My Son Can Dance

Okay, the Teen Dance Company Second Stage performance has been put to bed, quite successfully I might add. I was quite impressed, if I do say so myself, with all the kids’ performances and with the student choreography in particular. I think it is amazing that the studio offers a student choreography track, and it’s great that even a few of the students take advantage of that opportunity. Their numbers had such variety and scope. It really was amazing.

I thought Julian looked pretty good,, but he’s my son. (I can actually be quite critical, if you want to know the truth.) He was better on Saturday night; by Sunday he was tired. Plus, at the Friday night tech rehearsal he hit his head hard enough for Mark Foehringer to be worried that he had a concussion. Of course, I was not told about the severity of this incident until Saturday night when Mark told me he couldn’t sleep on Friday night, because he was so worried about Julian. He said he almost called me at 3 a.m. to tell me to wake Julian up and check on him. Great…a little late, I thought.

Julian told me he had hit his head and had a headache afterwards and a little trouble remembering some dance combinations after that, but I really didn’t think much about it. Next time I’ll pay closer attention. He just didn’t make it seem serious, and he gets minor injuries like that a lot.

I was pleased to have a new blog reader who lives nearby show up with her son to watch the Saturday night show. That was a real thrill for me, although they left before I could talk to them when the show concluded. (Hi Sarah!)

Julian had Monday off to rest and then his Dad and I had to become the mean parents and keep him home from TDC on Tuesday when we discovered some missed assignments from the last few weeks. (He told us he had changed…handled his schoolwork…Don’t ever believe your kids. I hate to sound distrustful and jaded, but teenagers just don’t always tell you the truth. They tell you what they think you want to hear, what gets you off their back and what they want you to believe.) Then, I discovered more missed assignments, so we cut out going to jazz at Studio 10 and yesterday I drove all the way to TDC, went in and talked to Mark Foehringer, and then took Julian home. You see, I feel down on my job of Big Bad Disciplinarian. I didn’t want Julian kicked out of a spring concert piece of ballet choreography, and Mark was running a rehearsal last night. He told me it was a good night for Julian to miss rehearsal, if he was going to miss, though, so we turned around and went home.  We’ll see if missing three days of dance made any impression on him at all.  After this, missing class and rehearsal will make a bigger difference…

As for those missed opportunities, it seems that Julian’s commitment to TDC is going to prevent him from having a role in Los Gatos Ballet’s production of Copellia, which he was asked to be in. He really wants that role — maybe more to hang out with the girls than to do the dancing , but the tech rehearsal and performance are on the Thursday and Friday right before a full week of tech rehearsals for TDC’s big Concert in May. So, Mark  has initially said, “No.” Julian was bummed.

Then, he was going to be in the Studio 10 spring show, performing only in the jazz III class’ number, but that show is on June 13. School ends on June 12 and American Ballet Theatre’s summer intensive starts on June 15. We figure that we might have to get on a plane on June 13. At the least, we’ll be busy getting ready to go to New York, so this performance won’t be happening either, much to Julian’s dismay. That means he’ll be attending class between now and May and learning the choreography, but at some point he will not be able to continue with it because he’ll be sort of in the way. At least, he won’t have a spot in the number.

By the way, yesterday Julian’s dad registered him (and paid the nonrefundable deposit) for the ABT summer intensive. So, I guess that is a done deal. We have half the dance world and the magazine publishing world and my old Syracuse University friends looking for sublets for us in NYC! We have not yet notified the camp that he isn’t coming…some little bit of fear on our part that should something happen his summer will go totally to pot.

Sorry I haven’t written more this week. I’ve been busy writing for dance magazines. I finished that piece for Dance Teacher on getting boys into dance class and keeping them there, and now I’m working on another for them on how to keep tap dancers’ feet healthy. (I wrote a similar story for them on dancers feet in general last year.) I’ve also been working on a story for Dance Spirit magazine on several teen dance companies, including TDC.