Whatever it Takes

The ingredients necessary:

• A set of enthusiastic, energetic, forward thinking, selfless teenagers (do they make those?) who use the project requirement of their International Honor Society and turn it to an opportunity to make the world a little better. They plan and carry out a benefit concert for the organization Dance 4 Life (a group which mobilizes and unites young people to push back AIDS and HIV 4Life)
  
  Kids like this, perhaps:
  

• A song, introduced to me via Allison of Soccer Mom in Denial, who seems to be on the cutting edge of all things cool. She blogged about it once, and we've been singing it in this house ever since (Andrew knows every word).
  A song such as this:
  
  

• A friend like this who introduces me to the selfless, forward thinking, energetic, enthusiastic teenagers. We collaborate. We brainstorm. I create. (I like doing that)

• A group of willing, or perhaps not so, youth participants (Emma among them) who are surprised by my presence one week during their weekly meeting. "Dance? Us?" They ask. I answer. "You better believe it."
  
  They do.

The product rendered:

• An enjoyable, uplifting afternoon for all involved.


• More than 650 euros raised for the cause.


• That little rush for all of us that something good just happened here.

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More music links at Soccer Mom in Denial.

(Click the button. It can transport you.)

Beneath the Wings

The first performance I have much cognitive memory of I was six years old.

Surely, there were others which preceded it. The in house shows at the end of each semester in the dance studio. Each class of budding young artists had paraded in front of adoring parents their polaroids and their generous applause. But this would be my first moment on the professional stage. I had been chosen to perform in a suite of choreography and I, along with the others in the cast, had spent weeks, possibly months, in rehearsal every Saturday morning in the army barracks building turned dance studio. I remember so much about the sights, sounds and smells of the place; the very way that the dust looked in the forgotten corners, how the sunshine came in at a slight angle through the partitioned windows and the way the records on the player scratched and skipped.

That experience is a moment frozen in time in my memory. The whole of each individual gesture and exercise, the sound of the choreographer's voice, the sight of watching the grown-up dancers work through the movement while we few young ones played in the corner of the room, is wrapped up in one eclectic and extravagant memory package.

But what I remember most--after the rehearsals, the costume fittings, applying the makeup and waiting an arduously long time backstage--is the moment I sprang out from the wings and entered that magical world of lights. It was the first time I felt that incredible connection between expression and reception. I couldn't have named it then and am not certain I can explain it at all well now, but there is this something deeply connective between an artist and her audience; an energy which, could it be contained just might power peace on the planet. Or if not that, at least could increase the happiness level of an individual exponentially.

I gave it my everything that night, pouring my heart into every movement. Whatever nervous butterflies had been flitting in my belly up to that minute, they were instantaneously gone when my bare feet touched the marley flooring; and the energy of the thousand flapping wings was pushing me forward to share my best; my all.

You well may wonder how I can recall it all so clearly. That's easy. In the 25 years of performing which was to follow for me, it happened every time.

I haven't been on a stage as a performer in a good many years and instead have found the magic occurs for me now by watching my young students find that moment themselves. The mystical connection and energy exchange between s/he who is on the stage and they who are in the audience rarely disappoints and I love to watch as a child experiences and processes such an incredible moment.

Part of what I personally left behind when our family moved to The Netherlands was the performing arts program I had built and nurtured in our Arizona community. It wasn't the easiest thing to let go and truth be told, I miss teaching very, very much. I have snuck in a class or two here and there in the past couple of years and have enjoyed those moments very, very much.

And this week, I got to get in on it all over again.

The music teacher at our school is organizing and directing a musical for the children. Someone, somewhere whispered something to her and she approached and asked if I could help with the choreography for the show.

I answered.

And in a few weeks time I will be watching a whole new crop of budding performers enter the stage (some for the first time ever) and touch that moment where they pour their hearts into the song and the movement and are received by an adoring audience--replete with camcorders--who will signal approval with the thunderous sound of applause.

Indeed, several stars will be born.

And I will be there to see it all happen.

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See what else is happening at 42 where you'll find the links to more memories.

Once a performer

Now a teacher for children

I watch from the wings

*For Leslie's contest

It's All the Rage Over Here; Is It All the Rage Over There?

Long gone are the days of The Hustle. We bid farewell to Running Man; and a toodle-oo to Pop-n-Loc. There is a new dance in town, and ready or not, it is taking over the place. If you haven't seen it yet, just keep your eyes peeled. Proudly brought to your neighborhood straight from Western Europe, this is JumpStyle and it's happening on street corners, at bus stops, in the malls, at the clubs and yes, in living rooms all over the continent.

If you dare attempt mastery of the steps, do like I do and stick your tongue way out while you jump and turn. It's sure to help in the concentration, and if I don't bite it clean off as I twist, kick, and bounce, certainly soon I will be as hip as the next kid and I'll be jumpstylin' with the best of 'em.

Sharing Secrets

I write all the time. In my head.

All. The. Time.

Constantly on the inside screen behind the ridge of my forehead, words and sentences play by. I write continually, inspired by the things I see or the memories triggered by what I smell. Even when I am inspired by nothing, I am composing. My brain literally bubbles with ideas; ideas which pop and play and line themselves up into coherent thought; it is poetry and prose like you would never believe. It is profound, precise, perfect writing replete with moving imagery and powerful metaphor. Thoughts melding into striking sentences, with grammar, punctuation and spell checks complete.

The trouble comes when I ask those perfect phrases to make the journey from my brain- through my neck-across my shoulder-down my arm-and-out my fingertips. I think sometimes the thoughts dawdle along the way, like a toddler on his way to bed distracted by that last chance to play, and somewhere between formation and fruition something, maybe everything, gets lost. Instead of idyllic words fraught with wisdom what comes through my hands by way of pen or keyboard is merely a shadow of the original thought.

A small, dark, skulking shadow.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to retrace the path, hoping to find the birthplace of my perfect, precise, exquisitely formed inspiration so I can get it on paper, as it were.

My gaze casts to the distance, my brow knits in concentration and my lower lip gets tucked into my teeth. I search and reach and long to remember just what it is that I am trying to say.

My kids are learning that to interrupt me from this comatose stance is to risk a flash of the eye, much like the pupil of a frightened bird; and a heavy sigh just like a... well, like the tired mother that I am.

"Oh, I see you're writing. I'll come back" I hear them say.

Right now it is these words always in concert inside my mind. The dancers who usually occupy that space have had to make some room. Although I am on a virtual hiatus from teaching right now, it is apparent that my brain didn't get the memo, because the dancers who have been in my head since before I can remember are still there. I hear music and in my head, the stage lights are burning, the curtains rise and my dancers make an entrance. Leaping, spinning, stretching, these graceful dancers play out the steps choreographed in my heart and magnificently performed in my head.

This is how it has always been for me. Music makes my head dance.

I have been teaching dance, excluding mini-breaks like this one, for the past 25 years. I love the work. It is the most honest part of who I am; to be in a studio classroom with children moving and creating together is simple paradise for me. When I work with students preparing for performance, this is generally how it goes. The music is selected and I listen. And I watch. The dancers in my head take off into such stunning movement that often I am breathless. I take notes. I listen to the music again. And I watch. And in my head there is dancing.

I know when I stand in front of my class, frozen to the spot with my brow furrowed and my lip tucked in, it is an odd sight. But even with notes in hand, sometimes I just have to watch the dancers in my head run through the combination or the formation one more time, so I can translate it onto the bodies standing in front of me.

Standing still, eyes cast to the distance, eyebrows crowding eyelids and begging to share space, teeth marks in my lower lip, I have often heard:

"Shhh! Quiet. Miss Jenn is thinking"

Because my students are in on the secret.

I see things in my head.

If I could, I would publish directly from the gray matter and skip the variations and mutations of the perfect paragraph as it resides there. And then, the dancers in my head could don their costumes, move onto the stage, and interpret the words; dancing with passion and grace in a spectacular improvisational performance. It well could be an artistic wonder.

If only I had the necessary plug-in.