needless to say, this famous piece was not performed by one ballerina on point, hair in a tight bun, dressed all in white, but instead by a group of sweat-shirted teenagers who brought a more casual (but still carefully choreographed) feel to the stage.
You’d know the music anywhere (apparently Tchaikovsky, a bit before 1892, was thrilled to discover that new kind of pinging instrument called the “celesta”) even in its 21st century version, but that’s about where the similarity would end. If the setting for the original ballet is meant to be the parlor of a wealthy family with lovely decorations everywhere, the number that I saw would be much more at home outside in the elements, on an urban sidewalk. Here’s a bit of it for you:
This is probably not like any Sugar Plum dance you’ve seen before, either.
Sadly, this year, my mentee’s grandmother (her main caregiver) wasn’t in the audience because she died in late September. So the fall has been a time of grieving.
In the version I tell myself, I once drove a little girl — my daughter — to rehearsals that culminated in a certain kind of show where many little girls were running excitedly around a stage, bedecked in silver. It was glorious. Years later, I drove a teenage girl — not my daughter — to different kind of rehearsals that culminated in a certain kind of show where, again, many little girls (in other numbers) were running excitedly around a stage, and, in the number I was most interested in, an older girl I had come to care very much about was working the stage in her red sweatshirt, black Converse sneakers, and Santa cap. And this, too, was glorious.
Happy holidays to all, whatever your style!